Ione Sala: "This is perfectly straightforward by the new standards of our awful existences.  The decorrelated physical event of you shutting down Keltham would help Asmodeus and injure Cayden Cailean; so if that outcome was the high-probability consequence of bringing you here, Snack Service wouldn't do it; so your choice to shut down Keltham would injure Asmodeus via you not being here at all.  Sure, even Nethys can't predict events like that perfectly, but it's also your interest to be more predictable about things like this, not try to randomize; because then Snack Service can use you for more Asmodeus-beneficial interventions -"

Pilar : "I get it, Ione, I'm not stupid.  I just don't like it.  And you are not my superior and don't have the power to order me to stop whining."

Ione Sala: "Grow up, Pilar.  Grow up very quickly, so you can be used for tasks that actually matter."

City of Brass: The actual 'SHOPPING' trip starts with Ione making a beeline for an enormous brass edifice with literal actual mithril fittings about it, some sort of absurdly high-class interdimensional brothel, with a symbol that Ione points out as meaning 'Wishes granted here' - if you have a Wish diamond and the rest of some exorbitant price, presumably?

And then Ione pays over twenty platinum pieces just to be allowed to speak to the proprietor, and 200pp more for the enormous fiery proprietor to swear to absurd secrecy conditions, after which Ione goes off to negotiate in privacy with the proprietor...

...leaving Pilar alone in the waiting chamber of a high-class interdimensional brothel, with various things (mostly female insofar as they have an identifiable gender at all) trying to flirt with her and entice her into a dalliance that costs as much as a +2 headband of vast intelligence would've cost a year earlier.

Pilar : "Did you do that on purpose?" Pilar says to Ione, when she eventually emerges from her mysterious dealings.

Ione Sala: "I sincerely don't know what you're talking about."

Pilar : Right then.  Pilar will follow Ione out of the brothel.

Ione Sala: "Okay, see, but now I want to know what you're talking about."

Pilar : "No."

Ione Sala: "I suppose we can conduct the whole trip on that basis, but it'll make it less fun, and maybe less beneficial to Asmodeus too.  How about if you're nice to me and tell me, and then I'll be nice to you?"

Pilar : "Fine.  The entire time you were gone, I spent with various things trying to seduce me into spending a few hours with them, in exchange for a large gem or magic item."

Ione Sala: "You know you're just allowed to tell them all no, and to leave you alone until I get back, right?"

Pilar : "Weren't you supposed to be nice back to me, now?"

Ione Sala: "So I was.  Here's forty thousand platinum pieces' worth of spending money.  Not for anything in particular, just if anything catches your eye while we're wandering around."  Ione hands over a bag that would be much heavier if it wasn't mostly huge faceted rubies and other gemstones.

Pilar : "What the fuck did you sell to her."

Ione Sala: "Eh, some of Doomlord's stuff.  I'd say it's not important and not to worry about it, but I'd be lying."

Pilar : "Is there a point at which I get read in on this whole Doomlord business?"

Ione Sala: "Yes, actually.  It's the point at which you're sufficiently reliably a grownup that you can be trusted to act on that information, granted you on that basis, only in ways that benefit Cayden Cailean and Asmodeus, rather than trying to seize as much benefit for Asmodeus as possible."

Pilar : "I have, in fact, been incredibly fucking cooperative about that.  Since the day that Snack Service first told me I couldn't arrest a group of Osirian spies because Surprise Compact I Never Agreed To."

Ione Sala: "Yeah, but you also spent the entire four months whining about it and that does not encourage trust on genuinely serious matters, Pilar."

Pilar : "I perceive that going all the way over to Good doesn't change the extent to which one is an enormous bitch, then.  I'd wondered."

Ione Sala: "And you're not an enormous bitch?"

Pilar : "First of all: I'm Evil, what's your excuse.  And second: no, actually.  I just have a huge case of resting bitch face, which is probably something like seventy percent of how I was able to still be considered a serious Asmodean after I started going around giving people cookies."

Ione Sala: "Surprisingly valid."

Pilar : Pilar doesn't answer because she's staring at the display-window of the bottom level of a five-story building, trying to deal with the thought her brain just had and the subsequent complete thought crash.

Ione Sala: "Whatcha looking at?  - Oooh, Metamagic Rods."

Ione Sala: "Yes, Pilar, that's right.  You want them.  You have plenty of spending money.  You should go in and buy all the cool ones."

"Do it, Pilar."

"It'll make you a better Asmodean."

"Do it."

Pilar : "Wow, you are so bad at that dark hissing voice of corruption, what with still sounding like a teenage girl."

Ione Sala: "Don't need to expend an auditory illusion on sounding better.  You're not going to be that hard to corrupt."

Pilar : "Yeah, fair."

Pilar Pineda heads into the store which has ALL THE METAMAGIC RODS with a weird spring in her step and an odd light feeling in her heart.  This is evil, right?  She's being evil right now?  She's sure this is what Abrogail Thrune would do in her place.  Shopping must be evil.

Ione Sala: When Pilar gets back out, Ione is talking with a collared being that looks like a dwarf with brazen skin and hair of literal fire.  Whatever they had to say, they were apparently just finishing up, because Ione nods and pays over a small handful of platinum and then turns back to Pilar.

"Congratulations!  I'm guessing this is the first time in your life you've wanted something for yourself and then acted in order to get it?"

Pilar : "Nah.  That's private, is all.  I do it, I just don't do it where you can see me."

Ione Sala: "Lies."

Pilar : "I have done that before on as many as several occasions in my life, all of which I can remember individually."

Ione Sala: "Okay... we need to stop quipping at each other using our shiny Splendour headbands and go start the actual mission."

"We're looking for places that offer the service of selling 5-Wish sequences if you bring in 5 Wish diamonds, and then I go in and swear them to the extreme negotiation secrecy conditions, and then I go engage in mysterious secret negotiations, and then I come out again.  We need to find twelve places like that."

"We can buy basically anything we want along the way."

Pilar : "Look... I can see where this is going."

Ione Sala: "Can you?"

Pilar : "Yeah.  You're waiting for me to ask why we're doing this, and then you tell me that I can't be told because I won't reliably react only in a way that benefits both Cayden Cailean and Asmodeus -"

Ione Sala: "I don't, in fact, tell you that.  You are able to figure that out for yourself, without being told, and it is better that way."

"You are likewise perfectly able to figure out the other thing I'm not saying because it's better for you to see it yourself."

Pilar : "That I kept complaining about how I never, at any point, volunteered to be part of any such compact, and how I never made a bargain like that.  So you're waiting for me to actually say of my own will that I'll be part of this thing, and only use the information to benefit Asmodeus in ways that don't harm Cayden Cailean."

Ione Sala: "Mm-hm.  Up until this point you've never been knowingly faced with a serious choice like that, Pilar.  Only mysterious commands you didn't understand.  You've never had to knowingly look at a serious case where you could benefit Asmodeus a lot, but you needed to turn away, or only help Asmodeus a little, because that was the condition under which you were granted the information."

"Past that point, we're no longer comfortable just telling you that you need to predictably behave yourself, or we'll have retroactively not included you in the fun."

Pilar : "I have to agree explicitly."

Ione Sala: "No.  Worse."

Pilar : "I have to ask."

Ione Sala: "Yes."

Pilar : "So you're actually doing that thing where you make the torture victim ask to be hurt more.  Who knew that Good did that too?"

Ione Sala: "GROW THE FUCK UP, PILAR.  Use decision theory instead of just letting other agents with better decision theory use you.  Stop whining about being given chances to advance your own interests just because they're not simple and don't let you do whatever you feel like.  And also quit complaining if the other grownups here want you to behave like a grownup too, someone who pursues her own decision-theoretically-nonsimple interests instead of having to be pushed into that every time."

Pilar : "What if I don't wanna, though?"

Ione Sala: "You follow me around on this shopping trip and don't ask questions.  Maybe Mister Doomlord destroys Cheliax or something, because you couldn't properly help, who knows?  Mister Doomlord sure does seem like an ominous mysterious figure.  But what do you care about that, so long as you're comfortably not making your own decisions?"

Pilar : "All right, shut up and let me think about this."

Ione Sala: "Your will, mistress."

Pilar : Pilar starts to snap at Ione not to do that, then stops with a feeling of odd disorientation as she realizes that... being called 'mistress' wasn't as wrong-feeling as it should've been, on Pilar's model of Pilar?

She follows Ione around the City of Brass instead.

Thinking.

She doesn't ask why Snack Service is being so quiet, in case it answers.  It's nice, to be alone in her head for a time.

City of Brass: Is that a ROD OF WONDER being advertised for sale?

Ione Sala: It is!  Ione will buy it!  People mostly stopped making wild-magic items in Golarion after prophecy stopped working there.  But it's a fun thing to have around if you're a Nethysian, and interested in scaring the utter shit out of people afraid you might actually use it.

"Come on Pilar, don't just think!  Buy random expensive shit!  We're not just on any shopping trip, we're on an EPIC MULTIVERSAL SHOPPING TRIP such as whose like may NEVER BE SEEN AGAIN!"

Pilar : "The fact that you consider this to be valid reasoning does not give me confidence in the rest of what you consider valid reasoning."

Ione Sala: "Yoooouuuu say that but that shop's got a racing broom of flying and I'mma buy it if you don't admit you want it in the next five seconds."

Pilar : "No, you can have it.  You need it more.  What with you not being able to cast Fly yourself."

Ione Sala: "No takebacks!"  Ione rushes into the store to make what will later turn out to be the worst purchase of her life.

Pilar : Why does the thought of - participating in this awful madness herself - feel as terrifying as it does?

Why is it important that she label in her thoughts as 'madness' what has started, over months that felt like years, to make an awful kind of sense?

Why does she need to call it awful sense?  Why not just sense?

...this is usually where Snack Service would step in and say something.

...maybe Snack Service is hiding itself away, on the Elemental Plane of Fire where prophecy still operates.

Or maybe it's just that Snack Service knows Pilar can figure this out on her own, and needs to do that instead of being told things.

City of Brass: A fiery being with the head of a giant snake, the lower body of a giant snake, and a humanoid torso carrying a spear, comes over and tries to bother Pilar.

Pilar : "You need to speak Infernal, or I can't understand your attempts to bother me," Pilar says in Infernal, and then goes back to thinking.

...it's probably her looming sense of horrible dread about whatever Comes After This For Pilar.  As might be gated behind her asking to participate.

City of Brass: How about if the Salamander tries to bother her with a SPEAR?

Pilar : Harm.

Quickened Ray of Frost.

Ione Sala: When Ione comes out, she'll see the collapsed body of a Salamander, not moving.

Ione Sala: "Pilar - that's -"

"Outsiders don't get afterlives.  They can't be resurrected.  They don't have souls, they are -"

"Did you - forget?"

Pilar : Pilar holds up the Merciful Metamagic Rod she just bought.

(Obviously Pilar just did it that way to avoid entanglement with local law enforcement, and not because Carissa Sevar would've cried pathetic tears about it.  Pilar is not Sevar's student anymore.)

Ione Sala: Ione doesn't say anything in response to this, probably wisely.

City of Brass: They head on into an incredibly fancy-looking restaurant which only serves one patron at a time, accepts payment in magic items only, and also, apparently, grants up to 5 Wishes in sequence if you've got the diamonds.

Why?  Who knows.

Ione Sala: Sure, Ione will pay a fee of 2000gp to cover the case where they can't come to an agreement about the mysterious deal to be further-negotiated.

She'll then vanish from Pilar's sight, and come back six minutes later looking noticeably more cheerful, and head out of the restaurant with a spring in her step.

"One down, eleven to go!" she says, her voice sounding more vibrant and forceful than before.

Pilar : "Fine, I'm fucking asking.  Please tell me what the fuck we're doing, and I will only use that information in ways that benefit Cayden Cailean and Asmodeus."

Ione Sala: "And that don't harm Keltham, who brought us along on this trip, and gave over some of Doomlord's hoard to spend, on the basis of expecting that it would not be used to harm his interests and would benefit them at least slightly."

"You will accept the words of myself or Snack Service when it comes to which ways of using that information will harm Keltham, Cayden Cailean, or Asmodeus."

Pilar : "Agreed.  Now what's going on?"

Ione Sala: "Hold on, this takes more concentration if I'm outside a library..."

The sounds around them hush.

"So, first, what do you think is going on?"

Pilar : "Doomlord had enough Wish diamonds that I can get a +5 bonus to my primary casting stat, which I guess is Splendour these days, which is the treatment that Doomlord planned for himself and I'm supposed to get.  Tropes suggest that Doomlord actually had 20 Wish diamonds, and Keltham, Carissa, and you, are all getting boosted the same way.  For some reason it's important that nobody knows exactly which Efreet performed the service for us."

Ione Sala: "What follows is true, but not the whole story:  Mister Doomlord is from a planet not in this plane that didn't have access to ninth-level wizards or the City of Brass to convert Wish diamonds into Wishes.  Wish-sized diamonds are a lot cheaper there."

"The plan is for us to get all of our abilitystats wished up."

Pilar : "Ione, it's not that I lack all sense of eagerness here, but this sounds increasingly like a really large fucking issue.  Not like telling Cheliax, like telling the Worldwound alliance sort of issue."

Ione Sala: "That sure is some common sense there.  So how'd that work out for you in Korvosa?"

Pilar : "How loud can I scream without that getting out of your sound barrier?"

Ione Sala: "It is contrary to the nature of my library powers that they be used for horrified screaming rather than privacy and solitude."

Pilar : "Disappointing.  Let me know if you spot a scroll of Silence for sale so I can get my screaming done at some point."

"Did Keltham get all of Doomlord's diamonds?"

Ione Sala: "He's got all of Doomlord's stuff, as already stated."

Pilar : "...how much of a problem is Keltham going to be, now."

Ione Sala: "From whose perspective?"

Pilar : "ANYONE'S PERSPECTIVE!  HAVE YOU MET KELTHAM?"

Ione Sala: "Technically, I'm the only girl he's still dating."

"And Keltham already donated the vast majority of Doomlord's remaining diamonds, minus this expedition, to the Church of Iomedae.  Which you're not allowed to warn Cheliax about because that hinders the interests of Cayden Cailean and Keltham."

Pilar : "Okay... that's very bad, incredibly bad, extremely bad, and yet I'm still feeling relieved."

"- is the Church of Iomedae by any chance under a constraint not to do things with the diamonds that harm Asmodeus's interests?"

Ione Sala: "NOPE."

Pilar : "Does Asmodeus lose Cheliax?  As a result of this."

Ione Sala: "I won't say that I don't know, because I do.  But I will say that it depends on people's choices, including yours."

Pilar : It's strange, it's surprising, that Pilar can be feeling - alongside other horrors, she's obviously horrified that Asmodeus might lose Cheliax, of course she is, and hearing that it depends on her own choices is making her nauseous - feeling wounded that Keltham would do that to Cheliax.

They - Sevar tried so hard to not hurt Keltham, Keltham's feelings, more than she had to - issued multiple commands about that - does Keltham have any idea what Cheliax and Sevar could've done to him, without breaking any of Asmodeus's directives, if they had actually wanted to crush his spirit?  Because Sevar wanted to preserve the chance that Cheliax and Keltham could ally, if he grew up and went Evil?  And then, Keltham turns around and does this to them?  They'd have been better off fucking breaking him.

Ione Sala: Ione Sala says nothing at all, expresses no opinions.

Pilar : "Was this - entire thing - the whole thing with Snack Service - about making Keltham not doing anything more stupid with the Wish diamonds, is that how it served Asmodeus -"

"No.  It can't be that.  Snack Service is just, too large, of an intervention," she cannot speak of it but Cayden Cailean is dying over this, whatever this is, Snack Service sold His guaranteed death to Dispater.  "It can't just be about Doomlord's diamond hoard."

Ione Sala: "Correct."

Pilar : "If I get my six abilitystats Wished up - the price of that is my - being unable to oppose Cayden Cailean, or Keltham, at all, from now on.  Unless I could have done it completely with my current abilities.  Because past today, almost everything I do, everything I can do, including any growing I do from there, will be partially the result of the people and the gods who set me up to get +5s to all abilitystats."

Ione Sala: "Correct."

Ione Sala: "You don't have to decide immediately.  We can find another five places that grant 5-Wish sequences, before you actually have to decide."

Pilar : "Okay."

Pilar : "You still haven't really explained anything.  I made the promise of my own will, and you know, by now, that I'm Lawful and keep my compacts including that particular kind of compact.  And you still haven't explained much of anything."

Ione Sala: "You'll figure a lot of it out yourself, after you're Wished-up, and then put on the artifact headband."

Pilar : Oh.

Somehow she hadn't made that connection.

Pilar : "Do you swear to me that all of this - not just today's choice, the entire fucking thing since the beginning - that it's all being carried out in a way that's - of Abadar, not Asmodeus?  Where this isn't some clever trap to indebt me to Cayden Cailean, and prevent me from benefiting Asmodeus more, as I would have done on my own?  Not just that exact thing being ruled out, but everything like that?"

Ione Sala: "I mean, Abadar wouldn't have set up your family to end up in Axis without asking you.  But it's a decision-theoretically-complicated bargain being made around your past and future selves that, cares, in that way, and looks out for people's interests in ways that they didn't know to ask for, that they'd have predictably wanted later.  You're not, ultimately, being used in a cruel way where they go 'ha ha' afterwards, at least if things go the way that we hoped, that was predicted to me.  The result won't be worse for you than if you'd done nothing, or had no capacity to do anything.  The results from your perspective won't be worse than if you'd been a rock with the same utilityfunction.  I can swear to that, and do swear to that."

Pilar : "Am I - being offered anything remotely resembling a fucking real choice, here?  Because if so, I'm missing it."

Ione Sala: "No.  You're being used.  Used to achieve your own interests, but still, used."

Pilar : "Hearing you be honest about that, is helpful."

"Will I think that all of this was a good idea, that I made the right choice here, after I get Wished up and put on the headband?"

Ione Sala: "You'll wish you'd figured out other things you haven't figured out, before coming to the City of Brass and being given information, and taken options you didn't see.  Of the options you do see, you'll endorse that you chose to get Wished-up.  You'll know that if you'd been a person who'd have figured it all out and acted earlier, Cayden Cailean wouldn't have invited you in, or given you as much information as you already had."

"You might not approve of the entire macroevent that's going on.  You'll prefer having been part of it to having been left out, and see that you were used in your own interests and not against them, in a sense that's deep, and real."

"I so swear."

Pilar : "Okay."

Ione Sala: "We'll do yours next, then!  I'm planning to hang out in the City of Brass doing even more shopping afterwards."

Pilar : "Like, ominous shopping of destiny, or..."

Ione Sala: "No, just fucking around and having fun because this is great."

Pilar : "I'd say that I'm glad somebody here is having fun, but I'd be lying."

Ione Sala: "Pilar?  Let me tell you one of life's deepest secrets.  No matter what else is at stake, and no matter what else is going on around you, no matter what ominous storm gathers just over the horizon out of sight, no matter what you don't know, and no matter what you're already afraid you know -"

"- anybody who can't have fun as a sixth-circle oracle on a City of Brass shopping trip, with an unlimited budget, is fucking doing it wrong."

"Now how about if we get you a permanent intrinsic +5 to all abilitystats, and you try not to whine about that.  Is this some kind of subby thing?  Because for somebody who grew up in Cheliax it's amazing how much you whine."

Pilar : Ione has a point, not that Pilar is going to admit it, but she does.

...Wait a minute.

Ione's already been to Wish shops.  She's already got +5 Splendour on top of her headband.  Probably got that in the first one she visited.

That fucker.

City of Brass: +5 Constitution.

City of Brass: +5 Dexterity.

City of Brass: +5 Strength.

Pilar : She doesn't ask why Ione is doing this in that order, because she already knows.  It's a kind of gentleness, and Ione is Good.