About twenty minutes into her beauty appointment, which thankfully involves things being spread on her face and doesn't require much of even her unenhanced attention, it does occur to Carissa that nobles who are also fifth-circle sorcerers don't run miscellaneous transportation errands Security could handle. 

Doesn't she have a country to run? But that's not even a reasonable complaint, really, because everyone knows full well that this little project is the most important thing in it, and that this little project will succeed or fail on Carissa's judgement.

And if it fails, then if she's lucky she'll go to Hell.

Asmodia could not possibly be less relatable; Carissa finds herself in fact utterly furious with her, for having the thing Carissa wants more than anything else in the world, and trying, like a toddler too caught in the throes of a tantrum to be reasoned with, to rid herself of it, the only inheritance she has, the only good thing about being human. 

She does remember to ask if she can also be fitted for clothes appropriate to her hypothetical station. 

Guillem & Arnau does not provide that service, but there is a fine clothier two streets up, if madam customer is sure she can afford their services; or if this is part of a government operation, they can append a few words requesting clothing-purchase assistance to the pickup request.

(Carissa has now gained a permanent +1 inherent bonus to Comeliness.)

Yes, please, on appending it to the pickup request; she is sure she can't afford it. 

It's not incredibly obvious, looking in the mirror; it's the difference between how one looks on a good day versus on a bad day. She could get away with not explaining it to Keltham, except for the policy of only telling lies they actually need. Also, she wants to keep doing it, so. 

She does not yet feel like she has understood the desires in herself that have no place in Axis, but - well, yes, okay, she has, she wants to rewrite the book of Asmodia to have REASONABLE PRIORITIES and be GRATEFUL FOR HER LIFE, that's not a desire that has a place in Axis, but not the pride related ones. Yet.

Pickup arrives in the form of somebody who looks like a slightly tired (that is, not noticeably to anyone who isn't Chelish) courtier who will escort Carissa to upscale clothing stores and buy clothing for her that a countess's heir should have.  Actual teleport to follow.

(Theoretically this decision gets made by Paraduke Ratarion, but the person who received the initial message made a snap decision that his decision here was predictable enough to guess and be corrected if necessary.  In an Asmodean tyranny, this is a bad thing to guess and be wrong about, but not insignificantly a good thing to guess and be right about.)

A countess's heir apparently would have a lot of clothes, more than are really feasible to own or wear or get from place to place; a countess's heir, of course, would have servants which would help on the feasibility front.

Carissa is not sure how much agency she is supposed to exert about the clothes-acquisition process but she figures more countesses' heirs err on the 'spoiled' side than on the 'meek' side so she tries to make demands, which go over fine; she wants fabrics that look like they'd be incredibly hard to do by machine, because they're labor-intensive and sufficiently non-repeating, since dath ilan will probably find those more impressive; a lot of laces are satisfactory on that front. She thinks that Keltham will be unamused by anything that takes an hour to lace up, so those are out. 

She wants a dragonhide purse, because dath ilan won't have that, and she's tempted by necklaces that have tiny humanoid fae trapped inside them, pounding frantically at the crystal, but probably Keltham would get worried about them and ask if they want to be let out. 

....this is just occurring to her: do countesses' heirs who have a sadistic boyfriend have - she's not even sure what she's imagining - imaginative sex clothes of some kind. The obvious version would be, like, shirtsleeves that can lace together so as to bind your hands behind your back rather than lacing separately, or... maybe there's a particularly spiky kind of lingerie? Fabric is so expensive that Carissa thinks of this as a fairly ridiculous indulgence but now that she's thought of it it seems like someone would've, probably. 

The courtier doesn't blink.  Yes, Ostenso has several shops for government-approved Asmodean subwear.  Most, however, target sufficiently wealthy people buying subwear suitable for their pets and slaves.  There's only one such shop that would be socially appropriate to a countess's heir purchasing subwear for herself to wear of her own accord, and that one may already be closed or closing soon.

Inconvenient. Can someone check whether it's in fact 'closed' or 'closing-soon', it'd be nice to bring Keltham back at least one thing from this shopping trip,

Because she is human and bad at the things humans are bad at, Carissa feels - what? distress at the thought they'll assume she's just like this as a person? Their opinion of her does not matter, and if she were just like this as a person then her life would be more convenient, and maybe she is just like this as a person, with the right handling which she just hasn't sought out. The embarrassment survives all these compelling counterarguments.

The courtier isn't much of a wizard and doesn't have extra message scrolls; they'd have to head there to look, but it's not that far.

Sure. Carissa is not pathetic enough to let embarrassment influence her. She will go to the other shop. Knock.

Someone opens the door.  "We're closing in thirty," she begins, but then catches sight of Carissa's Worldwound uniform and the tired-looking courtier next to her.  "We're always open for the Church or the Crown," she says a moment later.

"Good of you. I need something to wear. The intended audience is an innocent young man from a very Lawful Good country who is reconsidering what they taught him it's all right to do in bed."

The courtier adds that this situation is not any higher priority than would be appropriate to a count's heiress shopping at this store; they're not to bring out anything or offer any services they wouldn't offer to a count's heiress.

Strange and interesting, on both counts, but the door-answerer is certainly not arguing or asking any questions of this Obvious Intelligence Operation.  She'll quickly escort them to the relatively tamer sections of refined noble Asmodean subwear.  "You probably want things labeled Perversion 15 through Perversion 20," she says.

There are labels????? There's a scale?????????? But presumably what's interesting is both highly personal and incredibly contingent on past....whatever. Carissa will trust the system. What sorts of things have those labels.

Perversion 15:  Ballroom clothing suitable for a Baroness, not quite at the Countess level; elaborate, but nothing that would overly impede a dagger-fight if you had to do that instead of dance.  Cunning pleats and overlaps in the clothing would enable a lover to reach right through it for pleasure or punishment, in any number of various places and angles, without any need of removing it.

Perversion 17:  Loose slave garments and not-cripplingly-expensive-to-lose harem jewelry that would be suitable for a noble surrendering herself to a higher noble for sexual punishment after being defeated in a contest of wills and powers; according to a not-particularly-legible etiquette code that absolutely does distinguish this case from the case of a noble who got physically captured by another noble and forcibly redocorated by them, in which case, obviously, you'd be shopping at one of the other stores instead, because this store is only for noble submissives who are doing their own shopping.  It's not considered gauche or mockery to wear this clothing even if you're not really surrendering yourself to a higher noble, and is instead a pleasing roleplay or flattery, which makes it much more popular than the primary use-case would suggest.

In many cases, one can tell on a close examination that this is definitely subwear that noble Asmodean submissives buy for themselves, rather than subwear for Asmodean dominants to buy for their subs; because the subwear is visibly designed in some way to allow or require the submissive to put herself into it, rather than for her to be restrained while somebody else puts subwear on her.  (Obviously this is a matter of fashion signals rather than practice; it's not like you couldn't threaten somebody into putting this stuff on.)

The male-focused section of the store floor is smaller, maybe a quarter of the size, but very much existent (for the benefit of that very very rare Asmodean who wanders into a store like this one and starts pondering anything to do with gender disparities).

Carissa has never really given a lot of thought to how the nobility lives, beyond deciding a decade ago she didn't want to be a court wizard because the mortality rate was appalling. Her plan was to start a magic shop, figure out who was the most important person to bribe, make them something beautiful every year for a present, and assume that sufficient to keep her out of everything else. 

Her feeling now, looking at all of this, is - faintly infuriated? It seems very - fake - like they're playing the game of having sex, instead of just having sex like normal people. Carissa is not actually sure she is very interested in the game of having sex. She tends to have sex for advantage, which means that when she's having sex it's with people who have power over her, rather than people she has power over, but that's not a game, that's just how everyone's incentives are shaped. This is a game. The consequences are real but the thing itself doesn't seem any less fake, for that. 

She understands, maybe, what Maillol was trying to tell her, that it wasn't all right for Keltham to have her because she said it was. That comes from the same world as this, a world where everything is a game, where someone might decide to put on these clothes and seduce someone just because it's fun, playing with the inevitable natural order of the universe but only that, playing. 

Carissa is pretty sure that her actual sexuality, which she unfortunately needs to keep track of because there's no time in her schedule at present to learn to fake it, doesn't resemble this. It is about belonging to someone with the power to do whatever they like with you, yes, but - it's not about belonging to them because you're into that. It's not about the fact power is sexy, it's just about power. It feels like a real distinction, at least inside her head. Insofar as it features clothes like this at all they were definitely picked for her by someone who likes her in them, not picked out herself. 

Okay setting aside her actual sexuality, which being the product of a human mind is going to be stupid and incoherent, what does she want? Some of the fancy outfits that look like they definitely couldn't have been manufactured overnight as part of an elaborate effort to convince Keltham that masochism is a real thing, some things that look like they'd obviously only work with the cooperation of the wearer, some things for farther in project corrupt Keltham which don't as obviously only work with the cooperation of the wearer  - she tries to model Keltham's reactions about magic chastity belts and Keltham in her head is making a face but not a 'no' face so she'll grab that -

- she has a unhappy feeling that somehow looking at the more-dangerous stuff at all counts as flirting with Her Infernal Magistrix. Because everything counts as flirting with Her Infernal Magistrix, or at least everything done in the slightest awareness it might have effects on Her Infernal Magistrix. Anyway pushing Keltham too far too fast might make him decide to think too hard about the whole situation, so she won't get any of that. Yet. 

"I think this is enough for now," she says, once she's picked out an outfit for ballroom dancing, which she does not do, while sexually accessible, which pants work fine for, and the magic chastity belt, "unless you're apprised of the whole situation enough to have opinions and advise otherwise."

It's hard to figure out which possible responses to that potentially get her hand burned off in a way that non-government-employees don't get free healing for.  She's obviously not apprised of the whole situation, which suggests that she definitely shouldn't say anything, but that's too obvious to be the meaning.

"I have no experience or training in honeypot operations targeting unsuspecting Lawful Good targets.  Government-approved literature has seemed to suggest that presenting yourself to a Lawful Good man in obviously self-applied bondage," gesturing at the outfit of leather straps, "will tempt him to do things to your helpless form, without that seeming to hurry him along the path to inflicting pain; and that tickling is useful as an intermediate step towards getting him to hurt you," gesturing at a shelf of tickling implements and lubricants labeled Perversion 3, "but I don't know if any of that's meant to be useful advice or a fictional conceit."

Realistically shouldn't this be asked of a honeypot operator with experience targeting the boy's home country?  But there's presumably some reason they aren't doing that and instead asking her and also aren't giving her any more information??  Citing only government-approved advice is the only tactic she can think of for possibly getting out of this with mostly inexpensive injuries.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, Carissa would just like people to say things if they think she should actually know them and not otherwise. You know, people say that the Worldwound is bad for Cheliax because of how most of the national wealth is going towards fighting an endless horde of demons but she’s starting to wonder if it’s actually good for Cheliax because it’s a place where if you waste too much time or play too many games you get eaten, which both winnows out idiots and is character-promoting for everyone else. “Great,” she says shortly. “How much for this, then.”

40gp for everything else and 340gp for the Cursed Belt of No Touch.  (It would be more if it was an adventure-grade cursed item and not a bedroom-grade one.)

She glances over at the courtier in case she has opinions about whether Carissa is allowed to spend that much on sex toys.

The courtier continues to feel nervous about correcting Carissa Sevar in any way even when she is seeking guidance, let alone having any opinions on what Carissa Sevar is allowed to do, but has nonetheless been instructed to make sure Sevar doesn't make any accidental purchases she shouldn't, so:

A countess's heir could own a small handful of sex toys costing that much, but wouldn't own dozens of them.  This mission hasn't run out of gold yet, though they're getting close to the amount the courtier has on her.

These both seem like very safe opinions to express and not ones that will cause Carissa Sevar or Rathus Ratarion or Aspexia Rugatonn or a suddenly appearing pit fiend to kill her.

(This background anxiety doesn't show at all to Carissa; the courtier is experienced.)

Carissa is not very interested in peoples' internal states as long as it doesn't cause them to waste her time or not tell her things. "Great, then, let's get these and then swing back to the other store for one normal outfit, and they can take my measurements so I don't have to leave for future orders."

If Asmodeus has taken a personal interest in that event happening, the courtier isn't going to argue with it.

The items go into a standard military-issued common-use Bag of Holding.  Back to other clothing stores!

Carissa will get one nice dress that isn't a special sex dress and an undergarment for it, and not ask anyone any questions they are too nervous to usefully answer, and get all her measurements so that she can order future dresses that are even better fitted, and then she can be done with this ordeal and hopefully not have missed dinner...judging by the time, she probably missed dinner.

Keltham has acquired a timepiece that he will someday remember to check again!  He's found out that Cheliax is 85% farmers implying that their food-per-person gain function is 7/6 (~1.17) in which case anything that produced a permanent 1/7 decrease in farming productivity would cause human life in Cheliax to stop existing!  There maybe shouldn't be all that many priorities higher than increasing the food-per-person gain on farming to something more like, say, 100, or at least 10.  Dinner probably happened at some point, he isn't really focusing on that.

Keltham is currently experimenting with Prestidigitation to see if he can Prestidigitate things to be magnetic, magnetizable, or to have rotating magnetic fields inside them.  How's that going for him?