" - huh, really? If I was a Conspiracy I would not want random Worldwound wizards in on it, they're probably much worse actresses than my usual Conspirators. Anyway, that spell for noticing spies in other planes that your god gave you before we got the Forbiddance up, possibly as a way to tell us to do a Forbiddance? Glimpse of Beyond? Also detects if people are Polymorphed, which I think Security mentioned at the time but then a bunch of stuff happened."

"Yeah, that is the sort of thing that's more effective if I can spring it as a surprise.  Still, I can think of the correct surprising point to spring it, if that's not too obvious, so sure and thanks."

"Plus some additional points from the fact that my god is relatively less likely to be in the Conspiracy and did show me that spell, meaning it wasn't selected to be easy for you to defeat.  But it could potentially have been something that only worked if I used it at the right time that day before anyone was prepared for it..."

"I'd rather not talk about this while snuggling right now, I notice."

"I don't know the correct surprising point to spring it.... unless it's while I'm Altering Self anyway in order to not get pregnant, at which time if the spell works as promised you'll see through the Polymorph into my real face and confirm at once that this is my real face and that the spell does see through Polymorphs. In which case that's too obvious.

- and that makes sense. Sorry. We can talk about something nicer."

"That was it.  Thanks for telling me it was obvious."

Some of the tension is easing, in him, as Carissa behaves a bit more like a dath ilani would around his problem.

It's what alter-Carissa would do. Rude alter-Carissa, making their lives harder; though on this front, at least, there really is nothing to hide. 

"What should we talk about instead. Sexual fantasies we had before we met each other? How unreasonably hot Abrogail is?"

"If Abrogail seems unreasonably hot, that's a defect of the process you were using to reason about hotness, not a defect of Abrogail, and you should replace this obviously flawed reasoning method with one that finds reality less surprising."

"So how much does it cost to look that hot, are you planning on doing that in the limit of infinite money, would you like me to look hotter because I am not necessarily opposed to this line of reasoning."

"I don't know but reasoning from the cost of the enhancements wizards go for, probably a hundred thousand gold, maybe two hundred thousand. When we have infinite money I don't see why not. If it gives us unreasonable standards we can simply do it to everyone else too."

"What'll they do for a couple of hundred gold?  Seems silly to spend less than that if it's spendable."

"I think that'd probably get you something like the treatment I got last week, though I don't know if the options for men price out differently."

"Now that I think about it, if I'm not allowed to leave here, that's going to end up being almost entirely transportation costs to bring somebody here... well, maybe they can hitch a ride on travel that's occurring anyways, if the number of people moving isn't already at capacity... or maybe the part of Governance that does Teleports is on some totally other budget, like Security."

"Well, if it's actually that cheap, I'll probably want to do it just because, you know, I can."

"I'd ask what it takes to turn more resilient, according to you, but I don't feel like re-chaining you and tickling it out of you right now.  Is there any equivalent for - becoming physically stronger?  Speaking of old fantasies."

"Bull's Strength. Like Owl's Wisdom but for the body. I'd say 'guaranteed not to cause personality changes that can't be easily reverted' but I've started to get kind of superstitious about saying things like that...comes in a spell your god can give you or a permanent magic item, usually a belt."

"Cost of belt."

"Depends how strong you want to be. Cheapest one is 4,000 gold."

"I'll try the spell and see if it's instantaneously addictive.  Nobody ever died of having more motivation to make more money!"

"Probably a lot of people have died of that! But I approve of you getting stronger, on the same level as I approve of you stabbing me, and you being scarier generally."

"...it occurs to me that the 'nobody ever died of' game is probably a lot harder to play in Golarion than in dath ilan, not least because you can't look up the answers.  But for the record, when I say something like that - people have died even in Civilization of that, and probably a lot more before Civilization - you can, for example, say 'I object to your statement on the grounds that it is false', and then I can reply with something like, 'No, proximal cause of death was probably air-fuel starvation of the brain in almost all of the cases you're thinking of' or 'Eh they went to an afterlife' and so it continues."

"I have to say, though, it wouldn't have occurred to me to think that being physically stronger would make me more dangerous in any significant sense.  It's just something I expected to be fun."

"My main association with high strength is front-line fighters and they're terrifying. Not as terrifying as a high level wizard but only because pretty much nothing in the world is as scary as a high level wizard."

"...not actually seeing it, but I suppose now that you mention it, the Nidal invasion sure had a lot of people waving around big sharp metal objects for a world I would've thought had more dangerous options than that, like the Security wizard with us lighting up the whole perimeter with exploding balls of fire."

"Spells take time to get off and it's reasonably common for demons - or important people - to have magic shielding against spells affecting them. You want wizards and you want a bunch of people with sharp sticks in between the wizards and the problem. Note how Security only got like ten seconds in which to do that. ....also I assume Nidal didn't just want to kill you, so they had to get into melee, there's no way to steal a soul from a distance."

"Do you know how that soul-stealing thing would work, and do you think they were specifically planning that rather than stuffing me into a hammerspace, or mind-control and run me out of the Forbiddance..."

"Probably they had several plans? They'd have to get you out of the Forbiddance alive to put you in a pocket dimension. They could also have tried turning you into an insensible animal and kidnapping that. I know there's a powerful spell called Soul Bind for imprisoning the soul of a person as they die but I don't know what preparation that would've needed - would've required them to be in melee, though - it's too bad Kuthites are so hard to interrogate usefully -"

"Subject matter too grim, change topic."

Of course his mind goes on thinking anyways.  Is Carissa implying that Kuthites are harder to interrogate because Chelish interrogation tries to use pain as an interrogation tool?

Probably.

Keltham adds it to a list of things that are actually worrying - not so much on Conspiracy theory, why would she say that on the Conspiracy - as on the possibility that there's some final and deepest piece of Golarion Bad News that requires him to build Civilization here only far away from every existing government in this world, and play that hand only once he is ready to defeat them all in open military battle.

...he'd rather not talk about that, look in that direction, right now.  If that final grimdark realization comes, it will come at the point where all of his relationships that he wants to advance have advanced far enough for those women to follow him.</eroLARP-reasoning>

Lean. She said it because alterCarissa would, because Taldor has this problem too. 

"Right. Back to finding new topics of conversation. Do you want to hear my ranking of all of Security that I've met by who is scariest."

"Spoken like somebody who thinks I can tell the Security wizards apart from each other, like, at all."

" - fair. They try to be a bit indistinguishable deliberately, I think.

Do you want to talk about Asmodean theology. I'm not actually any good at explaining it but now that Pilar's yelled at you about it it has crossed my mind that maybe that's a bad reason not to try."