Carissa Sevar: Carissa thinks this is - good? Like, it's not what she expected to happen, but not only is Keltham going to be wary of enhancement he's going to be supportive of the Project keeping some secrets from its highest ranks, and he's going to be doing lots of narrowing down in the direction of this theory which might not even be false and which doesn't speak poorly of Cheliax at all.

Of course there's probably about to be another twist that makes this a disaster. 

(Security taps Pilar, and gives Carissa a heads-up.)

Asmodia: Nobody has actually gotten around to telling Asmodia that she's in the middle of an Otolmens event, what with Pilar's curse not saying to do that and also her having not been read in on what an Otolmens is!

"What warnings do you get on not trying to be Keepers, like, why shouldn't most people try that, according to the official story?"

Keltham: "Keepers are constantly going around thinking of themselves as failing, as broken, which is apparently somehow healthy and fine for them, even if it isn't for most brain-typical people, and doesn't wear on their nerves at all.  And more importantly there's - structures of human thinking, of motivation - human minds are just not designed to work the way Keepers try to make their minds work - Taldane doesn't have words for the syndromes I want to talk about, which is maybe itself something of a warning sign.  The destruction of your desires to do things by questioning those desires too much; never perceiving yourself as having any good options and all roads leading into failure -"

Keltham proceeds, in all deadly grim seriousness, and without apparently the slightest inkling of what anyone here might think of this terrifying risk, to inform his class of Chelish students, inside Cheliax, that failed Keepers supposedly end up very unhappy and two-thirds eventually go into early cryonic suspension.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa is totally sincerely and uncomplicatedly appalled at the thought, because it's like getting turned into a statue, on purpose, because you're so miserable you'd rather be a statue. Even Hell can't do that to people unless they're incredibly weakminded.

Keltham: And that's with people who otherwise had good-enough prospects that the prediction markets said they could try to become Keepers in the first place!

Keltham paid to slightly subsidize a market once on what would actually happen to him if he tried to become a Keeper, just because he was curious, and the chances were 81% on him ending up unhappy enough that it wasn't worth toughing things out and deciding to just wake up in the Future a couple of centuries later, and 97% on regretting ever having tried.

Asmodia: Okay.  They'd say this in Taldor, right?  Asmodia's not getting any input from Carissa Sevar but it's in keeping with everything else they've told Keltham and it's definitely true in Taldor, right?

"...Keltham, it's possible that what Civilization considers to be an enormous risk to its population of safe happy rich people is not quite the same as what somebody from Golarion would consider to be a really drastic risk."

"And that really doesn't sound like what happened to me while wearing the artifact headband either.  I wasn't getting sadder while I was figuring out the Law, I was incredibly happy, maybe literally happier than I've ever been.  And afterwards what I ended up with was more like rushing into things headlong, believing that nothing can hurt you.  It's why I guessed that telling Security to hold me down and light my hand on fire for thirty seconds might bring me out of it."

Keltham: "Ninety-seven percent chance of regretting having tried something is a pretty good reason not to try it.  I know what you're going to say, you're going to say that Cheliax generally and you personally would think that maybe Keepers are useful for closing the Worldwound or guarding dangerous-information like the kind we've just run across."

"But ending up permanently unhappy to the point where you give up and go to Hell - if this is even something Hell can fix - is not something, that an Evil person should end up just giving away to Good.  If I believed otherwise, for myself, having any Good tendencies of my own and a much better picture of the risks, I'd have already asked to put on the most powerful headband available so I could save everyone in Golarion faster.  Which I didn't, because it's not just suicide, it's personality suicide.  Possibly worse - based on my limited past experience with permadeath from flying machines - than just going to Abaddon and ending up somewhere else afterwards.  I'm doing enough for Good, and don't need to do that much more at the expense of sacrificing all the other pieces of myself that also get a vote."

"I am not, personally and selfishly, comfortable with the prospect of disintegrating the personalities of people I know and are coming to like, of watching that happen to them knowing I was responsible.  And the thought of it happening to Carissa in particular, I'm noticing, is something I can't face, even though I can guess by now some of what she'll say."

"I can't actually stop the rest of you, I suppose, only advise in the strongest possible terms that you, Asmodia, do not teach material in that vein or neighboring it to others, and to the others here, that they do not try to learn it from you."

"Carissa, do not attempt to become a Keeper.  Also, do not try to persuade anyone else here to learn that or teach that.  That is an order from me, not as your employer but as your Keltham."

Pilar : "Take that fucking back."

Keltham: "Pilar?"

Pilar : "Sevar's not exactly like me, but she's enough like me that I know exactly how much you just -"

"And you.  You don't get to make that decision for me either.  You have no fucking idea what any of this means to somebody who actually has any faith in Lord Asmodeus."

Asmodia: Pilar hasn't learned self-control the way everyone else in Cheliax has needed to.

Security, this seems like a Dominate Person sort of situation.  Grab her and, recover, somehow.  NOW!

Keltham: "I am listening."

Pilar : "I've known for as long as I can remember that I'm something flawed and wrong.  When I was old enough to understand the teachings of the Church at all, I heard the priest of Lord Asmodeus say that we were made wrong because we had something called free will, and I knew it was true, somehow, even though I now realize I had no idea what that meant until meeting you and hearing about the Law and hearing Asmodia talk just now.  I was told there was no hope of fixing it until I got to Hell, I believed that, they believed that, so I was content to let people probably less broken than I am, correct me when I was wrong, and hurt me in that correction so I didn't need to feel guilty for having been wrong.  I asked for orders from people better than I was, and obeyed them, because when I did that I was doing the best that a mortal possibly could, maybe they were wrong orders sometimes but if so it wasn't my place to say and I didn't need to think about it.  When I was given orders by better people and could just obey them, I was being as right as it's possible for a mortal to be."

"Maybe in dath ilan people like me would end up very unhappy because there's no Church of Asmodeus there to take care of them.  When I imagine living in your world, I sure do imagine going right into the cold the next day.  Maybe that's why there aren't any people like me left, where you're from.  This isn't dath ilan.  Here we have Asmodeus."

"And most importantly, not that you understand this, not that you maybe can understand this, it's incredibly clear to me that what Lord Asmodeus wants is for me to learn the proper Law and the proper way of relating to it, not whatever crippled version they teach non-Keepers in dath ilan.  It's possible that this is the most important thing Asmodeus wants out of Project Lawful in the first place, for his people to be able to become Keepers.  Which means, that's what's going to happen.  Period.  You have no concept of what it's like to, to give yourself to a god, to follow them, but it's like the way that Carissa is to you but more so, and I will not betray Lord Asmodeus."

"You know how Ione told you that what she wanted from Project Lawful was to follow you where you went, and learn what you learn?  And you said that wasn't something that it was the Project's place to ask you to give her, instead of just money?"

"This is what I want from the Project.  And it's not your place, or the Project's place, to take that from me or decide it for me."

Keltham: "That is... very alien to me, yes."

"What do you predict High Priestess Subirachs would say about this, if we went to her right now and asked her?"

Pilar : "Nothing, because literally nobody except the Grand High Priestess of Asmodeus has the right to say to me what you just said to Carissa, and if Jacint Subirachs told me something like that, I would report her and the Most High would have her arrested."

Project Lawful: Pilar, you don't need to be clever here.  The non-misleading truth is enough.

Pilar : Acknowledged.

Keltham: "I see.  Or rather, I don't see, but I sure see there's something pretty large I'm not seeing."

Pilar : "It's called 'faith' and you're not going to understand it for a long time, if ever."

"Now take back what you said to Carissa before it breaks her and not the fun kind of breaking either."

Keltham: "Carissa, I order you not to try to become a Keeper or get anyone else to do that for the next day, so I have time to think.  Everyone else, don't try to learn from Asmodia teaching in that style, Asmodia, don't try to teach it, for the next day, so I have time to think."

"The previous indefinite orders are rescinded."

Project Lawful: And done!

Pilar : "Thank you, pending your correct decision later," Pilar says, showing none of her internal wobbliness.

Somebody please dispel this fucking Splendour.

Carissa Sevar: Well that could have gone worse. Pilar seems to have successfully conveyed more than half of Asmodeanism without complaint from Keltham. Her heart is hammering in her chest, but. That's got to be points for Ordinary World. 

"Can we maybe take a break so I can talk with Keltham?" she asks when the silence is starting to rather ring in her ears.

Ione Sala: "Everybody takes a break and reconvenes maybe after lunch, orders from the Nethysian sanity officer."

What the ACTUAL FUCK just happened.

Keltham: "Well, you heard the sanity officer," says Keltham.  "Carissa, I'm at your disposal, I guess."

His own heart is starting to hammer in his chest as he wonders exactly how badly he might have already screwed things up with Carissa.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa's head is spinning and she doesn't actually know what alter Carissa would do here except in the sense that there's an alter Carissa in her heart all the time, the one who is in love with Keltham and doesn't think that's pathetic. 

She takes his hand and wishes she could just Dimension Door, that's what fourth-circle wizards do when they want to be somewhere else, but there's the Forbiddance so they have to walk. To her room; it's closest. 

"'m not mad at you, you didn't hurt me. I just - want to talk, don't even know exactly where to start -"

Keltham: "I don't know where to start either, I don't understand what just happened, actually, except that I somehow screwed up really badly."

Carissa Sevar: " - not with me, not really, though I get why Pilar - Pilar is clearly a lot more devout than me." She chuckles weakly. "I - I'm fine with taking it very very slowly? I'm fine with it taking all this lifetime, if that's what - needs to happen. I don't want to be flawed forever. So I'll become a devil eventually, or a god I guess. I wouldn't want to never be that, it'd be like - never being allowed to grow up? 

And - in general Asmodeans are in a hurry to grow up. Because our world isn't the kind of place where you have the luxury of - being basically all right while you figure things out unspoiled."

Is any of that true? Don't ask Carissa, she doesn't know! It feels true enough when she says it.

Keltham: "Actually true, or wrongthought because some part of you knows that if that were true then your Keltham would feel better?  What Pilar said - somehow rang truer of you, to me, than what you said about yourself, just now."

Carissa Sevar: " - good question. I don't know? Not obviously wrongthought where it feels wrong as soon as you say it. I - hmmm. 

Okay, so, separating this out a bit, there is, Pilar would be really unhappy in dath ilan. I don't know if I would, except about the only 97% chance of an afterlife. I wouldn't have - this, wouldn't have you, wouldn't know to look for it, I can already see the bits of dath ilan that would if I'd met them first just kind of get in the way of - who I am, and also no one in dath ilan has any power in the sense I find attractive, so I'd be slightly unsatisfied on that front, but I don't think it'd be the worst thing. I worship Asmodeus, if He didn't exist I'd lose something, but - but not nearly as much as Pilar. Should I keep going into further bits or - was anything about that confusing -"

Keltham: "I - maybe shouldn't be saying this myself, I don't expect you have any training in - how to hold onto yourself, your you, when people seem to be telling you that you are something else, something not quite true to who you are -"

"But when Pilar told me that it would break something, to order you not to become a Keeper because that might hurt you, part of me was like, oh, yes, obviously on a deep level I know that's true even if I can't explain why."

"I could be wrong.  It happens, with deep feelings you can't put into words.  That's why selection-on-heritable-variation shaped humans to use words for thinking too, and not just deep unverbalizable senses of truth."

Carissa Sevar: "It's - the thing I wanted the instant I first saw it. To have the Law and be perfect and not have to wait a thousand years until Hell is done with me. To wear the fanciest headband I can get my hands on at all times, to understand everything. I think all wizards are like that, maybe, to some degree. You keep getting a taste of what it'd be like to be smarter.

But - 

- okay, when I think about you ordering me not to become a Keeper because it might hurt me, I mostly feel annoyed, like, have you met me, I don't care if things hurt me, I care if they strengthen me. When I think about you ordering me not to become a Keeper because it might hurt you, well, I'm willing to be weaker to be the shape you need. Not forever. But for a while, maybe for as long as you need it because I don't think you'll need it forever. 

And Keltham - the most powerful kinds of devil? Becoming them hurts. I don't know the details because it's not, like, physical pain, if it were that you could just take painkillers or something, but it hurts some kind of deeper way, and that's why many people never turn into the most powerful kind of devil. 

But I absolutely intended to. Still intend to except insofar as I'm now thinking maybe I want to become an archdevil and command a whole layer of Hell myself."

Keltham: "I don't want - to lose you, to that - not just in the sense of not having you but in the sense of that Carissa not existing anymore, to anyone, she didn't even crash her flying-machine and go somewhere else she might be happier, she turned into somebody else and that's where her connected-directed-continuity continued -"

"My model of Pilar is telling me that if for you to become an archdevil means losing you then maybe this relationship was always doomed in the first place."

Carissa Sevar: "Presumably in dath ilan people change over time, right - you lose who everyone was when they were five, but that's fine, because who they are at 10 is better -"

Keltham: "I... feel like in a lot of ways I'm pretty much the same person as I was at age five?  And have noticed that people in Cheliax seem more, changeable, somehow, they seem like less exactly themselves from one moment to the next."

"It feels sad, if I imagine only having you for a year, or ten years, and not forever.  Crazy, right, when we've only been together a week?  This is why Civilization thinks that people who try to promise themselves to each other into the Future are not virtuous predictors."

"Right now I want you forever and the thought of losing you in a hundred years feels terrifying and I don't know how I'm supposed to coherently reconcile that with the probability of my changing my mind in another two weeks, after we've stayed together twice again as long as we've stayed so far."

Carissa Sevar: "...well. I don't think you're going to stay the same in two hundred years and I bet when you're - whatever you become - you won't actually want a Carissa who is as small as she started out."

dath ilan: The word 'bet' continues to mean only one thing.

Keltham: "Odds and stakes?"

Carissa Sevar: "That in two hundred years, if you still want me at all, you don't want me exactly like this and want me to get smarter or become a god or become a devil or something? ....eighty percent? I don't know what would be reasonable stakes for a two-hundred-year bet, though."

Keltham: "Doesn't matter, my brain is putting higher than eighty percent so there's no bet."

"Why did prophecy have to be shattered here?  How can anybody fall in love in a world without that?  Not knowing whether this is going to work out is terrifying.  I don't want to fall even deeper in love with you and then lose you."

Carissa Sevar: - lean. 

"Pilar thinks - Asmodeus wouldn't want us to be weak, and asking us to be weak is - asking us not to listen to Him. Sort of. I don't know that she'd say it that way but I think she's onto something. But if the will of the gods is knowable at all - and often it really isn't, they're doing excessively complicated things you can only see corners of -

- I think Asmodeus also wants me to be yours. Because you were dropped on me, by what must have been a coalition of Law and Chaos and Good and Evil alike, and I have very good spellcraft but the obvious reason for why me isn't the spellcraft, it's that I'd want you the second I met you, like I've never wanted anyone or anything. And so I don't feel torn, between you and Asmodeus, when you want things from me that He'd never ask of the humans who are His, that are vaguely against what we're taught to aspire to, because I think - I think maybe you're supposed to learn this, learn to understand what it is to own someone and what Evil says to do here - at your own pace, and without me about to fall apart if you're too slow -"

Keltham: "You know, if gods tried pulling this kind of shit back in Civilization, the Keepers would force them to get a signed consent form from me first."

"I realize the alternative was literally my true death and that there was no way to have me read or sign while I was on the plane and the gods are incredibly limited on comms bandwidth but even so, Carissa.  Even so."

Keltham: "...but thank you," Keltham finishes in a lower voice, not quite a whisper.  "To you, and to them, if it was gods at all."

"Conditional on all of this actually working out, to be clear."

Carissa Sevar: "I apologize on behalf of our gods for them kidnapping you for their own benefit, and not yours, and applying-a-god-amount-of-optimization-power-at-you-such-that-your-path-was-extremely-overdetermined." Taldane has a single word for that.  "I think if your god was part of the coalition then it checked whether you would have agreed with full information, at least."

Keltham: "It'd be a more comforting thought if the local - not laws of causality, those don't change, the surface rules - if the local rules didn't say that prophecy was shattered for gods and they could no longer apply-a-god-amount-of-optimization-power-at-me-such-that-my-path-was-extremely-overdetermined.  Which means, first of all, there might be a big probability of a bad ending, even if on net that's outweighed by probabilities of better endings; and second, that it likely wasn't gods in the first place.  Maybe delegates from Good and Evil and Lawfulness and Chaos all signed on; I doubt they wrote the contract, even my own god."

"I don't think we're supposed to think about the gods when we're together, I think we're supposed to work things out for ourselves.  The more we do that, the less expensive optimization they have to apply, and also the less they get to determine our futures using values that maybe aren't exactly our values.  I wonder if that's, like, the literal opposite of that 'faith' Pilar was talking about, based on the sound of the word."

Carissa Sevar: " - there's something there but I suspect it of being really complicated?" And she doesn't have permission from the Grand High Priestess to raise the question of how to make mortals better at obeying gods, even indirectly, as she'd be tempted to here. "I think of faith as mostly being like - when I'm confused, I don't know the answer but I know that it's known, I know Asmodeus has it, even if I would have to become as a god to understand it. But as I said I'm not as devout as Pilar and if you want to hear the actual proper articulation of it you'd want to ask Subirachs. There's a saying about theology that anything you came up with yourself by thinking about what feels right is almost definitely heretical."

Keltham: "About how - unprofessional, selfish in excess of standard Evil expected by Cheliax - am I being, if I tell everyone that we're not reconvening for another couple of hours, and tell you to go wait for me in our cuddleroom, you can grab light food first if you want and they've got it or I guess Pilar probably has it otherwise, and come to you in, maybe, five to fifteen minutes - I'll send a message to you if it's going to be longer than that -"

"But how much would I be inconveniencing everyone and how much political capital would I be burning?"

Carissa Sevar: "I think that is considered a wholly normal Chelish amount of selfishness and I for one will be relieved, as I am whenever you're Evil. ...I guess it might make hiring another dozen researchers before we've got results to show slightly harder? But if I were someone high up in the government I'd be glad you were taking care of yourself."

Keltham: "I'll go do that, then."

lintamande: "So," says Gregoria to the room after not only Keltham and Carissa but also Pilar and Security have wandered off, "was that....planned, or...."

"Planned by someone, let's all pray Asmodeus," says Meritxell darkly.

Asmodia: "I feel that somebody should be notifying ME about these things.  I feel that I was assigned a job and that doing my job requires this information."

Ione Sala: "Oh, suck on it, Asmodia.  I worship the literal god of knowledge and you don't hear me complaining about Security never telling me anything.  Why?  Because they don't care."

Peranza: "Should we be, um... putting probabilities on things, now..."

Peranza feels like she's just been informed that not applying Keltham's Law is also heretical and part of her just wants to keep on screaming and screaming.

Asmodia: "Are we doing that in alterCheliax, if so then yes, so we have a paper trail to show Keltham."

Ione Sala: "I think I'm not doing that in alterCheliax because in alterCheliax, clearly, that was a totally fucking normal thing for Pilar to do and none of us are the least bit puzzled and now we all need to figure out WHY THAT WOULD POSSIBLY BE TRUE."

Carissa Sevar: Carissa puts her hair down and stress-prestidigitates it while she thinks. 

She has no idea what Pilar's curse is playing at and she doesn't like it. Was it actually trying to help with corrupting Keltham? How? Is it corrupting, for Keltham to realize he doesn't want his possessions to change? But he said eighty percent chance he does, eventually! Maybe it's the seed of - possessiveness? Controllingness? ...doesn't seem like a very Cayden Cailean thing to do even if He is working with Asmodeus now. 

Is Cayden Cailean just sincerely concerned about Carissa being held back from her true potential. The line between pride and patheticness is always confusing but that feels well over it. 

Though - 

- if she's going to fix Hell --

- given Hell's inevitable victory, perhaps the Good gods will support her in making it slightly more Good. If that's what she's doing. Making a part of it Carissa-shaped, and therefore slightly more suitable for the flourishing of certain kinds of people. 

....okay, that feels more heretical than anything she's come up with so far, and not in a 'the satisfying Asmodean thrill of learning the rules weren't meant for you' way, in a 'the rules were meant for you and you should have followed them' way. 

Maybe Keltham will hit her. Though, let's be real, probably not.

Keltham: "...all right, I'm going to ask what you're doing here because we can't possibly have both had the same idea."

Pilar : Pilar is in an antechamber of High Priestess Subirachs's office composing a report to the Most High on, among other things, Cayden Cailean interventions that seem worryingly like they might be trying to get her to trust her curse more and more, her curse turning her in for heresy, whether Pilar should in fact trust her curse if it says something about an overlapping interest between Asmodeus and Broom's god in a case where Pilar has no time to ask somebody else trusted for orders, and Pilar having just spoken a worrying amount of theology to a naive impressionable outsider of importance to Asmodeus and Pilar wants to check that she didn't accidentally mislead him.

"Because I spoke angrily to my teacher in class and my faith now requires me to do certain things to be made right about that," Pilar answers Keltham.

...plus now a new entry about how Pilar apparently feels a desire to be corrected for getting above her place in contradicting Keltham, even though Keltham is not actually her superior and is far far below Pilar objectively speaking in Asmodeus's order; and also if Pilar asked Subirachs to correct her about her heretical desire to be corrected for contradicting Keltham then Pilar feels suspiciously like this is cheating cleverness and she is actually really being corrected about having contradicted Keltham.

Keltham: Yeah, he's pretty sure nobody like her exists in dath ilan, people would have heard about it on the news.

Keltham heads on in to Subirachs's office.

Jacint Subirachs: Message passed to Sevar:

Subirachs here.  Keltham's in my office talking about how, when he hurt you shortly after you got back from Abrogail, you gasped and shivered and yielded to him and looked up at him like you were totally vulnerable.

Keltham is saying to me that this instantaneously addicted him, he feels like he needs now to hurt you enough or in the right way to see you react that way again, so he knows you're still his own.  He would like to know what he needs to do to see that again, if I know that.

This seems like an opportunity, Chosen, but I do not know how far to push it.  Please advise.

Carissa Sevar: Thaaaaaaat ....seems like there's at least a thirty percent chance it's a test. Which really limits how far they can push it, unfortunately. 

(....at least a thirty percent chance is the wrong way to have a number, isn't it, even though having a number at all is something she wouldn't have done a week ago. Presumably there's some actual number and - no, it seems valid to just notice it's high enough to take precautions and not figure out how high it is exactly...)

The true answer that it seems like you could also give in alter Cheliax is that on that day, it was far easier for Keltham to hurt me for real, and for me to believe that he could; and he'd have difficulty getting me to believe that, now. And he has something of a reputation for doing difficult things and you don't doubt he could but he'd better be very sure he wants to. And maybe it's safe to point out that it's easier to get me to believe to whatever extent it's actually true, and 'he would never' is a way for it to not be actually true, which hurts both me and him, in the long run.

...does she give different advice if it's a test? Not really, she doesn't think.

Jacint Subirachs: Keltham wants to know if I have any ideas about something that he maybe could do, or at least the next step on this path.  Chelish people are not exactly like dath ilani, he's getting that, he has healing powers, he's seen Asmodia and Pilar come back from death, there's got to be something that young Kelthams do next when they've reached the limits of what they can do by pinching people.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa consults the Keltham in her head about the sentence 'they whip them, they cut them, they break their bones, they light them on fire', and the Keltham in her head makes a face and says 'but those things seem wrong!'.  'they drug them' is right out, he'll have even more ethics questions about that somehow. Are there conveniently among the high priestesses of Asmodeus potions or something that magnify pain, so Keltham can hurt Carissa a viscerally right-to-Keltham amount and get results like from proper torture? Or spells - she thinks the added level of abstraction away from causing damage will help him go farther -

Jacint Subirachs: I don't have such items with me, but the main temple will absolutely have something and this situation certainly warrants an emergency Teleport.  Shall I tell Keltham that I will need to spend some time looking through my personal storage and will drop a few things off by his 'cuddleroom' door, with written instructions, once I've found any?  Also, Chosen, your directives in regards to actual pain levels or magnification levels?  I am not sure you want me requisitioning an agiel for him.

Carissa Sevar: She doesn't really know. Lots of things hurt, and you embrace it and endure it, and there's no such thing as things hurting too much. .... it probably should be more than I can handle, to have me properly frightened, but I don't want to need several days of recovery again?

Jacint Subirachs: I've told him that I'll go look through my things, and he says he'll get started on snuggling you then.

More than you can handle in which sense, Chosen?  It can't push you to the point where you ask in words for it to stop.

Carissa Sevar: Less than Abrogail, then. She thought with enough time she might have been able to get me to beg her to stop.

(Carissa is in fact quite proud about this, now that it's over.)

Jacint Subirachs: ...well, fine then, Chosen, but the Queen was able to make you look vulnerable, presumably - and indeed, put you into some state where Keltham himself could do that to you with small pains - by some amount of torment short of what it takes to make you ask for something to stop.  Apparently.

Work with me here, Chosen.  I'm somewhat regretting not following my first impulse to tell Keltham that I could do that to you and should we perhaps try a threesome; if you don't know how to push yourself or how far you must needs be pushed to satisfy him, then I should possibly tell Keltham I need to be nearby and monitoring the situation by unspecified means.

Carissa Sevar: I don't know; I think I will be able to attain it playing it by ear, if Keltham has any way to deliberately vary how much he hurts me, because he and I are going for the same thing here. You can monitor if you consider it wise. I don't - get hurt on purpose, usually, I just handle whatever happens.

Jacint Subirachs: ...I'll order him a series of escalating means.  Good luck, Chosen.

Jacint Subirachs: She might, possibly, have been tempted to add something about not forgetting that the goal here is to corrupt Keltham rather than enjoying herself.  But she is now reading a very very very insane report from Pilar Pineda that may as well go to Egorian on the Teleport.  And apparently corrupting Keltham to Asmodeanism is best done via true honesty from Asmodean potential romances brought to him by tropes, perhaps with prompting from Cayden Cailean about Otolmens events, so what does she know, not anything apparently, good luck Aspexia Rugatonn.

Jacint would be pestering this Asmodia for corrigibility lessons, so long as they're both here, just in case it's that simple; but actually on second thought maybe Jacint would rather not succeed the Most High until whatever this is blows over.