"Are we doing that in alterCheliax, if so then yes, so we have a paper trail to show Keltham."

"I think I'm not doing that in alterCheliax because in alterCheliax, clearly, that was a totally fucking normal thing for Pilar to do and none of us are the least bit puzzled and now we all need to figure out WHY THAT WOULD POSSIBLY BE TRUE."

Carissa puts her hair down and stress-prestidigitates it while she thinks. 

She has no idea what Pilar's curse is playing at and she doesn't like it. Was it actually trying to help with corrupting Keltham? How? Is it corrupting, for Keltham to realize he doesn't want his possessions to change? But he said eighty percent chance he does, eventually! Maybe it's the seed of - possessiveness? Controllingness? ...doesn't seem like a very Cayden Cailean thing to do even if He is working with Asmodeus now. 

Is Cayden Cailean just sincerely concerned about Carissa being held back from her true potential. The line between pride and patheticness is always confusing but that feels well over it. 

Though - 

- if she's going to fix Hell --

- given Hell's inevitable victory, perhaps the Good gods will support her in making it slightly more Good. If that's what she's doing. Making a part of it Carissa-shaped, and therefore slightly more suitable for the flourishing of certain kinds of people. 

....okay, that feels more heretical than anything she's come up with so far, and not in a 'the satisfying Asmodean thrill of learning the rules weren't meant for you' way, in a 'the rules were meant for you and you should have followed them' way. 

Maybe Keltham will hit her. Though, let's be real, probably not.

"...all right, I'm going to ask what you're doing here because we can't possibly have both had the same idea."

Pilar is in an antechamber of High Priestess Subirachs's office composing a report to the Most High on, among other things, Cayden Cailean interventions that seem worryingly like they might be trying to get her to trust her curse more and more, her curse turning her in for heresy, whether Pilar should in fact trust her curse if it says something about an overlapping interest between Asmodeus and Broom's god in a case where Pilar has no time to ask somebody else trusted for orders, and Pilar having just spoken a worrying amount of theology to a naive impressionable outsider of importance to Asmodeus and Pilar wants to check that she didn't accidentally mislead him.

"Because I spoke angrily to my teacher in class and my faith now requires me to do certain things to be made right about that," Pilar answers Keltham.

...plus now a new entry about how Pilar apparently feels a desire to be corrected for getting above her place in contradicting Keltham, even though Keltham is not actually her superior and is far far below Pilar objectively speaking in Asmodeus's order; and also if Pilar asked Subirachs to correct her about her heretical desire to be corrected for contradicting Keltham then Pilar feels suspiciously like this is cheating cleverness and she is actually really being corrected about having contradicted Keltham.

Yeah, he's pretty sure nobody like her exists in dath ilan, people would have heard about it on the news.

Keltham heads on in to Subirachs's office.

Message passed to Sevar:

Subirachs here.  Keltham's in my office talking about how, when he hurt you shortly after you got back from Abrogail, you gasped and shivered and yielded to him and looked up at him like you were totally vulnerable.

Keltham is saying to me that this instantaneously addicted him, he feels like he needs now to hurt you enough or in the right way to see you react that way again, so he knows you're still his own.  He would like to know what he needs to do to see that again, if I know that.

This seems like an opportunity, Chosen, but I do not know how far to push it.  Please advise.

Thaaaaaaat ....seems like there's at least a thirty percent chance it's a test. Which really limits how far they can push it, unfortunately. 

(....at least a thirty percent chance is the wrong way to have a number, isn't it, even though having a number at all is something she wouldn't have done a week ago. Presumably there's some actual number and - no, it seems valid to just notice it's high enough to take precautions and not figure out how high it is exactly...)

The true answer that it seems like you could also give in alter Cheliax is that on that day, it was far easier for Keltham to hurt me for real, and for me to believe that he could; and he'd have difficulty getting me to believe that, now. And he has something of a reputation for doing difficult things and you don't doubt he could but he'd better be very sure he wants to. And maybe it's safe to point out that it's easier to get me to believe to whatever extent it's actually true, and 'he would never' is a way for it to not be actually true, which hurts both me and him, in the long run.

...does she give different advice if it's a test? Not really, she doesn't think.

Keltham wants to know if I have any ideas about something that he maybe could do, or at least the next step on this path.  Chelish people are not exactly like dath ilani, he's getting that, he has healing powers, he's seen Asmodia and Pilar come back from death, there's got to be something that young Kelthams do next when they've reached the limits of what they can do by pinching people.

Carissa consults the Keltham in her head about the sentence 'they whip them, they cut them, they break their bones, they light them on fire', and the Keltham in her head makes a face and says 'but those things seem wrong!'.  'they drug them' is right out, he'll have even more ethics questions about that somehow. Are there conveniently among the high priestesses of Asmodeus potions or something that magnify pain, so Keltham can hurt Carissa a viscerally right-to-Keltham amount and get results like from proper torture? Or spells - she thinks the added level of abstraction away from causing damage will help him go farther -

I don't have such items with me, but the main temple will absolutely have something and this situation certainly warrants an emergency Teleport.  Shall I tell Keltham that I will need to spend some time looking through my personal storage and will drop a few things off by his 'cuddleroom' door, with written instructions, once I've found any?  Also, Chosen, your directives in regards to actual pain levels or magnification levels?  I am not sure you want me requisitioning an agiel for him.

She doesn't really know. Lots of things hurt, and you embrace it and endure it, and there's no such thing as things hurting too much. .... it probably should be more than I can handle, to have me properly frightened, but I don't want to need several days of recovery again?

I've told him that I'll go look through my things, and he says he'll get started on snuggling you then.

More than you can handle in which sense, Chosen?  It can't push you to the point where you ask in words for it to stop.

Less than Abrogail, then. She thought with enough time she might have been able to get me to beg her to stop.

(Carissa is in fact quite proud about this, now that it's over.)

...well, fine then, Chosen, but the Queen was able to make you look vulnerable, presumably - and indeed, put you into some state where Keltham himself could do that to you with small pains - by some amount of torment short of what it takes to make you ask for something to stop.  Apparently.

Work with me here, Chosen.  I'm somewhat regretting not following my first impulse to tell Keltham that I could do that to you and should we perhaps try a threesome; if you don't know how to push yourself or how far you must needs be pushed to satisfy him, then I should possibly tell Keltham I need to be nearby and monitoring the situation by unspecified means.

I don't know; I think I will be able to attain it playing it by ear, if Keltham has any way to deliberately vary how much he hurts me, because he and I are going for the same thing here. You can monitor if you consider it wise. I don't - get hurt on purpose, usually, I just handle whatever happens.

...I'll order him a series of escalating means.  Good luck, Chosen.

She might, possibly, have been tempted to add something about not forgetting that the goal here is to corrupt Keltham rather than enjoying herself.  But she is now reading a very very very insane report from Pilar Pineda that may as well go to Egorian on the Teleport.  And apparently corrupting Keltham to Asmodeanism is best done via true honesty from Asmodean potential romances brought to him by tropes, perhaps with prompting from Cayden Cailean about Otolmens events, so what does she know, not anything apparently, good luck Aspexia Rugatonn.

Jacint would be pestering this Asmodia for corrigibility lessons, so long as they're both here, just in case it's that simple; but actually on second thought maybe Jacint would rather not succeed the Most High until whatever this is blows over.

NSFW subthread occurs here:

cheating is cuddleroom technique

Tldr sfw version containing just the decision theory, dath ilan backstory and technique, and key plot points:

sfw tldr cheating is cuddleroom technique

Asmodeus is a god whose concerns span many worlds, more than is true of most of his rivals. There are advantages to a narrow portfolio of worlds on which you intervene; gods that are stretched thinner face sharper tradeoffs, and Asmodeus' great power cancels this disadvantage but could instead be applied to turning it into an advantage. But while to a Good god, the existence of a god with the same values in another world is almost exactly as good as being there yourself, this is not true to an Evil god, or at least not true to Asmodeus; and so where Iomedae would sooner raise another hero in another world than colonize it with Her own church, if She had the chance to do either, Asmodeus works in both of them. 

Golarion is nonetheless a substantial and important part of Asmodeus's portfolio; He worked very hard on Cheliax. He is observing closely the events unfolding in the interdiction zone, even forbidden as He is from interfering. 

He has questions. 

This squirrel over here, a fairly pleasing squirrel, got selected as an oracle by Cayden Cailean, and has maintained her absolute loyalty to Asmodeus and might even be making some genuine progress on becoming the shape Asmodeus wants squirrels to be. This squirrel right nearby burns with conviction in her faith in Him, and with impossible-to-read-from-this-angle plans to alter Hell, while somehow being a cleric of Irori's now. 

(Most mortals who want to alter Hell do not have an idea that serves Asmodeus, and in fact it's out of disloyalty to Asmodeus that they imagine His Hell in need of any alteration. But Asmodeus is not impossible to impress, and the scope of his squirrels' current ambitions in Golarion looks like something that would impress Him, if they pull it off; certainly He'd see it tested whether they had anything else interesting in them. And Irori has at least moderately good taste, in picking His favorites, though He doesn't, generally, pick loyal Asmodeans.)

Asmodeus's intervention budget is large, but substantially expended in setting up Cheliax in the first place; it would be costly to Him to act, and also unwise, because He doesn't understand why things are going so well and could easily accidentally make them go worse. But He watches, and He does float, generally, that He'll do information trades relating to His nest of squirrels.

Offer to pay a standard amount for everything you know about why my squirrel spent a day in magical stasis of some kind. 

Deal! I have no idea.

Cayden Cailean has higher-quality information than that potentially on offer and is, of course, far more predictable about providing good value on trades than such a relatively more unreliable being as Asmodeus.

Here's the price if Abadar still wants to know, with an additional discount if He further agrees not to resell the information to Asmodeus.

Sure, Abadar will agree to the discounted price for not reselling to Asmodeus.

Is Cayden Cailean meddling just so He can feel self-important about having annoyed Asmodeus. That'd truly say more about Chaotic Good than anything Asmodeus could say.