And spoiler-protected people are supposed to only play with each other? She's not going to ask. " - I think it's sweet how you get angry about the women in the countries that don't let them do things. I get angry about that but most people don't and I think I started feeling specifically fond of you as an individual instead of as the vehicle for the most important thing that I can reasonably do when you first heard about it and decided we should steal them."

"You're angrier than average, huh?  Guessing that's not so much because it was your choice of diverse cause area, and more because there's so many even worse things to worry about in Golarion if you pick based on calculation instead of emotional pull."

"Yes. Other people are being entirely reasonable and I can't defend my fondness for the idea against fixing some other equally bad or worse thing but the one that happens to make me angry is that one."

"It is a reasonable thing to be angry about.  I - will not mind if all of you take it a little slower on telling me even more things to be even angrier about, if there isn't any reason I need to know right away.  Rapidly learning about lots of things to be angry about does not sound optimal for my mental state.  I'm not a Keeper."

(Yet, says a tiny voice inside him, which Keltham decides after a due pause is probably due to internal pessimization over things for internal voices to say, rather than due to internal prediction from knowledge he hasn't acknowledged to himself.)

"And that's also the advice I got from someone who sort of was." In a manner of speaking. Well, not at all actually, she thought of it herself, but it's a good excuse to stop telling him things, which she should. "That - I should be aiming at telling you about decision-relevant bad things rather than about ensuring that in the smallest possible time interval you know all of the awful things in a world full of them, except we don't totally understand your decision procedures so I shouldn't try to have that much ownership of it on my own, but that - it seemed likely to him we might err on the side of trying to press right on through every awful atrocity that Chelish parents protect their children from knowing of - and I know more of them than a usual adult, even, because of the Worldwound. 

We can - take it a bit slower. You're bearing up very well under it, but - uh, conventional wisdom in Cheliax which you might think is very foolish is that the more important someone's business the more important they have lots of nice things."

"Well, sure, that's why we coordinate to pay people who produce public goods for us, and why it's considered a good thing that people who produce not-so-public goods become wealthy too.  You want to incentivize people to do important things, and you also want them to be less distracted by unimportant things.  If I didn't have something in my model producing that conclusion already, I'd have been confused why your society was giving me what is, by your standards, very expensive living conditions."

"Just to be clear, I want to know it all eventually, I am not that much of a not Keeper, especially in a world that's much more dangerous.  But if nothing else, there's got to be more sensible ways of prioritizing what I need to learn first, than prioritizing it by how much it shocks me."

"Yes, of course. But I notice that now, tonight, we keep getting distracted away from nice things with horrible ones, despite agreeing that you need nice things very much, and I propose that that means we're doing something wrong."

"You make a compelling case.  All right, let's see if we can go the entire rest of the night without talking about anything horrifying.  Well, except that at some point before dawn tomorrow, I have to test my remaining cleric spells, and any appropriate warning signs on those should in fact be clearly laid out to me.  But when it comes to everything else, if for some reason I need not to do something in the cuddleroom, and the reasons are horrifying, you can totally not tell me why, just, not to do it.  And even if the reasons aren't horrifying, you still shouldn't tell me, to maintain plausible-deniability."  Oh, Taldane has a single syllable word for that, that's helpful.

"Okay. Don't turn into a girl with red hair and creepy fangs. That's all I've got but I'll let you know more if I think of them."

She totally did that on purpose.  "Right then.  Don't turn out to be asexual."  See how you like hearing about what is very clearly going to be a very interesting story that isn't going to be explained right now.

What does that even mean. It does not quite parse as 'celibate' and is obviously the opposite of 'sexual' but she doesn't know how to have sex in an un-sexual fashion if she wanted to! "I'll do my best while not knowing what that is."

"Some people don't have any sexual desires, or they don't find it in themselves except under very rare conditions, and obviously if you're the first sort and wish you weren't, you're never quite certain you're not secretly the second kind... wait, that's a sad thing, shouldn't have said it."

"If we were having advanced sex instead of beginner sex I would propose that we hit people when they say sad things. Maybe for beginner sex we could tickle people when they say bad things? With a feather - are there tickle technologies -"

"Oh, wow, there are people who gain arousal points from being tickled?  Because I am pretty sure I wouldn't, though I suppose we could very briefly try."

Keltham decides not to say, because it would be another sad thing, that unless there's a secret population of dath ilani who do gain arousal from being tickled, a torture machine is not something you would be allowed to sell even in a Shop of Ill-Advised Consumer Goods.  Well, maybe if you put intrinsic surveillance technology into it and only let people use it on themselves so they could practice being way too mentally disciplined.  Or maybe the Keepers have some incredibly unpleasant technology hidden for extremely unlikely emergencies.

"Point to Carissa in the sex games wars - yes, there are people who gain arousal points from being tickled, and even more who gain arousal points for futile-ly struggling to avoid being tickled!!"

Keltham visualizes this.  Boops the same internal part that was booped by hair-pulling, check.  "I wonder if I would be the first dath ilani to ever build a tickling machine.  It would automatically be the best tickling machine ever, unless people here have built even better ones."

"Well, you know, we do our best with our deficient tech level but I bet richer people can build more terrifying tickling machines."

"Hmmm!  I suppose to be properly terrifying it should chase you down, snatch you up, and maybe hold you there while the tickle devices approach closer and closer.  Which is going to take magic if I want to build it here without waiting an additional one hundred years to climb the technology ladder first.  Is that cheating?  I ask because I like to know whether what I'm doing is cheating, not because I'm going to do it any differently depending on your answer."

"It seems to me like it might be complicated, building a tickling machine while trying to prevent the escape of your ticklee. You could call in security but that would be cheating."

"Oh, the idea is that you build the tickling machine in advance, and don't tell them about that, so it can be a sudden cuddleroom surprise.  But I can see how a thought that Chaotic wouldn't occur to such a very Lawful woman from such a very Lawful country."

"Luring women into your cuddleroom under false pretenses to surprise them with tickle-machines? I wouldn't have believed you capable of it!! And I am delighted to be wrong!"

"All romantic relationships in Golarion are competitive deceptive ones, right?  I don't even have to put up a warning sign saying it might happen.  It's just assumed."

"Indeed. You still aren't even cheating. The cuddlerooms all have implicit signs: beware, may contain tickle machines, and dangerous boys, and possibly the sexy kind of dragon."

"This explains a lot about why people here never go into the cuddlerooms and just have sex in their bedrooms instead."

"We built great elaborate cuddlerooms, but then we got carried away and filled them up with goblins and mimics and treasure chests and traps and spike pits, and they were too dangerous for all but the bravest adventurers, and we retreated defeated to have sex in our beds."