"Am I going to understand why anyone would consider his own reputation shattered by the mere existence of an untrue rumor that somebody who was not him was sleeping with somebody else who was not him, or why the rumor affects Carissa's attractiveness to him independently of the truth of the rumor, if you try to explain that using only two sentences?"

"Probably not and I suggest asking Sevar about the topic later.  Though if you introduce the specific rather than the general context, you might want to take care to ask her... carefully."

"I'm not going to ask you for an oath that potentially destroys your soul," because Good people may be all too willing to sacrifice it, if they think that's sufficiently motivated.  He considers, momentarily, trying to tap her with a truthspell, but in worlds where she's lying and can't defeat the truthspell, a lot of chaos would break loose moments later, and this may not be the place for it.

Also the rumor is, you know, credibly not true at all, and if it were true, it could be consensual -

- and if it weren't consensual, Carissa might be into that??  Is that how it works???

"Why would I need to introduce the topic to Carissa carefully?" Keltham says, feeling a sudden tinge of dread.

"Because, while the specific balances of power between the Church of Asmodeus and the House of Thrune are complicated and you are frankly unlikely to understand them going on your current level of Golarion political sophistication, the Queen of Cheliax is arguably, and especially as Carissa might see it, the other person in all of Cheliax who could, so far as Carissa knows, successfully get her chained to a bed whether she liked that or not.  It would cost the Queen serious political capital with the Church of Asmodeus, but they wouldn't burn down the country over it."

- okay probably Her Imperial Majestrix is mostly talking to Keltham for project reasons but Carissa feels like perhaps it'd be valuable to Her Imperial Majestrix to note that the constraint here is that Asmodeus has intentions for Carissa. And maybe, if that is restricting Her Imperial Majestrix from things she'd otherwise like to do, they can ensure Carissa remains shaped appropriately for Asmodeus's goals with memory-erasing magic so Carissa has no idea what the Queen is doing with her?

...Carissa's model of Aspexia Rugatonn is still not happy about that plan and oh, yep, that'd be why Maillol's in trouble, he waded into a Church-Crown conflict. 

Over Carissa. 

PRESUMABLY THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF GIRLS AS PRETTY AS HER AND EXACTLY AS TERRIFIED OF THE QUEEN -

 - okay set that aside and focus on Keltham. How is he taking this, they may have pushed him too far.

Keltham is mostly - confused!  "We would ordinarily say in dath ilan that it was not my business or even much of a terrible problem whether Carissa developed a crush on the Queen of Cheliax, and we would also expect that situation to be resolved among mature grownups by Carissa sending the Queen a note to see if she was interested and the Queen's secretary replying 'no'.  Or is the problem that Carissa is mono-romantic," Taldane lets him construct the word, thankfully, and hopefully it's obvious what it means, "and falls out of love with me if she falls in love with someone else?"

"Has nobody mentioned yet to you who the Queen of Cheliax is, exactly.  Their - general personal attributes."

Oh no.

Tonia Barrero, when he asked her, under truthspell, what questions somebody in his position ought to ask somebody under truthspell, listed, 'What sort of person is the Queen of Cheliax', and said a few things that didn't - make much sense at the time, and then said she didn't know much more, in which case, why did she bring up the question - he should have asked her that, in retrospect, but he was very uncomfortable with the maybe-arguably-at-best-semiconsensual-pseudo-mind-reading situation and wanted to get out of it early.

If Keltham's trope alert level had already been raised to its current point, he might, possibly, have remembered earlier to ask more questions, of Carissa say, about this obvious plothook.

"She - took power when she was sixteen, which is young even for Golarion - I guess by coming in and killing whoever previously held power, because she was stronger?"

If Keltham's ~~~~~ alert level had already been raised to its current point, he might, possibly, have remembered earlier to ask more questions, of Carissa say, about this obvious plot~~~~.

What the fuck is a ~~~~~!?  And did he just call her a 'plot~~~~'?  What's a 'plot~~~~'!?

And damn straight she was stronger, little boy, when she was younger than you are now.

Isidre shakes her head.  "By executing the compact with Asmodeus that transformed Cheliax into its present form, which did include the careful removal of many elements of the then-current power structure and their replacement with more sensible persons, which in turn did involve a certain amount of early departure for the afterlife.  But, Keltham, you really need to understand what Cheliax was like before that, before you suggest that we should have made any different choices there.  Dath ilan, unless I entirely miss my guess, would have regarded them as extreme criminals under whatever notion you have of criminality."

"I'm more used to the Chief Executive of a country getting there by a different process, yes.  Well, let me ask you a question that, apparently, I should've asked somebody else some time earlier.  What sort of person is the Queen?"

"Abrogail Thrune the Second is a few years older than Sevar, now, but that is still - really very young, for a Queen, and she often does not pretend to conduct herself as if she is any older or more mature than she actually is.  Maybe in dath ilan you wouldn't expect any such pretense, but it is expected here, and she often does not make it.  She is a sorceress of vast power, among the strongest casters in this country and truly inferior to only one, without which basic requisite she could not survive even now in the new Cheliax.  Rumors would paint a different picture of her, possibly; but based on a more direct knowledge of Abrogail, I would personally say, myself, that she spends far too much of her time doing her duties and not nearly enough time doing things she finds fun, and that her closest advisors are currently making this problem worse.  If you were a Golarion native, I would say that her Evil standing might be threatened, at this rate; but a Golarion native would understand that for hyperbole, it isn't really.  But she has been possibly - I don't know if you have the expression.  Building up frustration."

"She also happens to be a sexual sadist like yourself.  Though that is, again, a much more common thing here and not exceptional, but still."

"She has a known type.  Carissa matches it."

Keltham's trope alarms are going off so flamingpoop hard right now.  He's never heard of such a walking trope.  The Queen of Cheliax must be more trope than flesh.

WHAT THE FUCK IS A ~~~~~?

...but the person in front of him doesn't know that, doesn't think like that, so why would she -

"Surely there are many other women in Cheliax who are also her type, especially if Carissa's type is as common as you say.  Why would you expect the Queen to be interested?"

An EXCELLENT FUCKING QUESTION.

"I am not sure that you properly appreciate who your current girlfriend is, precisely, perhaps because she has held back from telling you.  Carissa Sevar had the best spellcraft of anyone at her Worldwound installation, including wizards two circles higher than her wearing +4 Intelligence headbands.  Sevar produced enchanted weapons of extraordinary quality and precision.  I am reasonably sure that Sevar understands the Law you have spoken upon better than any of your other current students.  Better than me, with my headband that provides +6 to Intelligence and +4 to Wisdom, a literally priceless and irreplaceable relic of Cheliax second only to the crown worn by the Queen herself.  I'm too busy to directly attend your lessons, it would leave a genuinely huge gap in our government structure if I did, but even if I was there, I am not confident I would understand those lessons better than Sevar does.  Cheliax has only twenty million people in it, Keltham, almost all of them very poor and very few of them approaching what you would consider to be average intelligence."

"...also I've observed Abrogail paging through the sections of reports mentioning Sevar looking more than usually interested, so."

"I am interested - if there is any possible way for events to go, past this point, that could possibly be not complicated."

Is Sevar internally screaming about this?  Abrogail hopes she's internally screaming.  You have to work hard to get the level of justified internal screaming that Abrogail hopes this is producing.

Carissa was braced for the Queen to say a bunch of flattering nonsense that has nothing to do with the real reason which is that Asmodeus chose her. Or, well, maybe Asmodeus choosing her was related to her understanding the Law better than almost anyone, but, realistically, it was probably a combination of that plus being attractive to Keltham plus being a heretic in a coincidentally useful direction -

- anyway. Obviously the Queen of Cheliax doesn't like Carissa for the traits that Carissa values most in herself. It would be pathetic to believe that. It would be pathetic to believe even if it's being spoken into your ears with very high Splendour by someone who would know. Carissa is not pathe- okay, Carissa is pathetic, Carissa has spent like five percent of her mental motions this conversation on being happy that Keltham is protective of her, you can't do that and then claim you're not pathetic, but Carissa's not that pathetic. The Queen wants Carissa because she can't have her, and Carissa's personality has very little to do with it, because one doesn't show that much personality while being horribly tortured anyway and the thing the Queen wants to do with Carissa is horribly torture her. This is the not pathetic thing to believe and Carissa believes it. 

But it's true that she had the highest spellcraft at her Worldwound installation. And it's kind of nice that Cheliax did have that written down somewhere. (Unless they didn't, and learned it from her irritably thinking it earlier today, which now that she thinks about it seems likelier.)

And it's true that she understands something no one else did, which made Asmodeus choose her. 

....and it's true that he'd have done that even if there were only a tiny chance she did anything useful, and that if she fails he won't care if the Queen turns her into a statue and she never ever ever exists again. Stop being pathetic you will be gone you won't exist the stakes are much too high to be that contemptible 

Carissa exists because she might serve Asmodeus and might serve Cheliax, and she intends to try to do that, and she does not have any feelings at all.

Somebody needs to have a talk with that girl about how Asmodeus does not necessarily desire a tyranny in which all the victims suffer very boringly and pretend to have no feelings about what's being done to them.

"If this world is governed by - not the patterns I recognize - then you'd expect that this problem could be solved through the Queen's closest advisors having a talk with her about how it's a bad time to mess around with the project that Asmodeus started and complicate it, especially when a war with Nidal and a war between the gods just started.  And then finding her literally anybody else to get laid with."

"That sort of talk has been the approach taken by the Queen's closest advisors for too long a time, and I'm not sure it's really working at this point."

"Keltham, you're missing a lot of context here on how submission works, but - among the approaches that had occurred to me, if things developed in that direction of greater complication - was seeing if the Queen could rent Sevar from you for a half-day for five hundred gold pieces and get it out of her system.  Please don't object that you don't own Sevar, the point is that this is a recognized practice when somebody like Sevar gives herself to you, and the fact that the Queen would be renting Sevar from you means that she isn't stealing Sevar from you or fighting with you over Sevar and the whole thing is occurring in a way that acknowledges Sevar is yours and not the Queen's and the Queen only gets to have her because you said so -"

"Did that - make any sense to you, at all, or do I need to back up, I'm sorry if that's all coming on too quickly -"

"That's a very heroic attempt to avoid and defuse that complication, and I will put some additional questions on hold to admire your cleverness and creativity there."

"The problem is, if this world isn't governed by patterns, that won't be necessary because the Queen will have one drop of common sense anywhere in her intelligence-boosting super-headband."

"And if this world is governed by the patterns I see, the Queen literally can't make any decision except pursuing Sevar in a way that brings her into conflict with me, possibly the sort that resolves with her being revealed as having finally betrayed Asmodeus and removed from office, and possibly the sort that resolves with the Queen also added to my harem, but the point is, expecting the Queen to not make things more complicated is like asking for Pilar not to end up in Elysium, which no doubt made things more complicated, or for Ione to not deliver prophetic warnings, or for masochists not to exist, or for me to not land close to Sevar at the Worldwound.  If the Queen could make any other choice but the one that the 'trope' requires her to make, you'd have some different Queen instead."

"I'm - I'm sorry, I don't think I understood.  Are you saying that if the Queen doesn't pursue Sevar, she'll - be overthrown by a different Queen?  Or blink out of existence?"