"The prisoner part isn't a plus!"

"I'm sure that as marriageable Osirian men go you are top percentile in all the Osirian-husband-ly virtues," Belmarniss assures Mahdi. "Buuuut she's Chelish. It's hurting us kind of a lot here that we can't openly advertise, I can think of places I'd try asking... church per se wouldn't want her?"

"For us geas is sixth circle, not fourth, there's a lot fewer people who can cast it. And - they're going to be even more in favor of the marriage plan, on the grounds that it's also better for her. - I don't know that it is. But most people are certainly going to think so. It - sounds a lot better, right, married and studying magic with her husband, compared to in a cage making magic items every day..."

"But the cage is the thing she asked for."

"I know. I can ask whether the confidentiality agreement allows me to ask."

"It's possible she'll get along famously with Mahdi but if she doesn't - and I'm not actually sure how well we can tell under these conditions, she has fewer ways to pull levers here than a drow boy whose mom gambles! -"

"Yeah." Sigh. "Same problem with trying to talk her out of Asmodeanism though that is also probably worth a shot."

"With that you can at least verify it since Atonement won't go if she's bullshitting."

"Let's meet the girl, we can spin our wheels about this just as well in her company and maybe it'll be helpful for her to see that we're - trying."

"Yeah, all right."

And he takes them down into Lastwall's dungeons.

"Knock knock, it's your matchmaker's entire adventuring party!"

Carissa smiled at the first female guard she saw and asked if they'd mind doing her hair nicely, unsure whether this was the sort of thing you get Good points for or not; the guard agreed, so probably it is, and now she looks nice and hates everyone passionately. 

She turns when they walk in and - a smile is a hard sell, and looking right at them probably isn't being meek enough - very shy smile, looking at the floor. 

 - sigh. "Carissa, this is Mahdi and Hagan and Belmarniss."

"Nice to meet you."

"We have been discussing whether there is anybody we can safely ask about you at all who would be able to keep you and would only want magic items out of you as opposed to needing the deal sweetened. Mahdi is known to us as a lovely person, at least if you like stereotypical Osirian wizards, and signed the nondisclosure on Fazil's say-so, which gives him a big leg up in the general field of competitors here, but it has occurred to us that if you can't stand his nose you might not tell us so we're trying to be very clever. - Geas is higher-circle for clerics but would the church of Nethys maybe go for it, they're often wizards too, they have that side hustle with the wine and could probably move some items too if they don't already -"

It is sort of promisingly candid, though she's mostly trying to not have feelings, which won't help; the kinds of people who prefer to buy crying slaves are generally precisely the kind you don't want. 

"I'd like that, if it could be made to work," she says evenly. "I think I can definitely make it worth someone's spell slots.

The problem as I understand it is that I have no real means to object if someone, having made that deal, decides to make it any sweeter, so Fazil thought I should get ahead of that and sign myself over to one who will have thereby acquired an interest in keeping others off. And who I can pick."

"Do you think you should do that?"

"I don't think we'll get anywhere if I lie to you," she lies. "This isn't what I wanted a month ago. I am still a little worried that we have wildly different concepts of how it'd work, somehow. But - I want the chance to be safe, and worth something, and it makes sense that the way to do that in your society is marriage, and I would be really happy, if there were a way to make it work."

"You aren't in fact in Osirion at the moment. If some other society would do for the constraints at hand there's no special reason you have to go to Osirion. I'm not going to propose we sell you to my great-grandma, here, but by all means speak up if you... have vampire friends in Geb and want to go be a vampire, I don't immediately know that wouldn't work."

"I haven't heard there's anything wrong with Osirion except the weather."

"You can just have Endure Elements up all the time and then you don't even notice."

"That's what I did at the Worldwound."

"What were you doing at the Worldwound at third circle, they mostly recommend it to adventurers at fifth, sixth -"

Mindreading for Her Majesty's Eleventh. "I'm a weapons enchanter. I got down every style I'd seen in Corentyn but that's mostly just the basics, I wanted to see - demonsbane arrows and vicious swords and plate armor with spell resistance and so on. And the Worldwound draws adventurers from all over. So I went and I didn't fight, just hung around and talked people into letting me look at their swords and armor." Does that make her sound like a slut. Probably. She hates Osirion. "I wanted to open my own shop, eventually." She wanted every soldier in Cheliax to have the best weapons and armor in the world, you can get materials free if you're making things for the crown.

"That's pretty clever - you don't level that way, though, were you going to kit yourself up with something snazzy and then kill things or are you just super not into killing things?"