" - huh. You know, that - actually sort of follows - one explanation I've seen for enjoying pain being more common in women is that it improves the odds of surviving rape and sexual slavery, and then the - thing you talked about in class, about who has more children -"

Carissa is having the somewhat upsetting realization that maybe it would be bad for dath ilani people if they went to Hell? if they've just completely eradicated the mechanism by which their brains translate pain into something more complex than just suffering?

"I could wish these congratulations came under nicer circumstances, but congratulations anyways, you're learning to operate the theory validly."

"I mean, I already knew about the bad stuff, I just didn't know we were getting anything good out of it. And - I think we are. Getting something good out of it, that is, something I'd definitely arrange for heredity-optimization to keep having - wow, I bet in Nidal it's everyone -"

"I hope you're right about everyone in Nidal enjoying it, but even I'm starting to notice that sounds a little optimistic for Golarion."

"Oh, Nidal is horrible and I bet everyone there is miserable, but I also bet that they have near-universal sex-related pain-enjoyment - sex-related pain-enjoyment doesn't give you context-free enjoyment of all pain, I did not enjoy getting punished for bad grades, and I've had sex with a girl who was into hurting me more than I could handle and that wasn't fun either."

Blue and orange, Keltham thinks, as he notices it explicitly this time, how there's an alien reality here that doesn't make sense and his brain is trying to force it.  But he doesn't know the thread to pull to unravel this whole knot, all he can do is wibble the fringes of it.

"If you don't have money flows to make up for relationships that would be imbalanced like that - is there some class of things okay to trade, that aren't money, that you were getting out of that relationship instead?"

"Yes, people trade - favors, protection, in that specific case a spell I really really wanted. It's not that people don't have sex for - reasons located outside the sex, they do that all the time, it's just culturally rather unheard of, to name a specific amount of money as a bid, and it's also traditional for it to be a bit ambiguous how much you are doing for what reasons."

He's going to wait until later, in case it's somehow wrong and wronger if done in public, to ask Carissa how much hair-pulling he can trade for how much explanation of how the ass the flirting norms here actually work.

"Yeah, dath ilan has all kinds of dating ambiguity and mindgames, like you'd imagine from people with high intelligence and a lot more spare time, but the concept of never naming specific amounts of money - it's so not dath ilan, I can't easily convey it.  Anything worth anything is worth money.  Not just money in general, a specific amount of money.  It's 'the unit of caring' in our parlance."

"Yes, I am not surprised that dath ilan prefers forthrightness on the value-transfer elements of sex and flirting even if they like ambiguity elsewhere. I can see how you'd get used to it, even. But I think if you do it here you'll just confuse people terribly."

"Is it literally just money or do I have to be careful not to offer anybody anything such that it would have a well-defined resale value..."

"That is definitely sometimes done - spells have a resale value - but there are nuances and I might recommend running it by someone else first."

"Is such conversation also bad on the metalevel?  If I asked everyone who'd be the best person to ask about which sexual offers are and aren't offensive, is that question itself even more offensive?"

Keltham has noticed that Golarion can sometimes be effectively predicted by asking himself how he would design a social protocol as badly as possible.

"This conversation is fine. That question is fine. I promise we are not entirely made of impossibilities."

Well, congratulations to Golarion on passing the bar that he set literally as low as he could imagine on short notice, but it's sure an improvement on undershooting it, so he'll take what he can get.

"I think I'm pretty much done with my dinner, myself.  You?"

"I'm done. Up to the rooftops? Or have you rediscovered your sex drive in the course of this conversation?"

Good question.  Keltham turns his attention inward, not quite able to stop himself from thinking how much clearer that perception was under Owl's Wisdom, how much easier and fuller the seeing of Keltham by Keltham.

"It sure is more there than it was when I walked in, maybe half from time passing and half from discovering high-payoff sexual options I never imagined possible.  Still, I think I want to start off the evening a little slower, and spending at least some time on the rooftop sounds good."

Are people in dath ilan just that candid and self-aware all the time. How do they live. "Rooftop it is. Assuming we can find it. Do you want to ask security right away or go exploring ourselves." Normally the second would be a stunningly dangerous thing to do but security isn't going to let Keltham get exploded by a stray internal defensive measure.

"Let's explore!  Though I'm trusting you that misguided exploration is either knowably not fatal, or that they'd resurrect us without too much fuss."

Oh okay she'd been worried that 'this sort of thing is dangerous' is something that'd have him all shocked and appalled about what societies outside dath ilan are like but apparently it's allowed - "I expect this place has defenses that might in fact be fatal if triggered but that they have been very thoroughly disabled, Chelish security's not stupid and they don't want you to die. And if you did they'd resurrect you but I'm not relying too much on that because I'll be in lots of trouble if I get you killed, even though it'll take all of ten minutes to fix."

Keltham rises from the table.  "Shall we?"

"Yeah! You know, I figured I would live my whole life without getting to poke around a Duke's villa, I am very excited."

"Your lead, then."

Carissa would attempt to trot up the massive entryhall staircase in a sexy way except she's not actually sure she knows how to do that, it's a skillset that definitely exists and that she has witnessed on display but not one she's had occasion to practice, and trying and failing to do it is pathetic. The natural default mode for exploring is more - cautious, giggly, childlike, and that is appealing in its own way - maybe to Keltham too - but not sexy, and she's going to be kind of dissatisfied if -

- one thing at a time. The massive entryhall staircase opens out onto a luxurious mezzanine and then there are two wings with rooms, presumably parlors and bedrooms and guest rooms and so on, and no obvious staircase up, though she knows that this place has some towers. "Do you have a sense of where the towers were, relative to where we are."

Keltham tries to visualize the villa as seen from the courtyards they sometimes pass through.  "I don't think I actually remember, but I think there's a tower visible from a courtyard I think is that way, and then we'd know."  He gestures in a direction.

He's considering offering to hold hands, but maybe Cheliax considers handholding an unreasonably advanced form of erotic perversion practiced by only the most sexually degenerate individuals, only if he keeps asking about that sort of thing at every step, that'll take all night, but also holding hands seems not optimal for exploring and potentially sort of awkward for maneuvering, and do they even do that here, and...

"Yeah, all right, let's try in that direction."