Zakiya: "- that's fair. I think the thing I mean to say is that things are very specific. Some things that look very bad from the outside don't hurt too much, and some things that look like nothing, next to other things you've been through, can be too much. I know lots of specific things that happen to girls in this palace. I don't know much about Cheliax. I can tell you the things I know, but they might not work for you."

Carissa Sevar: Carissa has obtained a dress and is scrubbing blood off her hands in one of the fancy mosaic basins. "Yeah, I'm not going to try offering lemon water."

Zakiya: "It's not about the lemon water, it's about - little decisions, that you get to make, that go the way you expect. Do you want this, or that? And you get the one you want. Consistently. It helps people reorient. It has to be something that couldn't possibly be a test or a game or have a right answer. If you weren't in a hurry I'd do it with the clothes, too. Do you want the blue dress, or the pink? Do you want to lace it up, or do you want me to do it? Do you want me to do your hair?"

Carissa Sevar: "...I think if you hurt someone enough that comes across as a game no matter what the question is."

Zakiya: "Well, if you hurt someone then you certainly shouldn't be their recovery person! That should be someone who doesn't have power over them, who they feel safe around, who doesn't report to you, and who is going to be willing to stand up to you and tell you to lay off if you're about to damage them further. I don't have the authority to tell your ride to Keltham that you're ready to go, but I do have the authority to say that you aren't, yet, if it seemed like actually going to Keltham was a terrible idea that was going to damage everyone involved and maybe lead to an Inner Sea war."

Carissa Sevar: "My not going to Keltham is a terrible idea that might spark an Inner Sea war."

Zakiya: "You don't have to convince me, I'm not going to stand in your way. But if you were curled up in a ball crying then I'd tell your ride I wasn't releasing you yet. Not because I want an Inner Sea war, mind, I really really don't, but because people who have hurt themselves into weird twisted pretzels that can go up in flames at the first spark start more Inner Sea wars than people who haven't."

Carissa Sevar: Carissa's hands are clean; she's dressed. She notices herself being slightly sad about this fact and decides it's fine to stay thirty more seconds. "What would you do for someone who was - betrayed, by someone they loved and trusted, and was really, really, really twisted into a pretzel about it?"

Zakiya: "You can't follow a script, for that. You just have to let them steer, and be there, and listen, and hurt with them, and be angry with them, and be sad with them, and make sure they're not alone."

Carissa Sevar: "Right. 

Thanks. That was interesting. I don't suppose you want to come help do injured-people-repair in Keltham's secret lair."

Zakiya: "What's the pay like."

Carissa Sevar: "You know, I should really be getting used to that by now. I will get back to you about the pay. Where's my ride." 

Zakiya: "Outside the Dome, I think."

She opens the door.

Carissa Sevar: Then if someone will show her the way, Carissa will depart. At a bit of a run. 

Ri-Dul: Indeed, he's not getting paid the nearly infinite amount required for him to go inside the Black Dome, and be unable to cast spells for the several minutes it might take him to figure that out.

He's just hanging around right outside the Black Dome until Sevar shows up.  Idly playing with some spellsilver, it having become much cheaper nowadays.  Seeing if he can figure out what it would take to put together an assembly line for +2 Intelligence headbands, as Sevar is reputed to have personally invented.  (Keltham says he mostly thinks she did, but doesn't know for sure because of the Conspiracy; it might've been somebody else, to impress him more, to make up for other demands on Sevar's time.)

Carissa Sevar: She steps out of the Black Dome in an Osirian-style beaded blue dress, an illusion making her look like a normal Osirian woman leaving the Dome for normal Osirian reasons, a +2 Splendour headband on her head. 

Ri-Dul: Illusions.  Heh.

"Good afternoon.  I am Keltham's employee.  I am to Mind Blank you immediately, will you not resist?"

Carissa Sevar: The illusions aren't to fool him.

" - understood. I won't resist."

Ri-Dul: He flicks an enormous powerful day-duration abjuration loose at her, which promptly settles in.

He didn't use a scroll or item; so this person must be at least an eighth-circle wizard, or maybe a priest with an unusual domain.

Incidentally, Carissa's Arcane Sight isn't seeing anything magical about him.

"Ri-Dul," he says.  "Eighth-circle necromancer.  Keltham says you are supposedly recently fourth-circle and supposedly quite good at Spellcraft for that; though he does not know, now, what was truth and what was lie, in that, save that Ione thought it probably true."

Carissa Sevar: Are they making small talk? Why are they making small talk. Is he professionally interested in whether she's actually good at magic or whether that was made up to impress Keltham? Carissa's - focus of thought, the set of people she's paying even the slightest bit of attention to - has been narrowing and narrowing, this morning, and now it's just Keltham, and it's hard to think of anything else. 

Her deeply unreasonable Splendour of course means she's answering despite this, with a slightly embarrassed smile. "I hit fourth shortly after meeting Keltham, and fifth this morning. I haven't met anyone better than me at Spellcraft, but Cheliax, you know, has a dearth of high-level wizards due to our defection problem." It was immediately obvious once she thought about it that that was what explained the differential between fourth and fifth-circle scarcity. 

Ri-Dul: "Fifth, at your age?  My my.  Perhaps we shall have somewhat to discuss once we are settled in."

"Well, do you want to take in the sights of Sothis, make some purchases, with your newfound freedom, or shall I conduct you straightwise to Keltham's lair?  Keltham has not, in fact, extended any promises that you will be allowed to leave anytime soon after entering.  Its location is terribly secret, you see."

Carissa Sevar: " ...of course he's not going to let me leave. No reasonable nation-state at this stage of this game, having gotten hold of me, would let me leave, and I'm pretty sure Osirion's only doing it because they can't afford to piss him off when he's their defense against Cheliax, and because I told them very tearfully that I was scared Keltham was going to scare Asmodeus into destroying the world. I don't have shopping to do. I'm not free. Let's please go."

Ri-Dul: "I do expect Keltham would let you fly free if you asked now, being still that sort of person.  Though without me to Mind Blank you, you'd obviously be kidnapped shortly after..."

"Well, let's be along then.  Prepare for Teleport."  He pokes her shoulder.

Carissa Sevar: It's sort of good to hear that Keltham's still that sort of person. It's also sort of disappointing, like on some level she didn't want to have ownership of this choice, she wanted it to be inevitable. 

She does not resist the Teleport.

Iarwain: They're now inside an indoors room, possibly an underground chamber judging by how one wall is rock.  There's a Mage's Sanctum enchantment, permanencied, about the whole area, and the border of a Forbiddance in front of her, with a very solid-looking and magical door ahead of that.  It looks remarkably like the Chelish safehouse/prison, really.

There's a tiefling woman here, of scarred face, dressed as a rich man's maid might be.

Ri-Dul: "Password, sweet stone sunlight.  It's a Neutral Good Forbiddance so don't forget that, it'll fry you like sausage."

"This young lady is Tarnish."

Carissa Sevar: Clothes more than expensive enough to fix the scars, if she - or if Keltham - wanted that. 

"Pleasure to meet you, Tarnish."

Tarnish: "The pleasure is all yours, I'm sure, and it will pass swiftly.  I'm not an admirer of Cheliax's work on Keltham."  A harsh melodic voice, like this woman had been a singer before her throat took an arrow to the knee.  "I can take you to Keltham, do you wish; or bring you refreshments, or take you to your new bedroom to rest; or give you a tour of the premises, which are not large."

Carissa Sevar: "...Keltham didn't express a preference?"

Tarnish: "Keltham is always very careful to determine others' wants and needs before expressing his own.  He'd no more just tell someone what to do than he'd smile or flirt or risk hurting somebody or get angry or have sex."

Ri-Dul: "Tarnish is not in love with Keltham, to be clear, or even fond of him, she just wants to hurt you.  I'd have warned you about that if I'd thought ahead, but I didn't think of it because of my overwhelming distaste for everything about Keltham's personal life."

Carissa Sevar: Wow, this sure sounds like one functional research organization, Carissa does not say. 

"If you want to hurt me conventional methods work fine, confusing me about what Keltham wants does not. I need to talk to him, but if he's not interruptible or has no desire to see me I"ll go to my room."

She is absolutely not going to have feelings about Keltham from something someone said to her specifically to hurt her.

Tarnish: "I am not permitted to hurt people by conventional methods, only with my words.  Keltham is interruptible; I'll take you to him."

Character Name:  Keltham           Alignment:  True Neutral             Character Level:  2+1Deity:  Keltham                              Homeland:  dath ilanClass:  Wizard 2 / Alchemist (chemist) 1                                            School:  UniversalistLanguages:  Baseline (native), Taldane, Osirian

STR:  9          CON:  19 (13)     DEX:  10INT:  22 (18)   WIS:   16            CHA:  18 (14)

Magic items equipped:  Headband of Mental Prowess (+4 INT / +4 CHA), Gloves of Use Magical Device +5, Belt of Mighty Constitution (+6 CON), Tiny Sword of Glibness, Ring of Sustenance, Glasses of Arcane Sight, various others

Feats:- Being a computer programmer who's played a lot of mathy video games- Skill Focus: Use Magical Device

Traits:- Dath ilani chemistry training- Dath ilani mathematical training - Pragmatic activator- Signature Spell (Prestidigitation)

Skills:- Spellcraft: 3 ranks (+3 class skill, +6 Intelligence bonus, +2 theoretical magician, +2 magical aptitude)- Use Magical Device: 3 ranks (+3 class skill, +3 skill focus, +2 magical aptitude, +6 int (pragmatic activator), +5 from gloves)- Bluff: 3 ranks (+4 charisma)- various Knowledge

Iarwain: That person's first action, on hearing that Carissa is on her way, will be to swap out his +4/+0/+4 headband for a +0/+0/+6 headband.  That should be maximal attainable previous-Kelthamness, and the less different he seems, the less it will hurt her, probably.  He doesn't want to hurt Carissa without a reason.

Tarnish will probably have said something cutting enough, or the Osirians warned Carissa enough of their own perspective, that Carissa will not be entirely unprepared; she should arrive warned, in a context where she'd hear the words warily rather than them hitting with all the force of reality straight out.

(He couldn't ask Ri-Dul to say anything here.  Ri-Dul made it a condition of his employment that Keltham's personal life drama would be causally screened off from him to the maximum feasible degree.  Which, valid.)

Keltham?: That person looks much the same, outwardly.  His face is maybe slightly thinner.

To arcane sight... he's got a headband of +6 Splendour, gloves enhancing some skill, a +6 Constitution-enhancing belt, a ring of sustenance, glasses of... probably Arcane Sight, and various other filled slots.

He is currently doing something with a flat metal plate inscribed with a complicated spellsilver pattern, spellsilver wires above that, and what looks like a scaffold or... something with a lot of moving magical parts that could not possibly be a spell, item, or anything functional at all.

He looks up at her when she enters the room.

"You look different," he states.

Carissa Sevar: - she kneels. It feels less complicated that way. And if she'd do it for Abrogail and for Dispater and (without conscious decision, Dominated) for the pharaoh of Osirion, well, it feels strange to just stand there for Keltham. 

"You look different too. - I got it done in Dis. Not for you, I actually thought at the time you'd probably have mixed feelings about it, but I thought it'd help with my cult and my cult might be important."

Keltham?: "Let's not talk about your cult.  Presumably it's an intervention by the god of tavern rumors, which means I try to think about it as little as possible."

"Carissa, I - am not able to just resume our relationship where it left off.  If that's what kneeling to me is meant to, ask, offer."

Carissa Sevar: "No, I, uh, figured that. I'm here to try to make sure the world doesn't get destroyed, and to help you find something better."

Keltham?: "That sounds like it should be a private conversation and probably a long one.  Can we continue this in time-dilated demiplane?"

Carissa Sevar: Ooooohh, time-dilated demiplane. She wonders how long it's been for him and then cuts that line of thought off as unproductive. More than a 2x multiplier is hard to get. Probably it hasn't been more than double what it's been for her. 

"Yes, of course."

Keltham?: "It's new, and temporary, so don't cast from any overpowered scrolls if you've got those with you.  There'll be a 9th-circle of Sarenrae there when we arrive, finishing up the portal.  Don't talk until I've had a chance to put up a Rope Trick for privacy."   He picks up the complicated spellsilver wires and spell-diagram-like plate, sweeps it into a Bag of Holding, takes a scroll from the Bag of Holding, and a tuning fork.

He conducts her the short walk back outside the Forbiddance, then casts Plane Shift (5th-circle divine form) from scroll; slowly, carefully, but without obvious difficulty.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa's feelings are alternating between declaring loudly that they're VERY COMPLICATED and apparently not being there at all. 

Why won't anyone just light her on fire until she's no longer harmed them. She bets if she went back to Cheliax they would obligingly light her on fire. 

She takes Keltham's hand for the Plane Shift, and says nothing.

Iarwain: Welcome to this personal temporary time-dilated demiplane!  The sky here is bright and white, like somebody took the Sun and sky and blended the colors back together.  There's grass beneath her feet, and dirt below the grass.  It's small, for a demiplane, maybe as wide across as three houses in each direction.  There's a pool of clear water that looks plenty wide enough to swim in, a house-distance away.  Walls of mist demarcate the plane's edges.

A clean desk rests next to four bookcases all of whose shelves are full of mess; there's a whiteboard, currently clean; a cabinet, one of whose drawers visibly (to arcane sight) contains a few pounds of spellsilver.  An adventurer's high-quality portable personal bedroom rig (calling it a 'tent' doesn't do it justice) stands beside.

Magic here behaves slightly oddly; if you stare around with Arcane Sight for a while, you can figure out that divination is impeded here.  A Mage's Private Sanctum overlays the whole area, but not a permanent one.

Also here is a very impressive-looking Grand High Priestess of Sarenrae, but she's busy casting the incredibly slow magic of Create Greater Demiplane.

Carissa Sevar: So Sarenrae's in on it too? Or no, Keltham said he was trying not to think about Cayden's plans, so that means he doesn't consider himself to be working directly with Cayden -

She can see the outlines of the two pieces she's missing, the two pieces that'd make everything else fit together, maybe just one piece but definitely not more than two. One is what outcome Cayden Cailean and Nethys are angling for and why only they are working towards it. The other is why Cheliax hasn't attacked Osirion yet and - she's pretty sure this has the same answer - why Keltham changed course to work with the Church of Sarenrae and the Padishah Empire when she sold her soul.

Keltham?: He pulls out another scroll and casts again, putting up a Rope Trick, and climbs up into the space thus created, offering a hand up to Carissa if/when she follows.

Carissa Sevar: She didn't even know you could do that though now that she thinks about it there's no rule you have to be on the Material to cast a Rope Trick. 

She climbs in.

Keltham?: "I suppose in a sense we are beginning again where we left off, inside a Rope Trick."

"There are - too many things to say - I suppose I'll just say one of them.  Why did you return my option premium and sell your soul?"

Carissa Sevar: "...I don't know for sure because I erased my memories of the decision but I think it was to get Asmodia and Peranza out of being eternally tortured, purchase the souls of everyone else on Project Lawful so I could protect them too, get fifteen Wishes and an artifact headband so I could make progress on ensuring you'd be better off for knowing me and on coming up with a plan to save the world, and maaaaybe to compact with Asmodeus in a way that'll make it easier to overthrow Him or maybe that part was all Cayden's plan not mine."

Keltham?: "What happened to Asmodia and Peranza?  Priority question, were they being temporarily tortured for long enough that this would possibly damage anybody who wasn't you or Pilar?"

Carissa Sevar: "Well at the time I thought they were but I purchased them having never been tortured and having been completely fine all along so, in fact, they were at no point tortured and were fine all along. Peranza was executed for betraying the Project. Asmodia we think killed herself."

Keltham?: "I did not know you could do that, in fact.  Did not know that was an option.  Thank you.  That is - I hadn't believed, before, that they were dead and being tortured, but - thank you, I am a lot less - feeling what I was feeling - about the soul-sale thing."

Carissa Sevar: "I, uh, would speak to this with more confidence if I'd rederived all my thinking, which I haven't yet, but it - wasn't about not being yours, I wanted that, it was about - people who'd trusted you, trusted Civilization - that's - what Peranza did, she decided she was with Civilization - warned Iomedae about the Project - and I only had, the one thing, to buy them with, and I am not really worried about my eternity because we need to overthrow Asmodeus anyway and we can't exactly need to overthrow Asmodeus harder. 

Right?"

Keltham?: "Oh, if Peranza and Asmodia had been, effectively destroyed, it would, in fact, be possible for Asmodeus to be in more trouble than He currently is."

"What, according to you, do you think is going on, right now?"

Carissa Sevar: "I have two big glaring holes in my understanding of what's going on and I suspect I know enough to figure them out but I haven't had time. - I don't think when I'm being mindread. It's very convenient. Uh. I think that you're going to try to overthrow Asmodeus and by default He'll release Rovagug and the planet will probably get destroyed. I think that Nethys knows this and tipped off Cayden Cailean and maybe other gods, for some reason, and that they've been angling for conditions to exist under which you and Asmodeus can compromise and not fight, and those conditions might involve me and maybe also Pilar ascending. I have a compact with Asmodeus and a cult which might be useful for ascending and I think I could do it in ten years, maybe five if we have this fancy time-dilated demiplane full time. Pilar's trying to eat Cayden Cailean.

The glaring holes are: why are only Nethys and Cayden in on this and not all of Good and most of Neutral, and why have Cheliax and Osirion neither made war nor peace, what are they waiting for. - I can explain, if you want, what those glaring holes are entangled with, how I got to them as the most important missing pieces -"

Keltham?: "Meritxell used Alter Self and Disguise Self to shift to a number of pretty women, for me.  Merrin, some other dath ilani celebrities, Ranthal, who I drew with Silent Image.  Also some women in Golarion whose looks I liked, but didn't want to complicate my life by trying to date, right then.  Jacint Subirachs, Willa Shilira, Abrogail Thrune."

Carissa Sevar: ...sure, figures. She remembers thinking at the time it was impressive Meritxell had the nerve to impersonate Abrogail, even Carissa would've asked Abrogail before doing that and Meritxell's not exactly someone who can just write the Queen for permission - 

Carissa Sevar: Oh. 

Carissa Sevar: Who gains by having Keltham have sex with someone Alter Selfed to look like Abrogail or a bunch of other people? What do they gain?

The idiots - Abrogail, it must've been Abrogail, no one else would've conceived of and done it without Carissa's approval - decided to get themselves some Keltham-descended children secretly. To - use as leverage against him? No, they must've known that wouldn't work - why, then, why make the case where they lose so much worse than it needed to be -

" - you could probably get Cheliax to hand them all over, if you point out your alternative is blowing the country up."

Keltham?: "I'm mostly guessing it's just Abrogail, but if they know I know, they hide her outside the country and then I have no further reason to blow up the country.  Or Egorian, I wouldn't glass all of Cheliax if glassing Egorian was enough."

Carissa Sevar: "...do you want me to kill her?"

Keltham?: "I would not have guessed that was something you could do."

Carissa Sevar: "I mean, it wouldn't be trivial, but I bet I can. She wouldn't even have to stay dead, that's the really hard part of assassinating someone."

Keltham?: "The more concerning possibility is that it's not just the one kid."

"I am figuring that they probably did not extract semen directly from my epididymis, or steal it after Meritxell performed oral sex, and use that to impregnate a lot of other women until I had 144 kids.  If that modality worked for them, it would have been foolish of Abrogail to risk disguising herself as Meritxell disguised as Abrogail, which was a huge tip-off.  Even though I had that thought while I was with Isidre, in the Palace, with a lot of eighth-circle casters potentially around.  But I have it flagged as an instance of - trying to guess the Conspiracy's competence level, at a consistent level, and I've had bad results from that in the past."

"You know anything relevant to the possibility-set of no offspring awaiting ensoulment, one offspring by Abrogail, multiple offspring, many offspring?"

Carissa Sevar: " - Isidre was just Abrogail in disguise. Otherwise I don't know anything. They didn't tell me - I'd have told them not to -"

Keltham?: "Wow, that must have been hilarious for everybody who wasn't me."

Carissa Sevar: "And the Isidre impersonator in the room when you met Abrogail, I think they executed her afterwards. And Abrogail herself, who had to smile at you while you criticized her to her face and then gracefully lose to you about me, I think she didn't like that much. ...and me, I took a punishment in the middle of all that for thinking insubordinate things about Abrogail and was a little out of it. ...Aspexia was having fun, I guess."

Keltham?: "Oh, so the etiquette lessons would've been Aspexia.  I wondered about that, afterwards."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but your Conspiracy was kind of shit and I'm ashamed that it worked on me literally at all."

Carissa Sevar: "Cheliax wasn't, actually, good at lying to people who were allowed to think about what was true. Probably because it doesn't have any."

Keltham?: "I'll have to think about it again once I'm boosting Intelligence and Wisdom, but preliminarily I'd say that takes probability of multiple kids from 40% to 30% and the probability of lots of kids from 8% to 20%."

"I don't... actually want, to glass Cheliax, or kill anyone at all, really, but I don't see a way out of this before the given time deadlines that doesn't involve killing a lot of people.  I'm sort of, sad about that.  Haven't actually killed anybody on purpose, up until now, despite all the people dying and going to Hell around me, whose names I never knew."

"What's your alternative?"

Carissa Sevar: "....the time deadline is a problem. I don't see how I can do my plan before the time deadline. If we had - a bit more time - 

I have fifteen Wishes granted by a devil out of Hell. I figured we'd - make ourselves smarter, see more options. I have broad outlines for kinds of things it'd be useful to do, like, close the Worldwound, I bet that's possible if you're smart enough and have approximately unlimited resources and it's the kind of thing that gets people believing you're on a path to ascension but it's not going to happen fast enough, I also bet we can get Dispater to help us but we'd have to read over that confidentiality agreement incredibly carefully and I don't see how to do it in such little time - 

How low would the probability have to be, that you have kids in Cheliax, for you to not want to destroy Cheliax, and if we conquered Cheliax and it was better would that fix it?"

Keltham?: "If Cheliax is playing the game that way, they could put kids outside Cheliax so that I couldn't solve the problem by destroying Cheliax... from the standpoint of dath ilani storytelling, a plot development like that - isn't, trying to signal you to destroy a larger area of landmass on one planet, it's saying - you have to fix everything, no way out but fixing everything."

"I'm hearing that your current self, as opposed to the self who sent you here on a memory gambit, doesn't have a plan for beating the deadline."

Carissa Sevar: "I definitely think we should fix everything but I do not see a way to fix everything in the next month. Or do you mean - it's all right for the kids to exist, so long as they'll grow up in a better world?"

Keltham?: "Probably the intended reading."

"You mentioned a compact with Asmodeus and seemed to think you could get Dispater on our side, what's that whole part about?"

Carissa Sevar: "Do you, Carissa Sevar, conquer territories or hearts in Hell's name, be you fairly judged by Hell's Prince to be the most prime mover in such conquests, such unsold and unclericed souls from those lands and peoples as enter into Hell calling your name, in death as they called it in life and did you and Hell more service than disservice, shall pass into your custody or the custody of those in Hell you name your slaves or allies;

and when you have conquered three-quarters of Avistan all such souls out of Avistan shall be yours as well; when three-quarters of Golarion is yours, all such souls out of Golarion; when three-quarters of this plane is yours, all such souls out of this plane; when three-quarters of Pharasma's Creation is yours, all such souls out of Creation; while Hell's dominions of those lands and peoples last; and all this be annulled should you fail finally after death in being acknowledged by Hell as a Hellish Power, or should the yield in strength and wealth from those souls granted you be less than He accounts as ordinary from His subservient Powers of Hell; or should the Prince of Hell fairly judge you to have entered His despite in death or life," she says, once again, from memory. 

"...so the obvious avenues to cheat are to, uh, in some meaningful respect conquer most of Creation, which I am not entirely pessimistic about but which would need time, and to get someone else named Hell's Prince - probably Dispater - who'll evaluate me more favorably, but even before I do that, if I conquer anywhere, people who go to Hell because of me and calling my name are mine, and safe, unless I look like I'll never become a power in Hell, and according to Aspexia Rugatonn I have a lot of cultists. 

I hadn't had much time to think of a plan but the fragments of one that I had were that I'd enhance us both as far as possible, ask for your help figuring out how to close the Worldwound, which is - the sort of thing that someone on the path to ascension would do, it'll make my cult take me much more seriously, declare it my territory and those who go there my possessions, and then reach out to Dispater with a contract for confidential negotiations, where He can't use anything learned from the negotiations to hurt me. My impression of Dispater is that He enjoys indulging me, if it's not obviously stupid, if it grants Him pride and respect in Hell, and I've already had as much benefit as I can from that in my current position but if I did something epic and impressive, He'd be willing to indulge me again. 

If the Worldwound doesn't work I could instead seize Cheliax, which proves my Asmodean bona fides all right and which I feel less averse to now that I know this entire situation is Abrogail's fault more than I already thought it was. That doesn't count towards my conquests but it does count towards how cool Dispater thinks I am. And if neither of those work I could probably start actually conquering other countries, except if I do that I have responsibilities to everyone in them so we'd have to be really sure of subsequent steps of the plan.

Anyway, once I had a impressive track record as rising Power-of-Hell, I'd bring a confidential negotiation, tell Dispater I intend to overthrow Asmodeus, and see what He says. He's not bound to obey Asmodeus and He runs Dis - not well enough, but closer to not being stupidly wasteful, He'd be willing to run it in an acceptable way, He wouldn't destroy the world about the rules changing. And He's, you know, a devil, He respects strength and He respects trying to rise to your place. I think He'd help me if there were something compelling in it for Him. I think at INT 29 I can compact with Him safely.

I am assuming here that you have some fraction of a plan to kill Asmodeus already, because none of what you're doing makes any sense if you don't. But I am assuming that it's a bad plan that runs unacceptable-to-me risks and we might need to think of a better one. In particular, I'm worried you just - don't mind - that Asmodeus might release Rovagug - uh, it's reassuring, you saying you don't want to kill people, I'd gotten scared that you'd just decided to - be ilani and clean up this whole messy little bit of reality -

- but, uh, I'm not helping with a plan where Asmodeus might release Rovagug. I want to fix the world, not be worse than any Evil ever to scour it."

Keltham?: He sits silently for a while.

"What - counts as conquest, can I tell Golarion that every country in the world needs to acknowledge you as Empress or be destroyed, and pay you, I don't know, 1% of tax revenue, and then you can collect all the Golarion souls going to Hell and then - I have not been able to find out, what it would take to get to other planets, other planes - does this plan basically work?"

Carissa Sevar: " - Iiiiii think that plan might work but I have moral reservations about it!!! I realize that's rich, coming from me!"

Keltham?: "I, too, have reservations.  Mostly that this does not fix enough.  Also that it sounds like the sort of thing where more than a quarter of Golarion might be stupid about it, or countries would ban your cult just to be, cruel, so people couldn't call your name in life, there's the question of who you could name your slaves and allies in Hell that would - treat people remotely acceptably - whether you can become acknowledged by Hell as a Hellish Power without torturing people."

"I'll put on my Intelligence headband instead of my Splendour, augment Wisdom, and think about it, I suppose.  Probability this was memory-gambit Carissa's plan?  I see tropes in fewer places than I once did, but am still somewhat alert for them.  On tropes, memory-gambit Carissa's plan will be the one that actually works, whatever it was, because we don't know it, and all of us are dancing to her tune."

Carissa Sevar: "....10%? I don't think everything turns on my compact with Asmodeus. Like you said, it's not enough. We have to overthrow Him, not just let me steal everybody. But I do think that everything might turn on whether Asmodeus, when you do whatever you're doing and it would be helpful now to know what that is, thinks there's any interesting Asmodeanism in the world from there or not, and my compact might matter for that. Also it might make some marginal gods be against destroying the world. 

I do think memory-gambit Carissa had figured out something I haven't yet rederived, something that made her - even more desperate than I feel right now - and maybe this conversation is a waste of time until I rederive it, which I do think I can when I review all my notes and think."

Keltham?: "Yes, well, on the trope theory, you can't do that, or won't do it successfully even though you think you have, or if you derive it then it will no longer be possible for it to work, unless it's reasonably the case that the viewpoint could've shifted off us before that happens..."

"I do not think I am actually smart enough to think through the important parts of this, even with new crystallized mental skills, without swapping to my Intelligence headband and using an Owl's Wisdom."

Carissa Sevar: "I don't think I believe versions of the trope theory where you can't think thoughts if Something is paying attention. I think if the other Carissa deleted her thoughts it was for more concrete reasons surrounding people who were definitely paying attention, such as Dispater, and Cheliax. - headband seems like a good idea."

Keltham?: "That Keltham is - colder."

"If we're going to talk about - us, at all, we should do it, before then.  The reason I'm running +6 Splendour and no Intelligence or Wisdom is because - that's about as much as is left, of the Keltham you knew, for him to exist again and speak to you."

Carissa Sevar: - nod. 

"I don't - know what to say. What I did to you was awful. I loved you, and I used that to hurt you, and I wouldn't forgive me, if I was you. I do want you to forgive me. I think when I made the plan to buy the souls back, to get the Wishes, one of the things I was hoping was that you could forgive me, if I could fix it, but even if not for the babies, I couldn't really have fixed it. I could say that they'd have sent me to Hell to be tortured eternally, if I'd done anything different, that I was being mind-read near constantly, that Abrogail would tease me about things she'd read in the transcripts she was having made of my thoughts, that I was only half-there, only half-thinking, my entire life until the moment in my bedroom where I realized that probably no one was reading my mind -

- but I don't know. I want to have higher standards than that, I guess. It wasn't literally an unsolvable problem.

I don't need you to forgive me. I don't need you to be angry with me, or not be angry with me, or forgive me, or not forgive me, or hurt me, or not hurt me. I just need us to save the world. Whatever - whatever you need from me, to do that, to make sure that this stupid stupid awful thing doesn't cost everyone everything - you have it, of me, forever, if necessary. And I'm sorry."

Keltham?: "The Keltham you knew, the one who could have forgiven you in any meaningful sense, is effectively true-dead.  Though I suppose, from your own moral perspective, you wouldn't see it that way.  To you, being conscious, existing, having qualia, is everything, no matter what the form of that existence.  Never mind memories, emotions, purposes, relationships between people, what they care about, who they care about, what they aspire to, who they believe they are in their models of themselves.  A lemure in Hell that doesn't remember its name or anything of its life isn't just as good to you as the original person, I suppose, but you'd say it's - 90% of the way from Abaddon to Nirvana, on the Nirvana side of the utility interval?"

Carissa Sevar: " - I don't know very much about lemures. A four year old who doesn't remember anything of being three isn't effectively true-dead."

Keltham?: "It's funny.  I thought I'd - accidentally killed off anger, inside myself, but - there is absolutely something in me that wants to hurt you, right now, not in a cuddleroom way.  It wants you to know how Keltham felt just before he gave up and augmented himself, not because he wanted to stop existing as himself, he wanted to go on existing, but the children in Hell mattered more to him than that, because he wasn't that selfish, in the end.  And the part of me that, doesn't hate you, but wants you to hurt, wants you to understand how much, what happened to him, is something that dath ilani are not, in fact, trained to put themselves back together about, after that, without assistance.  Survive, sure, go on functioning, sure, but not put themselves back together, that was supposed to involve a therapist who knows things that not every dath ilani gets taught as a child.  You, Cheliax, Golarion, hurt Keltham to the point where he didn't want to be in the world anymore, and that was why he could, for the sake of the children in Hell, make the choice that would cause him to effectively stop existing as himself, which, I guess, is something that Carissa Sevar can never understand or experience real sadness about, because to her, Keltham is still Keltham even if he's a lemure."

Carissa Sevar: It is completely true that while she isn't sure about a lemure, Keltham is still Keltham when he puts an intelligence headband on and she does not actually feel sadness or guilt about Keltham putting an intelligence headband on. About the fact he was in pain, yes, about the fact that it felt to him like giving up and he was willing to do it anyway, yes, about the fact he put an intelligence headband on, no, because that's in fact not death and not even a bit of death, any more than learning new math is death. 

She is not going to say that. It doesn't seem helpful. 

She's also not really sure this is on her? Would Keltham not have done it if she'd defected with him to Iomedae on day one? 

She is not going to say that either. 

Carissa Sevar: "Keltham, you know that - if Rovagug ate the world, people would die true deaths, and - even if your appearing-elsewhere thing is right, there are lots of Hells out there, 'I'll do whatever I want with people' is a less complicated way for a mind to be than sharing all of human values, most places are probably bad - if we fuck this up you'll be sending children to hells. Young ones. Pharasma doesn't judge eight-year-olds Evil."

Keltham?: "Save it for colder Keltham.  Possibly for when both of us are INT 29.  You'd need a lot of background, including a lot of material that I had to rederive myself from realizing that Civilization must have hidden it and why they did, to argue with me about the population statistics of Larger Reality."

"I understand, Carissa, that there are many, many senses here, in which what happened to me, was not entirely your fault.  There were, by your own lights, maybe also by mine, worse things that would happen to you, if you refused to play along with Cheliax.  You had options like walking out on Cheliax with me right there at the Worldwound, but you were twisted and warped by things smarter than yourself into not seeing those options, not thinking of them then or maybe even now you haven't thought of them.  There were gods messing with your life.  There were, with great probability, things above gods messing with your life at least a little.  You didn't choose this story, They did."

"It's possible that even if you'd gone to the nearest church of Iomedae right there at the Worldwound, that I would have just found out about the children in Hell, earlier, and been even less prepared for it.  That I'd have augmented my abilitystats the same way for the same reasons, and ended up doing the same kind of damage to my emotions and my, me.  Even if I was taking it slower.  Even if I hadn't been, then, in so much pain.  Even if I hadn't known, yet, the reasons why I shouldn't accept help, and somebody had tried to help me make it through.  Maybe the worst aspects of this all turn out the same for me, either way."

"The fact remains that you, no matter how forced into it, chose something, that dealt a kind of damage to me that is separate and additional from getting to Golarion and finding out that there were children in Hell, the damage of, daring to trust somebody, of telling yourself that you need to have courage, to fall in love, and finding that courage, and falling in love, and being betrayed in, if not literally the worst possible way, probably a worse way than anybody in the last hundred years of dath ilani history has ever been betrayed."

"It's probably nothing to Golarion.  It probably doesn't compare to a mother slowly watching her child die of sickness, knowing she'll never have the money to resurrect them, never be able to find them in the Boneyard.  It certainly doesn't compare to a single soul going to Hell."

"So you'll never, really, be able to understand the hurt that you dealt, or consider it as something very significant on the scales of your, utilityfunction, apart from what it meant to your emotions, which are just your emotions, and which probably hurt you a lot, but you did it anyways because of your utilityfunction, which isn't even something I can disagree with, I would not have wanted you going to Hell rather than betraying me."

"I am not, in the end, able, to tell you, that you, chose this wrongly, I just want, to say all these things to you, and make you feel hurt, because you chose it, and the only reason I'm doing that, when I can't tell you the algorithm you should've used to choose differently, is because, wanting you to hurt like that, is one of the last pieces and last wishes left of Keltham, along with a lot of best wishes for you that I am probably not going to act on."

Carissa Sevar: - all that and she is mostly, somehow, terrified about the part where even though he has pointedly not confirmed her Rovagug-worries he has been rederiving things about the population-statistics of Greater Reality. 

Carissa Sevar: Set that aside for a moment and listen to Keltham; you owe him that. 

(If he were, as he claimed, not Keltham, you wouldn't owe him anything.)

(Set that aside for a moment too.)

Carissa Sevar: "I don't think it was a small hurt, for whatever that's worth."

I do think that you're dangerously wrong about the entire concept of being a person - not the time for that, either. 

"And I don't think I weighed up the magnitude of the hurt to you against the other things I wanted, and decided it was worth it. I'd respect myself more, if I'd decided that. I just didn't let myself decide at all.

What - are your best wishes, even if you don't want to act on them anymore."

Keltham?: "For you to live happily ever after with your Keltham, of course.  What else?  Excuse me."  The man in front of her reaches up and wipes Keltham's tears away from his eyes.

Carissa Sevar: "Wasn't obvious, see, because I've never met anyone who wasn't Chelish and Chelish people don't say things like that. But yeah, I don't think we're going to get that one. We'll have to settle for getting it for everyone else."

Keltham?: "I'm mostly hoping they're almost entirely not real, which would make a mockery out of some of my own past life decisions but, even so, I'm mostly hoping they're almost entirely not real, the everyone-else.  And those are issues that you did not, last I knew of you, like to think about, or confront as possibilities, so chalk it up as one more thing to talk about when we're both INT 29."

Carissa Sevar: "Do you have a reason to think that - yeah. Okay. Once we're enhanced. 

If you're - not Keltham - 

- then why, from your perspective, would I want to work for you?"

Keltham?: "Because the colder Keltham is doing something you want, or otherwise doing something you fear, of course."

"If we do this, Carissa, I say this, out of Keltham's last wishes and because I'm feeling strongly instead of being smart, if we do this, we should do this on a Lawful Evil basis, the same way I deal with Ri-Dul, where you get what you compact for.  I was betrayed by those I trusted in part one of this story, and it sure would rhyme if somebody trusted me and got betrayed by me, in part two, even if there were reasons and even if there'd be, no algorithm, that I should've used to make a different choice, of the choices that I actually saw."

"I should go, get my headband now, I have to be outside the Rope Trick to take it from my Bag of Holding.  I have, said that one thing, that Keltham wanted to say to you, and all the other things, that he wanted to say, like that he loved you, or that he wanted and hoped that you'd end up with a happy ending of your own even if it couldn't be with him, those are all obvious if you know the pattern and it hurts too much to say them anyways."

Carissa Sevar: " - okay.

I love you too."

Keltham?: "You have knelt to, to me, for the, last, time, now, because that, hurts too much, to see -"

Keltham?: The man taps her on the forehead.  "I give yourself back to you.  You own yourself.  Imaginary tag points to Carissa.  Excuse me."

He climbs down the Rope Trick, crying.

Keltham?: (He's gone a bit longer than it would take to just remove a headband from a Bag of Holding.)

Carissa Sevar: Yeah, that figures. 

Maybe if she'd had a better plan, if she'd known about the babies, if she'd already actually fixed everything - if she wasn't mostly still scared of what he might do -

Maybe then it would've gone differently. 

But it didn't.

dath ilani: Somebody climbs back up through the Rope Trick.  Looks just like Keltham, but he's wearing a +6 Intelligence headband and visibly has Owl's Wisdom running.

"All right," he says.  "Let's negotiate.  Are you willing to swear, before I reveal potentially dangerous knowledge to you, that you will not use any knowledge revealed here to you, to act against myself nor my plans, in the sense that whatever you learn from me should not cause you to take actions more damaging to my interests than you'd otherwise have taken?"

Carissa Sevar: She'd have hesitations about this except for how he can just turn her to stone if she's intending to act against his interests; with that, it's not a hard call. "Yes, I'll swear to that."

dath ilani: He holds out a single earring, familiar to Arcane Sight, but larger and less spellsilver-efficient than her own version; a specialized geas.  "This earring compels you to keep bargains and promises you make with me after putting it on, unless I violate my side of the compact.  It prevents you from lying to me, but doesn't prevent concealing information.  It's cursed against voluntary removal, and the geas prevents you from trying to arrange to have it removed.  Once worn it hides itself and looks like an ordinary earring to regular Detect Magic.  I, for my part, swear to you that that's all this earring does."

Carissa Sevar: "Where'd you get that made?" She could make it in a month, probably, but she's actually wildly envious of any other item enchanter who could without having her previous work on the geas earrings to go off. ....well, they could've had more than a month, with the time-dilated demiplane.

dath ilani: "Lawful Evil 7th-circle.  She wasn't starting from scratch, I was able to buy some cursed geas items with more unfortunate specializations and had her repurpose those."

Carissa Sevar: "I want to meet her. I'm putting on the earring but mostly only because you could make me."

dath ilani: "She did not want to meet anyone else or have it known that she was dealing with me."

"You have the option of not putting on the earring and not getting to negotiate with me.  Most of what I want from you is voluntary activity that cannot optimally be forced from you by geas."

Carissa Sevar: "Yes, but this is still not an offer I'd take from someone who couldn't make me. Can you if you deal with her again at least show her something impressive I made and give her my contact information."

dath ilani: "Yes, though I don't have any Sevar items about me besides your glibness pin."

"Once you've put on the earring, repeat your promise not to use knowledge that you learned from me to harm my interests, relative to what you would've done without that knowledge, as is a condition of this negotiation."

Carissa Sevar: She puts it on. She repeats the promise.

dath ilani: "All right.  Diamonds turned out to be tetrahedral Element-6 crystals, for which I happened to know a straightforward, purely chemical synthesis method.  That synthesis is presently in progress in a temporary demiplane I set up to have the environmental conditions for synthesizing diamond, with a scattering of diamond dust within to act as seed crystals.  I expect the diamonds growing there to be large enough for Wishes in about a week.  It's not a large demiplane, though, so I'm not expecting to get more than a couple of million Wish diamonds that way."

"Ri-Dul does not know this important fact, nor does the priestess of Sarenrae below us, and it would be damaging to my interests for you to tell them, or, indeed, anyone I have not told you is cleared for it."

Carissa Sevar:  "- well in that case I think we're actually going to be completely fine. I'd be annoyed I sold my soul for something we can make by the million but actually I can't even be annoyed right now, it's impossible. - I want to know the chemical process for diamond synthesis but that's not even arguably a priority."

dath ilani: "That's a week of realtime, two weeks of demiplane time, and those two weeks may matter considerably.  In particular, they matter for whether or not I have an incentive to destroy Egorian or all of Cheliax to prevent the ensoulment of my children, or as many of those children as possible, or if I'm able to advance other plans to a point where it's clear that Golarion and Cheliax will end up being an acceptable place for children."

"I'd like to buy your Wishes to enhance my Intelligence, Wisdom, and Splendour.  I want to rent your artifact headband for at least a month of realtime.  I will not offer you thousands of Wish diamonds in exchange, because I don't want them proliferating all over Golarion just yet.  I will offer that you may go on the trip to the City of Brass that I was previously planning to take with Ri-Dul, where, I've read, many Efreeti can readily cast Wish given a large enough diamond for it.  I'll send with the Wish diamonds and other payments for you to buy +5s to all six of your abilitystats in the City of Brass.  In the event that I cannot fulfill my side of the bargain in a timely fashion, because the diamond synthesis method failed to scale to Wish diamond size, I will endeavor to pay you back the reasonable value of fifteen Wishes and the headband rental whenever I can.  Unless I am dead and unresurrectable for any number of reasons, in which case you get an unremunerated bad outcome."

Carissa Sevar: "I am sure you realize that's a deal I'd happily make Keltham and would be a fucking moron to accept from Dispater."

dath ilani: "How so?  Just because Dispater is generically adversarial and smarter than you?"

Carissa Sevar: "Because my side of it is 'give up my artifact headband which is crucial for figuring out what is actually going on here, and my fifteen Wishes which definitely work, now, to maybe get the benefit of the Wishes in two weeks and the headband back in four'. I guess I also get some strength and dexterity and constitution. I don't care about strength and dexterity and constitution, I'm a wizard. This is tempting because you think it might help you not need to destroy Cheliax, and tempting insofar as I want to help you with that at my expense - tempting because we have shared goals."

Carissa isn't going to argue with Keltham about how he experiences augmentation but she doesn't feel cold, just more alive, better at seeing things and saying them.

Keltham?: "Yeah.  From your perspective, this deal is about harm reduction.  My having a greater chance of not destroying Cheliax.  Or, if I have to do that anyways, getting more time to work on the Wish wording for it, as may reduce the chance of a catastrophe there, being able to only glass Egorian and making sure that I don't accidentally crack the planet in the process.  I'd be Wishing about some dangerous stuff."

"The plan there, to be specific, would be to summon a horde of fiends, demons maybe, or daemons though I realize you'd rather I not, to attack Egorian, they Teleport their emergency response teams there and get in a bunch of their best people, bang, no more Egorian.  They'll have a True Rez scroll somewhere to bring back Rugatonn and she can bring back others but it'll take her time.  Hopefully that's enough to let somewhere non-evil come in and take over Cheliax.  I'd probably tip the Church of Iomedae to what I was planning, and give them diamonds.  My current plan is that everything in my harvest that I can't realistically use goes to the Church of Iomedae under seal, and they can use it for whatever, to clean up the mess, if anything permanent happens to me."

Carissa Sevar: "And the plan that might enable you to not have to do that?"

dath ilani: "It's the plan that you get to try to talk me out of, though I expect that to go better if we're both INT 29.  Let's be very clear, I currently intend to do that part whether or not I have your fifteen Wishes.  What you buy is that I am less likely to glass Egorian or Cheliax first, because I am able to do it faster, and I do it using better-phrased Wishes."