Ione Sala: Teleport, from scroll, immediately, because you don't want to hang around in a random section of Efreet territory even a tiny little bit.

Planar Adaptation.

Pilar : Planar Adaptation (from scroll).

...and Pilar exhales the remaining breath she was holding, and breathes again.  With Planar Adaptation around herself, the air doesn't smell like anything.  White-glowing sparks enter her nostrils and do nothing in her lungs.  It feels like a slightly hot day, and no hotter than that.

City of Brass: Around them stretches the City of Brass.  Not reputed to be one of the safest places in Creation, but the Efreet won't slay you out of hand, it's said, for they do wish to protect their City's trading custom.

It does not, quite, look as large as Dis, but then Dis tries to look large.  It looks wealthier than Dis, at least to the eyes of someone from Golarion, because using souls as building material doesn't strike the eye in quite the same way as making whole buildings out of brass.

Fire is everywhere, and nothing is burning.  Anything that could burn, in this place, is long since gone and not even the ash of it remains.  If there's a section of the City of the Brass that's meant for mortals too weak to protect themselves, and yet somehow strong enough to travel hither, it is not this section.  Its mortal hospitality is seen in how there are stable brass streets to walk upon, and not just lakes of lava submerged in oceans of fire.

Ione Sala: "Looks like the others aren't here yet.  Hopefully we're not too early, and hopefully Nefreti will poke me if it turns out we're in the wrong place."

Pilar : "I guess we'll just hang around in the City of Brass, then.  Just like old times in Ostenso, only with everything on fire and also the two of us being enemies."

Ione Sala: "Not that much of a change from Ostenso, then, in a certain deep sense.  But sure, we've got stuff to catch up on... actually it wouldn't surprise me if I was given deliberately bad timing information for that reason."

Ione casts her eye critically about the brass architecture around them, in which there is a notable lack of conveniently human-sized chairs or benches.  Eventually she steps over to the end of the platform they landed on, and sits down on the edge with her feet dangling below, facing a pleasant view of a rippling lava lake.

Pilar : Pilar follows her.  "Oh, you don't already know everything about what I've been up to?"

Ione Sala: "There's a lot of details I don't need to be told, especially if you're going to tell it to me anyways."

"So how was Korvosa?"

Pilar : "At first I was annoyed once I realized how Snack Service had set me up, but I spent a couple of days being tortured by the only woman I've met who's as beautiful as Abrogail Thrune, and... I'm not going to lie, I needed that, after everything else I've been through."

Ione Sala: "Glad to hear you enjoyed your torture vacation."

Pilar : "I mean, Ileosa could have been better at the actual torture.  Her usual torturer, Kordaitra, was a devout member of the Church of Asmodeus and Ileosa correctly guessed that Kordaitra shouldn't be told about me.  But Ileosa was even more sensual than Subirachs, and was genuinely trying to break me and brainwash me into serving her, and that made up for a lot."

Ione Sala: "Never going to be my own cup of tea.  If I would've ever had a side like that, of either polarity, Cheliax ruined it for good.  But it sounds like you had fun and I'm sincerely glad about that."

"So how'd the adventure progress from there?  I don't think your curse could've just walked you out of a torture cell, on my understanding of the rules it follows."

Pilar : "Pretended to be a lot more breakable than I was, played up the adorable agonized victimhood for all it was worth.  Managed to lure one of the Grey Maidens guarding me into also having some fun with me.  They hadn't been told that I was senior Chelish personnel, or a plague-ridden corpse when it came to avoiding contaminating the Church of Asmodeus with knowledge of me.  I managed to unwillingly leak to my new Grey Maiden playmate that I was ever so terrified of Asmodeans and their torments."

"She brought Kordaitra in to have a pass at me."

"I didn't actually tell Kordaitra the whole story, at first, just let her 'break' me too, and spilled out secrets as appropriate -"

Ione Sala: "Wait, did you literally overthrow the wicked queen of Korvosa just by... submitting and getting tortured a lot?"

Pilar : "I was trying to do it exclusively that way, but Snack Service told me I was running out of time and needed to stop playing around.  So yeah, I brought the commander of the Guard into the conspiracy, without trying to seduce her with my adorable victimhood.  I got into some actual magical fights.  I didn't directly fight the Queen myself, obviously, she was out of my current league.  But it's not that hard to take out a royal when your side has got her second-in-command, her third-in-command, and surprise."

Ione Sala: "I'm speechless on the object level, if obviously not the meta level.  Well, it sounds like your life-changing journey is going fine so far."

Pilar : "I learned a lot of valuable life lessons, that's for sure."

Ione Sala: "Dare I ask?"

Pilar : "Any problem can be solved by submitting to the people hurting you, but maybe not solved quickly."

"I don't, in fact, know better than legendary adventurers.  They're better than me and had reasons to do things their way, and I should meekly accept their implied epistemic authority in the future."

"Somebody having a Lawful Evil alignment isn't enough by itself to make them behave reasonably, if they don't answer to a higher authority, the way that people in Cheliax answer to the Queen and the Queen herself answers to Asmodeus."

Ione Sala: "Those sure are some very Lawful Evil lessons to learn from overthrowing a wicked legal government."

Pilar : "I vigorously dispute that characterization of what I did.  Once I got my Splendour headband back, I gave Korvosa my best oration on how states always end up ultimately ruled by Evil people, even if those rulers pretend to be something else, even if they mislead divination spells so they look like some different alignment, even if they make secret donations to Good churches so that their alignment will genuinely detect as something else.  You'll always end up ruled by Evil people, because they're the ones who want power and because of what people have to do to keep power.  That was why Korvosa needed to choose openly Lawful Evil rulers in the future, who wouldn't have to pretend about the Evil and could be selected for Lawfulness too.  And invite in a powerful representative from Cheliax, who'd supervise the next ruler and make sure she didn't do anything too crazy that would destroy Korvosa's value to Cheliax as a trading partner and port to Varisia."

"I replaced one wicked legal government with another, got it?  I wanted to talk them into just joining the Chelish Empire again, but my Splendour was warning me that they wouldn't go for it."

Ione Sala: "I mean, not to hammer on the obvious, but it's that whole Evil and damnation thing.  A lot of places would love to join the Chelish Empire and get the benefits of all their wealth, if the price wasn't misery in the present and eternal torture in the afterlife."

Pilar : "Yes.  People are so unreasonable about that."

Ione Sala: "Not... really."

Pilar : "Anyways, I used enough high-circle divine magic in high-stakes combat, mixed with what wizardry I had, that I went up to third-circle wizard.  At the same time as I hit sixth-circle oracle, near as I could figure afterward.  And I managed to duplicate and re-cast an arcane spell using way too much divine magic, when that was unreasonably important on account of sudden unexpected actual fucking dragon, which I understand makes me formally a mystic theurge."

"You?"

Ione Sala: "Sixth-circle oracle, but still just second-circle wizard.  Knowing as much of the future as I do makes it hard to get yourself into the right kind of trouble.  Something about the psychology of doing it to yourself on purpose... doesn't make it not count, exactly, but there sure is a discount.  You're fortunate to have that whole Snack Service setup, but then, I shouldn't complain since you're not so fortunate for needing it."

Pilar : "That sure is a perspective on my life which is not my perspective."

Ione Sala: "'Yet', she said ominously."

Pilar : "Ione, if you're going to use your foreknowledge to ominous at me, I'm going to leave."

Ione Sala: "Yeah, that's fair, I shouldn't be doing it even as a joke."

"Do anything special with the ex-Queen before you sent her to Hell?  Feel free not to answer if it's horrible and would ruin our friendship."

Pilar : "Didn't send her to Hell at all, she could've had all sorts of True Resurrection arrangements."

"They Petrified her and put her in a supposedly secure vault.  I've actually got title to Ileosa, legally speaking.  The new government got a court to rule that Ileosa should be enslaved to me as recompense for those terrible, terrible tortures she put me through.  Maybe if I get powerful enough and have that much spare time I'll pick up Ileosa again and keep her as a harem slave, someday."

Ione Sala: "...like, as a victim, or..."

Pilar : "As a sadist.  I think she could be good at it with some training."

"My read on Ileosa is that she was spoiled, frankly.  It's sort of sad.  Past a certain point, she never had anybody in her life who could tell her what she was doing wrong or set her right.  About anything, including torturing people."

Ione Sala: "You... uh... really liked her, huh."

Pilar : "She was beautiful and sexual and she sincerely tried to break me.  Call me shallow, then, because I am, in fact, shallow, and I'll own that."

Ione Sala: "You're different, you know.  Either at Splendour 21, or at sixth-circle, you're different."

Pilar : "Let me guess, you liked the old me better."

Ione Sala: "I don't think I'd put it that way.  The old Pilar was - nicer, maybe, but -"

"I don't want to make it sound - like Good is something you can ever switch off and put away.  Any more than you'd be okay with seeing Evil like that.  But we're in pretty weird circumstances, and - I guess, in light of that - I can appreciate this Pilar, for her being -"

"Well, for her being what she is."

Pilar : "Is that your way of saying that you morally disapprove of me, but you know I'm hot?"

Ione Sala: "No."

Pilar : "I'm curious what you are saying.  Any tiny scrap of appreciation of Evil from you is progress, and I'd like to know about it and build on it and maybe bring you back to the side of Hell, someday."

Ione Sala: "So take dath ilan, which nobody in the Conspiracy understood or could have understood, at the time.  Not even me, because I hadn't gone all the way over to Good, then.  Even Peranza didn't understand until she went fully Good herself, and that she didn't do while she was still under threat in Cheliax."

"There are kinds of Goodness you can't express in dath ilan, if it's the way that Keltham described it -"

Pilar : "You don't know?"

Ione Sala: "Even Nethys can't see there from here, or so Clepati implied that Nethys implied.  Neither of them is Lawful and either could be messing with me."

Pilar : "Huh.  Go on?"

Ione Sala: "There's kinds of Goodness you can't express in dath ilan.  Maybe sometimes a house there catches fire and the parents have to run in and risk their own life to save the lives of their children.  But no child ever starves to death, there, for want of food.  No mother or father ever decides to starve themselves so that their children can have a little more food.  They don't die for their children slowly, one day at a time, facing down the pain and enduring it.  That kind of Goodness isn't a thing, there."

"And it is better so.  It wouldn't be worth setting things up so that a child could face starvation, just once, so that their parents could choose to starve themselves instead.  Not even to complete the expression of Goodness, to complete the expression of what mortals can be, inside dath ilan."

"But if, somehow, that happened in dath ilan, just once - I think they'd be able to celebrate the Goodness of the parents who starved, and be glad their people had proved that about themselves, even as they wished it had never happened and mourned the parents whose lives were cut short."

"Really, when you think about it, there's much larger pieces of Goodness missing.  They don't have Hell, at all, let alone Malediction.  No paladin ever risks going to Hell themselves in the uncertain hope of maybe saving more people from Hell than that, not even innocent people, maybe, but just people."

"They would so never ever introduce Hells or Malediction, in dath ilan, just to get the paladins.  But if somehow, that happened to them, they would find a tiny space to celebrate that the expression of Goodness in their world had become more complete."

Pilar : "You actually did go all the way over to Good, huh."

Ione Sala: "Yeah.  Once I was out of Cheliax and no longer under threat and not, subconsciously trying to look a little less like a complete alien and traitor to my old friends from Ostenso.  I went all the way over."

Pilar : "Well, you sound a little sad about that, so maybe there's still hope.  Do you know why you sound sad?"

Ione Sala: "Put that question on hold.  I wasn't done talking about you."

Pilar : "Uh huh."

Ione Sala: "So - where was I -"

"Dath ilan would find a little space to celebrate the greater expression of Goodness in paladins, among all the mourning and wishing it hadn't been so, if Hell came to their universe."

"Because Good and Evil don't cancel out."

"I've been thinking, now and then, about how - being in this universe, Pharasma's Creation - might have changed things compared to what Keltham is so certain is the natural state of a world.  And I think - besides the categories of Good and Evil themselves, maybe being not the way we'd have sorted everything ourselves - we get used to thinking of people having a net total quantitative alignment and not just a, huge bag of events.  Where each individual event is one that could have multiple aspects we'd celebrate, multiple aspects we'd mourn."

"You can't, actually, make up for bad things by doing good things.  It can shift your alignment but it can't cancel the reality.  Every bad thing you do, is just there, forever.  And every good thing you do, is also just there, forever.  Which doesn't mean you should be sad about the badness over and over and over until the total sadness adds up to infinity.  It's just - the way things are, in dath ilan, that nobody ever judges them at the end of their lives, and they don't have any need to think of people as finally Good or finally Evil.  Instead people are the whole collection of everything they once did, and everything they currently are."

Pilar : "So you morally disapprove of me, and think I'm hot, and the two facts coexist."

Ione Sala: "Not literally, because if I had such an aspect of myself, a potential to appreciate that kind of hotness, Cheliax ruined it for me far past my own ability to put it back together again."

"Metaphorically, I suppose, yes."

"What you've become - isn't, I think, the best Pilar Pineda you could have possibly become, from the starting point where we first met in Ostenso.  If we were just considering the person you became for yourself, and not considering your effects on anyone else."

"But what you became instead is stronger than you were, and prouder, and finding new parts of herself and new ways to be happy.  I can celebrate that even if other people get hurt, even if I think it wasn't the best possible outcome for you personally, even if I wish our whole universe hadn't been shaped the way it was.  To say that I can appreciate some aspects of the more grownup Pilar, isn't to say anything one way or another, about whether it's a good thing on net.  I can celebrate, even, that our world has somebody like you in it, even as I wish it didn't have anyone like you in it.  Badness and goodness don't cancel."

Pilar : "I'll have to think about whether there's anything useful buried under that enormous mound of heresy.  Do you already know why it is that you're sad you went full Good?"

Ione Sala: "Because I did have Evil desires in me.  If I wanted to be hurtful at you, Pilar, I'd say that Cheliax ruined that for me.  But probably even if there'd been no Cheliax in my past, I'd choose not to do those things, because of how other people would get hurt, if I did.  And hurting people - really hurting them, not like you going on a torture vacation - hurting people is wrong."

"But it means I'm not literally - everything Ione Sala could possibly be, in every part of herself, and I can mourn that, even as I affirm that it was the right choice and I don't wish to be otherwise."

Pilar : "I'm glad.  It sounds like you'll be okay, eventually, even after Asmodeus conquers everything."

Ione Sala: "Noooooo comment."

Elsewhere and slightly earlier

Keltham v4: "Fe-Anar.  Got a moment for something fairly important?"

Prince Fe-Anar: "I expect so. Did you decide not to release Rovagug?"

Keltham v4: "Not yet.  Maybe with two more Intelligence points."

"My Demiplane of Diamond Synthesis has been harvested, and my party is heading off to the City of Brass momentarily.  I didn't actually get two million Wish diamonds, more like - estimates since I didn't count exactly - two hundred thousand Wish diamonds and a million True Resurrection diamonds.  Not all of the seeds grew out the same way."

Prince Fe-Anar: " - well, I can't actually imagine any plans that need a million instead of two hundred thousand, but my condolences."

Keltham v4: "If reality was just being reality, the conclusion would be that diamond just won't be a limited resource, pretty soon; they'll be a material component in spells, but not a valuable component.  Even if something odd happened to me, and to the Iomedaen whom I gave sealed instructions, the Scientific Revolution would still figure it out in a year or two."

"The only way anything from the Demiplane of Diamond Synthesis could actually end up being valuable, was if something weird and tropey happened to make it be the case that what I did once, here, can never be done again.  That's the only way that any products of this event end up valuable, or rare, rather than useful the way that water is useful."

"It seemed important to disclaim that part, before I gave you some things that are probably worthless and not even slightly rare as of a year or two later, unless something tropey happens."

Prince Fe-Anar: "People will probably start using them for jewelry like they use turquoise," he says in a tone of approval.

Keltham v4: "I wasn't sure initially if the diamond synthesis would scale around diamond dust used as seed crystals, so I also got thirty-two jewelry-quality diamonds, the sort that are unusually clear but too small for even a Limited Wish, and had those polished smooth and spherical, and Prestidigitated them before throwing them into the demiplane, to try to ensure that early diamond deposition would be very regular for at least the next hour... I don't know if that worked, but only three times, or it was just some unrelated seeds that went really well... anyways, I ended up with three of these."

Keltham takes from his Bag of Holding three exceptionally clear unfaceted jewels, considerably larger than Wish-sized, barely small enough that you could close your fist around one of them.

Prince Fe-Anar: He stares at them open-mouthed for a little while. 

"- they're beautiful.

You know, if there is something beyond ninth-circle....that's the kind of focus you'd need to get anywhere with it."

Keltham v4: "Well, I thought a bit about who should have these, if it turns out that going to the City of Brass is some huge story turning point where our party doesn't come back afterwards etcetera etcetera whatever and these are the only Big Diamonds ever to exist.  And you're the only person I know, outside of that party, who goes around having ideas like 'Maybe we can make our own shield from the Outer Gods and tell Pharasma to get lost', so I thought you seemed like the best fit."

"You're also the most combined Good plus actually sensible person I know, besides myself of course ha ha, such that it seems like giving these to you would actually have good outcomes."

Prince Fe-Anar: " - thank you. I don't know if there's a way to make them into our own shield from the Outer Gods but I will certainly give it a try."

He reaches out and takes the diamonds, reverently.

Keltham v4: "I do want a fairly serious promise that you won't misuse them or let them end up in the wrong hands, if they're at all valuable or dangerous."

Prince Fe-Anar: "If I took that tropes hypothesis of yours at all seriously I would not be making important oaths," he says. "However, I don't, so, I swear to you, if these turn out to be items of power and significance, I will guard them and their secrets with my life, and with those resources I can command, and I will not allow them to be taken from me and I'll recover them if they are, whatever that takes and wherever it takes us..."

Prince Fe-Anar: "...unless you or Abadar tell me to consider myself no longer bound by this oath, or my best understanding of you and of Abadar if both of you are dead or inaccessible, would tell me that."

Keltham v4: "Yeah, fair point about the tropes.  Feel very free to go 'Arbitrarily nope' at the tropes if it seems like they're trying to throw a plot at you that they wouldn't have thrown at you if you wouldn't react in an interesting way.  Or do Something Else Which Is Not That about any sort of non-common-sensical situation that reality seems to be trying to put you into.  Or generally not to let this whole situation create drama, even if that seems on the surface like it might involve an exception to the exact words of the promise.  You have my total permission and encouragement to just be unexpectedly sensible about anything that develops unexpectedly, and say, 'That's what Keltham said he wanted on the day he asked me for this promise.'"

Prince Fe-Anar: "All right. ...You, too, should try to be unexpectedly sensible, if you notice the plot trying to make you destroy the world."

Keltham v4: "I'd say 'give it a rest' but I rather understand why you're not."

"Obvious things to a dath ilani, if you end up passing these on to somebody else, ask them for the same promise, including the sensibility clause and the clause about asking a further recipient for the same promise diagonally.  From our perspective, that'd just be an automatic consequence of the original promise, but saying it out loud in case it's not."

Prince Fe-Anar: "That is sensible but not in contracts unless you put it in them. If I pass the diamonds along I'll ask for the same promise."

Keltham v4: "Off to the City of Brass, then.  Wish me horrible luck that ends with me permadead and you and Carissa and the Church of Iomedae trying to recover the situation with a couple of hundred thousand Wish diamonds."

Prince Fe-Anar: "I hope you die in a tragic and baffling fiery explosion!"

Keltham v4: "Wouldn't be nearly enough, I've made the obvious True Resurrection arrangements and backup Wish resurrection plans etcetera."

"I mostly expect I'll just come back in a few hours, more intelligent and ready for a proper conversation with Wished-up Carissa.  But if I never see you again, my awful experience in Golarion would've been even worse without you."

Prince Fe-Anar: "My fairly great experience in Golarion would have been worse without you too. Good luck on dying."

Keltham v4: He goes to seek Carissa.  He's supposed to give the +4/+6/+6 headband back after this, and though he thinks he's put himself together in a way that held and will hold with a +6/+6/+4 headband, it's still the last chance if un-Wished Carissa has anything to say to a noticeably stupider ex-boyfriend with somewhat stronger emotions.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa has been occasionally departing the demiplane for cult encouragement. Her cult is... encouraging, she guesses, not for any purpose for which she'd actually want to leverage it except accounting for her activities and adding to her hoard of souls. It's certainly very vigorous and enthusiastic, in those cities where it lucked into good local leadership or a resonant bit of theology. The pamphlets she releases routinely with her teachings are widely reproduced and/or strictly banned in forty-six countries. 

Aside from that she has chased down a few of the threads on her wall, mostly to unsatisfying conclusions. No one knows what Aroden's aims with the Starstone protections were. No one who is allowed to tell her knows at what stage in ascension those who go missing and can't be resurrected are destroyed. The Church of Abadar, which provides Starstone attempt insurance (full price of a True Resurrection plus fees, up front), knows how often it happens, and it's not often, but the ones who it happened to seem like those who were more promising than average, not less so. 

No one knows much about the universe Pharasma came from. No one knows much about the overall composition by planet of origin of any of the afterlives other than Axis. Mortals aren't allowed to wander around arbitrary parts of Axis either. She's put up hundreds of scraps that will, perhaps, assemble into an answer when she's smarter. Such and such apparent species observable in Aktun. Such and such results from Fe-Anar's analysis of the linguistic inputs to various languages spoken there. Such and such results on supposedly random summons. Reality has consistent features deep down; you just have to be positioned to notice them. She's no longer in the habit of thinking of it as an ilani teaching, rather than a Sevarite one, but it's important. 

When she's tired of that she works on Keltham's magic simulator. It's complicated the way problems are supposed to be complicated, instead of the way they turn out to often actually be complicated. 

" - hey. Ready to go?"

Keltham v4: "Yeah, unless 24/20/19 Carissa has anything left to say to 25/26/25 me before he goes 29/27/23 and she rises to 29/25/24.  I continue to suspect that the Wish augmentations run wider than spells and headbands in a way that Golarion can't easily measure."

Carissa Sevar: "I think - there's almost nothing I could say that wouldn't really be about trying to prevent the end of the world. If there are things you'd want to hear, given that..."

Keltham v4: "Those need wait only a little longer."

"Let's collect Ri-Dul and Tarnish and go, and remember the infosec conditions around Ri-Dul."  Ri-Dul isn't aware of exactly how many +5s they mean to purchase, here.

Carissa Sevar: (Carissa is hoping that Ri-Dul will get suspicious and kill them all, but she considers it unlikely.)

"Yeah."

Pilar : "Hello Keltham.  Hello Sevar.  I'd be louder about some other issues, especially with Sevar, but I'll put that on hold to ask whether 'Mister Doomlord' is still a problem, or if you're here because you took care of Him.  Or It.  Whatever."

Keltham v4: "I unfortunately cannot promise that Mister Doomlord is no longer a problem from your perspective, but I have all of his stuff and I don't expect him to be an issue for Cheliax... over at least the next few days.  Carissa is a bit more concerned about that, and I wouldn't be surprised if Snack Service calls you in on it at some point."

Pilar : "Fucking great.  Sevar, are we on the same side here?"

Carissa Sevar: "I don't know and cannot speak freely about most relevant considerations. I think I broadly want Snack Service to succeed at what it's trying to do."

Pilar : "Are you by any chance on Asmodeus's side and Cheliax's side."

Carissa Sevar: "Yes." It's a lie but one she tells unhesitatingly, at this point. Asmodeus believing it is good for the only thing that matters.

Pilar : "I admit I wasn't expecting that.  Is there a reason you're hanging out with Keltham and not running Project Lawful?"

Carissa Sevar: "Yes."

Ione Sala: "You frankly had no right to expect any other reply."

"Hi, Sevar.  Wish we could just kick back on the edge of the platform, watching the lava flows, and talk harem reunion things.  But I'm guessing it wouldn't go that great with all the genuinely important questions I can't answer yet."

Carissa Sevar: "Likewise except I don't even wish we could talk harem reunion things. Are you here in the hopes Keltham will give you valuable stuff for no apparent reason?"

Ione Sala: "Hope no, knowledge yes."

"You are a very different person from that Carissa Sevar I once knew, and you will become more different yet.  But for whatever it can still mean, I say to you now:  I forgive you."

Carissa Sevar: Ione is not in fact even on her list of people that she meaningfully wronged; Ione had negotiated her good treatment with Cheliax before Carissa had any power.

She tries to imagine what Carmin would say. Probably that, to Ione, Carissa was Cheliax, was part of how it twisted people, and so the hurts Cheliax did Ione are, to Ione, hers in part. 

None of it really feels like it matters, alongside the end of the world. 

And she does want to thank Ione for prophecying for her everywhere, that's been very useful, but she doesn't acknowledge around Keltham that her cult is plainly a Nethys/Cayden plan.

She nods.

Ione Sala: "Yeah, I know.  You didn't do that much to me, by Cheliax standards.  What's a measly 20 lashes that I didn't even try to get out of?  But you did also hurt some other people I cared about."

"I forgive you for that too."

"Is there anything for which I still ought to ask my own forgiveness, of you, that you know of?"

Carissa Sevar: Her face definitely wasn't readable. Oracles of Nethys are very annoying that way. 

The thing Carissa's going to have a hard time forgiving is that Nethys could have maneuvered for Keltham to be unable to attempt world destruction plans and to have to just work with Iomedae, and didn't. She has no idea if Ione understands that, let alone endorses it.

Ione Sala: "I wasn't actually using foreknowledge there, just guessing, so I can't actually read your mind if you were trying to think anything back."

"If I had to guess again, I'd say that I'm sorry for not answering your questions, even though it's the kind of halfhearted apology where I think I have reasons and I'm going to go on doing it after the apology.  Or if it's about the other thing, then I'm sorry again in that poor halfway fashion, where I think I have an excuse, where I say that what I feel about it myself is irrelevant because Nethys would retroactively not have made me His tool if I would predictably betray Him later, and it is better that He have that tool than not."

"And if it's anything else you can't say, and I can't guess, then please accept the apology I'd probably give if I knew."

Carissa Sevar: "We should probably not linger here."

Ri-Dul: "Yes, quite.  There are spells with time limits running.  Keltham, I do require directions from you on how to handle this... complication."

Keltham v4: "Telepathic Bond between you, Tarnish, and Ione.  Split to three groups, Ri-Dul and Keltham, Tarnish and Carissa, Ione and Pilar."

"Ione, do you know my intended business protocol and rules?  Also, do you or Pilar need a ride home afterwards?"

Keltham is handing over a small Bag of Holding to Ione, even as he speaks; and to Pilar, the +4/+6/+6 artifact headband that Snack Service gave to the scarred maid (Tarnish?) earlier.

Ione Sala: "I can give Pilar a ride back to the Material once we're done.  We shouldn't need to reunite before that."

"I have a prediction about the contents of the transactions you want us to do, but not any special rules about them, though I could guess at sensible ones."

Keltham v4: "Swear any promising-looking Efreet groups to secrecy about literally all aspects of the remainder of your negotiation and transaction, including the payment offered and the service sought and whether or not the transaction with you concluded successfully at all, before discussing any other trades with them."

"I put four denominations of payment in your bag.  If an Efreet group wants more payment than one of the largest denomination for one full service, or more than the least denomination of payment to agree to absolute indefinite secrecy, walk out."

Ri-Dul: He finishes casting the Telepathic Bond.

"You people try for such fascinating amounts of secrecy.  It reminds me of various episodes in my own youth that I will dramatically hint at, but say nothing more about."

Pilar : "If we're not meeting up again after this, I've got a question.  Is there a reason that you, Keltham, are wearing the other of the two artifact headbands that Snack Service bought from Dispater?  Because I'm a little upset about that being how things turned out, especially when I was under the impression this was important for fighting 'Mister Doomlord', and I wonder whether Lord Dispater would be happy to hear about -"

Keltham v4: "I traded away an even more powerful artifact to get that one, to somebody who was much more clearly on your and Carissa's side about the Mister Doomlord business."

Tarnish: "Sevar, you want to get started on our shopping while those two flirt?"

Carissa Sevar: "Sure."

Did agreeing to let Keltham use her headband actually make him likelier to end the world? Or likelier to get something better than that? - no point trying to figure that out now. 

City of Brass: Welcome to the City of Brass!  Everything here is made of brass and also on fire.

Complicated divine arrangements and negotiations will have ensured that you don't meet anybody from a different planet or Prime Material plane while you shop.  You may, however, run into a devil or two, maybe an inevitable or a daemon, or denizens of Earth or Air.  To meet an angel here is not unheard-of, but demons are less welcome.

It is not literally true that everything imaginable is for sale here, but they do have a lot!  You're on sharply limited time, though, and are supposed to prioritize your main shopping trip.  Still, you've got about 50,000gp of spellsilver, at new Golarion prices, or four times that amount in old Golarion prices.

With Tarnish's approval, you could also trade away a Wish diamond here, given suitable promises of secrecy - though Keltham has expressed some worry and reluctance about arming Efreet with that kind of power, or making it obvious that the diamond market was flooded from Golarion.  Keltham/Tarnish will be happier if you trade the Wish diamond to a particular noble Efreeti intending to use it themselves, who swears an oath about how they'll use the diamond and that they won't tell anyone about the transaction.

(If what is written in many books is correct, almost any noble Efreeti can cast Wish up to once per day, given a Wish diamond.)

Carissa Sevar: Carissa wants her mental enhancement first. She'll shop afterwards, if it seems like a good idea once she is smarter and better and cooler.

She doesn't, actually, prefer this world where she becomes incredibly smart and powerful to the one where Keltham never comes to Golarion and she goes to Hell. But it's - something resembling a consolation prize.

City of Brass: Okay, let's consider the market in the City of Brass for quintuple sequences of enhancement Wishes!

Noble Efreet are not exactly rare, in the City of Brass.  The place doesn't run much in the way of censuses, but there can't realistically be less than twenty thousand noble Efreet here, all of whom can cast 1 Wish per day.

This means there are many, many more noble Efreet than there are travelers with Wish diamonds to convert to Wishes!  The process doesn't take long and doesn't exhaust a noble Efreet, either!  And if you were very naive about how markets here operate, you might reason -

dath ilan: The City of Brass's price of converting a Wish diamond to a Wish should collapse to a small service charge, about what you'd pay for a few minutes of a noble Efreet's time for any other service; modulo transaction costs that both parties are incentivized to keep small.

(At least, assuming there's no such thing as a 'premium Wish' that fewer noble Efreet can offer.)

City of Brass: Yes, if you were very naive about how markets work, you might think that!  But naturally the City of Brass has legislated rules about minimum Wish prices - which, of course, it is illegal to explicitly tell travelers!

dath ilan: ...then obviously you're going to have more and more entrants into the Wish-diamond-to-Wish conversion market, until all of the excess profit from this artificially high regulated price has been dissipated in marketing expenses and idle labor.  You'll get noble Efreet shops advertising Wishes on every corner of the City of Brass, as they all compete to be the shop a traveler chooses, to buy this legally overpriced service that 20,000 competitors in the city could also offer.

This artificially high price will also have the further result that fewer outside purchasers will come to the City of Brass.

Thus, the net value captured by Efreet and not dissipated in competing for overpriced transactions will be less.

Why would anyone do that to themselves?!

City of Brass: Because the travelers have to spend more to buy Wish-castings, and if they're losing, the Efreet must be winning!

dath ilan: Huh.  What's the average Intelligence and Wisdom of Efreet?

City of Brass: 12 INT and 14 WIS.  Why do you ask?

dath ilan: No reason.  Anyway, dath ilan accepts the City of Brass's correction: standard economics does indeed fail to describe how trades in the City of Brass work.

City of Brass: Standard economics, ha!  Dath ilan is just naive about how markets work in real life!

dath ilan: ...if you consider Lawful Evil aliens with INT 12 / WIS 14 to be 'real life', then yes, standard economic models from dath ilan do not well describe what happens when such aliens in 'real life' try to operate what they imagine to be a 'market'.

Anyways, the City of Brass was saying something about its 'market' for sequences of 5 enhancement Wishes?

City of Brass: Right!  Now, while it's pretty rare on any given planet for somebody to assemble 5 Wish diamonds that they want to convert to a +5 abilitystat increase, that's when you're considering just one planet.  If you consider all the planets across all the planes, that have advanced to the point of anybody there having Plane Shift, that's more like 10 parties per year that come into the City of Brass with 5 Wish diamonds that they want to convert to 5 Wishes!

dath ilan: And this service is overpriced as a matter of regulation, so there's many groups of 5 noble Efreet vying to persuade travelers to buy 5 Wishes from them.  Correct?

City of Brass: Yep!  Though not to the same extent that every noble Efreeti you come across wants to sell you 1 Wish.