They get food themselves, and give him a minute.

Once he looks slightly recovered Carissa Messages him. 

The girls took what you said earlier to mean they should all attempt to seduce you now. So if you don't like that, you should say so in words before they get to it. And if you do like it, well, good luck.

Thank you for the warning, Keltham mouths back.

It now seems like much less of a panic situation than when he first realized he was trapped with a horde of amorous women in the villa library.

Partially it's that he's not in like some totally other dimension, well, he still is, but not quite so recently; and partially it's that he now knows any of them at all; and that he understands better what he might owe in return (not something unspoken that he won't be able to repay); and that the thought of his having that much mating value is no longer so shocking and unconsidered; and maybe it's even that he feels somehow a little more comfortable in his own skin, now that he's ever hurt Carissa in bed.

He'll get his food, then, and sit down among the amorous horde of women bent on mating with him.  Every man has to face them eventually.  This is wisdom.

Carissa will flash him an amused smile that she has absolutely no idea about the sincerity level of, and sit across the room where she can watch the mess in peace.

Well go ahead and flirt with him, then.  He awaits their lures.

The Queen of Cheliax stands in a high tower of her palace, one that lets her gaze over the city of Egorian surrounding it; a new city, but a thriving one.  The sun is setting but there will yet be people in the streets when it is gone, taverns and whorehouses open at night, open always.  There are enough souls about the palace with Rings of Sustenance to promote Egorian to the ranks of cities that know no rest.

"I see it," says Abrogail Thrune, letting the exultation that she feels fill her voice unhindered by concealment, only moderately enhanced by Splendour.  "I see Asmodeus's plan."

"Nothing good has ever happened to me after hearing those words."

"I guessed you would say that, Most High.  Indeed, that is why I spoke so.  Did I manage to hit on anyone's exact wording?"

Yes.  "I assume you have some purpose in bidding me here, other than amusing yourself wasting the time of your senior partner's more valuable slaves."

"I think I do see it, though.  Asmodeus's plan.  But I will not work around the edges of my current instructions in order to fulfill it better."

"Oh, good," Aspexia says dryly.  "What are you going to start doing differently, then.  Tell me of it, and how very predictable it would be to our Lord."

"I would devote additional resources to one of our current operations in a not especially creative fashion.  Would that suit you?"

"I feel a spark of hope that it will do less harm."

"Somebody in all Cheliax must try to have any notion of the course of greater events; that person is, of course, me.  Asmodeus would not have forged an Infernal Crown so mighty if it never served Him for its wearer to think."

"The time for such cleverness is when you are about plots and projects that you originated yourself; or else perhaps when events are happening that our Lord could not have predicted, when His plans are clearly beginning to go astray."

"But tell the Most High of her Lord's brilliant plot, then, that you are brilliant enough to perceive yourself."

"Plot?  Hardly.  It is a plan spanning thousands of years and perhaps implicit since the creation of the world."

"Ah.  One of those.  Hell is the destruction of hope."

"Consider, Aspexia.  It is said in many places and many books that Abadar, god of wealth and trade, and Asmodeus, god of slavery and tyranny, are on friendly terms.  Why?  Because Asmodeus is a god of compacts?  He does not promote compacts well-suited to trade, nor the increase of wealth; when we force a Chelish soul to sign with a devil, they are not thus enriched as Abadar sees it.  Because Asmodeus is Prince of Law?  Let Abadar be on much friendlier terms with Iomedae, then, whose Laws would seem more suited to her peasants accumulating gold."

"Consider.  Asmodeus would have us build schools and roads, He has sent us resources out of Hell for it.  Of course His slaves become more valuable thereby, more useful; but consider, is that usually Asmodeus's way with His slaves?  We are resources to Him, yes; but the worshippers of other gods are equally resources to them, and yet among the never-mortal gods only Abadar also troubles Himself to see so much to their industry."

"Consider.  Evil can force its people to work by whip, until in mortal lands they drop, or in Hell forever.  A few elites of Good may strive, but the people of Good are lazy.  Hell is more industrious than Heaven, and Axis can scarcely be bothered to spare a droplet of attention from their amusements.  Then why has our Lord not already won?"

"Because there were balances of power set in the beginning of things.  The game of gods is one that can hardly have any winner, perhaps a few losers at best; it is akin to a game where players all have heaps of stones and take turns removing one stone from some other player's heap.  Should any player get ahead, the other players combine more against them.  If from the beginning of things Asmodeus had seemed more set to win, more alliances would have been made against Him and more compromises forced."

"Exactly.  And one of those compromises is that the devils in Hell cannot be told what the outsiders of other Outer Planes are told by their own masters."

"It is a key compromise that partially negates the advantage of Hell's industriousness; and, if that compromise is itself compromised, in a world of shattered prophecy, Hell's road to victory then opens.  Not only in Golarion, in all the realms Asmodeus contests, for devils are not limited to one realm as almost all mortals are."

"We didn't understand where His plan was going, before, because we had not seen Keltham, but seeing Keltham and hearing of his Civilization, it becomes clear.  This is the common interest that Asmodeus has with Abadar, that in a world with enough schools and roads, there can be made devils who are not ignorant, who are instructed here in the Law that our Lord cannot tell them, working with industriousness and Lawful accord after death as in life, to transform petitioner after petitioner into higher devils.  From Hell then shall pour out armies that no other realm can withstand."

"This is why our Lord slew Aroden, Aspexia.  This is why it was worth it to Him to slay Aroden, when the cost was prophecy shattering; which, as you have observed to me, now advantages gods who were once-mortal in predicting the mortal realm.  Asmodeus did not slay Aroden to save this one realm of Golarion from some little once-mortal's temporary dominion.  Shattering prophecy in Golarion makes Hell's victory possible in all of the realms.  For if prophecy still operated here, not only the gods of this realm but those of others might have combined their forces against Him, before it was too late."

"We are in the beginning of our Lord's endgame."

"Or - even if all your other cleverness is not just dancing upon air - in the beginning of one more moderate victory that will mildly improve our Lord's position, after taking into account how other gods then react and league themselves more against Him, and yet not trouble themselves to cancel His new advantages perfectly."

"Among the many common failures of mortals thinking they can see our Lord's plans is that they tend to imagine plans much larger, and with more flattering roles for themselves, than our Lord essays to move His pawns for on almost any real occasion."

"Perhaps, and yet also perhaps not.  Consider the events around us; this is no ordinary occasion.  Asmodeus is intervening over and over and over.  Our Lord has finally moved against Zon-Kuthon, now sealed, and the other gods yielded to Him in the matter.  Otolmens Herself makes bargains visibly to His favor.  Asmodeus's triumph in Golarion is become predictable enough that Cayden Cailean has made common cause with Him, god of Good that Cayden Cailean may be in name, in exchange perhaps for more revels and fornication in the worlds of the new Lawful Evil, along with a little solicitousness towards children; turning openly against Iomedae along the way.  Nethys is backing Project Lawful for the spread of knowledge, Irori for the perfecting of souls and Law.  Abadar might prefer His cleric elsewhere, but He has not withdrawn His powers from Keltham."

"Hell's victory is at hand.  We may even live to see it in Golarion."

"I must have missed the clarifications from Hell notifying us of an alliance so momentous and so straightforward, when they troubled to instruct us regarding the children at all."

"Why pay extra to tell me what I am clearly capable of figuring out for myself if I bother to exercise a little wit?"

"Abrogail.  Tell me you are amusing yourself at my expense, and not actually being this incorrigible to our Lord."

"I am of course not certain of any such conjectures.  But I can see the possibility, nor is anything about it surely wrong; and if those are perhaps not the exact details, something vast seems to be latent in the air.  Some endgame is beginning, I think, and perhaps not only the endgame of Golarion alone, and our Lord does seem to be at the center and even, we may hope, in control.  What would you of me, Aspexia, having seen this much possibility?  Would you that I do nothing?"