"I know you know I know etcetera goes off to infinity, which means I have to throw out the entire approach of representing knowledge as probabilities assigned to propositions, I need a finite representation that derives the infinite series there. 

I'm actually, on a different note, really confused about your Conspiracy threat model, here? Even if you assume the Conspiracy put all the best liars in Cheliax on this project, I'm not on this project in my capacity as one of the best liars in Cheliax, I'm on this project because it might be that the gods picked your landing-place on purpose and if so we don't want to mess with that. So it'd be bizarre if I were the best person in Cheliax to pretend to be a seventh-circle priest of Abadar. Also, Abadarans always have a price, in the Conspiracy we've just paid this guy to lie to you and promised to exceed any bribe you credibly offer him." 

"Imaginably correct as of the moment I landed on the Worldwound, but since then I've been teaching you in particular and also I plausibly landed on somebody who'd understand me better than other liars -"

Wait.  Has he been distracted enough by considering whether that particular response sounded less like Carissa than the previous ones, wondering if they read his mind and brought in a different actor to run that, that he's failed to consider the simpler possibility where the person he tickled was not Carissa at all -

A thought crosses Keltham's mind, and he quickly reaches out and grabs the hand of the possible actor playing Carissa Sevar, before they could be invisibly spirited away and replaced by the real one.

Keltham considers whether to use up his one Glimpse of Beyond to check on the true identity of the person whose hand he's holding.

- she looks down at his hand, and then back up at him. "... new theory is that someone is impersonating Carissa Sevar so Carissa Sevar can impersonate a priest of Abadar?"

"How do you get that off my suddenly holding your hand?"

"You're not being affectionate, you're not going to be in the mood for that until you've satisfied yourself I'm not pretending to love you to further my nefarious Conspiracy ends. So, you suddenly want to be in physical contact, why, because that makes it harder to swap me out with an impersonator, except once you've had that thought it has to occur to you that maybe I've already been swapped out with an impersonator."

"So why am I holding your hand then?"

"Trying to think of a test- no, you've got one, you will've asked your god for Glimpse of Beyond this morning when you decided to spend the day looking for Conspiracies. But if you use it now then the Conspiracy can freely swap me out for impersonators after this. You could ask for a scroll of it."

She is, of course, actually Carissa, but that doesn't mean she has nothing to fear from someone looking at her with True Seeing; she is wearing the Crown of Infernal Majesty, right now, and it will not look like her usual +4 headband. If he asks for a scroll, they'll have time to swap it. 

"Harder to trust a scroll the Conspiracy supplies to me."

Keltham thinks about whether he wants to burn his Glimpse of Beyond spell on this, agonizes a bit, and finally lets go of Carissa's hand so she can resume her mathematical endeavors, feeling a bit sick and weary of it all.  He refocuses his attention on the priest of Abadar.

(Message to Abadar priest again.)  "It's also been claimed to me that the Pharaoh of Osirion has the legal right to take any woman of Osirion he likes, including foreign visitors."

"That is a consequence of how power works virtually everywhere on Golarion. The Pharaoh of Osirion does not exercise that right, that I've ever heard of, and the teachings of Abadar celebrate voluntary and mutually profitable arrangements, so it seems likely to me that anyone Abadar selected as His person in Golarion would exhibit similar restraint. But that he has the right - that's the way of the world. If anyone told you that it wasn't so in Cheliax, they lied."

- so Aspexia sends, while still in the middle of her hasty invisible flight back to Abrogail.

Aspexia did not allow herself to think any thoughts of triumph, when Keltham seemed to be accepting the words she was speaking through the cleric; she did understand that much of drama.  It was enough reply that Aspexia would predictably continue to behave with that slight deference to tropes henceforth.

When Keltham then picked that moment to tickle Sevar, Aspexia did wonder if the tropes were trying to encourage her.

Then when Keltham threatened in his mind to use Glimpse of Truth, and perhaps see through to the Crown - nor could any invisible Security dare dart in to quickly replace it, for Glimpse of Truth might see their invisible forms too, if Keltham cast it just then - Aspexia wondered if the tropes were playing her.

Abrogail herself didn't know whether the Crown's artifact status, or perhaps the true actuality of its transformation, would let it evade True Seeing.  The question had not previously been germane to the Queen's usual games, for anybody using True Seeing would see Abrogail herself beneath her seemings, never mind her Crown.

Abrogail had bid Aspexia then to fly invisibly and in haste to check on the Crown of Infernal Majesty from the edge of True Seeing's range, to learn whether they stood at risk, even if that meant leaving Abrogail less-defended for a few rounds.

And now that Aspexia has seen the Crown with the eyes of True Seeing, she does not know at all what to think of tropes -

- Aspexia reaches Abrogail again, and only then sends the message, to be delivered to Sevar when she's not imminently working, that the Crown's guise will pass even True Seeing.  (Aspexia could not send that message earlier, for that might have told some of the Security here that Abrogail was less defended in those moments.  The Queen of Cheliax is not truly undefended, but the Queen is far less defended than usual.)

Perhaps 'the tropes are beyond your comprehension, dare not to work them' is the message the tropes are trying to convey?

Or perhaps all of the events in this sequence were only ones that would have occurred regardless, in a very ordinary way, and Aspexia is only being a fool to think that any tropes were in play at all?

Good luck figuring that out.  Nethys Himself isn't sure.

"Carissa, does that match your own understanding of Osirion, Cheliax, and for that matter Golarion?"

"It's not true at the Worldwound," says Carissa. "At the Worldwound Abrogail or the Pharaoh of Osirion are obliged the same as everyone else, to render aid to anyone fighting if they can safely do so, and to not do violence to them, or detain them except in the course of normal criminal investigations.

I - guess it's probably true of pretty much everywhere else. With - different details, and the details do matter, and at varying and in some cases quite high political cost, but I'm not going to sit here and tell you Abrogail couldn't have had me, if you hadn't gotten there first."

"So why'd you tell me that about the Pharaoh of Osirion, then?"

"If I recall correctly I was trying to explain to you why women being desired by powerful people is not particularly validating, and I said something like, 'for example it wouldn't be very validating to be chosen by the pharaoh of Osirion, because it'd only mean you're in the top couple hundred or that he was tired of the top couple hundred and wanted something new.' I didn't use Abrogail as an example because being wanted by Abrogail is, it happens, validating, because she's very picky."

Keltham to priest:  "Sorry, I'm trying to reconcile stories I was told.  How many women is the Pharaoh of Osirion - dating, or however this works?"

"Osirion doesn't do anything they or you would identify as dating. The pharaoh has eight wives, and hundreds of concubines, which historically was a social role that involved bearing him children but is more expansive these days. An Osirian would emphasize that to be a wife or concubine of the pharaoh means that he has obligations to you - to feed and house you and your children for life, to provide for your health and your dignity - and that your corresponding obligations to him are mostly about Osirion's legitimate interest in being assured of the paternity of potential heirs. It's not sexual slavery."

"And what kind of - selection process, constraints, laws, or customs if there aren't any laws - determines who ends up one of those hundreds of concubines?"

"Historically, many of the pharaoh's concubines were women presented to him as gifts by neighboring countries  on his ascension to power, women who came to his attention in some other ways, women captured on campaigns of conquest and so on. But that was the ancient Pharaohate, which Abadar had no part in. Today, recruiters go out and look for eligible candidates, conduct interviews, and present the pharaoh with the most promising, and the majority are selected through that process, though I think some cases are more complicated. Qadira does still send some girls as gifts, and it'd be very rude to turn them down about it."

"What happens if one of the gift girls from Qadira arrives in Osirion and announces that she's sorry but, having met the Pharaoh, she'd rather not be his concubine after all?"

"That really seems like a question you should ask of an Osirian. I know little of the inner workings of the Pharaoh's court. I doubt she would simply depart, but perhaps employment more suited to her could be found for her."

"Carissa, is this matching your understanding."

"If he doesn't actually grab girls he sees who suit him, then that's better than I knew. I sort of expect that if a concubine doesn't like it she gets told to grow up and do her job and not anger the powerful person who rules the foreign country she's been shipped to where she owns nothing, cannot legally work a job, and doesn't even speak the language. But I don't know anything firsthand, here."

It's... not out of the reach of Ordinary possibility, for Golarion, in terms of different sides of different factions having different stories and maybe not understanding each other all that well, Keltham supposes.  His childhood training in the Way would not have emphasized so much the need to make sure you understood the other side's story, as they would tell it themselves and from their own mouths, if that was not otherwise a failure mode of human beings.

"Carissa, back to the math mines, please."

And to the priest of Abadar:  "Okay, and trying again to verify those words were indeed from a seventh-circle priest of Abadar, I don't suppose you can give me any analysis of what we've just been discussing that sees the world the way a high priest of Abadar would see it?"

"I am tempted to analyze the dynamics between rulers and the lovers they take, or between men and women more broadly, through the lens of bargaining power," says Temas, as Carissa, smiling, turns back to her math notes. 

"Go ahead," Keltham says to the priest.