She nods, silently, and proceeds, silently, and imagines Contessa Lrilatha telling Abrogail to leave Carissa alone, because that must be - that's pretty much what Abrogail said happened. How would that even go. Would you go find a couple dozen other Carissas to distract Abrogail with. Poor dozen other Carissas who didn't have the good sense to be in the right place at the right time. 

(She hopes they're not statues. That's not entertainment-at-the-misfortune-of-another, that'd just be sad.)

(That's not heretical, right? Wanting every soul to find its way to Asmodeus?)

Keltham tries to figure out how he'd feel about telling the Chelish government - well, not to give him Carissa or else, because, like, that is stupid on so many different levels both as decision theory and as a trap that Isidre could be setting for him if she was less than absolutely trustworthy.  Please give him Carissa permanently or until he gives her back, to do with as he pleases, and have that be the regulation of Cheliax and not just an arrangement between the two of them, formalizing what Carissa gave him informally, as Carissa herself wants according to your very smart people; and in return Keltham charges Cheliax very very slightly less of their GDP increase, or some such.

It's not - particularly landing, at this point?

In a world with Pilars, Keltham can see, somehow - not with the eyes of dath ilan but with the eyes of his own sexuality, that had no place available for it in dath ilan in a way that wasn't anyone's fault - Keltham can see how there could be a submissive!woman gender-subtrope that is like being pursued and dated, but more so.  He can imagine how that gender-subtrope of woman might think it was more romantic for a man to desire her so much that he came in and just took her away, paying costs to do that but never asking.  The question of how this ends up with the right people matched, and without giant flaming obvious incentive problems if a man likes a woman who doesn't like him back, may perhaps rest on Golarion institutions unknown to him; or it may be a reason why this desire unsatisfiable in reality is fed mainly by Golarion romance novels.

He can imagine that Carissa wants that - even if he's pretty sure he's not imagining it correctly, true to the real Carissa Sevar, it's enough to explain why a possible person would want that.  To be in - metaphorical bed-chains, in her larger social and legal situation, chains that she wears always, as proof that a man wanted her that much.

Carissa wants it, let's suppose that to be true; does that situation appeal to Keltham himself?

...not really.  The part where Carissa gives herself to him feels deeper and more meaningful, to him, than that choice being taken away from Carissa so that Keltham no longer knows she's still making it.  It's a choice that says Keltham is worthy, that he and his sexuality are worth so much to Carissa, that she has judged him and chosen him even though she could have had another, that he is valuable to Carissa in a way he was not so valuable to any woman in dath ilan.

Is there some way you still get that in full measure, if somebody is with you because they can't escape within Golarion and have opted not to escape to the afterlife?

Keltham isn't seeing it, for now.  Maybe his thoughts are being too crystalline and logical about it; too denying of subtleties and forcing it all into 'well, but then therefore' where people could just opt to not conclude that therefore.  Maybe there is a way that Keltham can know Carissa still finds him worthy, even as she lives truly in the world where she has no other choice.  Well.  Like the Detect Desires spell, for example.  If you have that around for people who can afford it, then it is obviously going to change some things -

SHIT.

Does Isidre do that to the people around her.  Cast Detect Desires around them, or have it cast by a cleric who reports to her, and maybe not a cleric of Asmodeus either.

Keltham is trying not to believe it too hard, but his brain just shouted very loudly "YES SHE DOES", because Isidre knows far too much about what various people want.  And it is extremely the sort of deontology violation that you'd expect from a Good person with a deficit of Law, an overly powerful intelligence headband, and horrifying problems that are horrifically large.  Isidre would reason that the privacy violation was just not really that important, on the scale of twenty million people; and even if her intelligence headband lets her fake some intuitive shadow of the Law of Coordination, she might still argue to herself that knowing more true facts about somebody is not something that ought to cause a breakdown of coordination.  Keltham isn't even sure she's wrong, he doesn't have her problems.  Call it 75% probability.

But suppose Carissa is fine with Detect Desires being used on her.  Though, maybe that aspect has to be illegible so Carissa doesn't have to admit to herself that she could escape by wanting to be free... well, leave aside the deontology violation of doing it without asking, suppose the thought experiment anyways.  Or maybe Carissa says Keltham is entitled to Detect Desires her and truthspell her whenever he wants, because that is part of what it means to give herself to him, and they never have to make mutually legible why or whether Keltham is doing that.

Consider that Least Convenient Possible World, for the argument against putting Carissa in a situation where the 'absolute-power' (Keltham thinks the Taldane word in Baseline) that Keltham has over her has been formally materialized and made real.  The world where Keltham casts Detect Desires every morning, or multiple times per day because Least Convenient Possible World, and the spell always says that Carissa still wants him and judges him worthy and would have him hold 'absolute-power' over her.

Then what?

Then Keltham does not really see the added appeal from his perspective; but it is not obviously, or not legibly obviously, something he couldn't do for Carissa to make her happier, at little cost to himself.

Except for where his mind just screamed that he is tilting further on that dangerous narrow ledge he is standing upon.  And also, Isidre warned him not to have that done to Carissa unless he wanted it for himself.

Keltham doing it because Carissa wants it is probably not what Carissa wants either.  The Golarion woman's romance novel is about the man who wants you that much in that way and not because he thinks it is something you need to be happy.

Maybe someday Keltham will come to feel for himself the thing that is the male complement of the gender-subtrope that Carissa has, where he wants for himself to make that 'absolute-power' real, and cast Detect Desires as a guardrail around it, and make it so that if Carissa can't stop wanting him then she can't stop having him either.  Maybe someday he'll understand better the grounds he stands on in Golarion, and it will no longer seem like something that would get you kicked out of most cities in dath ilan... well, no, not actually, they're just not going to do that to you in dath ilan, if Carissa is standing there saying 'get the fuck out of our private business, Civilization, I don't need you to protect me'.  No victim no crime, as the proverb goes.  So it isn't like that.  But maybe someday it will stop feeling like that.

Also Civilization would... what would they even think of a situation where Carissa is going 'Let me out, Civilization, I don't want to be here anymore!', to test the bounds of the chains placed on her and be reassured that they are real, and Detect Desires is showing that Carissa wants desperately for Civilization to laugh maniacally and say 'No you belong to Keltham now!'

Keltham is sad he will never get to subsidize this question in a voting prediction market.  He really wants to know what Civilization would think of it.  Well, no, actually he wants to see the enormous flamewar and Very Serious People shouting at each other that would happen if this question really came up.  But also he wants to know what Civilization would think of it.

What does the Kelthamverse think of it?

...The Kelthamverse is, what, three days old, at this point?  The Kelthamverse knows that it is a tiny baby world and wants to refer the question back to Civilization so that it has a good starting point.

But, mostly, this thoughtsearch has reached quiescence; there is not much expected value of logical information in searching further.  Keltham finds no desire within himself, for his own sake, to transform Carissa's free gift to him into a metaphorical chain that she wears always; and for him to do it for her sake is almost surely not what Carissa wants.  He will reopen the question when and if he finds within himself that gender-subtrope that is complement to Carissa's.

And meanwhile, he is not going to say anything to Carissa that sounds like 'Never forget, you've got the right to leave at any time!' because that would be stupid.

It's somewhat nervewracking, knowing Keltham is thinking and having no idea what he's thinking, being totally unsure whether at any moment he'll say 'great, okay, I resolved all my internal Good-training, go crawl into the fire' or 'hey, was that Isidre secretly the Queen of Cheliax in disguise, it was inferrable from several things she said' or 'I've decided Cheliax is too Good, can we relocate operations to Razmiran?' or .... actually, coming up with scary things Keltham might say isn't a productive thing to be doing. What if instead she tries to understand magnetism, so she can be impressive next time they try Prestidigitation, and then whatever happens will happen. Give up hope and endure.

"Carissa, meta-question, if I suspect Isidre of doing something that might or might not be incredibly criminal in Cheliax, maybe it is, maybe it's the sort of thing people like her are quietly expected to do, is that something I talk to you about."

Wow that's substantially worse than 'crawl into the fire'! 

"...at the Worldwound you are obligated to report things like that, to a different Lawful church if you think your own might fail to handle it. Here....I guess talking to me about it is a reasonable thing to do, let me think if there's a reason not to tell me -"

Are they going to have to escape -

"I think you should tell me."

"Isidre knows way too much about what various people want, and this isn't dath ilan so the people around her don't have a good sense of what you can't do with just an intelligence headband.  I suspect Isidre of having somebody, maybe a cleric not of Asmodeus, casting Detect Desires and reporting to her.  If she's not that cleric herself, come to think, or maybe it's also a wizard spell I didn't think to ask -"

"Anyways.  I'm at 75% probability that's what she does and that's taking into account how little I know."

"Targets would have included you, Pilar, maybe me if Asmodeus didn't specifically direct otherwise, and possibly, I am less sure about this part, the Queen of Cheliax."

Even in Taldor -

- but old Cheliax is Taldor, new Cheliax is Asmodeus's -

- safer not to lie. Except for how everything is a lie. Carissa has never found lying to be difficult before and these days it's like navigating a dungeon blindfolded. 

The fact that Cheliax could mind control Keltham and hasn't is useful evidence of good faith, and also she's already told him that - but also making it clear that Keltham wouldn't notice if sufficiently powerful people did it makes it impossible to preserve an escape avenue where Keltham concludes there's a rot that doesn't extend to the top - 

" - I'm going to start by saying things I'm very sure of and then get to things I'm less sure of," she says. "So, invasive divinations by default feel like something, it's possible to notice them happening to you. Probably, uh, Contessa Lrilatha, or the Queen herself, could cast an invasive divination you couldn't even detect - they could also do mind control that felt like your own choices - but anyone much less powerful than that would be running a reasonably high chance that their targets would notice. Unless there are some powerful secret magic items involved, which there might be.

When you cast Detect Desires on me I felt it, and I could've attempted to fight you off and probably succeeded. We should .... make sure you know what that feeling is and that you haven't felt it at any time in the last couple of days. Strongly predict you haven't, though. When the priest on duty at the Worldwound first got a revelation from Asmodeus about you, his instructions to me suggested that Asmodeus had very firmly prohibited - a very wide class of things including some we don't even think of as bad behavior - with respect to you."

"I haven't noticed unexpected invasive divinations or enchantments cast on me though I consented to a truth spell and some invasive divinations for Security screening for this project and I'm third-circle, not fourth, that makes a substantial difference in how powerful you'd need to be to be sure I wouldn't notice. And Pilar's second, which makes her even easier to hit. - and Pilar might've agreed to screening for various weird things, when she got back from Elysium, because she'd spent a bunch of time around Chaotic outsiders...

Trying to cast an invasive divination on the Queen of Cheliax is definitely an incredibly serious crime, like, they would execute you on the spot after making sure you weren't spying for somebody sort of crime. I think trying to cast an invasive divination on people involved in a secret project would be considered a big deal also. I - it might be one of those things where the Church and the Crown aren't entirely on the same page.

It is definitely the kind of thing you'd report at the Worldwound."

"Somewhat reassuring, and also, in retrospect, I shouldn't have said 75% for Detect Desires, that was too narrow a hypothesis, rookie cognitive error - magical items, sure, maybe, a function on that irreplaceable relic headband.  Or is there something that's like Fox's Cunning, Owl's Wisdom, Eagle's Splendour, but for reading people -"

True, not that damning, sort of inconvenient to admit but Keltham's already noticed a bunch of its correlates in various places. 

" - yeah. There is. Uh, not a spell, but there are magic items for it, and it's - a stereotype about nobles - that they're all ridiculously enhanced at it -"

"That - would plausibly be it, yeah.  I don't know what it can't do.  And if it's legal and not considered socially unacceptable, then Isidre seems like the sort of person who's extremely likely to get the most powerful version of it that exists."

"Well.  Maybe I ran ahead too far of my inference speed limit, there, too influenced by the 'trope' where you walk up to somebody and grimly say 'I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you know too much' and then prove that they couldn't have reached their conclusions from only the information they were supposed to have.  It would be more likely that Isidre was doing something undetectable and legal than that she was doing something incredibly illegal and where she might get caught."

Of course dath ilan has stories about that, and finds a special joy in discovering and uncovering it. 

Abandon hope and endure.

No. Win.

"I'm still not sure what a trope is but - yeah, I'd expect someone in her position is much much likelier to be achieving her results with powerful magic that no one really objects to - it works just as well if the other person has Mind Blank up, which is the intuitive line between 'just being uncannily good at looking' and 'using invasive magic' -"

"Mind Blank?"

"Eighth circle incredibly powerful abjuration that provides approximately categorical protection against divinations and enchantments targeting you. You can't get around it with a Wish, that's how powerful it is. If someone tries to scry the room you're in, the room will appear but you won't. If someone casts Detect Intelligence they'll detect all intelligent minds in the area except yours."

"And there's magic items of it but they cost eight million gold pieces and who knows they might be cursed."

"I actually don't even know a magic item of it to exist at all but if it did it'd certainly be priceless."

"And it can't possibly be what it sounds like, but I'll ask anyways just in case.  Wish?"

"Does what you ask for. - which is very bad and dangerous and there are organizations that'll kill you if they suspect you're trying to use a Wish. There are known safe phrasings for, like, fifteen, twenty things, very powerful things but not nearly as powerful as the spell's capable of but if you try something there's not a known safe phrasing for extremely bad things will definitely happen."

"Combo with twenty Auguries?" Keltham says, before it occurs to him that maybe he shouldn't be giving ideas like that away.

"Duplicating auguries doesn't work, you get the same answer. But there are more powerful spells for talking to one's god, like Commune, and ninth circle wizards with an INT of 30 do occasionally advisedly cast powerful Wishes, which I assume is how we got the known safe phrasings we do have."

"How the flaming noodles do you get to INT 30, even with a +6 Intelligence headband you'd have to start from INT 24 which is dath ilan +3 and then that takes you to dath ilan +6, I'm not sure we even have anybody who's actually that smart and not just a measurement breaking down.  If anyone here is that smart and not restricted from communicating like gods are restricted, Golarion shouldn't exist."

"One of the known safe wordings of a Wish is intelligence enhancement. Just +1; you need a chain of five Wishes cast in immediate sequence to get +5, and that's the most Wishes cast in sequence attested in all of history. So you'd have to start from 19, and we don't throw one of those often but in all of history we have. I don't know why having INT 30 didn't cause them to solve everything wrong in the world; maybe INT 30 doesn't actually perfectly correspond to the dath ilan + 6."

"That... was a thought that had occurred to me earlier, yeah, but with people supposedly INT 30 running around, I feel a lot more credence in that thought.  That Detect Intelligence isn't measuring everything that dath ilan thinks of as intelligence, and that the spells and headbands only enhance - what we'd see as one relatively narrow aspect of intelligence.  Dath ilan separates smartness into a lot of factors, I suspect what you call Intelligence and Wisdom together would be, like, three of seven main ones, or some such."

"Somebody with general smartness 30 and not just Intelligence 30 should - shred apart the reality of Golarion as they walk through it, I don't think there's any way you can be that generally smart and not figure out, like, the idea of selection on heritable variation."

"That could be. Though also maybe Archmage Nex a thousand years ago figured out selection on heritable variation but didn't, uh, tell everybody, because who knows if it'd have suited him. And there's no one that smart around now."

"What's the current highest INT?  If there's Detect Intelligence then is there also a Detect Wisdom spell?  What's the average Wisdom of a wizard-tracked student with Intelligence 18?"