"I would not be terribly surprised if I could get to that point faster than our being able to wreck the next worst place after Nidal.  Actually, hold on a sec -"

Message to Yaisa:  Classification status on being able to tell Carissa that you were able to put buying and selling prices on sexual services, and this was incredibly helpful to me and should enable me to feel much less nervous about those same services even in non-financial contexts?

- sure, go ahead?

"Yaisa says I'm cleared to mention that one of the incredibly helpful things she did was being able to put a financial price on a couple of sex things, both what I'd pay her, and what she'd pay me, under my Fair Pricing spell.  I expect to be a lot less nervous now that I have some idea of the order of financial magnitude that goes with some things, even if nobody is actually paying for anything."

"Uh, order of magnitude is the rough number of 10s in a bag of 10s describing the number, like, 4,000 has an order of magnitude of around 1,000 or 10,000."

" - that makes sense. You know, probably the project should've gotten an actual proper sex worker cleared for you ages ago. I'm glad Yaisa's enough of one. Anyway, the thing for me is much more about - you being unleashed, you doing whatever you want - than about the trappings of supervillainy, though probably at some point we will have to conquer some places and I do expect that to be fun. Power is inherently interesting but - internal restrictions on how you use it aren't very different from external ones, in terms of how hot it seems to me?"

"Got some trouble parsing that, on dath ilani Law.  Where does your sexuality draw the line between internal restriction and internal direction?"

"Like, let's say I'm in a Cooperation-Defection dilemma with Broom, Broom promises upon his Law that he'll Cooperate if he expects I'll Cooperate, I tell him under truthspell that I'll Cooperate, and then it comes my turn.  If I write Cooperate, I get Carissa, and if I write Defect, I get Carissa and Yaisa.  Had Broom written Defect, though, my choices would have been Cooperate for nothing, or Defect for Yaisa."

"When I write Cooperate, am I internally directed into my choice to win Carissa?  Or am I internally restricted by the dull bonds of duty and obligation to my past self, who needed to pass his truthspell, to give up Yaisa?"

"- I don't know what I expected. If I query my 'is this hot or not' opinion about that situation it returns 'it's hot how Keltham is a bizarre alien who is very smart'."

"Same Carissa-Yaisa Cooperation-Defection dilemma, but Broom just said he'd Cooperate and I Cooperate back because that's what Kelthams do.  Internal direction or internal restriction?"

"Keltham's not on any level wishing he was different and was the kind of entity which would defect and get both? Is he thinking 'well, it'd be really nice if I could get both, but that'd make me a bad person, so I can't'?"

"Being motivated by wanting to not be a bad person is something I think of - as a particular flavor of Good that Civilization is kind of ehhhhh about, not least because it goes along with people who are sad that they can't destroy all of reality to make sure nobody ever has to stub their toe again?"

"Hypothetical Keltham definitely wants both Carissa and Yaisa, that's what makes the setup even be interesting.  The thought that writing Defect would make him a bad person isn't particularly occurring to him, though, that's just not how he parses things.  The situation where Broom wrote Cooperate and Keltham wrote Defect is just one that Keltham intensely does not want, and for him to avoid that is no different than him taking a gift of a million gold pieces if those are on offer.  He wouldn't take the million gold pieces because it would make him a bad person to turn them down, he'd take them because he wanted a million gold pieces."

"Well, then that's fine, though it is too complicated to be hot. I am a simple woman and need to have had at least three hours to digest new cooperation-theory before it starts appearing in my sexual fantasies."

"If 'too complicated to be hot' was a thing for dath ilani our species would've died out when our average Intelligence went past 15."

"But 'too complicated' is relative to the intelligence of the people involved! Selling you options on my soul is probably too complicated to be hot for someone who doesn't understand what an option is, but I do, so it was the right amount of complicated. Once I understand the deep Law of the Cooperation game then it will find its place in sexual fantasies, it's just not there yet."

"I hope at some point you catch up on enough Law that your fancy intelligence headband allows you to start saying very clever things that are clearly just barely beyond where I can presently understand them.  Which, in an ordinary and Civilized relationship, would force me to bribe you for an explanation, possibly with sexual services, but in our case I guess I just cuff you to the cuddling surface, bed, and tickle it out of you..."

"You know, every now and then I realize that yet another aspect of dath ilani culture is probably - from your standpoint - I guess my standpoint now too - an awful side effect of our having a world of sadists with no masochists.  That gendertrope in particular is probably about having a sense of control over another person, in one of the few ways that's possible to do, in a way that makes them still want to be around you, and be benefiting from being around you, in a world where nobody actually wants to submit."

" - huh. 

It seems awfully sad, for a whole world to just be like that, built around - something missing.... I don't want to sleep with any of them, I don't really go for Good, but I wish we could trade them."

"Your world would not at all lack for tradeables even if it had no magic, yes."

"If Yaisa alone fell into a portal to Civilization, then even if none of her magic worked there, even if she couldn't remember any of her past to sell memories, she would still end up very very very rich."

"Though possibly not if there were any existing masochists around at all, as I misdoubt but do not disbelieve.  They could be real there but rare.  In that case she'd only be very very rich."

"I have a feeling she's going to manage to swing that here, too. And good for her."

There's no chance all the powerful people just go around sexually unfulfilled when they could just grab someone.

...there's some chance. It still doesn't feel likely but dath ilan is very different and there's some chance of all kinds of strange things.

(Lunchtime is ending.)

Time to go sign some IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS!

PL-timestamp:  Day 13 (10) / Early Afternoon

Somehow it takes HOURS for the Governance representative to cough out TWO SIGNATURES.

How is that even POSSIBLE.

PL-timestamp:  Day 13 (10) / Late Afternoon

Keltham staggers out battered but triumphant.  He now has a stock corporation, and his stock corporation now has an interim meant-to-be-replaced contract with Cheliax.

Time to get his first 8 employees in to look over their employment contracts.  They're pretty simple by Civilizational standards.  He's still not expecting them to sign right away, obviously.  There's less urgency about that aspect of things, if they're willing to trust to a handshake deal that current work gets retroactively covered by the contracts when signed, and they're already being paid in mere money without having to wait on that.

They definitely don't want to sign right away but this all makes sense and looks pretty good and they're happy to trust to the handshake deal if he is.

Great!  He now has a CORPORATION and a CONTRACT and EMPLOYEES.  And a MISSION and someone he LOVES and a FULL-TIME SEX WORKER.  Anyone who requires more than this to be happy in life is DOING IT WRONG.