Abrogail Thrune II: YES.  PRACTICE IS REQUIRED.  If you want to be good today you need to have already practiced yesterday and probably for a while earlier.  You would think Carissa Sevar would understand this even if it was about torture instead of Spellcraft.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa is not confused about this she's just not sure if, being in fact unpracticed, she should've refrained from hurting Maillol. Well. She'll try fixing him and learn something from that.

Carissa Sevar: Every Project section should get priorities for the next week and next month, and notes on under what circumstances they can be promoted.

Pilar will be charge of discipline/researcher safety complaints. Routine mindreadings will include asking whether people sabotaged anyone else's work, or acted against what they understood to be the interests of the Project.

The new ilani will get a morning lecture on corrigibility and an afternoon lecture on using probabilities to think. 

And an emergency tailor should be brought in, to get Carissa's outfit fitted such that Avaricia has nothing to say.

Cheliax: When Carissa emerges from her bedroom (or demands food be brought to her, should she be so inclined) she'll be told that Aspexia Rugatonn requests word by Project Lawful's evening Teleport on whether this expedition is to occur tomorrow after dawn, or later; Lady Sevar can make an appointment with the Queen if she has matters to discuss, else a Teleport to Project Lawful awaits her.

Oh, and here are some of the Queen's private notes on torture.  Nobody's ever understood them and the Queen has given up on trying to explain to anybody.

Carissa Sevar: Oooohh, that sounds like a challenge. Carissa loves challenges. 

She is ready to return to Project Lawful and begin her preparations. 

Security: A very respectful Security wizard will escort her, then.  He doesn't turn into pudding in Carissa Sevar's presence; he's also been exposed to the Queen a fair amount, and Carissa Sevar isn't that much scarier.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa remains blissfully ignorant of the full force of the rumors spreading about her in Egorian and does not think to ask the Security wizard for tips on not melting into a puddle. It does occur to her to summon some slaves when she gets back to Project Lawful and ask them.

Cheliax: ...how is Carissa Sevar asking, exactly?

Carissa Sevar: Well, she'll summon them and then ask them to tell her how they avoid turning into a puddle around terrifying people. She's in a hurry, she's not planning to make this complicated.

Cheliax: This first slave seems to have interpreted Carissa Sevar's question as a demand to know why they aren't more scared of her, and has prostrated themselves on the floor frantically babbling about how they meant no offense they only do their jobs they are very terrified they will always be very terrified from now on, since that apparently is what is being demanded of them.

Carissa Sevar: Well that's totally unhelpful!!!!!! No! She doesn't want them to be more terrified! She wants to know why they aren't! 

....she hasn't given them any training in believing her when she says things, has she. They have literally no reason to do that.  It sounds so incredibly inconvenient and time consuming to convince them, she didn't even succeed at it with the Project students....

...probably you cannot be terrifying enough that no one dreams of crossing you while not being so terrifying it impairs them in doing their jobs. Inconvenient. 

Carissa Sevar: Lessons for facing Dispater: probably he would like it if Carissa was terrified of him and not impaired thereby. Since this is what SHE would like. 

She tells the slave they can go and paces. She feels - deeply unhappy, somehow, and she hasn't even talked to Maillol yet. ...she should get all the Project stuff squared away so she can definitely go do this tomorrow, she thinks further waiting won't be salutory.

Ferrer Maillol: Maillol won't seem very... functional, when she goes to check on him.  He'd maybe be capable of making administrative decisions on autopilot, that looks to be about it.

Carissa Sevar: Right. This is an outcome she deliberately tried to achieve because she wanted it, it would be pathetic to have feelings about it. She is not that pathetic. 

...she does mindread him in case there's more going on there.

Ferrer Maillol: Looped despair, a sense of unevadable punishment and that he cannot live up to Sevar's ever-increasing standards, Project Lawful is impossible to manage and when he fails people torture him and there's no realistic prospect of his life being anything else, has to pull himself together or they'll just send him to Hell - he wants to be back at the Worldwound wants to be back at the Worldwound it was hard but he was adequate to his tasks there he knew what to do -

(Abrogail's notes say that the sort of torment meant to accomplish a shaping of action and effort, within somebody, should leave them a defined way out of what is unendurable, a sense that the hardship will fade to only endurable torture if they take some mental action internally available to them.  There's an exasperated note scrawled beside the previous notes saying that you can mind-read people while they're being tortured and talk to them if they're not thinking the right things.)

Carissa Sevar: Well, she wasn't really paying attention to Maillol, right, the point was that she wasn't paying attention to him, it's what Subirachs told her when she first really hurt a Security, the lesson is for the benefit of everyone else. Abrogail's doing something different than all the systems in the country she built. Abrogail's trying to sculpt people. They're just trying to warn off other people. 

She doesn't actually think a disconnect like that could have happened if Abrogail didn't want it that way. 

Bad line of thought. 

Carissa Sevar: Hell doesn't hurt people intimately and personally to craft and shape them, it just lets them lie in the fires of Avernus suffering -

-- even worse line of thought. Bad Carissa. Stop that. 

Carissa Sevar: "I'm going to Hell tomorrow," she says inanely. 

Ferrer Maillol: Some fragmentary sentences, broken bits of a stream of consciousness, go through his mind; Maillol still has curiosity, but it's not that he's been scared out of it, more that a link between that and action has been severed at least temporarily.  He doesn't ask why.

(Abrogail's notes: when you hurt people enough, even if you were trying to hurt them in order to make them do something, they are liable to start freezing up instead, if the thing is at all complicated.  The instinct to get away, or if you can't get away, freeze up in the presence of the person who deals pain, is very simple in people; that instinct starts to dominate if you've gone and smashed the more complicated behavior you were trying to get.)

Carissa Sevar: This is upsetting and she wants to run away from it but if she can't handle this she's really going to melt about Dispater. 

"I ...wondered if you had thoughts on whether I should put Abarco or Olegario in charge."

Ferrer Maillol: He doesn't need to think about that question to answer it.  That's good.  "Abarco and Pilar advise Olegario."

Carissa Sevar: - nod. 

I didn't mean to break you

I don't really mind if you go to Axis

I know I don't know how to do this yet but I will figure it out

"I wouldn't punish most people for not trying as hard as possible to get my desired results; I can't expect that of most people. I don't intend to place you again in a role where I do expect that."

Ferrer Maillol: please make clear what you expect of me, says the part of his mind that knows how torture works in people, that knows this is what Sevar should've done before this started

but he cannot say it in words for some deep instinct in him does not want to risk saying anything that causes the torment to begin again.  if it seems like the torment might begin again then he'll start saying things that will make it stop.  there is no reason to speak while the torment is already not happening, that would be stupid.

Carissa Sevar: "I expect you to try to manage the Project, or advise those managing the project, so as to make progress and not have disasters, and not so as to serve as an avenue for corrupting me personally, and not in whatever way involves the least inconvenience for you personally."

Ferrer Maillol: oh.  she's reading his mind.

maillol will stop having thoughts then.

well there'll be starts of thoughts but not finished ones.

Carissa Sevar: "Would you stop that? I'm not going to hurt you further, I have a lot to get done today and I'd like you functional to advise Olegario."

Ferrer Maillol: Oh.  He might actually get hurt if he doesn't do things.

"I can advise Olegario," says Maillol's voice, sounding almost normal, because there are well-worn patterns inside him and they could just run even if Maillol wasn't home at all.

Carissa Sevar: "Good. ...if you have any advice for me, I would also want to hear that."

Ferrer Maillol: "No, Chosen."

Carissa Sevar: Why does it feel like she lost a friend. He would have laughed at her, if she'd ever said she thought they were friends. 

Right, okay, that's more than enough being pathetic, she needs to go prepare for Hell. "I don't expect anything beyond that you advise Olegario," she says, and then leaves.

Cheliax: The rest of the Project does seem more properly scared of her now!  That's something, right?

It might... possibly be a little unproductive in the new Project members who've never known the previous Carissa and are not aware that this person has any mode for 'nah you did pretty much okay actually'.

Carissa Sevar: Well. She'll try to go around telling some people they did pretty much okay actually. 

And she should compose a letter to Keltham. It seems important that he know he cannot stop this by charging off to, or exploding, Cheliax. 

Carissa Sevar: This shouldn't be too difficult, right?

Keltham:

I have decided to go to Hell and sell my soul directly to Dispater for the highest price any mortal has ever commanded. I am in Hell already.

It would be easier to figure out what to say after that if she could rederive her seduction plan.

I do not intend, by this, to break away from you, but I cannot sit here waiting and unchanging until you see fit to pick me up, either, not when Cheliax, which matters so much to me, is at risk. Were you to swear that Cheliax will be safe, I would abandon this course, but I don't realistically expect it, and so I must be capable of defending her. 

I'm genuinely not upset about the prospect of going to Hell. I want to be a devil and I'm going to be a really impressive one. I am not deluded about what it will be like; I am here in Dis to witness it. I am all right with thousands of years of suffering for a result which endures for all the life of the universe. I am impatient for it. 

Love, Carissa

Aspexia Rugatonn: The night passes, and two hours of sleep; morning comes, and when dawn has passed, Aspexia Rugatonn is there.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa Sevar has requested her Splendour headband back from Pilar, and used magic to put herself to sleep when she was failing to achieve that, and left detailed somewhat pointed project instructions for everyone and especially Olegario. He might make mistakes but he is trying to protect Carissa's interests and that's invaluable, really. 

Pilar : Pilar is here, wearing Asmodia's +6 Wisdom headband, and hands over her precious Sevar-crafted Splendour headband.  Pilar is a little sad about not getting to see the majesty of Dis herself; the sights of Hell scried to her in Elysium were mostly just petitioners getting tormented and screaming to be allowed to die.

Carissa Sevar: - and Carissa feels, indeed, a little fuzzier, a little less like she can think of things no one's ever thought of, but also stronger and more determined, less like there's something inside her that doesn't want to become a devil and doesn't want to sell her soul. 

A good trade, on the whole, maybe not even just for this specific occasion.

Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia is not carrying the Crown of Infernal Majesty; besides leaving Abrogail vulnerable including to tropes, it was deemed more fitting that Sevar face Dispater with a headband of Splendour that she crafted herself, so that all the strength of her will is her own, born of her.

Aspexia has a double-strength Ring of Eloquence that Cheliax reserves for emergencies where somebody suddenly has to be a diplomat; and a bracer that grants an instinctive knowledge of Infernal customs and etiquette for outside visitors including the Infernal language.

Carissa Sevar: Well, then, that is as ready as a person can be. "As you will, then, Most High," Carissa says with conviction, and if part of her still objects very quietly that it doesn't want to sell her soul, well, that part is why she has to sell it.

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Take a deep breath before you step through the Gate, and don't breathe until I've had a chance to cast Planar Adaptation," says Aspexia Rugatonn.

And opens a Gate to Hell, to Avernus, at the outer doorway of a fortress that guards one of the many many entrances to Dis.

And steps through.

Carissa Sevar: Smarter Carissa knew what she was doing, Carissa tells herself firmly, and steps forward into Hell. 

(She does have Resist Fire up because it'd just be embarrassing to be constantly flinching about all the fire in Hell until Aspexia casts Planar Adaptation.)

Aspexia Rugatonn: The fire in Hell isn't even mostly the problem.  Aspexia Rugatonn can feel the weight of Avernus trying to press on her soul, horror and despair and regretting all your choices; before she casts Mass Planar Adaptation on the party, and the pressure mostly eases.

Carissa Sevar: Well, Carissa does regret several of her choices, and she can see how if anyone were in a position to correct her errors right now it'd be useful for her to feel the weight of that regret. 

Anyway. 

Onwards. 

Iarwain: It's a mighty fortress they've arrived to, all blood-rusted iron and seared pitted steel, and lesser devils on the ramparts, looking down at the newcomers with all the scorn their lesser kind can muster.  It stands in the midst of a vast desolation, a volcanic desert with sand of iron and obsidian, from which, in the distance, not really all that far, bursts of hellfire constantly erupt from the ground; the firelight of the plane flickers, but has yet to go out for even a moment.  There are not many petitioners about this place, but in the distance their screaming forms a background sound steadier than the firelight.

The magical Gate has taken them to before the physical sort of gate, polished and unblemished steel that stands in contrast to the rest of the scarred fortress.

Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia steps forward and drives her fist into gate, backing it with magic to produce a hollow bang; for the gate has no knocker on it, if you are not strong enough to knock on a door in Hell then nobody in Hell is going to pay you much heed.

"You'll speak for us, for practice," Aspexia tells Carissa.

Carissa Sevar: Right. Makes sense. She wonders if it's really so that every devil in Dis knows her name.  She wonders if they'll be laughed right out of Dis. ...probably not, it's in fact true that she was asked by a devil if she'd settle for three Wishes, and that when she was substantially less valuable. 

Unseen Servants hold the hem of her dress clear of the ashen ground, and she waits.

Iarwain: The outer gates crack open.  Behind them stands a creature like a very tall cadaver, skin shrunk to almost fit the skeleton and skull, but that the skin is itself animated and moving bone.  A great stinger-tail rises from it, and many not-particularly-functional-looking delicate wings of bone, like colorless butterfly wings petrified.

Behind the thing is another, even more imposing-looking gate.

Carissa's new instincts for Hell will tell her that this is an Osyluth, a sort of lesser Security of Hell.  The greater party speaks first, in Hell, and it will be waiting for Aspexia Rugatonn to speak.

Carissa Sevar: "I am Carissa Sevar, called in Golarion Chosen of Asmodeus, come with the Grand High Priestess of Asmodeus to Hell with business for Dispater. We would pass through the gates of this fortress to Dis."

Iarwain: The bony thing turns its head to the evidently far more powerful and Evil soul, with a questioning, submissive look.

Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia Rugatonn gives no return sign; only stands beside and to the left of Sevar like an allied mercenary who was not paid enough to speak.

Iarwain: ...confusing.

But confusions are not worth resolving, except insofar as they touch upon the interests of the self.

"Do you offer me fee for passage, or threat for it?" speaks its cold rasping voice.

Carissa Sevar: She can't, actually, take a devil in a fight, even a lesser one like this - a caster of her level could probably win this fight if they were an adventurer, but she's not one.

Rugatonn could, though. 

Also they shouldn't have to fight, this isn't the Abyss, that'd be stupid. 

Carissa Sevar: Her voice carries none of this uncertainty and no nervousness about maybe getting unceremoniously stabbed by the first devil she runs into. 

"We're here about Asmodeus's business and will cut down what stands in our way, only negotiating with anything that would otherwise have a true interest in impeding us."

Iarwain: A slight rasping noise that surely is not laughter.  "I did trouble myself to open the outer doors for you, and now you'd have me open the inner doors as well.  Do you pay me for my effort, or tell me to pay it as your due?"

Carissa Sevar: She's tempted to pay, but she suspects she's not supposed to. This isn't Axis. Paying is admitting - something. That she's not very important. And importance is negotiated, and she needs to be important. 

"If you want payment, seek it from someone else, for the story of what you witnessed. We are owed your obedience; open the gate."

Iarwain: The Osyluth reads sincerity in her, and the Grand High Priestess waiting by her side and not contradicting this statement does lend it credit and threat; it obeys, then, and the inner gate swings open.

Iarwain: The interiors of fortresses set to guard Avernus are not so complicated as mortal fortresses, they need not food nor places to sleep, only mazes of traps to also serve as garrison.

Behind the inner gate is the entrance to a dull metal hallway that branches out left and right from the gate's opening.  And a next sentry there, a nightmare of chains linking bladed cogs and jagged gears; a Castigas, a thing stupider than the Osyluth but more dangerous did it choose to fight.

Dozens of pitted lenses angle slightly to point at Aspexia Rugatonn, and then the mass of chains clunks forwards into the left-hand side of the maze, assuming (Carissa's bracer will tell her) the submissive posture of a guide who walks ahead of its superiors.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa feels no doubt, no confusion, no repulsion at the ugliness of the place, though it is, in fact, ugly, not doompunk.

She follows.

Iarwain: They pass through a garrison-maze, made of sharp turns and corners without any curves.  From time to time the automaton-thing presses three floor-tiles in a pattern, or the like, before it continues on.

Iarwain: They pass small garrisons of bearded devils with living, snarling beards below snarling faces, any one of which Sevar might defeat, but which she'd be hard-pressed indeed to handle as a mob.  They are playing dull games to pass the time, more on the level of naughts-and-crosses than any game held respectable in Golarion, though they bring their toothed glaives to respectful yet threatening attention as the group passes.

(Legend says that there was a whole planet of beings like this, which Barbatos sold to Asmodeus and so became archdevil of Hell's first layer.)

Iarwain: At the end of their path through the maze is a vast iron room with a silvery irised gate set into the floor.  Above the gate, a swaying flat circular platform held slightly above the floor-gate by rough-surfaced chains meeting above the platform, connecting to a slightly thicker chain that goes through a pulley and winds about a huge reel.

A brutish-looking horned humanoid with leathery crimson skin, from whose head protrudes a great mouth filled with sharp teeth, waits about the reel.  It's a Marzach, Carissa's bracer will tell her, and smart enough to be a wizard albeit a mediocre one by the standards of Golarion.

Like the guard of the entranceway, it takes one look about Aspexia Rugatonn and then waits to be spoken-to.

Carissa Sevar: Then she will say again, "I am Carissa Sevar, called in Golarion Chosen of Asmodeus, come with the Grand High Priestess of Asmodeus to Hell with business for Dispater. We would pass through to Dis." 

Iarwain: "And do you offer me fee for passage, or threat, as I stand here above and lower you down?"

Carissa Sevar: This is just frustrating. She bets Axis has one guard to bribe, instead of a whole line of them. "I am owed your service, and you'll provide it."

Iarwain: Again it glances at Aspexia Rugatonn not denying this, and then goes to crank the floor-door iris open.

These beings are very regular and predictable once you have a small amount of experience with them!  If you have any experience dealing with free-willed mortals it's a relaxing change of pace.  It makes you wish that all the workers on your project were this easy to predict!

The platform, notably devoid of any safety rails, or anything to hang onto except those rough chains, sways and tilts in the heated breeze that rises up from the opened iris, even as the Marzach goes to wait by the chain's reel.

Carissa Sevar: She is, in fact, beyond fear of mortal things like falling by now. She steps onto the platform without giving the devil another glance.

Aspexia Rugatonn: Aspexia too shall step onto the platform, following Sevar's lead, though she does trouble herself to catch a rough chain in one hand.  It will, obviously, cut her hand, as they sway about the air, but it's simpler to apply a trivial healing spell at the bottom, than to take flight about the whole descent to stabilize herself.  Hell is full of choices like that.

Carissa Sevar: - sure, Aspexia is the expert.

Iarwain: The platform begins to lower, and sure enough it sways about and the chain cuts into Carissa's hand where she holds it, little barbs in the roughened surface catching at her palm's skin.

Carissa Sevar: She could have asked for a scroll of Overland Flight to have today, and it would perhaps have suited her pride better, but she's made rather a lot of demands of Cheliax as it stands, and it seems worse trope-wise to rely on things not in her own power. She prepared Flight, but that lasts only briefly, and she only has one, because she went instead for redundancy on Fox's Cunning in case the negotiations drag out; that Aspexia cannot cast for her.

lintamande: And as the platform lowers Dis is visible below them,  long pale streets and the two twining rivers and black towering spires such that the overall impression is of being lowered into a pit of spikes, only to realize as you approach the spikes that they are much much taller than you. 

The air is heavy with smoke and sickly-sweet, and there's no wind; the platform is swaying only with the slight involuntary motions of its passengers. 

Iarwain: (It's now been slightly over exactly ten minutes since they departed for Hell.)

Keltham: "Carissa.  Do not sell your soul.  This is an absolute order.  If you want to protect Cheliax this is a wrong and counterproductive move."

Carissa Sevar: She has enough Splendour to only slightly visibly startle. "Hard to talk out of this" since I don't know why I decided it, "told you what it'd take to make me stop. I'd be yours, if everything else I have to protect would be safe that way."

Keltham: There's no further reply, of course, because Sending permits one exchange only.

Carissa Sevar: Is it possible that the effect on Keltham is the point? That for some reason doing this causes something good to happen with him, but not if she knows about it? ....no, she thinks that Keltham wouldn't treat someone setting their memory-wiped self up to threaten him differently from directly threatening him. And she's not threatening him. 

She has something in her mind next to Keltham that wasn't there yesterday, some intuition or learned-habit, that says - a vague formless thing, that Cheliax isn't safe from him - she already knew that though -

He won't destroy it while she's out, will he? It wasn't just the risk to her holding him back? 

- doesn't matter, cooler Carissa and Abrogail and Aspexia will have made the tradeoffs, her job is to execute on them - 

- her hand is dripping blood, now, from the wire that she's holding. Probably that's on her; she's clenching at it excessively fiercely. The black spires of Dis have grown into buildings around them, and more have emerged through the haze; the people walking the pale streets no longer look like distant scurrying ants, except the ones that are in fact ant-like in body plan.

They land. She casts Infernal Healing to fix her hand. 

It's easy to see, from the air, where the Iron Scepter, the palace of Dispater, is; it's at the center, the greatest and most elaborate building, with both rivers twined around it like necklaces. 

The ground is burning. Carissa is resistant to fire.

The ground is screaming at her in agony. 

Fixing the paving stones and making them useful is going to be difficult but it's definitely on her to-do list. 

Carissa Sevar: (Keltham, love, you can't protect all my concerns for me while I sit in safety, I've gone and put all of Hell in my concerns.)

Carissa Sevar: And she walks, with the Unseen Servants holding up the hem of her dress and no other concessions to the landscape, through the streets of Dis, unhesitating, winding her way across red-hot metal bridges towards the palace. She has activated the pin of Glibness, by now, but it's not mainly Bluff she's leaning on. This is Asmodeus's, and she has been commanded to go to Him without thought of other choices, and to remember that she is not Irori, and so here she is, where Irori would never go, to give herself over to Asmodeus; He alone can win a contest among the gods simply by ordering it won for Him. 

She is afraid, but not very afraid. Smarter Carissa had a plan.

Carissa Sevar: She reaches, in time, the gates of the palace, and the devils standing to attention there; smarter ones, older ones, leering horned devils, a winged munagola. 

Iarwain: Words bell forth from a Bdellavritra, from the end of the giant sluglike form that has three human heads, all speaking in high voices like slime dripping into ears.

"Who seeks entrance into the Palace of Dis?""What brings a mortal to the Palace of Dis?""With whom is your appointment?"

Carissa Sevar: "I am Carissa Sevar. I have come to bargain with Dispater."

Iarwain: At the sound of the name 'Carissa Sevar', every devil's head, or other sensory appendage, turns in her direction.

Iarwain: Something covered all over with spines speaks in a sound like screeching metal.  "I will raise you as a pet, and sell you to a Duke of Hell when you are better trained."

Carissa Sevar: "I will bargain with Dispater as I am, today, because Asmodeus's interests in Golarion will not wait on us; after that the Lord of the Second will of course make arrangements for me as He sees fit."

Iarwain: "And what if I -"

Aspexia Rugatonn: Destruction.

Iarwain: The spell doesn't slay the thing, but it howls away half-disintegrated.

Iarwain: The gates of Dis's palace are opened, then, for Carissa Sevar to pass.

Carissa Sevar: Right. That's everything going according to plan, then, mostly, probably. Not that she knows what the plan is. 

lintamande: Dis's palace is cool, and the air is clear, even fragrant. Petrified angels, their wings spread, their postures intricately wrangled, stand in spacious alcoves in the cavernous halls. The faces in the glossy marble floors shift below her feet. The ceiling arches upwards far too high to see, and balconies open downwards into what is to all appearances a bottomless pit. There are no fires to be seen, but the reflections of fire are everywhere in the black marble, lighting their surroundings with a cool orange glow.

There are railings, on the staircases, but they're of metal cut sharper than any knife. The floor is slippery. 

Carissa Sevar: A good time to Fly. 

...hopefully there's less than nine minutes of this.

Aspexia Rugatonn: Ironskin.

It's a trivial spell but one whose power scales with caster level, and cast by Rugatonn 'sharper than any knife' won't cut it.

Carissa Sevar: Yes, yes, she's getting the sense that wandering around Dis is stunningly lethal if you don't have a ninth circle cleric defending you, presumably smarter Carissa knew that when she came up with this plan. 

They're attracting a bit of an audience; not much overt, but lots of devils trending in their direction substantially more than chance, some of them invisible about it, some of them disappearing by Teleport from behind them only to appear by Teleport ahead of them. 

The stairs are only a few minutes, thankfully, and then they're winding through a hallway decorated on both sides with a spectacular green-glowing forest of construct trees made with eerily mathematical precision, each one precisely alike, some gooey bloodlike substance pulsing through their false-veins in perfect synchronization. It's quite cold. She already had Endure Elements up. 

They pass by a ballroom, where dancers move gracefully in perfect synchronization, their smiles gentle, their eyes desperate and pleading. They pass by balconies overlooking an utterly silent library. 

And then Dispater's waiting-room, a mockery of a comfortable warm parlor such as you might find in many places outside Cheliax, with stuffed armchairs to suit all body-configurations and drinks and snacks set out and an ordinary fire in an ordinary fireplace. And a silken rug that's got some powerful enchantment laid about it spread across the whole floor.

Carissa stops short of it; Dispater can do whatever He wants to her, obviously, but she's not sure she's supposed to just walk into it. 

Aspexia Rugatonn: "Dispater is polite to His guests, perhaps the most solicitous and courtly of all devils.  Here they may wait with time hardly seeming to pass for them, until Dispater is ready to greet them.  Where mortal guests are concerned He almost never lets them wait until they have aged down to husks, unless they have in some prior way offended Him."

Carissa Sevar: - oh that's cool. 

It's not unprofessional to stand here breathing it in and trying to make sense of the whole enchantment and get it all to fit together in her head, right? She's not thinking anything outrageously impudent like that she thinks she could learn how to do divine-domain wondrous-items herself.

Aspexia Rugatonn: It's a good thing there's only one Carissa Sevar, because Aspexia Rugatonn wouldn't know what to do with two.

Carissa Sevar: It's SO BEAUTIFUL. She'd have been much less afraid of selling her soul if she'd known she would get to see THIS. 

Carissa Sevar: "courtesy" is important to Dispater and probably that means she should sit on the couch like a good guest but she just wants to memorize the rug first.

Carissa Sevar: Aspexia hasn't sat down yet so you shouldn't expect Carissa to.

Aspexia Rugatonn: She'd sit on the couch like a good guest if she expected Dispater Himself to come in and greet them when it was time, but this she doubts will be the case, and so it seems wiser to withhold.

lintamande: Indeed it is a lesser devil which comes, in not long at all, to direct them into Dispater's throne room. 

It is beautiful; not in a twisted, horrifying way, just beautiful straightforwardly, with crystals glinting in the distant vaulted ceiling to cast rainbows and sparkles across the floor. They went down to get here, so it doesn't quite make topological sense, that the rivers Andramal and Lethe pass under the floor of this room, with a narrow crystal bridge separating them. 

Dispater's throne is spectacular craftsmanship, stone rendered in the form of pillows and cushions of luxuries so convincingly it could be mistaken for the real thing, and in fact comfortable and luxurious. 

"Carissa Sevar, Aspexia Rugatonn," the devil who fetched them announces them.

Dispater: It is hard to see His form.  There is a wavering about it to every sense including magic, as waves of heat cause air to waver but this is only Power.  What is hidden is perhaps humanoid, perhaps horned.  The wavering distorts all sense of distance, Dispater could be the size of a normal man sitting on a normal-sized throne, or He could be as vast as a mountain range seated on a continent and this throne room only a window onto it.

Only the symbol of his office is clear in vision, a great spiked mace of black metal whose horned head is a huge glowing ruby like a fiery eye. 

In Hell the most dangerous thing speaks first, and there is no question at all Who that is. 

"Carissa Sevar," says a most courteous and gentlemanly voice, perhaps from there in the room, perhaps from a thousand miles distant.  "You bring with you some company that is not entirely welcome in Hell, but I suppose you had no choice about the matter.  Was your journey here a pleasant one?"

Carissa Sevar: She has knelt on the crystal bridge; hopefully she will not fall over into the waters of either side. That wouldn't make a very good story.

...Is He talking about the Most High? About her Irori clerichood? Something else?

"Lord of Dis," she says. "Your palace is beautiful, and your city inspiring, and I have longed every minute of my trip to command the respect that would enable me to wander it safely. I count myself richly rewarded for whatever small service I have done Asmodeus, that I had the deep honor of seeing this."

Dispater: A chuckle, sounding warm as the angel that some stories say Dispater once was.  "I usually don't hold mortal guests to the standards I hold devils, for they're hardly capable of it, are they?  But you - you aspire to something more, chosen of Irori."  You can hear, somehow, that there's no capital letters in the way He pronounces the phrase.  "You aspire to know when you lie, so that to speak truth is even an option that you consciously possess."

"You don't count yourself richly rewarded for all you've done Asmodeus, only by seeing this city."

Carissa Sevar: Whaaaaaat are they not lying even a tiny bit, now? How do you do courtesy without lying. 

Probably it's more fun if it's a more difficult game. "I don't, my lord. Other mortals have seen this city. It is my desire to merit a reward no other has had."

Dispater: "Not to be an archdevil, then.  Barbatos already had that one."

Carissa Sevar: "It is my desire, my lord, to deliver to Asmodeus first victory in His contest with Irori; then victory in his contest with Abadar; and then Golarion."

Dispater: "Just Golarion?"

Carissa Sevar: "It seems to me, knowing little of other worlds, that the principles which would enable conquest in Golarion would be usable elsewhere, and that devils more worthy of Asmodeus would serve Him better everywhere."

Dispater: "Ah!  Now that sounds more like I am speaking to the first source and original fountain of those wild rumors of Project Lawful that have run through the streets of Dis; and sent up to mad heights the soul-prices on what are, to all appearances, some very ordinary souls of mortal women out of Cheliax.  You wouldn't think, looking at her, that she'd stand out enough in Asmodeus's sight to merit His direct intervention."

Carissa Sevar: "My best ignorant guess, my lord, is that I came not to our Lord's sight but to Irori's, who bargained for me; and Asmodeus thought it entertaining to take both Irori's payment and His prize, or saw afterwards that I had more value than either of them had initially imagined and desired to rearrange the contract to His greater benefit, or otherwise found Himself advantaged in the events surrounding Project Lawful by laying claim to me after all."

Dispater: "Our Lord conceives of Himself to be in contest with Irori for you, yes.  He is proud that way.  I misdoubt that Irori sees it the same.  But in Hell one must take Asmodeus's views as definitive, where they are known."

"And what business do you have with Me, then?  For I am neither Asmodeus nor Irori."

Carissa Sevar: What kind of QUESTION is that what's the GAME is it that she has to admit she came to Him because she couldn't go straight to Asmodeus, without wounding Dispater's own pride?

"If I had attained all I hope to in the mortal world, my lord, and risen in my own power as far as that took me, I might have dared venture farther into Hell, so as to offer myself to Asmodeus, who commanded me to come to Him. But events are moving quickly, and I do not believe we have the luxury of the years I would require to dream of surviving even two, three layers deeper into Hell, for not all parts of it are crafted as Dis is, to welcome outsiders, if they have the boldness and strength to come here.

And I am unfit, yet, for Asmodeus; I believe I can do Him a service no other can, and I know I can hand Him the victory He is owed in His contest with Irori, but I am a flawed and ignorant slave, and require further formation before I am fit to be presented to Him.

And further, my Lord, some rumors of Hell's doings reach the Material Plane, and it is rumored that specifically in Dis my name is known everywhere, and the souls of all those I touched traded as prizes; and so it seemed to me that the ruler of Dis might be more entertained by the prize of Carissa Sevar's soul, and by the work of finishing Asmodeus's gift, than any other."

Dispater: "It seems that there are some things a woman of Irori will find difficult to grasp no matter how long she lays with a man of Abadar."

"Your value is not something intrinsic to yourself, Carissa Sevar.  Your value is not something you gain by your achievements.  It's what others expect to gain from you, when they bid on you - what they gain only if they pay.  What they expect to obtain regardless they have no reason to pay for."

"You could, perhaps, sell yourself to an Infernal Duke, of Dis.  And to that Infernal Duke, your value would not be any service you've done for Asmodeus or any victory over Irori that He gains.  It'd be the prestige they gain by being the Duke alone in Dis who holds Carissa Sevar's soul, a prize that obviously their rivals would have gained for themselves if they could."

"I have no rivals.  No matter who in Dis holds your soul, they answer to Me.  The contract devils here in My domain are not Asmodeus's agents to reimburse a soul for services performed to Him, they buy souls for themselves and to profit from them.  That Cheliax exploits this institution to also make those slaves more useful to their governments is not why the devils do it, any more than Cheliax is selling us souls for our devils' benefit."

"If you harbor any hope of reimbursement from Asmodeus for delivering a hundred planets to Him, who made Barbatos an archdevil for delivering but the one, you'd best compact with Him while that prize still lies within your hands to withhold.  Once He already holds it, He'll see it as but His due, from His slave.  He'll ask you what more He'll gain from you than He would have had elsewise, does He compact with you; and whatever that is, He'll not offer you any more than that, whatever your past services.  Barbatos delivered a whole planet of souls to our Lord, but He compacted with our Lord first."

"What's your value to Me, Carissa Sevar?  What will I gain that I would not elsewise have had, by owning you?"

Carissa Sevar: That is an extremely reasonable question that smarter-Carissa totally presumably had an answer in mind to, but she isn't smarter-Carissa; likewise smarter-Carissa had a reason in mind for trying this, and not a compact with Asmodeus about delivering a hundred planets, but this Carissa does not know her reason.

...it's possible smarter-Carissa just made a mistake. A problem with this approach is that there's no way to know. 

Or, what if, smarter-Carissa did have this realization, and wanted to compact with Asmodeus and set herself on the path to become a Power in Hell, but remembered that it was not what she'd been ordered to do, and intended this Carissa not be confronted with the temptation. That's now lost; is there more it was an attempt to preserve?

Well, she's committed to obeying smarter-Carissa, who hopefully did not make silly mistakes; trying to halfway obey her will be worse. 

"Asmodeus did not direct me to compact with Him, my lord, but to come to Him without thought of other choices and become among the most treasured of His possessions." Why are you instructing me instead in how to fulfill my own ambition which I don't think He shares.

"I am to find in Hell what I cannot find in Axis, and Axis will certainly offer me compacts in which I achieve great wealth and high place for my achievements; but they cannot perfect me. I think it would be a mistake, perhaps a deadly one, to seek from Hell power without accompanying slavery. And it seems a worse deal for you, unless I misunderstand you greatly. If I'm yours, all my achievements are, and you can compact with Asmodeus. But perhaps I misunderstand you; for you speak in one breath of how I might deliver a hundred planets to Asmodeus, and then ask in the next what you would gain by possessing one who achieved such a thing."

Dispater: "I?  Compact with Asmodeus?  Threaten to withhold your services from Him, unless He does pay Me in exchange?  Do you imagine some relationship between Us other than that He commands, and I obey?"

Carissa Sevar: She in fact gets the sense it's a bit more complicated, with the dukes of the nine layers of Hell, that they are not precisely the same thing as all other devils - but perhaps that's wrong, or forbidden even if it's right.

"I am ignorant of the secrets of Hell," she says.

Dispater: "You are indeed.  And was Carissa Sevar arranging to sell Me the soul of Carissa Sevar all the business that Carissa Sevar had with Me today, then?"

Carissa Sevar: "No, my lord. I desire also to buy from you the souls of all the other parties associated with Project Lawful, at the spellsilver-denominated prices they've traded at in the markets of Dis, ideally at exchange rates which don't match present Chelish ease of spellsilver production, so that my own price does not break Hell's budget for intervention in Cheliax and so I have budget for future purchases."

Dispater: More of that warm laughter, that you could imagine hearing in Heaven.

"So many, many mortals do seek to make themselves more like devils during their time in the Material.  It is a thought that has occurred to many who see no destination for themselves but Hell, to act in imitation of how devils act.  Hoping to earn a little favor in Hell, when they come here in due time.  Hoping to be more like devils already, when they come here in due time, so that less torment will be required to perfect them."

"Few such simply want to do the same things devils do, solely because that suits their own purposes.  Perfecting souls, merchanting them.  The woman who sent you hither is treating with me as Powers do in Hell, having her representative merchant a soul to me and buying of my own merchandise in exchange, making budgets for herself with which to fit into well-organized arrangements of Cheliax and Dis, benefiting both herself and Hell in a way that shall also please Asmodeus by its cleverness."

"And from having met you, as must be not too dissimilar to the true Carissa Sevar, I have no doubt that she did not do it out of the little fear of Hell."

"Did I consent to such an arrangement it would aid greatly in her eventual ascension in Hell, that she once treated with the Lord of Dis as one of His lesser peers - and I doubt she even knew it, for such knowledge of Infernal ways she'd not have erased from you."

"It is a pity I cannot speak to that Carissa Sevar and negotiate with her directly.  But I suppose she might be a worthy soul to own, even for the Lord of all Dis.  What price are you sent hither to seek from Me, on her behalf?"

Carissa Sevar: Thank you smarter-Carissa, you did know what you were doing, smarter-Carissa, love you smarter-Carissa

"She commanded me to ask for two headbands granting +6 Intelligence +6 Wisdom +4 Charisma. And 30 Wishes."

Dispater: "Hardly a price that seems earned, unless her present accomplishments are far greater than you've named to Me."

Carissa Sevar: "I am as ignorant as you name me but I know that the value of an asset is its expected future value, and I think the one who sent me here clearly has at least one chance in a hundred of conquering a hundred planets."

Dispater: "You'd sell yourself as a speculative investment, then."

"Would you know the real story of how the Project Lawful girls came to command the prices they did, in Dis?  It was on just such speculative investment, that they might learn the secrets of making better devils.  And then, their prices having grown that high, it became a mark of status among the lesser players to own them.  Then the greater players, and then they became held by Counts of Hell."

"And then - as those who stayed out of the game, or left it early, do always say afterwards was foreseeable, inevitable - the speculation was punctured, and the market in Project Lawful girls disappeared."