Carissa will just.... ignore that and move on.

"All right. First, on settling sadism bets, the answer is yes. Also do not propose a bet with Keltham because dath ilan has a deeply bizarre norm that the thing you bet during sex is nonreciprocal services, which would otherwise, naturally, not be a thing because anything anyone does they should get something in return for. Yes, he thinks that still applies here where he has knowledge any government would slaughter cities for. Yes, I think it's plausibly worth trying to convince him that Evil has more fun, but you've got to be careful about it. I'll give much more specific instruction to anyone who seems to be getting close to him but the essential bits are - you want to be here, it's ridiculous that anyone would threaten or coerce you into being here if you didn't want to be, you might be exceedingly transactional about your intentions towards Keltham but it's your transaction that you expect to enrich you. You can, if you'd like, have one mean boyfriend who didn't treat you like that in your backstory, especially if you've got hangups to explain, but coordinate with me so you don't all do it. I do not want people who are inexperienced with pain in bed, or sexually inexperienced generally, trying to let Keltham hit you; we're working with a narrative where some people really like that, and most pain here or in Hell is because some people really like that, and if you've obviously managed to talk yourself into it that has decent odds of coming out. 

You are going to not lie to him about anything that's not essential. I get transcripts, I will light you on fire, you will be grateful I did because otherwise my boss would have to do it and he has a longer attention span for it. The key thing here is that Keltham notices different features of the world than us so we don't, actually, know all that much about how to lie convincingly to him. So the less you force us to fit into the lie, the easier our lives are. Say 'I don't feel ready to talk about it', say 'I should have learned that in class but it was the week my sister died so I wasn't paying attention', say 'I'm having a hard time putting it into words', say 'can I recommend you a book? I forget all the details myself'. You all want to show off by being competent, but we will get more out of Keltham if we are weak, flawed, confused, and therefore wouldn't be expected to have good answers to all of his questions. He already thinks everyone in this world doesn't know how to think. If you can't think of a true thing to say, or an approved in-story thing to say, the thing to do is to let him believe that even harder. 

Questions?"

Ione speaks first.  She's recovered, now, something of the demeanor of a student among other students, when she needs to play that role.  "I already offered myself up to Keltham as somebody who would do anything he wants without asking anything in return.  I'm not actually into pain, but didn't take that off the menu at the time for obvious reasons.  I didn't represent myself as already experienced in service, or as desiring him sexually, if it's important that I lie about neither of those things.  Further guidance?"

"...I think that works fine, as long as you keep not lying about those things. Did he not immediately ask what you were getting in return?"

"I represented myself as being willing to do it for the knowledge, when I made the offer."  Ione smiles briefly; she would be willing, under entirely different circumstances.

Paxti's shiny new arcane sight shows that the circlet Carissa now wears is a powerful magic item.

"You've got an intelligence headband.  When do the rest of us -"

"We're going to delay it as long as we can because outmaneuvering smarter Keltham's going to be even harder, maybe impossible. Officially, Acquisitions said it'll be two weeks and I went ahead and ordered one myself, which I can afford to do and you can't because I've been earning a generous salary from Cheliax for my work at the Worldwound for six years and you haven't. The gossip is that this is because, you know, some intelligence headbands are cursed, and even worse some are just a tiny bit cursed, make you see things in a particular light, and optimistically Acquisitions is making really sure the project headbands are good and pessimistically, well, they could be manufacturing them a little cursed. Please attempt to have a little bit of subtlety in causing this gossip to reach Keltham's ears. I actually suspect that only the 'optimistically' part needs to be said and he is competent to fill in the rest. 

Also we are going to be hiding a lot behind you guys not actually being all that well-educated, not actually knowing that much history or politics or economics, because magical education in Cheliax is very specialized. The smarter you are the harder it is for you to make innocent mistakes. 

Keltham is under the impression you were screened for willingness to bear his children; I think that's just true, but if it's not, you now explicitly have permission to lie about it. Keltham is under the impression you are getting generously paid; I think that's just true, because I have told everyone that we're doing as few lies as possible, but if it's not, you have permission to truthfully say 'I was told we would be generously paid and if the money isn't there I'm going to go to whoever's in charge here and make a nuisance of myself' and then to come to me, and maybe to lie after that depending what's up. Keltham is under the impression that if you didn't want to sleep with him, no one would make you; you have permission to lie to him about that, but also, if you find yourself getting cold feet in bed, you won't actually be punished for telling Keltham 'wait, I think actually I'm not ready and I just want to cuddle', because that presently advances our goals. That said, if Keltham ignores you about that, that would be great news for the project and you should make sure he has a really pleasant time about it and ends up with the impression he was right to ignore you. I strongly expect that if you try to tease him by getting him really turned on and then saying 'no' he'll just give you a hug and say it's okay, so if you are trying this route you're going to have to try something a lot subtler and cleverer than that, and you should run it by me. 

We aren't telling him about the soul arrangements, but if he somehow learns of it, the line is that it's normal for people in dangerous lines of work to arrange their afterlife in advance so they don't end up in Avernus in general processing, and that as a bonus these business arrangements are hotly competed for among devils so a good negotiator can get some reasonably powerful magic out of making their afterlife arrangements. But that's only if he somehow finds out. I, and some of your colleagues, don't have arcane sight, because our contractual arrangements were a bit different; we're still working out the best story for that so for today you should conceal having it. 

Other things you are explicitly expected to lie to Keltham about: who his god is. It's going to be an obscure Tian one. Whether all fourth-circle clerics have a weaker personal aura should they differ from their god in alignment; it doesn't come up much in Cheliax because it can't happen with an Asmodean cleric but you'd expect they wouldn't. Whether Cheliax is systematically concealing things. Whether Hell involves involuntary torture.

And, of course, everything to do with the character of Cheliax as a nation. We're going to be pretending that Cheliax is Taldor."

And she explains her reasoning, again, and explains the key outlines from the fake timeline and from the books about Taldor. 

"At this time I'll take questions, but my plan is actually for you to spend the rest of the morning learning enough about Taldor that you can be a magic-tracked shut-in who plausibly lived there."

"So I've been thinking," begins Paxti, "and I realize it was just a book, but I don't see any reason why the plot of The Damnation of Sir Nicolau wouldn't work in real life if the target was Keltham instead of a paladin.  Only with a series of different girls, rather than one woman with a disguise amulet.  First girl, obligate fetish for being forced, requires him to role-play forcing her, but she asks him to do that in advance.  Second girl, loudly remarks about how she can't achieve sexual satisfaction without being forced and it doesn't work for her if she has to explain it to the man, and we all explain to Keltham what she's hinting and encourage him and note how she never said she didn't want it, he tries it, it seems to go well for him.  Third girl, always staring in fascination while that's going on, but looks away blushing and can't seem to talk about it.  Fourth girl acts angry but in a way that's obviously sending mixed signals.  Fifth girl is straight angry at first, but warms up once she's pinned down.  Sixth girl begs him to stop and acts overtly horrified, but by that time he's so used to it always being a pose that - wait, I skipped one in the sequence, in the book there were seven -"

"In the book Sir Nicolau damned himself on the sixth* disguise, but she kept going to be sure they ended up in the same depth of Hell together, after she killed him and herself," corrects Ione.  "...not that I'm agreeing this is the slightest bit workable as an idea.  If Keltham is a sadist then dath ilan has sadists and his world will have romance novels and he will notice that we are running the stereotypical plot of a romance novel on him."

(*) Romance novels approved and distributed by the Chelish government may not accurately represent exactly which sexual behaviors first produce alignment shift.

"Dath ilan actually discourages its sadists from noticing, because - Keltham thinks - they haven't got people who like pain and they haven't got any other outlets aside from paying people a ton of money for it, which I think wouldn't even be as fun. But I do think he'll notice if we're running the plot of a romance novel on him, it's too - you wouldn't expect to run across those people in that order unless something was up. And unless you're very good at faking sexual reactions he'll notice what you're actually into, dath ilan does train that skill. Also Keltham has in common with paladins that in real life the biggest barrier to seducing them is them endlessly going 'I don't want to risk you having a child I couldn't take proper responsibility for'. I think there's no point trying to convince Keltham that that's Good, I get the sense dath ilan has lots of children-related taboos which we should mostly just try to steer very far clear of. -relatedly, you're not allowed to point out to him that he could use magic to make you have an abortion. 

That said if anyone does have a convenient fetish for being forced that seems valuable. And once he's had some time to adjust we might be able to work with having threesomes where one girl forces the other and if Keltham objects both of them are like 'we're having a great time here????'."

"I have the convenient fetish, not obligate but would be easy to pretend it is," reports Pilar. 

"Unlikely to actually be sexually attracted to Keltham under any circumstances, will need training to fake it if he had training to detect it," says Asmodia, after some inward agonizing about how to phrase this in a way that doesn't sound like she's being noncompliant.

"It might be good if attraction to Keltham is not represented as universal, for plausibility reasons. Maybe just tell him you take a long time to develop attraction, though, and put some effort into learning to fake it, so that if it's convenient later we have the option. Pilar, I authorize you to lie and claim it's obligate, as seems situationally appropriate." Carissa is trying to be VERY SERIOUS about authorized lies to Keltham only in case that helps people break the habit of habitually lying about everything. 

Paxti and Ione seem to have developed their own sub-conversation.

"Adventure of Ameron," Paxti says.

"I don't think any of us can convincingly fake being half sea-creature," retorts Ione.  "I'll concede you could come closer than many."

"I meant metaphorically - never mind.  A Girl Corrupted By Books but with Keltham as the girl."

"Fine except for the part where the outcome is the exactly precise opposite of what we want."

"I'm not suggesting we run the entire plot, I'm suggesting that in real life it would inevitably go wrong for Keltham and then we'd get what we want.  Perverting Adan."

"That is literally the worst idea I've ever heard.  It violates -"

Now both of their hair is on fire. Just a little bit of fire, a cantrip of fire, if they're good at patting out fires it won't even burn their hands. "We don't have much time before Keltham is done preparing spells, and you all need to spend it becoming familiar with Taldor. Are there any more questions."

None that any dare speak aloud.

"Great! Keltham has no reason to think I have any authority here and you will lie about that if he asks. Let's all sit together and read about our history."

They scatter to desks, but even with more than one girl to a book, there's not enough books for girls.  "I'd offer to grab another copy of Taldorian Chronicles from Ostenso, but Keltham knows I can do five a day and he might ask where the first one went," Ione notes.  "It sounds like he'd accept my saying that I reserve a book-use per day for personal reading, but that's a lie so I'm checking it."

"Yes, you can say that if it comes up."

Ione briefly goes into the library's other room and returns with an additional copy of the Chronicles.  She's curious about whether anyone else here has been told the full story about her, yet, but she's not going to ask.

"When you run across something that's interesting or memorable or especially anything surprising, anything that wouldn't be true of Cheliax, share it."

And they can get to reading about Taldor. Carissa's so glad she doesn't live in Taldor. It sounds like a tedious undirected nest of snakes.

Shortly after Keltham is done praying there's a knock on his door.

Keltham shall accordingly go to the door and open it.

It's a man of about 40, wearing glasses. "Keltham? I'm, ah, a researcher studying minor and geographically bounded deities at the University of Westcrown, and I was asked yesterday to figure out, uh, which god you are probably a cleric of. I have the report here, would you like me to leave it, or stay and explain it?"

"I wish I could say I'll no doubt understand the entire thing on my own, but this is not in fact the case.  I can read through it first, unless you think it's better to preface it with something."

"No, go right ahead." He hands Keltham eight handwritten pages, bound together with thread. "I can wait in one of the sitting rooms?"

"Sure."  Keltham takes and reads, leaving his door open.