"Right, okay, that's fair, she probably has an entire page of sexy sexy performance reviews on me. I would be stunned and impressed at your initiative and extremely confused and kneel very obediently for negotiations because if that's the kind of thing the Queen likes she would absolutely be taking notes on whether I was kneeling properly - I'm probably not, the palace has all kinds of rules for things like that."

"The Queen is a much more experienced sadist than I am.  Feeling insecure about whether she could successfully steal you from me, I insist on negotiating a term in our agreement saying that, if your affections shift too far from me towards her, I'm legally entitled to walk out on any current project obligations and take you with me, whether you like that or not, to a country that's okay with my owning you like I own my shirt.  The idea being that in this way Carissa Sevar never thinks in her heart that maybe the Queen has more real power over her than Keltham does."

Keltham deserves to see the face she made privately when he first came up with this plan, even though her feelings are mostly all dead now. 

"Not to fight this incredibly hot hypothetical too much but if the Queen wanted to keep me against my will, she knows how, and you don't. It takes some work, with wizards, and even the places that would agree that you - own me like you own your shirt - wouldn't be able to help you find me, if I summoned a horse made out of mist, in the night, and ran away." Is she making it obvious enough that her desired reaction here is not 'well obviously I'd let you go, then'?

Keltham entirely fails to take conscious note of this minor shift of ethical premises because he is a dath ilani boyfriend who has been handed a Problem to Solve!  "I've still got whatever pay I've accumulated from Governance, and the contract gives me enough time while Security holds you prisoner that I can look up whatever solutions are standard and deploy them on you."

See this is going exactly how Carissa planned except for the thing where Abrogail is furious with her, and if it continues to go exactly as planned Abrogail will work out her frustrations eventually. "I think the standard solution is to make them use all their spells and take their spellbook, which works on the ninety eight percent of wizards who don't have high enough Spellcraft to eventually learn how to scaffold without any special inks for structure. I do not think the standard solution is the one that the Queen of Cheliax would be using, if we are surmising that she read my records."

"I mean, the notion isn't that I'm taking the Queen head-on in a contest of wills and powers, the notion is that I cheated and got her signed agreement to lose to me before the contest started.  I don't have to hold hypothetical Carissa better than the Queen could, I just have to hold her so she can't get back to the Queen."

"But actually our story doesn't get this far!  The Queen of Cheliax mysteriously refuses to sign off on this absolutely and totally reasonable request I am making of her, despite Contessa Lrilatha and all of her other advisors telling her how absolutely and totally reasonable it is.  I break off negotiations and inform you that the Queen of Cheliax is a living manifestation of the same phenomenon that sent Pilar to Elysium, a belief further updated when it turns out that Asmodia started being able to see people's thoughts after she came back from Hell, and now we all have no choice but to flee back to our new project home.  I tell you that you are firmly forbidden from ever again meeting with the Queen of Cheliax, no matter how hot she is or how much your thoughts turn to all the scary things she could do to you, because everybody has a job to do and I don't want any more plot complications we can possibly delay or avoid.  What is your estimate of the effect this entire series of events would have on our relationship?"

" - Asmodia can what now? Uh, being tangentially present for palace romantic drama and being ordered to stay away from the Queen at all costs sounds hot but I feel like honestly in this situation my sexual feelings are mostly taking a back seat to my trying to figure out what the fuck phenomenon is messing with our project and how to kill it."

"Correct, Carissa.  Very correct."

Some further sexual hypotheticals follow.  Keltham then says they've done enough of those, on net he's feeling pretty reassured about some things, and excuses himself momentarily to dispatch a message to Isidre.

His oblivious girlfriend will hang innocently out on his bed.

She is very oblivious and innocent!  Carissa not having any idea what's she's about to walk into does make Keltham feel rather supervillainish, to the point where he has to fight back his conscience questioning whether Civilization would really, honestly approve of all this.

Carissa has been very very loud about wanting him to try more things in the cuddleroom, wanting him to take more risks, he checked under suddenly truthspell if she really believed he could trust what she was saying, and she did.  They have known each other for three whole days now, and it's time to move forward on ambitious third-date activities, like negotiating fallback ownership options on her so that he can safely rent her to the Queen of Cheliax as a romantic surprise.  If he can't do even that much, their relationship is hopeless!

Dath ilan spends a great deal of money and energy trying to prevent its overly smart people from getting bored by a life that is far less complicated than the most complicated life their brains could handle.

So far, in Keltham's experience, Golarion is doing legitimately better at this.  Credit where it's due.

Keltham pounces on his oblivious girlfriend and kisses her; and hurts her as best he can, without using any tools, squicking himself out, or being the Queen of Cheliax.

They are not going to advance all the way to sex, though.  Keltham has further work ahead of him this evening; and frankly, he is not sure he can make it through all that, if he is not sufficiently horny to remember why he's trying.  He does moderately expect that, if things go well enough, he can get fairly thoroughly laid afterwards.

His oblivious girlfriend is very satisfying to hurt, and very attracted to him, and gives no indication that she is bored of this and wants a more experienced sadist such as the Queen of Cheliax. 

(She...doesn't.)

There are some sights you see very rarely in Golarion, like a nude beach full of sunbathing drow, or a gnome and a ninja patiently feeding seaweed snacks to a dragon who is presently a hamster but which keeps flash-freezing them when it sneezes, or a mouse the size of a building smashing through to, and then pooping in, the innermost sanctum of the ancient imperial line of Minkai, or a pepper grenade roadside stand doing brisk business in the middle of the great desert, an overwrought and glittery temple of Iomedae, or a paladin on a shoplifting spree.

You do see them a bit more in Golarion than in other places, though.

There are some sights you see very rarely in Golarion, and one of those sights is the Grand High Priestess of Asmodeus clutching a sheaf of parchments and laughing so hard there are tears in her eyes and she's having to physically lean against the wall and is probably going to hit herself with Lesser Restoration when this is over to make up for how much she isn't breathing and all of these paroxysms are making her stomach physically hurt but none of this matters because Aspexia Rugatonn has now reached the part where Keltham is completely innocently explaining to the Queen of Cheliax that if she doesn't act like a fucking sane person for once in her entire life she will be either unceremoniously removed from the throne or forced to become his girlfriend.

That... might not be such a bad idea actually?  Though not in that sense, of course.

It's just that Keltham - for all his headstrongness, his errors, his delusions, his total spoilation and lack of discipline bestowed by his Lawful Good society's insanely permissive upbringing - still in other ways radiates a powerful impression that... well.   That he could not only understand Aspexia's notion of 'corrigibility' after three minutes of explanation, but would possibly even invent it all himself the moment he understood what Asmodeus's own problems were like as seen from His perspective.

They have no idea what dath ilani halfbloods will be like, at this point.  But depending on how they turn out, if they can keep half of all that Law and be raised also Evil, it's plausible that the Church of Asmodeus would really, really, and by 'Church of Asmodeus' Aspexia Rugatonn here means 'Aspexia Rugatonn', really, really, really want somebody on the throne of Cheliax who could understand the concept of 'corrigibility'.

Abrogail Thrune II's compact with Asmodeus says that, while she can bear any number of potential heirs to men of her own choosing, the Church may twice ask of her a father of the Church's own choosing.  As for who inherits, that is something that only a compact with Asmodeus can decide.

The Church hasn't asked that of Abrogail, so far, because there's been no candidate that would be worth the amount of fuss they'd get.  Abrogail's compact says that she needs to do it, but the incompetent devil who framed that compact unfortunately did not specify that Abrogail needed to act professional about receiving such a request.  Rather a massive oversight, as it turned out, among many others.  So far Abrogail has borne no children at all; but this is not a national problem, there are other Thrunes who could compact with Asmodeus.

Aspexia Rugatonn will have to seriously consider whether she wants to actually do this, or just threaten to do it in order to witness the look on Abrogail's face.  Those are the only two options, to be clear, there is no third.

But first she's going to finish reading.

Keltham receives notice that he has an Important Meeting in 10 minutes!  He thanks the messenger, closes the door, checks his new pocketwatch to establish the time, and goes back to being mean to Carissa for the next 8 minutes.

(This, to be clear, is less notice than you usually give a Chelish citizen for a royal audience, they will probably want to get dressed or write out a testament or some such.  But Abrogail Thrune does have any grasp of what Keltham hasn't the tiniest inkling about, and she does not particularly want to spend any additional time receiving him on an impressive throne.  As in, not one single additional minute.)

Bye, Carissa, sorry for all this going-back-and-forth but this is hopefully Keltham's last meeting-set of the day!  He'll probably be like at least thirty minutes; this would be a good time for Carissa to spend some time decompressing from the whole Security thing and getting in some alone time for herself.  Though, to be clear, that's not a command, it's just an idea.

The idea will be taken into account!

(Carissa could in fact use some time to herself, but does Abrogail want her for this?)

There's no Security showing up to escort her anywhere in particular.

Cool. Then she's going to snuggle under Keltham's covers and 

- if you'd told her two days ago that by the end of the third day she'd have Keltham demanding of Cheliax the legal right to take Carissa with him against her will anywhere he pleases, and reluctant to leave Cheliax because of being hunted by Kuthites, while Cheliax conquered Nidal using diamonds Otolmens gave their project, she'd be delighted.

She isn't, but that's because the torture seems to have burned out more feelings than just the inconvenient one. She wonders if Contessa Lrilatha ever has any feelings at all.

Within the center of Egorian's Imperial Palace is a tiny park, lit by magically artificial sunlight, with a brook of clear water that flows from nowhere to nowhere.  It doesn't see much use; Cheliax doesn't often receive visitors so naive as to be moved even subconsciously by the implication that this is where some Thrune likes to spend their spare time.

Abrogail Thrune II, now in her true outer form, is wearing royal robes much simpler than those she usually wears, and sitting in a simpler chair than the Throne of Cheliax.  She's flicking breadcrumbs to the fish that spend their whole lives confined to this artificial brook.

As much as Abrogail is annoyed by other aspects of the affair, including the manner in which she was the author of her own destruction, she's never going to get a chance to do this again in her entire life and have somebody actually buy it.  So, yes, she's feeding breadcrumbs to the fish.

Keltham, having left his escort behind a few steps ago, steps into the tiny park and gives an approving nod; like much of the Imperial Palace, this place seems acceptably pretty for a civilized society.

The Queen of Cheliax... is superstimulus-level hot the same way as Contessa Lrilatha, but much more dangerously so on account of looking human.  Keltham is glad that he knows that magical beauty treatments exist (is that why the plot point of Carissa getting one?) because otherwise his ero-route trope alarms would be blaring even louder.  It makes perfect sense that the Queen of Cheliax is absurdly hot, of course she is, she'd be able to afford it in a society with the economicmagic for that; it's not at all inevitably the case that she's going to try to steal Carissa, or that one way or another the two of them will end up fucking no matter how contrived the reason, no, not at all.

She also looks tired.  Exhausted, even.

"Sorry about this," Keltham says apologetically, as he comes over to sit in the chair left next to the Queen's own chair, which is exactly as fancy as hers.  "I realize you're probably pretty busy.  Exhausted even."

"Don't be too sorry.  This is less stressful than what I was doing before I came here."  So gently says the tired Queen of Cheliax, Abrogail, who, while not dangerously Good like Isidre, also has overly large problems and a headband too much more powerful than anyone else's.  "So you're the boy who's caused all this trouble, hm?"

"Can't quite tell if that was a joke across the cultural gap.  If not, there's a difference between setting off trouble and intending to create it.  Though the same proverb also says that making people any less responsible, than responsible for all the effects of all their actions, can create dangerous loopholes in things - but, I think for a case like this one, some of that distinction matters."

"It was a joke.  Mostly.  There may have been an edge to it, now that I think about it.  When war begins, there is a certain urge to look around and find somebody near to hand to blame."