Carissa Sevar: "I don't have loved ones."

lintamande: "...okay. I only specified that because I think most people wouldn't want to spend eternity completely alone, burning on fire or not."

Carissa Sevar: "- I mean, I could make constructs or something - I'm sorry, I think I'm being a bad student, here, and not addressing the point you wanted addressed. It is better if I am on fire, because everything is my fault, and I can't live with that, and if I'm on fire then I don't have to."

lintamande: "I think that probably you just need to toughen up and deal with things being your fault and stop trying to avoid living with that."

Carissa Sevar: "That is somehow not exactly the answer I expected. It's kind of what Derrina would say, if I said that to her, but I don't think she's Good."

lintamande: "What answer were you expecting?"

Carissa Sevar: "I don't know! Something - about how people shouldn't suffer?"

lintamande: "People can suffer if they want to. It's just, in your specific case it seems like you want to because the alternative is learning how to live with yourself."

Carissa Sevar: " - I do actually also separately like it when people hurt me but for my own benefit and it makes me stronger and then they pet me and tell me how well I did, that's a separate thing here that's not just about learning how to live with myself."

lintamande: "Is it by any chance the case that that's approximately the only context in which anyone in Cheliax has ever been nice to you."

Carissa Sevar: " - well if they were just nice unprovoked it'd be weird and I wouldn't be sure what they were playing at."

lintamande: "So teaching someone to associate suffering and slavery with companionship, support, and intimacy, which are otherwise completely inaccessible and pathetic to want, is actually much more sophisticated than Cheliax is usually capable of being but does seem like something they might do for a specific individual they are trying to corrupt because she's running an important project for them."

Carissa Sevar: "- oh, yes, I'm very much clear on the fact that's what they were doing, I wanted them to do that, to help me be a better Asmodean. ...Aspexia and Abrogail and Subirachs and Maillol worked really hard on that, for the last four months, and they shaped who I am today, and I'd try to undo that on the grounds that it was hostile interference in my personality and values except that, one, I am confused about, given how muddled all humans are all the time, what it would even mean to deal fairly with them - maybe Abadar just knows the answer to that one but it wasn't obvious just from thinking about it - and, two, I think maybe my being more and properly Asmodean was part of the plan."

lintamande: "The plan?"

Carissa Sevar: "Keltham doesn't want to start emotionally relying on it but I think Cayden and Nethys and possibly some other gods are trying to steer this so the universe doesn't get destroyed, and I think my being someone who can replace Asmodeus is part of their plan."

lintamande: "And you are pretty confident it's a good plan and you want to help them pull it off?"

Carissa Sevar: "...I don't know what you're getting at?"

lintamande: "Just that there's a failure mode where you decide Asmodeus shouldn't be able to order you around and go looking for someone worthier to throw yourself behind."

Carissa Sevar: "....is...that a failure mode?"

lintamande: "There are a lot of sacrifices that get made in emergencies, and that's one of them, but ideally, the person deciding who you should grow up into should be you."

Carissa Sevar: "- I don't actually see how that serves Iomedae."

lintamande: "Okay, one, why do you care if that serves Iomedae, you don't work for Her. And two, why would Iomedae be worth serving, if She didn't want us to grow up?"

Carissa Sevar: "...because She is opposed to Hell and doesn't want to destroy the world?"

lintamande: "...all right, that's fair, serving Iomedae is somewhat overdetermined for a lot of people. But still, I'm glad She's not just the absolute minimum Lawful Good god who technically is on the right side and more useful than Erastil or fucking Shizuru."

Carissa Sevar: "Oh, is Shizuru actually useless, that's not just Chelish propaganda?"

lintamande: "Well, some people argue it should be parsed as 'damaged' more than 'useless'. But She hasn't done much of anything in Golarion since Tsukiyo died and Iomedae's leading the war on the Evil afterlives despite being brand new as a god and comparatively very weak."

Carissa Sevar: "Huh. 

I don't have any idea what kind of god I'd be if I ascended. If I had all the time in the world, I think I could figure something out, but Keltham wants to go ahead very very soon, if I don't convince him to go with my plan instead..."

lintamande: "It's a very hard problem we've set ourselves here."

Carissa Sevar: "And if Iomedae has a solution in mind about who I'm supposed to be I'd at least want to hear Her out about it!"

lintamande: "Iomedae doesn't know we're here and would presumably shut this down if She did. Which I think would be an improvement, but it's not an improvement I have the power to make unilaterally, and presumably if things got to the point where Cayden Cailean thought it'd be an improvement He could tell her.

If She were here, I imagine She'd ask - if you were in charge of Hell, would it be a horrifying atrocity full of torture?"

Carissa Sevar: "No! Torture is stupid! It'd be a place where people like me can get stronger and better. And if people don't get stronger and better through pain then you should obviously do something else to them."

lintamande: "Well, I gotta say, I think most possible gods that turns into is a big improvement over the present situation."

Carissa Sevar: "Well, thank you for the vote of confidence."

Carissa Sevar: "...what is Iomedae's stance on doing something really awful that harms and potentially damns lots of people in order to slightly increase the probability that this plan works and the world doesn't end? Is it just, well, how bad, for how much probability of making things better -"

lintamande: "...mostly it's that mortals shouldn't do that, and should leave it to the gods. But if you have to do it, there's not some strategy that's better than figuring out how likely it is to work and how much harm it's going to do and if there's any better way, and then doing your best."

Carissa Sevar: She makes a face. "That's kind of dath ilani."

lintamande: "They're probably also correct about the color of the sky."

lintamande: "And plausibly about a lot of things, but it's hard to tell from here how much they had instincts that are actually somewhat appropriate to this situation because of knowledge of the broader multiverse they concealed from people like Keltham, or had no information at all about that, how much the things they taught about ideal reasoners are applicable to negotiating with gods..."

Carissa Sevar: "I want to swear Dispater to secrecy and then ask Him. He's not on our side, obviously, but as not a full god He's easier to just talk with, and He'd know, and Erecura got divinity from Pharasma and I bet knows lots more than anyone alive about what kinds of things are actually possible to ask Pharasma for."

lintamande: "That's not an awful idea."

Carissa Sevar: "Wow, thanks."

lintamande: "I don't know if it's a good idea. We're into very strange territory, here. Generally I would never talk to an archdevil for any reason."

Carissa Sevar: "I acknowledge that I have low standards and also that I was straightforwardly being manipulated by hostile entities who torture people for fun, but He treated me like I wasn't livestock, like my growing stronger was a potential shared interest of ours. He could exist in my Hell, I think. - without the torturing people for fun.

I don't actually know if He tortures people for fun or just because it's the done thing. What He told me He'd do to me if I failed was hand me off to one of the counts of Hell whose pride I'd wounded.

Kind of fucked up how at this point that sounds like an unusually good eternal fate for me."

lintamande: "I really think we can do better than that."

Carissa Sevar: "I'm just terrified we'll do worse.

...every time Keltham is - terrifying, or horrible, I feel - like I deserve it, because I hurt him worse and first, and like I don't deserve it, because I never wanted to hurt him, and like I should forgive him because he's in pain and like I'd never forgive myself for that reason and why shouldn't I hold him to the same standard and I hate him for not being - good enough to do the thing he's trying to do, and trying to do it anyway - but I used to admire that about him, I remember admiring that about him..."

Carissa Sevar: "Sorry. I don't know what I'm asking."

lintamande: "Well, if the question is, did you hurt him, yeah, you really really did. And if the question is, is he handling it in the manner Iomedae would handle it, no, he really really isn't. I don't think he wants to. And if the question is, is any of that going to get better, ever....

....probably not? I've seen some serious interpersonal wounds heal but not when events were basically guaranteed to keep salting them."

Carissa Sevar: "This is really really stupid but I kind of hoped he would react in some way when I explained about Elias Abarco."

lintamande: "That doesn't sound really really stupid."

Carissa Sevar: "I think it's that - it's not that I mind that he had sex with me! I'm not twelve! I was going to give him Tonia, except that Cayden Cailean intervened, which, in hindsight, might not have just been Cayden Cailean randomly doing shit, if He was trying to protect the Project girls so Keltham could be reasoned with - though if that was what He was doing you'd think Keltham could be reasoned with and he isn't showing it - 

- wow, I sound like a terrible person even to myself, when I talk about this - 

- but anyway, the thing that was upsetting about it was that I'd promised Keltham I wouldn't, and it was, actually, weirdly upsetting, I think about it every time I see Abarco and it's been like three months now and I realize that's on me - and, so, it feels wrong, or something, for Keltham not to care, like there's something there I thought was real that never was -"

lintamande: "Abarco raped you?"

Carissa Sevar: " - kind of? I mean, calling it that feels like I wasn't happy that no one felt sorry for me so I just decided to pick a more dramatic word for it. He had permission from my superiors, it wasn't like he committed a crime or something."

lintamande: " - you know it's very normal to be upset if someone raped you even if they had permission from your superiors?"

Carissa Sevar: "I can't think of a single guy I slept with except Keltham who'd have taken it well if I told him no and I've never had problems before!"

lintamande: "What....are you imagining Iomedae thinks about this."

Carissa Sevar: "That I should grow up and stop feeling sorry for myself?"

lintamande: "Wow. 

No. 

Okay. I think we should back up a little. 

The only solution I've ever run across to not wanting to be an actor in the world, to looking at this world and thinking it's too hard and confusing and scary, to wanting someone else to run it for you, to looking for some rule you can follow instead of doing your best, is to do the hard thing and stop looking for shortcuts. People try a lot of other stuff. Never super seen any of it work.

That is not the correct solution to being traumatized in full generality."

Carissa Sevar: "Fine, then, what is?"

lintamande: "Well, generally, you expect that if someone raped you then you're going to be fucked up about that, definitely if you have to keep working with them, definitely if it's only been three months, and also you might reasonably wish your boyfriend was upset on your behalf when he found out, and feel gratified if other people are upset on your behalf when they find out, and feel like that's one of the hurts your relationship with Keltham did you, that you weren't able to tell him until much later, and he wasn't able to comfort you -"

Carissa Sevar: "Because he was simultaneously learning that I betrayed him in every conceivable way!"

lintamande: "When people hurt one another, they quite often both get hurt, you know. What you did to him was much much worse than what he did to you. But it is not surprising at all that your relationship hurt you too, even that it hurt you very badly.

And no matter who you were, no matter what you'd done, no one should have raped you."

Carissa Sevar: "Or Tonia."

lintamande: "Or Tonia. Or anyone. It ....seems possible to me that some of what Keltham is going through is harm related to his having been tricked into having sex under conditions he didn't agree to and didn't want, with people he wrongly trusted cared about what he'd agreed to and what he wanted."

Carissa Sevar: "I know. I didn't - mean to do that. I wanted to be someone he could trust. I - tried to keep his trust, that's - why the stupid Abarco thing even bothered me -

I would fix it for him, if I could. ....I in fact am probably more attached to my tentative plan where I stab Abrogail for him than makes any goddamned sense."

lintamande: "If I had a plan to stab Abrogail Thrune that had a good chance of working I'd be attached to it too."

Carissa Sevar: When it's been two hours and she has a plan and a long list of questions and is done crying and feels like she's not going to have a panic attack if Keltham gets frustrated and proposes statuing her again, she leaves her tent.

Keltham v3: Outside her tent is a note.  Weirdly, it looks like a printed page from a book, though with slightly uneven letters on the line, even though it was clearly written just for Carissa.

The note says that the Entity Formerly Known As Keltham had previously promised himself he would take a day off, possibly two days, once he got time-dilation up.  He has not actually had a day off since he left Cheliax, because time previous to establishment of time dilation was too valuable.  You can keep going for quite a while with a +6 Belt of Mighty Constitution.

Mister Doomlord thinks he may, in fact, actually need to take a day off, now.  Right now.  Even though Carissa is here and has all sorts of important questions.

Keltham v3: The note continues to say that some of the others here can answer some of those questions.  Carissa does in fact know the key elements of his basic Doom Plan.  Others in 'core' will have more details if she asks.

The critical-path item on the Doom Plan is (1) Wishcrafting the three explosions he needs, 1x Rovagug 2x Absalom, which INT 27 is hopefully enough to start doing; and (2) getting three Wish scrolls with which to do it.  That Person does not expect Carissa to help with (2), but thinks (1) should plausibly count as 'harm reduction' here.

Carissa hopefully has lots she can get up to speed on productively?

Or Carissa could take a day off inside time dilation.  Ex-Keltham does not think he made the wrong decision about not taking time to recover immediately after he left Cheliax, there was too much that needed doing immediately.  But it sure was what everybody in Osirion was telling him to do.  Possibly the same advice may apply to Carissa.  Well, not the part where they wanted him to spend a month in a monastery, that would've just been wrong.

Keltham's successor entity does not know of anything that Carissa needs to do immediately the way he needed to do things immediately.  So far as he knows, nothing terrible will happen if she takes an entire day off.

Keltham v3: Carissa's ex-boyfriend has no idea if she considers herself still bound by any promises she made him, about that sort of thing, but if so, she's free to have sex with people here, as Carissa once told him a long time ago was helpful for recovering from violence.  She can also get a relaxing massage from the woman calling herself Minor Character, though she also answers to anything else you want to call her; this massage, on some viewpoints, would reasonably count as sex, hence the specification.  He'd say more but - it's cheating, to do anything with emotional implications, while you're hiding in your time-dilated adventurer's-tent.

He's pretty sure that Minor Character is not Nocticula, he checked.  She now answers to 'Noticula' too.

He really needs to stop thinking now.  Good night for a while.

Carissa Sevar: Well, all...right, then? 

Carissa has zero interest in sex with anyone here. They're not as pretty as Abrogail. She'll....get some books from the library, and read, if not the truth, at least the lies the rest of the world tells, and take notes for her argument with Keltham tomorrow. Or the day after. As soon as he's ready. 

Carissa Sevar: A couple hours into that she will concede that possibly she in fact needed a day off too. 

has she actually ruled out that Minor Character is Abrogail, most people are

Carissa Sevar: After about ten hours of reading books and eating chocolate Carissa determines that she is not, as a person, temperamentally suited to taking days off when there might not be very many days left. 

She gives herself Permanent Dancing Lights just so she can have more than the maximum number of Dancing Lights, and puts a Permanent Alarm on her bag of holding just for practice with Permanency and a Permanent Invisibility Alarm on her headband because why not. Then she copies a bunch of fifth-circle spells off Keltham's scroll library and also any staff who'll let her. Carmin has Overland Flight which means Carissa will be practically able to swoop around never touching the ground again though 'objectively' this is 'not a good use of a fifth circle spell slot' or something. 

She's not going to work on Wish wordings until she's talked with Keltham; if any of her ideas are good ideas, they'll have several additional months to work on Wish wordings, and any work done before she Wishes herself up as smart as a person can be will be wasted. 

Maybe she can just figure out how to make a 6/6/4 and then she and Keltham won't have to fight over it. 

Keltham v3: He finishes more or less blacking out in his bedroll just being tired.  He finishes being curled up in a ball internally screaming and feeling emotions that he thinks he can now survive feeling at Splendour 25, which isn't actually all of the emotions.

He does not leave his tent in time dilation; instead, he starts trying to think.

This thinking process uses his Incredibly Fake Computer, technically an unusually complicated permanent reactive illusion hooked up to a Baseline-language version of the keyboard his typewriter uses.  It is literally just a text editor, but it allows for nested outlining and to edit things already written.  (His aligned item-creator has not figured out any equivalent of 'print this screen'; if he wants to save or share anything from the Incredibly Fake Computer his aligned taskmonkey has to manually translate it to Taldane and enter it into the typewriter.)

The real person running this entire show is not somebody who can think in realtime, especially at only +3 Intelligence.  He thinks slowly and using a fake computer for external memory anchoring, processing lists of possibilities too large and arguments too intricate to be held in memory all at once.

To be clear, the simple aspect of "making lists" or "writing down complicated arguments" is not the key thing and would not have gotten previous!Keltham all that far; the key point is more like "thought processes that successfully scale to considering more possibilities, because it's not always the case that everything after possibility #3 on your list never happens, and what does happen usually isn't on the list anyways" or "arguments whose local steps hold together well enough that their productivity scales intact to larger argument structures, rather than arguments too complicated to hold in your head just never working".

Nobody tries to design an entire liquid-phase nuclear reactor in their heads, even before their society invents outline editors.  But then, you can have nice things like nuclear reactors only because your society has designed some method of thinking about such engineering problems which is precise enough that it scales to a nuclear reactor design, and actually goes on working.  If all of your society's political arguments fit into a paragraph, it doesn't necessarily mean you've discovered a kind of thinking about politics that scales well to longer than a paragraph, or that people with longer arguments have better arguments; but still, that's the kind of politics you'll get.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa's just writing pages and pages of notes, whenever something comes to mind while she's item-crafting. 

Thoughts related to alternatives to releasing Rovagug, thoughts related to alternatives to bargaining with Pharasma, thoughts related to Achaekek, thoughts related to the plausible state of information of various gods, thoughts related to entities to contact, thoughts related to making it unnecessary to avoid Cheliax, thoughts related to influencing Asmodeus's perspective on how well the ilani project is going, thoughts related to what Cayden and Nethys are angling for, thoughts related to her cult and how to encourage it if that seems useful, thoughts related to world conquest if they end up going down one of the unlikely-looking branches where that seems like a good idea, thoughts related to assassinating Abrogail in a way that doesn't discredit Carissa with the Church of Asmodeus, thoughts related to whether they're 'in a story', and whether there are any worlds in the overlap of 'in a story' and 'should not just act like everyone and everything matters exactly as much as you'd expect'....

Carissa Sevar: "Hey, this might be a slightly absurd question, but do you think Osirion would agree to let Cheliax conquer them if we swore to them them it was for complicated reasons in their long term interests?"

Prince Fe-Anar: " - is it in their long-term interests? It seems about as not in their long-term interests as a thing could reasonably be!"

Carissa Sevar: "Under some sets of assumptions, one of the things Cayden and Nethys have been trying to influence is how much Asmodeus cares about Golarion, the planet, either so that He won't release Rovagug even if He loses or so that if Keltham releases Rovagug Asmodeus will commit the resources to stop Him before the planet is eaten. If even Asmodeus is strong enough to do that, which I consider unlikely but not so unlikely this isn't worth thinking about."

Prince Fe-Anar: "Hmmm, most of the gods that saved Golarion the first time are still around, right?"

Carissa Sevar: "Also unsure but I think no. A lot of the gods that were around then died. I bothered a couple of the historians for estimates of how many and they were like 'between three and twenty'. We have more than three but fewer than twenty new gods, but new gods are also much weaker than ancient ones. On the other hand, some of the ancient gods fought on the side of Rovagug, and maybe no one will do that this time? Or maybe Asmodeus will, in which case I think we're completely fucked."

Prince Fe-Anar: "Keltham's much more optimistic than you about that, I don't know his reasoning."

Carissa Sevar: "Do you trust his reasoning?"

Prince Fe-Anar: "Hmmm. He reminds me a lot of myself when I was younger, really. I would absolutely have murdered trillions of people to spite Pharasma. Luckily I didn't have the opportunity."

Carissa Sevar: " - okay not that I haven't myself been a bad person in the past but I actually have trouble imagining what it's like to be the kind of person who'd murder trillions of people to spite Pharasma! You don't even get to stick around enjoying having spited Pharasma! You're dead!!"

Prince Fe-Anar: "If it's not intuitively obvious I don't know how to explain it. She thinks She owns us; She doesn't own us, we own us; fuck her, we'll do this without Her."

Carissa Sevar: "That just seems like going .... 'gravity THINKS it's in charge here, but it doesn't own me, I own me, I'll jump off a cliff and show gravity who is in charge!'"

Prince Fe-Anar: "Yes. Obviously you do pick up a Fly first if you can."

Carissa Sevar: "That's - but - if you haven't picked up a Fly first you don't do it! Because - and at least then you're only risking yourself!!! This is more like throwing a bunch of innocent people off the cliff to show how much you won't let gravity spite you!!"

Prince Fe-Anar: "Well, I agree today I wouldn't do it. But when I was Keltham's age? Absolutely. If Pharasma doesn't like it She should've been a better god."

Carissa Sevar: "What changed your mind?"

Prince Fe-Anar: "That is a question I've given a lot of thought without a satisfying answer. Some of it is just - witnessing enough horrors to realize on some important level that bad things are actually bad even if my logic for doing them is impeccable. I do not think that'll work on Keltham, since most of the horrors he's witnessed are Hell, and fixing Hell is in fact a pretty reasonable thing to go on an insane crusade about.

And some of it is my wife and children, and more recently my father being in Axis and substantially more - whole and wise and happy - and, hmm, I have the impression that well is somewhat poisoned for Keltham."

Prince Fe-Anar: "To be clear, I am also optimistic that we are jumping off this cliff with a Fly spell up."

Carissa Sevar: "He's going to destroy the world! Even in what he considers a good scenario Rovagug's going to probably eat everyone in the world!"

Prince Fe-Anar: " - so, we're not destroying the world, there, right, the problem is that Asmodeus can't stand losing and so will destroy everything rather than suffer a hit to his pride, and we can't just let ourselves all be hostages to Asmodeus. We should say to Him 'fuck you, go ahead and try'."

Carissa Sevar: "But then we'll die!"

Prince Fe-Anar: "Well, you can't just do whatever people want you to do because otherwise they'll kill you!"

Carissa Sevar: "Not only can you do that very nearly everyone who isn't Osirian royalty is doing it constantly!!!"

Carissa Sevar: " - okay, setting that aside, today you wouldn't do it, right? Why not?"

Prince Fe-Anar: "You know how it used to be that daemons would eat souls out of the River of Souls?"

Carissa Sevar: "Yes. Asmodeus put a stop to that. - did He actually even do that. It was one of my favorite facts about Him."

Prince Fe-Anar: "All the gods agreed to put a stop to that. But anyway, outside a place like this, if you ask people how they feel about that, they're all appalled. If you ask them if they wish we'd let the daemons go back to doing that, they're terrified. They don't want that at all. Now, Keltham would point out, once people go to Hell, they often want to die. But I guess I figure - if pretty much no one wants the River of Souls fed to Abaddon, then even if some of them after they go to Hell do want that, they don't get to have the other people not in Hell murdered on their behalf. I'd feel differently about that if there were a sizable contingent of people who did wish all souls got eaten when you die. And there's not none - some Rovagug cultists showed up to join Keltham, they're mostly like that - but it's a really unusual stance, much rarer than going to Hell is."

Carissa Sevar: "I'm not sure that really touches - very many of my intuitions about this."

Prince Fe-Anar: "Well an intuition of mine is that it's very different to destroy a lottery people wouldn't've agreed to participate in on behalf of the losers than to destroy a lottery people did agree to participate in on behalf of the losers. And while I'm very much enthusiastic about cancelling the whole stupid lottery I bet we can come up with a smarter way to do it, in time."

Carissa Sevar: "If you have ideas for a specific smarter way -"

Prince Fe-Anar: "I'd have to be a lot smarter than I am but I was thinking about making - something that does what Pharasma does. Shield us from the interference of the other Outer Gods. If Civilization had that then we really could tell Her to go die in a fire, and I'll be the first to do it."

Carissa Sevar: " - well. Let me know if that gets to the point where it needs spellcraft."

Prince Fe-Anar: "Will do. Now, you had some kind of crazy plan that involved invading Osirion?"

Carissa Sevar: "Yeah, I need to check several of my assumptions with Keltham and convince him in some way that doesn't rely on reasoning about what Nethys and Cayden are up to but, uh, I think Asmodeus might be powerful enough to save Golarion, if He wanted to, and if His triumphant forces are in the middle of conquering it and also making huge corrigibility discoveries then, well, He'll want to. Is the broad outline. I realize this involves, uh, everyone you love dying horribly, but so does unleashing Rovagug, and this way could conceivably be temporary."

Prince Fe-Anar: "...seems like a plan that fails in a spectacularly ugly way, if it fails. Say, if Otolmens notices and crushes this project after that but before Keltham can attempt ascending."

Carissa Sevar: " - yeah.

If I were in charge of Cheliax?"

Prince Fe-Anar: "...is that a realistic possibility?"

Carissa Sevar: " - probably not? I'm exploring a lot of ideas that probably won't work. But, I mean, assassinating Abrogail probably would work, and she did tell me I was her obvious successor. - she was displeased about it."

Prince Fe-Anar: "I'm surprised she didn't kill you on the spot."

Carissa Sevar: "I think she likes me."

Prince Fe-Anar: "You have fascinating romantic taste."

Carissa Sevar: "Don't want to talk about that actually.

- thank you, though. This was helpful.

Why are you here, if you don't want Keltham to succeed?"

Prince Fe-Anar: "Well, I think if he surrounds himself entirely with Rovagug cultists things will go even worse."

Keltham v3: The person who eventually emerges from his tent does not look especially well-rested.

A lot of people inside Project Doom's Doom Base* would probably be glad to see him looking like that instead of distant, for what it's worth.

(*)  Not his choice of name, but this isn't Cheliax and it's not his nature to force people to use names they don't like.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa is both looking forward to and dreading having their conversations about this again But This Time With Emotional Maturity. She's made as much progress on the newest headband as she reasonably can today - at some point you just start making stupid inattentive mistakes, and if you aren't being tortured by a devil it's not worth pushing through them - and is now seeing if she can permanency the spell Gust of Wind in a way that makes her fancy new Cloak of Resistance flutter cinematically behind her no matter what she's doing. The book says you need to be sixth circle but there's no way to tell how hard a requirement that is without trying. 

She glances up at Keltham and then looks back at her notes.

Keltham v3: "Interruptible else interruptibility ETA?" he says in Baseline.

Carissa Sevar: " - interruptible, yeah."

Keltham v3: "Wishes are very different cognitive enhancers from headbands and spells.  I'd expected any difference from their stacking separately, still surprised at how different they are."

"I think in retrospect that possibly dath ilani are built along slightly different lines and the headbands just don't work on us exactly the same way as Golarion natives.  Headband Splendour was not giving me much more persuasiveness, just stronger emotions, and I think the stronger emotions were coming in at a significant discount to what would happen with a Golarion native wearing the same headband.  But now I feel like I could see - maps of how this conversation could be more or less pleasant, persuasive, for you."

"I can also clearly see in retrospect that I should've gotten one attribute Wished up first, and then paused to analyze the effects.  But I'd have picked Wisdom as the first attribute to Wish up, because it's the cognitive self-analysis one, so I'm somewhat glad I didn't actually do that."

Carissa Sevar: After extensive complaining to Carmin about how it was deeply unreasonable to expect emotional sensitivity from Keltham but she could really use it, Carissa came up with a strategy. 

Carissa's imaginary Keltham: "Translation: I was being a dick earlier, and while I'm not quite willing to apologize for it I'm planning to do better this time, I wasn't being rude because I wanted to see you suffer which is how it might have come across."

Carissa Sevar: "I'm - sorry that the modifications have been necessary, that you've been rushed into them. I know how much you are paying to - try to be able to think as clearly as possible, here. I also have some maps for how this conversation can be more pleasant and will do my best."