Ascending. 

Nope, doesn't work, you can't actually pull that off at fourth circle no matter how clever you think your plan is and also she's not sure it'd be following Asmodeus's instructions.

Wish-kidnapping Keltham back and doing a murder-suicide. That would be cool but not actually advance literally any of their strategic objectives and also requires a Wish. 

...selling her soul for three Wishes, Wish-kidnapping Keltham back, using the other two Wishes to do something really cool. take over cheliax she knows she is far too weak to pull that off and doesn't even want to it's just the kind of thing that appears when you try to think of things that would be really cool. 

....that devil wanted her to agree to only ask for three Wishes. 

Aside from the problem where it'd leave Cheliax in dire straits, how much could she sell for? Five? Ten? Could she go run right into the arms of Asmodeus and ask him for fifty nope definitely not that's a terrible plan that's an amazingly terrible plan that definitely ends in some completely inconceivably awful way. It wouldn't even please Asmodeus.

Could she sell her soul for twenty Wishes, then use them to overthrow Barbatos wow that's also a terrible plan. This is a cruel, cruel question to ask people. She should keep it in mind for if she ever wants to torture someone horribly.

But she's pretty sure that you're out of pathetic rearguard action territory by the time you've arrived at horrifically ill-advised regicide and deicide plans, so, uh, there's that, which will be wonderful comfort when she is tortured horribly for every thought she's just had.

Okay, Aspexia is just going to show Sevar the entire note before they run out of Modify Memory time, and ask if Sevar can reconstruct any part of her Keltham seduction plan.

Most High,

Working on corrigibility, realized devils don't have uncommanded curiosity (further notes on this attached). Had a crisis about this - tell me again with Owl's Wisdom up and watch if you want details. Decided to press on and figure out more, but kept failing Hell's admonition to come to Asmodeus without thought of other choices. Think I should sell my soul before trying to make further progress. 

My defection risk aside, realization about uncommanded curiosity implies my value to Hell higher than I thought. Want to sell my soul in a way no mortal has done before: by going to Dis to bargain directly with Dispater and renounce Irori for Asmodeus before him. (yes, I figured that out. you can watch me figure it out with an Owl's Wisdom). 

Carissa should be told that she needs 2x +6/+6/+4 headbands and 30 Wishes, where the second portion of those are for Keltham as part of a seduction plan she'll rederive next time she's fully augmented, but though Carissa shouldn't be told it during negotiations, you can step in and tell her it's really okay to settle at anything down to 1x +6/+6 and 10 Wishes, without which Carissa actually will walk out on them and see if she can become more valuable before selling.

Headbands + Wishes for augmentation. Can't beat augmented Keltham with much stupider Carissa, tropes say equals. Wishes used to square payment for Cheliax's spellsilver progress, Keltham quoted 200k for a Wish scroll, can get arbitrator to agree on headband and Hell-Wish prices anchored on that. He might be doing something risky with Wishes, strongly prefer ambiguity interpreted by Hell than by other sources. Do not give Carissa Wish-augmentation immediately. Headband easier to take off if anything goes wrong and less-augmented Carissa safer to closely monitor (close monitoring will be necessary, suspect for INT 29 Carissa only Gorthoklek can do it).

Objection: this bankrupts Cheliax. I have a solution in mind. Want to own all PL souls as a personal vanity; it's the first thing I asked Abarco for when commanded by Hell. Think I should be permitted, if in Hell's interests, to repurchase souls sold in Cheliax at their spellsilver-denominated prices from the original sale though we can now produce spellsilver more cheaply, freeing up budget for my Wishes and headbands and for future soul sales. Would also like to own everyone save you + Majestrix who ever read my mind, if the approach goes through at all, but this is a vanity not a priority. 

Objection: probably a traitor's plot. Could trivially have suicided for rez in Osirion, or sought divine attention, or Geased my loyalists. 

Objection: then why wipe memory. Think the Carissa who stands before you is more valuable in the eyes of Hell and in her own eyes. Want to be the most valuable version of myself. Think Asmodeus's instruction to come to Him without thought of other choices is important, and am no longer able to do so. Don't want to be distracted by fear of losing my curiosity/etc while selling my soul. Slightly worried further revelations following from these ones really would have broken my loyalty. 

- Carissa Sevar

- wow, previous Carissa was notably cooler than her, she wonders what her secret was.

The obvious thing is to conquer a country together. It's a very Lawful Evil thing to do, Keltham does have some inclination to do it, he's stopped cooperating with all these countries probably because he intends to oppose them, maybe she had some idea for how she could help him overthrow Osirion over the sexism, say, or the Padishah Empire over all the child slavery, simultaneously acclimate Keltham to conquest and power and spend time with him where he can appreciate her and also plausibly meet his real need for a country from which he could build Civilization. 

If it's not that she's not sure what it is. There's a clarity of vision in the letter that she doesn't feel, and she's not sure why - like there's some piece missing that the other Carissa thought she'd infer immediately -

Tap Sevar with Splendour and a Lesser Restoration, see if she gets it then.  The original conditions are already violated and they're running out of time.

Go to Keltham, enhanced, smarter than him, and he'll make himself smarter too, to match you, and - then what? Well, you'll be the only woman in the world who can even comprehend him, but that's not a seduction plan all by itself. It seems very plausible he is preparing for some kind of terrible war on Cheliax - could she stop him, by selling him the Wishes, by giving herself again to him - it does seem likely that with enhanced enough stats she could figure him out, but she's not grasping it right this second -

And they're out of time.

Modify Memory.

Deep Slumber, actually.  They need to discuss this, and Carissa shouldn't try to puzzle this in her current state.

"I'm not particularly offering to defer this decision to you, but you're the Carissa Sevar expert."

"Yes.  Obvious disturbing thought, the Carissa Sevar who devised this plan was greater than this Sevar because she'd seen through suppressed thoughts, inner conflicts, inner lies."

"Or the other Sevar was less stressed, not in my presence, less cumulatively tired, less frightened beforehand - she did seem to pick up stride once Restored and Splendored."

"What does her traitorous self hope to gain, compared to just killing herself to wake in Osirion?"

"Expiation of her sins to her god, Keltham, by undoing as much as she can of the harms she's dealt him while damning herself as thoroughly as she may without Abaddon, which she never would."

"Would she actually, knowing that Keltham certainly didn't wish it of her?"

"I don't know.  I think at +6 Cunning and +4 Wisdom Sevar would be smarter than that, it's just, hard to be sure with somebody like her."

"Suppose we trust to Sevar's loyalty.  Suppose Hell goes along with all this insanity.  What do you think of Sevar's intended game, as much of it as we know about?  What would the tropes say of it? - for that in particular you may apprehend better than I."

"It would unambiguously set Sevar up as the other pole of a contest with Keltham for dominance of Golarion and perhaps beyond, which is - a story much friendlier to Lawful Evil and Chelish ways, than others that could be told - and also put them on something of a friendly basis, as they fought, hinting at further rapprochement, from a position where Sevar granted a kind of aid to him -"

"I don't like everything about it, in particular that it sidelines me decisively once Sevar has grown far enough."

"That was always going to be the case if Sevar served Asmodeus sufficiently.  You're not planning to betray Him in the depths of your heart, I'm sure."

"Indeed I'm not...  Well, I'm not the main character and this was never my story.  I suppose I should be glad it isn't, or this sort of thing would be happening to me."

"What do you make of her failure to reproduce her own seduction plan?  A bluff, a sign that no such plan exists, that the Sevar we saw was not like unto the one who wrote this note?"

"Well, if nothing else, it at least -"

"I have a thought you're going to hate.  But it may point to the only possible way for Cheliax, for Carissa, to win this."

"I'll endure, and think with fondness of how much less complicated Hell must be than this."

"It's the same reason we only speak circuitously about our own plot that might end up giving Cheliax a shield against Keltham."

"Sevar is proving unable to figure out her own seduction plan, because the tropes require Sevar's character perspective to not know her own plan until the moment she implements it."

"There's theoretically more things we could try, like putting her back into her bedroom and Suggesting that we've given up on figuring it out and nobody is looking at her.  But we'd be fighting tropes the whole way, and anything we could try that would actually succeed would get shut down.  Somehow."