Cheliax: It's not quite wise to pounce too directly on the Queen's new plaything, even when she pretty much invited it.

This noble is apparently being very polite as he inquires how Miss Incognito found her first trip to the big city... Egorian, one thinks, or was it more of a surprise trip to Absalom?

Carissa Sevar: "Oh, it was unforgettable - very tiring, a little confusing, but I'd never seen so many kinds of people before, and I got some shopping done, and it was lovely, only, I didn't know about this party tonight, we got a Sending all out of the blue."

Cheliax: ...he notes that she didn't say which city, which, could just be her concealing things for the fun of it - though even that much spark is more than someone might've expected from an empty pretty thing - but then, the Queen might well have been more likely to choose someone with spark - though her beauty would then have to be artificial and very expensively so -

Her Infernal Majestrix did lecture them tonight on the importance of Intelligence.  It would not be even slightly out of character for this woman to be some sort of intelligence test, with a prize to the first person there to fully solve her.

"What kinds of people, dares one inquire?"

Carissa Sevar: "...I saw Pilar Pineda. You know, with the pink hair."

Cheliax: "I don't, actually!  My apologies for my unworldliness if I ought to.  What manner of creature is a Pilar Pineda?"  It sounds Taldane, but...

Carissa Sevar: "What, really? I thought everyone had heard of her." Based off...one palace spy having done so, and Osirion, which has uncannily good intel and must have a very very high-ranking spy. Put that on the list of things to think about with her fancy new headband once she's rested, alongside what Cayden Cailean is doing and how to conquer the world. "She's the Project Lawful girl with cake powers. Well, I didn't see her have any cake powers, but that's what they say about her, is that she's the cake powers one."

Cheliax: The probabilities of this being an ill-fated innocent beauty are dropping by the second.  "Oh, this would be the sorceress of whom it's said that she's already standing right behind you?"  He doesn't do anything as gauche as turning around to look, just lets his eyes glance off some reflective surfaces well-positioned to show that, no, there isn't a cake-bearing girl behind him.  "I wasn't privileged before now to know her name was Pilar Pineda.  You don't suppose that she'll be appearing as well, tonight?  I've never heard anyone suggest that Project Lawful wasn't key to winning the war on Nidal... faster, that is.  One can only imagine how slow the war would have been without them."

Carissa Sevar: "Without them we couldn't even beat Galt!"

It is hard to overstate how much you absolutely never ever no matter what do not say that, in Cheliax.

Cheliax: How about if he suddenly spots a long-unmet friend and makes his excuses, then?

Whatever sort of Intelligence test she is, he's worried that reaching the correct solution involves a +4 Intelligence headband he hasn't been issued yet... now there's an idea, mention to the Queen that he'd be happy and eager to receive his headband earlier.  It's obvious in retrospect, but he'd also wager that most of the nobles present won't think of it.

Carissa Sevar: Okay, that is kind of fun. 

Are there drinks at this lovely party.

Cheliax: There are!  Some drugs stronger than alcohol in there, too, for the benefit of anyone who wants to try their hand at bullying somebody else into imbibing them!

Carissa Sevar: She'd just like something that's not very alcoholic, please - she doesn't drink much - and definitely does not have anything else in it.

Cheliax: A thickset Baron will be happy to point her at a vintage like that, and pour it out for her, too.

He wonders how she and Abrogail Thrune happened to meet.

Carissa Sevar: "Well, she showed up in disguise as a mysterious noblewoman, and then again as a powerful sorcerer. It took me a while to realize and then when I did I was terrified but she's really very nice.

You'd have to ask her how she decided to bother with me in the first place."

Cheliax: He supposes that's one way to seduce people when you're Abrogail Thrune.

"You don't think it was because of your natural beauty?" he inquires, not missing the implication that if her beauty doesn't constitute an obvious answer then the beauty might be incredibly expensive and artificial - or, he supposes, illusory, though it's unlikely when so many others here (if not him) would see through it.

Carissa Sevar: "Well, I mean, I certainly get lots of suitors, but I would imagine if you're the Queen of Cheliax and you just want to date someone pretty then you have lots of choices! I'm probably not the prettiest girl in the country besides Abrogail. There are lots of people here who are very beautiful. - that lady over there, say, I'd say half of men would pick her over me, if they could pick."

That lady over there clearly did it alchemically, but you have to know the tells, and Carissa does not happen to.

Cheliax: The Baron sips some of the stronger alcohol he's taken for himself; his tolerance is practiced.  "Any refined eye looking at her can see that her beauty was bought.  Natural beauties as pretty as you are very rare indeed.  Well, what were you about before Abrogail Thrune appeared to you in disguise?"

Carissa Sevar: "I grew up in Corentyn. My father's a merchant but he's giving the business to my half-brother and my mother's a teacher and I wanted to open a shop. I can do Prestidigitations, you know, so I can make drinks cold in summer and sell them, which seems like it'd be much more fun than doing laundry like everyone does with Prestidigitation. I think if Her Majesty gets bored - not speaking ill of her, just, you know, realistically she might - then I might travel, with all this money I've got now. I've always wanted to see Absalom."

Cheliax: "It's a wonderful place, though prophecy has it doomed as Carissa Sevar devours the souls of all within during Her ascension to godhood.  You might want to hurry if you'd see it before it's gone."

Carissa Sevar: "Well I'd rather expect that all the Starstone gods would object to that, if she really tries it! Also, if she were ascending, couldn't she just ....touch the Starstone? In a non-soul-consuming way? Like everyone else who ascended there?"

Cheliax: "Well, who wouldn't devour all the souls in a city if they'd end up a more powerful god that way?  I've heard many things of Carissa Sevar, but never that she was Good."

Carissa Sevar: "Well, if she's Evil like Abrogail then I suppose that'll turn out all right."

Cheliax: "I suppose there's the kind of Evil that denies someone an afterlife for personal benefit, and the sort of Evil that denies someone an afterlife because it's fun, but if you wouldn't destroy a soul for either of those reasons I don't think you can be a proper Asmodean.  Though I admit, I couldn't say from my own knowledge that I've heard of the Queen consuming anyone's soul for her personal benefit."

Carissa Sevar: "I meant that Abrogail - knowing her is better than not knowing her. She might hurt you, but she leaves you stronger."

Cheliax: All right, not completely naive then.  "If she doesn't leave you a shattered wreck, yes."  The thickset Baron raises his glass to her in salute.  "Then I salute your great natural resilience as well as your great natural beauty, as would make you twice over one of the luckiest people alive."  In other words, that didn't happen.

Carissa Sevar: "I might be, but not in that respect. I got it done in Dis."

Cheliax: Maybe NOT human then.  If she's not just successfully toying with him.  "Is that where you met Abrogail Thrune, by any chance?"

Carissa Sevar: "Not at all! I told you, I met her when she showed up in my bedroom in the dead of night as a mysterious noblewoman who wanted me to join her schemes. - I suppose, in the end, she had the last laugh, as here I am now, in all her schemes."

Cheliax: "I don't believe you'd mentioned some of those details before, actually.  What sort of scheme was a Prestidigitation adept of Corentyn being invited to join, by this mysterious noblewoman?"

Carissa Sevar: "Oh, you know, high treason, regicide, that sort of thing. I shouldn't tell of all her tricks; what if she wants to use them on other people?"

Cheliax: "Well, congratulations on passing your loyalty test, then.  Assuming you did pass, and all this isn't the aftermath of your failure where you're told that you die a horrible death as soon as you stop amusing her."

Carissa Sevar: "You'd have to be one idiot of a wizard to agree to mysterious noblewoman schemes to overthrow House Thrune....though I'm not sure that is actually what she's testing." She shrugs. Sips her drink.

...chills it, with a Prestidigitation, made convincingly wobbly off her hand like she never quite mastered spell scaffolding. "Anyway, she already did the 'die a horrible death as soon as you stop amusing me' thing, I doubt it'd be as fun the second time."

Cheliax: "You're actually confident of surviving the romance, then?  I won't say there's nobody in Cheliax who can lay claim to being one of her surviving exes, but it's by all accounts the exception rather than the rule."

Carissa Sevar: "Well, we'll see. But just between you and me, I think she likes me."

Cheliax: "I'm glad I don't have your problems."  He raises his wineglass in salute to her a final time, and respectfully departs.

Cheliax: The thing about Cheliax is that its surviving nobles are not the sort to charge in heedlessly.  There's a Countess who seems at first to be toying cruelly with the naive beauty, but it rapidly comes clear that the Countess is maintaining firmly in mind the possibility that this isn't a naive beauty, and isn't particularly taking any emotional satisfaction from the process of probing this possible facade.

But it's Cheliax and there will be somebody.

This recently-ascended Baroness, who looks a bit like Avaricia in the sense of maybe having bought her own looks from the same purveyors, doesn't believe that Miss Incognito is an innocent beauty picked up by Abrogail Thrune and thrown to the wolves.  But she wants to know if Miss Incognito is some other manner of enjoyable victim, because so far it looks like people have just been probing her cautiously and that's a sad look on Hell's country, isn't it.  If Miss Incognito is here to be hurt, the Queen will be pleased with the first to dare hurt her, especially with so many others having shown themselves too cowardly.

"The Queen must favor you much, to invite you to such an exclusive gathering as this," says the Baroness, who feels confident in her Sense Motive against most people's Bluff short of the Queen.

Carissa Sevar: "I think she's hoping I'll have fun, yes. Though I notice she really invited rather a lot of people."

Cheliax: And what does her Sense Motive tell her about this answer?

Carissa Sevar: Carissa's giving her Bluff a lot of exercise this evening, and she has her Glibness pin up, and she was actually very good at this even before that. 

She's hard to read. 

However, 'I notice she really invited rather a lot of people' is ...in reserve to be interpretable in retrospect as an insult, say, rather than outright being one.

Cheliax: "It takes a number of people to run a successful war, many fewer than have been deemed worthy to be here."  The Baroness gestures at the chained shackleborn tiefling, who now has an older woman interestedly casting some minor sorcery spells against him, to test his resilience.  "Even that sad thing contributed; you can't have a successful war without an enemy, or loot, or a conquered people to learn their new place."  Subtext:  And what's your place here, then?

Carissa Sevar: "Good of the Queen to invite one of them, then. Though I have to say, I don't know that I like it. Why'd they cut off his fingers." It's an apparently sincere question, with the slightest note of concern for the poor thing.

Cheliax: "Well, you know what they say about shackleborn.  Couldn't have him going around fingering people."

Carissa Sevar: "I don't know what they say about shackleborn, actually." And probably it's changed in the history books, now that Nidal is conquered Chelish territory instead of a technically-allied independent polity.

Cheliax: "To put it another way, at a party like this one, you're either one of the ones who does the fingering, or you're one of the fingered.  Cutting off his fingers serves to ensure nobody becomes confused about which role he holds here."

Carissa Sevar: "They have him chained up and they're doing an auction! And it seems like some bloody expensive symbolism, what with how whoever buys him is going to need a Regenerate to make him useful!"

Maybe she really is just an innocent who does not understand the way that the court in Egorian works, at all. If she's bluffing she's bluffing incredibly well.

Cheliax: "Nobody here gives a fuck about the cost of a Regenerate, not that he'll get one.  He's being sold for purposes of interesting suffering, and doesn't need fingers to suffer."

Carissa Sevar: " - right. 

Sorry, where I'm from people buy slaves to...do things."

Cheliax: "There's things he can do without fingers, once he's properly broken.  It takes a long time to break shackleborn, but they're good for a longer time after that than most human slaves after you break them.  He's a good investment for someone who wants to practice their hobby of cruelty in a medium that requires a long effort of the hobbyist and rewards that long effort with a lasting bit of craft."

"And you wouldn't want him fingering anything during the process."

Carissa Sevar: "Are shackleborn an interest of yours?"

Cheliax: "They weren't, but that was before a couple of thousand such went up for sale in Cheliax and somebody at the victory party so forcefully called my attention to them.  I don't care enough to win the auction on this one, but maybe I'll try my luck with one of the others.  And cut off their fingers, and leave them off, now that you've brought the subsequent possibilities to my attention.  I know you don't want your name spoken here, but is there a way I could mail the fingers to you?"

Carissa Sevar: " - what're you trying to prove? Obviously we won and can do as we like with everyone in Nidal. I just don't personally happen to want anybody's fingers."

Cheliax: "Yes, that would be exactly why I'd have the fingers delivered to you, you see, because you didn't want them.  It's a question of who in Cheliax gets to do what they want with everyone in Nidal; the ones who want tieflings to have fingers, or the ones who want them not to.  So far it looks the Fingerless Tiefling Party is winning."

Carissa Sevar: Imaginary Carissa is flustered! (Real Carissa is having lots of fun and can't even explain to herself why.) "I feel like you're making this into - obviously if it's your slave, and you want them - limbless and chained to the wall, or something - you should get to do that! I'm not trying to convince you to do otherwise! I suppose I do think it's nice that some people don't want that, and want nicer things than that, but I bet you think so too; after all, you're in an Asmodean tyranny where you get to be a baroness instead of being in a Kuthite suffering-country where no one gets to have fingers. Metaphorically."

Cheliax: "Well, that's the whole difference between Kuthism and Asmodeanism, isn't it?  In Kuthism everyone suffers; in Asmodeanism, you can be a noble in life, or a devil in death, and get to cause a lot of suffering while doing little suffering yourself.  There isn't an option in either system for being little-harmed yourself while not dealing harm.  Those who never want to cut off a slave's fingers are bound to end up fingerless themselves."

"Managed to hurt anybody yourself?  Because with an attitude like that, I bet you didn't enjoy it properly even if you did."

Carissa Sevar: "You don't know anything about me." But she does not sound like someone with a lot about her behind that angry answer.

Cheliax: Mostly the Baroness doesn't know what kind of victim this is, and whether she made any progress at all on hurting her, and something about her seems to not quite fit because what would somebody like that be doing here and failing to deduce what kind of place they were in from seeing a fingerless tiefling already...

The Baroness walks off without saying anything at all by way of departure, the last little bit of injury she might be able to manage.  You're either a hurter or one of the hurtees, and she tries with her every act in life to make herself one of the former.

Cheliax: There's now an interesting overhearable conversation nearby, the sort where people are talking in voices not particularly meant to demand attention, but loud enough that somebody else could join their conversation if they wanted.  It looks to be a noble, a high-level fighter, and a cleric of Asmodeus; and if they aren't all walking into a tavern, they're at least standing near the drinks station.

Noble:  ...sign that the accursed wizards are taking over the whole fucking country, I'm telling you.  They go off and figure out how to make an expensive wizard thing more cheaply and suddenly they're the key to world conquest?

      Fighter:  Aye!  If spellsilver had always cost a tenth of the old price, nobody would think anything of mining it so.  If only warriors had always lazed about and made an attack every minute!  We could pretend now to speed up to an attack per round, and we'd all be the center of attention.

   Cleric:  There's something to what you say.  Not much, and not necessarily good, but something.  I notice some concern myself that the Queen is handing out Intelligence headbands to the nobility -

Noble:  Yes!  Exactly!  It'd be one thing if that were a free action, but you've got to take off your Splendour headband to put on an Intelligence headband, and we need those!  I never thought I'd see the day when an eighth-circle sorceress started to go along with the wizards on Intelligence being everything!  Who's to say that Intelligence is any more important than Splendour, in life?  If Intelligence is everything then why doesn't Nefreti Clepati rule the world, hm?  It's we nobles who run things all over Golarion, and that's because Splendour is just more useful than Intelligence to everyone who isn't a wizard, everyone living in real life.

      Fighter:  Aye!  Who's even to say that an Intelligence headband is any more useful or important than a belt of Strength or Constitution?

   Cleric:  Me, for one.  I'd say that.  At least if we're talking about those who'd rule.

      Fighter:  There's many a king that wouldn't have attained their throne without a Belt of Physical Might.

Noble:  Once you have the throne and can afford to hire bodyguards, Strength becomes not quite as important, after.  If you can trust the bodyguards, that is, which is a matter of Splendour.

      Fighter:  Did I take a throne, I'd put a Splendour headband on myself, but I wouldn't take off my Strength belt after.  Being strong changes you, there is a confidence that comes from being able to punch through iron and outlast a stone statue.  If you cannot outfight your own bodyguards, it changes how you treat them and how they treat you.  There is no mind without body, even petitioners must manifest one for themselves.  I'm surprised and dismayed to find myself the only advocate here of the commonsense position that all six abilitystats are equally important in life.

   Cleric:  It's easier to sound wise than to be wise, as the clerics say.  There's a reason why wizards do say that Intelligence is most important in life, clerics that Wisdom is most important, sorcerers that Splendour is most important, and fighters argue that all six abilitystats are equally important.

      Fighter:  Namely, we're in a profession that actually uses more than one abilitystat, allowing us to appreciate that more than one such might have an equal place in life, and that the gods made all six to matter equally.

Noble:  No, it's because 'Strength matters as much as Intelligence' is a fucking stupid stance for anyone except a fighter or a farmer, which can only be justified under cover of arguing an even stupider proposition which would imply that Dexterity matters as much as Splendour.  You can get by on Strength 7 as a duchess, if you must, but try out Intelligence 7 and you'll be dead by evening.  My objection to the Queen's plan is more that, once you're smart enough to not be one of the stupid people who never matter to anything - once you're smart enough to qualify for the inner circle of people who matter at all, as they know that among themselves - it doesn't help to be any smarter than that.

      Fighter:  Wouldn't it be amusing, though, if people put on Intelligence headbands, and the first thing they realized with all that wit would be that Intelligence doesn't matter any more than Dexterity after all?  Ha!  Ha, ha, ha!  Wouldn't that be a daggerthrust through their pride!  Oh, sometimes I do slay myself with my own wit.

Noble:  If only.  But, I believe the other person who matters at all, in this conversation, had something they wished to say, about how they were disturbed that the Queen was handing out Intelligence headbands and demanding they be used?

   Cleric:  Well, yes, it's that if the problem is nobles being stupid in the ordinary and colloquial sense of stupidity, I'd expect that was better fixed by enjoining them to put on Wisdom headbands, not Intelligence headbands.  Nobles being idiots are usually more headstrong than truly uncomprehending of the correct way, I think?  No decision that a noble faces is ever as complicated as even the most basic Spellcraft, after all, nor requires any mathematics more complicated than the arithmetic of tax records.  What's needed is not the cleverness to grasp a complex remedy, but the perceptiveness to understand that some simple remedy is correct.  I pray that this is only an ordinary matter of the manufacture of Wisdom headbands lagging, and not that the Queen has truly set such hard-to-understand priorities on the abilitystats needed for effective rulership.

      Fighter:  Did we ask the Queen's new fucktoy yonder, she'd no doubt say that Comeliness, the seventh abilitystat unrecognized by magic, is the most important thing in life, and that struggling nobles should make themselves more comely.

   Cleric:  And you, by your own lights, should agree at least that Comeliness is just as important as any other abilitystat?

      Fighter:  Nay, I draw the line at six.

Carissa Sevar: Are they failing to notice that cheaper spellsilver helps with literally any feature you might choose to enhance, and with any other magic item you might want to buy? Or is the idea that since they could afford their favored enhancement anyway, making it cheaper does them a disservice, since now lesser people will have it too?

Imagine living like that. 

lintamande: A strikingly handsome young man in a dress uniform taps her on the shoulder, which is more forward than anyone else has been; she spins around to blink startledly at him. 

"Forgive me," he says, "but I overheard those guests over there speaking of you with appalling disrespect, and I wondered if you meant to confront them, and lacked only for anyone on your side. For if so, I would delightedly defend you."

Carissa Sevar: Hell was real. This is all - fake, a performance, people trying to show each other how Evil they are - she doubts Asmodeus can even see it -

Carissa Sevar: "Oh, would you? I'd be so grateful!"

lintamande: And he takes her arm and drags her into the conversation. "Forgive me," he says, "but I caught the last of what you were saying and had to emphatically disagree. There is no question, to my mind, that beauty alone would be insufficient to bring a woman to Her Majesty's attention; surely this striking lady has many other talents as well, and need only tell us of them."

Carissa Sevar: " - oh. I, um, that wasn't my objection, I just thought they were being rather crude. ...and I thought they'd forgotten that spellsilver being cheaper helps with all those things they were talking about.

Except prettiness, I suppose, since there isn't a magic item for that.

...so maybe someday every peasant will have a fancy headband and a fancy belt of strength and beauty alone will distinguish us."

lintamande: He laughs, gently. "Not Intelligence, then. Spellsilver being ten times cheaper, or even a hundred times cheaper, would not have peasants going around in headbands; and even if headbands were free we wouldn't hand them out to peasants. Some people it's a favor to them, really, to let them go on being idiots."

Carissa Sevar: "Is it?"

lintamande: "Yes! Why, say that that shackleborn there had failed to understand what was being done to him, and thought that all the viewers were friendly, and that he was going to be set free any minute now; would you enlighten him?"

Carissa Sevar: "No one could be that stupid."

Cheliax: The noble blinks amusedly at the two of them.  "I'm certain that at least one person right here at this party is that stupid.  It's really just a question of who, and when they figure it out."

  The cleric sends the noble a quelling look, and speaks rather more sententiously than before.  "If all in this world did wear headbands the equal of the Crown of Infernal Majesty, it'd change nothing but the fraction of wizards and clerics; there'd still be fools to the slaughter, they'd just be smarter fools, and smarter butchers walking about to slaughter them.  Asmodeus doesn't will that it be so; He only wills that we understand it to be so."

Carissa Sevar: "Well, I think the peasants might not be Asmodeans if they were smarter! They might notice it wasn't in their interests, to be the ones who suffer forever!"

lintamande: "I would say, well, Her Majesty also obviously did not pick you for your political opinions, but actually I suppose she might have."

Cheliax: Noble:  "I'd say the obvious solution was not to give headbands to peasants, even once there's that much spellsilver about.  But if Osirion is handing out complicated farming machinery and giving headbands among theirs - I suppose if any countries who try that all end up like Galt, that'd be one answer to how we're to win this great game that's beginning."

     Fighter:  "I hear tell that Carissa Sevar, who's said to be the inventor of the 'production line' of headbands, did also invent the Geased earring.  I'm no wizard, but it's an obvious thought to stack the Intelligence boost and the Geas into one item, if that may be done, once you're handing out headbands to peasants."

   Cleric:  "Intelligence is to think of stacking a Geas into the headbands.  Wisdom is to see that you must arrange matters so that the peasants don't have any alternative but to obey or suffer worse, no matter how smart they become."

Carissa Sevar: "But if you're not more intelligent than them, you will think you've arranged matters so they have no alternative to obedience, when to them you're like a bear who has treed a tasty adventurer - sure, as far as your bear-mind knows, they're really truly stuck in that tree, but the adventurer is barely inconvenienced because there are so many solutions the bear can't think of. A horde of peasants who are wizards, even if you've Geased or threatened them all into line, is alchemical fire - the slightest contact with air and up goes all of Cheliax in flames."

Cheliax:    The cleric nods, showing a deliberate grim smile.  "Yes, the problem is that right now we have headbands and they do not; giving headbands to all is equivalent to taking away ours, in how it changes the structure of power.  I can only hope that with so much spellsilver and wizardry it becomes possible to build +8 or +10 items, as expensive as the +6s are now, to preserve the present balance of power between the strong and the weak.  Or mayhap Project Chemistry will learn to refine diamonds like they refine spellsilver, and with so many wizards we'll gain a 9th-circle to Wish up the rulers."

Noble:  "Eh.  I don't see why we couldn't just sweep every farm with Detect Thoughts every week, if we had a second-circle in every settlement.  We do chain soldiers and wizards to the Worldwound, by such means, including those wizards who perform Detect Thoughts themselves.  We can chain smarter farmers to their farms."

Carissa Sevar: "Seems better than putting all one's hopes in Project Chemistry or whatever they're calling it these days pulling off a second miracle as great as the first."

Cheliax:    Cleric:  "If there's anything that Project Chemistry and the Scientific Revolution have promised us all, it's that we won't live in an age of just one miracle."

      Fighter:  "It's which miracles we'll get that I worry of.  No cleverness of wizards and alchemists will ever obsolete hand-to-hand combat, of that I'm certain.  But if one's got to swing some mechanical horror more complicated than an enchanted sword, next year's warriors may need more balanced abilitystats than I.  More Intelligence and Dexterity, less Strength and Constitution... and I might think to keep up with the right belt and headband, but the trouble is, my enemy'll have belt and headband too."

Noble:  "Sir Pascual, why don't you apologize to this lovely lady for calling her a fucktoy, and let her be off with her equally lovely defender?  I'm sure there's an interesting night ahead of them, one way or another, and I wouldn't want us to distract them further."

      Fighter:  "Aye, fair enough.  I apologize for naming you fucktoy, nameless thing of the Queen's."

Carissa Sevar: "I would say I forgive you, except I think the Church said recently that's a heresy." 

lintamande: "I've actually no idea what you mean by that," the man says, as he tugs her away. 

Carissa Sevar: "Oh, I didn't intend you to."

lintamande: "Well, if you won't reveal it before a larger audience, will you tell me privately, what secret spark in you drew Abrogail Thrune?"

Carissa Sevar: She takes another sip of her wine. "...all right, but you must promise not to tell anyone."

lintamande: "You have my word, my lady."

Carissa Sevar: "She said that if I annoyed her she'd turn me into a statue lost to the world forever and ever, and the thought consumed me with horror so totally I could scarcely think of anything else, which she thought was rather flirtatious."

lintamande: "I see. And you don't suppose she'll really do it, as soon as the followthrough is more fun than the terror?"

Carissa Sevar: "Why do you ask."

lintamande: "Oh, I don't know. Curiosity. Sympathy for such a beautiful thing, no less trapped than the shackleborn, and not, I think, an idiot who can't see it coming."

Carissa Sevar: "I'm not an idiot."

lintamande: "I hear it's your first time in Egorian. Have you seen the skyline from the palace balconies at night?"

Carissa Sevar: Well, this is a game no one else has tried. Is he trying to ...steal the queen's lover. Presumably he is aware that's a terrible idea. 

Carissa Sevar: "I don't think I'm supposed to wander off."

lintamande: "Well, that's why I'm with you." And he tugs her firmly off towards a balcony. 

Pilar : "Surprise."

Cheliax: There's a brief moment of horror interested surprise in the ballroom, as everyone stares at the corpse now collapsed on the ground in front of the pink-haired girl.

Cheliax: "Security?" somebody says uncertainly.

Pilar : "Apparently I AM IN FACT Security for this event."

Security: A Security who doesn't know the implications of 'pink-haired girl' starts forward, then notices the Grand High Priestess and Queen of Cheliax converging on the location and thinks better of it.

Abrogail Thrune II: "I had thought you weren't allowed to do that, Lady Pineda.  At the least I thought you had to give them a cookie first."

Pilar : Pilar gestures at the corpse of the woman she's just slain, in uniform of senior palace serving-attendant.  "I didn't do it for her benefit, your Majesty.  I did it because a friend of mine is having a fun time at this party and I wasn't letting her ruin it."

Abrogail Thrune II: "Oh, now that opens up all kinds of new possibilities... possibly?  I'll have to think on it.  Could you have had her taken for interrogation and Malediction?"

Pilar : "She probably went to a Good afterlife, I doubt I could've gotten away with taking her alive."

Pilar realizes only after she says it that she didn't properly think about the question -

Abrogail Thrune II: "Is that why you're reading as being so very annoyed, Lady Pineda?"

Aspexia Rugatonn: "She's annoyed for the same reason I'M ANNOYED, but we'll speak of that later."

Snack Service delayed them so that Carissa Sevar would be at the party, meaning Pilar could protect her.

It needs not be spoken to anyone of wit what almost happened.  The woman's corpse is lying in front of the stand protecting the Helm of Brilliance, one of the more famously volatile magic items in existence; and now that Aspexia Rugatonn thinks about it why was that there in Nidal and who did make the decision to display it at this party.

Aspexia Rugatonn wonders if there's such a thing as being so annoyed with Chaotic Good that you transform into a horror from the Dark Tapestry and start eating people.

lintamande: The hubbub caused by Pilar's appearance takes a while to filter out to the distant balconies of the ballroom, in one of which Carissa Sevar is now ....making friends. Or something. 

"I've seen the type before, if you'll forgive me. Just sort of... obediently walking towards their own doom because they're too terrified to think about whether they could avoid it. It's very pleasing to Asmodeus."

Carissa Sevar: "To Asmodeus that's you as much as me, I think."

lintamande: He laughs. "Oh, maybe it used to be that way - but not anymore, I don't think. Word's gone out about how much Osirion pays for defectors, especially anyone who was close to the crown. A year ago, you could fairly have said of me that I was carefully not thinking about whether I want to leave. Now, I've gotten a Sending with an offer."

Carissa Sevar: "Why not take it?"

lintamande: "Well, it wasn't a very impressive offer. I do have my pride."

Carissa Sevar: Is he offering to defect with her.  And if he is, is he doing it as some sort of game, or in sincerity, or carefully not knowing himself. And if it's a game, what's the game? Has he figured out who she is, or does he just figure it'd be fun to spirit off whoever the Queen's sleeping with? 

Carissa Sevar: (Carissa would like to clarify for listening Security that she is, obviously, not contemplating defection, having just sold her soul to Dispater and been offered all her dreams come true. She's just playing, as Abrogail definitely intended.)

Carissa Sevar: "It's too bad how I don't trust you at all."

lintamande: "It is. But, you know, if I were you, I wouldn't be asking myself - am I going to find someone I trust enough to ask them to save me? I'm going to ask - am I going to find anyone I trust more than this. You might as well go with the best chance you have, even if it isn't a good one."

Carissa Sevar: "What do you get out of this? Hypothetically."

lintamande: "Money from Osirion. Having pulled off something no one pulled off before. Axis, which I hear is very nice. Not you, if that's what you're asking. I've had my fill of fragile pretty things with nowhere to run."

Carissa Sevar: "All right."

lintamande: "I need you to say more than that, if you want me to risk my life, which is not nearly over, on this. 'I want to defect to Osirion and will give you Osirion's defection payout for arranging it'."

Carissa Sevar: "I....want to defect to Osirion and will give you Osirion's defection payment for arranging it," she whispers.

lintamande: He beams at her, and then turns around to give an invisible someone a slap on the back. "Pay out, then, oh ye of little faith."

The slap breaks the invisiblity; it's another man, the same age, similar-enough looking to perhaps be a brother. "Oh, I don't know, I sense there's another twist impending."

"Deal was, I get her to agree to defect. If you wanted to reserve the right to declare she didn't really mean it, you should've been more specific."

Carissa Sevar: The pretty girl is sitting there frozen in horror. "Abrogail's - going to be angry with you -"

lintamande: "Hmmm? No, I'm on her good side, we provide a valuable service. We've tried half the palace slaves by now. I've been offered the title of anyone important I can swing it with, but it's honestly more fun to pick off helpless little girls. You, on the other hand, the Queen is going to be angry with you. You lasted twenty minutes, that's worse than your typical bloodied miserable kitchen slave. Truly embarrassing."

Carissa Sevar: "I was going to report you!"

lintamande: "Yeah, yeah, tell it to Security. Pay out," he says to his friend. 

"End of the night, if nothing else happens."

"Wanna make an additional bet on that?"

Carissa Sevar: There's Security visible on the balcony, now, a squat man and a tall woman neither of whom Carissa recognizes, presumably in case anyone pretending to be a defector thinks about becoming one for real. Carissa wonders absently which level of the game they're on, whether Abrogail briefed all the Security about her game or not. 

What would Abrogail's poor innocent beauty do.

...she shrieks in frustrated anguish at them and tries hurling herself off the balcony. 

lintamande: "That's a double!" says her erstwhile friend delightedly, as the Security haul her back. "I'm on a roll."

Abrogail Thrune II: "Has my sweetling misbehaved herself?" Abrogail says to the impromptu gathering a few minutes later.

To her slight surprise, she notes that some small part of her is glad Carissa is having fun.  That's been an obvious possibility for some time now, but that it's obvious doesn't change that she's going to have to watch it very carefully.

Carissa Sevar: " - no, your Majesty - I didn't - I wouldn't -"

lintamande: "Your Majesty. It fell for the Osirian defection line and then tried to jump off the balcony," the handsome man says cheerfully, bowing. "Twenty minutes, a quite disappointing score."

Abrogail Thrune II: "I'm terribly disappointed in you, my darling.  I know you're tired and I sprung this party on you rather suddenly, but I hadn't thought it so awful that you'd sooner defect to Osirion than stay around for it."

Carissa Sevar: "I wouldn't! I was going to report him! I just wanted to see where he was going with it!"