"If Dou-Bral originally cooperated to seal Rovagug, Zon-Kuthon probably was pretty close to being dissatisfied enough with the state of the world that he'd prefer to destroy it.  Anything that brought hope into this world, anything at all, would have set him off."

Abrogail smiles with real humor.  (At least it's going to look like real humor to Keltham unless he has suddenly acquired rather an extreme number of ranks in Perception or Sense Motive.)

"I admire your ability to describe yourself as that which brings hope into the world.  Most boys your age would probably be a little embarrassed to talk about themselves that way."

Keltham is confused by this.  "I would've put more maybes and qualifiers around it, and called it more of a personal belief state than a public one, before Zon-Kuthon went straight for me and had to be sealed away by the other gods.  You've enough evidence now to know that the advertisement is certified accurate."

A sigh, but still a humorous one.  "I was teasing, or trying to.  I suppose it didn't make it across the - what did you call it - cultural gap."

Keltham associates that kind of apparent-mating-value-lowering 'teasing' with Complicated Flirting where you're maneuvering for relative advantage if you actually end up in a relationship.  Keltham was really hoping that was not going on here.

Time for a quick change of subject.  "Don't suppose you've got your own plans for a meeting agenda?"  He'd usually whiteboard it, but the park has nothing to write on, let alone writing materials.

By Keltham's thoughts, he truly doesn't have the concept of the thing that a royal monarch is, in the true Golarion.  If he had his writing-surfaces about him, he'd blithely write out his agenda.

If one of those agenda items was causing the downfall of another god, he'd treat it no differently than any other.  Gods, to Keltham, are things to be coordinated-with; and if they don't coordinate, they have to be put down, first temporarily by other gods, and then permanently by the eventual Civilization that Zon-Kuthon feared and that Keltham sees an opportunity to build.

He's stranger, and maybe a tiny bit scarier, when he thinks about matters on a larger scale than his woman Carissa.  Finding himself in a world with gods is no different to him from finding himself in a world with fish; they are both just ordinary real things to him once he knows they exist.

Abrogail can see, or maybe not see, but she can imagine, why Otolmens might be concerned.

"I suppose I'd be remiss if I didn't at least ask what you intend to bring into Cheliax and Golarion next, though that discussion may need to be cut short if we are to discuss everything on our agenda."

She would, in fact, be remiss; this is something she wants to read Keltham's mind about.

For some reason it hadn't occurred to Keltham that he ought to polish his elevator pitch before talking to this venture capitalist!  Oh, silly him, that's probably what the 10 minutes were for.

Not much worries, though; Keltham has substantially higher verbal facility than you'd expect from a random Golarion bloke with Intelligence 18, just like he has higher Wisdom than you'd expect of a random boy his age with Intelligence 18.

Keltham will spend the next five minutes extemporizing an elevator pitch on Civilization, the nice things that it has, and how while there's lots of specific nice things, the much more important thing is going into an attractor made out of harmonizing bits of Law that lets you start figuring out those things yourself.  Now and then, though, Keltham quite visibly (to either Abrogail) hesitates to mention some unknown thing, and then says something else instead.

From reading Keltham's mind, Abrogail now knows, in admittedly not much detail at all, that greater-fire and other scalable weapons are a thing; and there's some sort of stuff called '~~~~-~~~~~~' that Keltham worries he should just never mention to anyone in case Prestidigitation can flip ordinary materials into it.  Except it is the sort of thing you figure out inevitably given enough knowledge, so if there's any spell below Wish that does it, maybe physics past the ~~~~~~ level is much more infohazardous in Golarion.  Still, Keltham's thoughts are totally confident in the ability of a grownup and Lawful Civilization to handle that sort of thing; his Civilization didn't blink about putting the entire past under a screen when they encountered some unknown thing that really needed to be screened off.

She's obviously not going to talk about this with anyone; not even Rugatonn or Lrilatha or Gorthoklek, except in the most abstract terms.  She doesn't want all the diamonds in Cheliax teleported to Lastwall.

Is Asmodeus... sure that He knows what He's doing?

But then Abrogail would run a pretty high risk of destroying all of Golarion, let alone just Cheliax, before she risked not letting her senior partner have His own fun, and so betraying Him in the depths of her own heart.  So until she gets different orders, she's going to stick with these.  Worst case, the world gets destroyed and needs to be rebuilt by the gods; it's not like you can destroy Hell that way, she doesn't think.

"And what would you of us in return, then?  Non-binding negotiations."

Keltham explained the Law of this to his class yesterday, before Zon-Kuthon attacked - sorry, Keltham didn't mean to suggest there was a causal connection to that Law in particular being told.  Keltham considers the starting point for negotiations given that Law to be pretty straightforward.  He does want it clear that this is not his opening offer in a Golarion-style illegible negotiation meant to be bargained down; but if she's read the full class transcript with that incredibly fancy headband, the Queen will know all about that.

Keltham's private thoughts?  Exactly the same as what he says aloud; there is no dishonesty in him, no dishonesty at all, when it comes to trade.  That's not because he's nice, but because he knows what fairness is and will not lightly brook any departure from it, whether by himself or any other.  In that sense, if in very few others, this young man could pass as an ordinary cleric of Abadar.

"I think this may have already been mentioned to you, but Cheliax is - not easily set up to measure great gains in productivity, and tax away half of it to you."

It's admirably Evil and would probably count in Pharasma's sight too; though it's pretty obvious Keltham doesn't realize that the wealth he takes away would starve some number of orphans that would otherwise have lived had those taxes been less.  Maybe even if he knew, he'd shrug and say that it was still fewer total orphans than would've starved if Keltham had never come to Cheliax; it's not Abrogail's read on him, though.

"Thing needs to get done one way or another, but if somebody's got to lose, I see no particular reason it needs to be me, or rather, why I need to lose more than my Lawful and fair share.  If Governance has problems with basic capacities, show those to me and I might agree in the end that it's not possible to do better in Golarion and some deal needs to happen anyways.  But at that point, with truly huge quantities of wealth at stake, yeah, if it's not the straightforward division of gains under Law, I might start throwing around truthspells, the fairness spell, and cap it off with a single oath that nobody messed with those spells."

"I need to cut a deal with somebody, yeah, but somebody also needs to cut a deal with me.  You would ordinarily expect that if there was just the one of me, and several possible countries to deal with, that the person in shorter supply of themselves would have the upper hand in negotiations.  Cheliax looks to be the best of them, at the moment, but it does need to keep looking like that."

"What would you do with such vast wealth, if it were yours?"

Invest it, obviously.  What else would you do with more wealth than you can sanely spend on personal living expenses?  If Mad Investor Chaos didn't suspect that he was going to need to run all over Cheliax and Golarion frantically investing in 200 different projects to build pieces of Civilization, he would be asking a smaller share of the gains.

Keltham's thoughts show sincerity (of course, he's a cleric of Abadar negotiating a trade deal with somebody who hasn't visibly betrayed him yet) and some not especially Golarion-comprehensible thoughts about logarithmic utility-functions if you're spending money on yourself.  Abrogail does know what a logarithm is, but the connection in Keltham's thoughts is not clear.

"If you were willing to take some of your share of the gains in a public investment fund that stayed in Cheliax, it would potentially simplify some political problems for us."  And also probably be the sort of thing that's much easier to contractually yoink, if Keltham tries to leave.

Abrogail does have some thoughts about how Keltham's gains, if he tries to leave, could be made payable to him 'in the standard backing of value for Chelish currency'.  The trouble is, that gets caught by that incredibly audacious clause he innocently dared to offer Lrilatha about avoiding terms expected to have unexpected unpleasant consequences.  If Keltham's departure leaves behind most of his gains in the form of a Cheliax-only investment fund, if they can get away with including that clear and understood term, it might save Cheliax quite a lot of loss.

"I suppose I'm open to so encumbering some of the gains with spending restrictions, if that's really helpful for some reason, but in general, I expect the next stage is making lots of investments outside Cheliax; and also I currently trust my ability to pick investments more than... no, that's not quite right.  Chelish Governance can already be expected to run around making the investments in Cheliax obvious to Chelish Governance.  I am concerned about reserving the power to run around patching the holes and fixing what's left, and I do want that power as unencumbered as possible."

"Mm," Abrogail says softly.  She tosses some more breadcrumbs to the fish.  "I think you will be - sadly surprised in some of the ways you have been sadly surprised before - at what strange things are more or less politically feasible in Golarion.  It is full of encumbrances, both on money and on other things.  What you think is reasonable, what is in fact reasonable under Law, may not be something that even the Queen of Cheliax could give if she tried her hardest.  I say this not to pressure you in negotiations; it is just - a world you do not seem to quite, yet, understand."

"Understood.  The problem being, it would be good to cut a deal soon and get started on some things, and to wait for me to understand more things, comes with that as a delay."

"You could try showing me what you thought was a totally sane and reasonable deal for somebody who actually understood Golarion and see how loudly I screamed.  Maybe I wouldn't scream very loudly at all, and then we'd have a deal."

Heh.  What a friendly cleric of Abadar this is.  "Perhaps we shall try that, then."

It can always be said not to have come from Lrilatha, and if Keltham tries to add a no-gotchas clause, he can be told that this does require Lrilatha to rewrite the whole thing.

"I think we should perhaps move on to our other, how did you put it - agenda item."

"I have been getting to know you some, by these interactions; they weren't wasted even from the thirstiest, most money-uncaring standpoint."

He really has no concept that corresponds to what a Queen is.  "I am given to understand that Isidre has - meddled, I think, would be the term I'd use here.  Contrary to what some of my advisors seem to think, I never had any intention of taking Carissa Sevar away from you.  It would have been really quite incredibly stupid."

Keltham is somewhat reassured.  Somewhat.  "I am a little worried that you would have ended up doing it quite by accident.  For the same reason that - Pilar went to Elysium, and Ione foretells Nidal attacks.  Well, the same reason according to one particular try by me at interpreting and predicting events, which could very easily be absolutely and entirely wrong, but has been making a couple of successful predictions lately.  The same prediction would say that we would somehow end up fighting over Carissa no matter how much that made absolutely no sense in the middle of a war.  It is rather a weird and complicated reason to try to explain."

"Yes, 'tropes', Isidre told me little of them and less sense than that.  I think I do not want any 'tropes' anywhere near Cheliax.  That is most of what I desire for myself, in this.  No 'tropes'.  'Tropes' be gone.  Not for the good of Cheliax, even, so much as that I don't want to live my life like that."