Now.

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). 

Aspexia Rugatonn's reaction to this isn't exactly 'This is legitimately not the cleverly disguised traitorous plan I was expecting' but it's pretty close.

She turns the pages away from herself, stops to think.

It doesn't so far look like the start of an escape plan, unless there'll be some elaborate operation that supposedly must needs be carried out before the trip to Dis, proposed once Aspexia's suspicions are lulled... she doubts a traitorous Sevar would expect Aspexia to fall for that, but Aspexia will know what she's reading if that comes next.

It's - sort of an overwhelmingly tropey version of Aspexia's imagined true-loyal Sevar who found some fault in her loyalty and would lay out some much more mundane plan to correct it.  Perhaps there will be some evident reason for the drama, in the next paragraphs.

Alternatively: some initial gambit of an INT 24 traitor who has read Aspexia Rugatonn about as well as she could.

It will depend on what the rest of the letter says.  If this is essentially all the plan, but for notes on corrigibility, then Aspexia would in a tropeless world consider herself reassured enough.

Aspexia turns the pages back into her vision, and reads on.

Carissa should be told that she needs 2x +6/+6/+4 headbands and 30 Wishes -

Aspexia has a number of immediate reactions starting from the beginning of this sentence, including, in no particular order:

'WHAT'

'ARE YOU MAD'

'Dispater actually accepting that price would use up Hell's soul-purchase budget for - I don't even know -'

'ARE YOU MAD'

and

'2 headbands and 30 Wishes rather sounds like half of this is for Keltham.'

- 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.

Half are explicitly for Keltham - is Sevar supposedly going to negotiate something with Keltham, in his presence, before selling her soul -

- what is she doing, how does the erased-Sevar think she can sell Aspexia on this being reasonable sane thinking -

- and Aspexia reads on, for she is sufficiently confused that it seems not a useful place to stop and think.

Earlier

 

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.

 

(She leaves some space blank to add the justification for this, which she hasn't thought of yet at all.)

Objection: this bankrupts Cheliax. I have a solution in mind....

... 2x +6/+6/+4 headbands and 30 Wishes?  That sounds like half are for - she explicitly says half are for Keltham.  Mmhm.

Rugatonn would like a little more detail on this mysterious plan.

It's so he is on net glad he met me and will listen to me about not destroying the world. 

What else could it possibly be for. ....she's actually having a bit of a hard time. 

When you can't think of good ideas, think of dumb ones; at least you're thinking.

...she's going to use the Wishes directly to make herself irresistible and then corrupt him.

....she thinks if she's with Keltham as he enhances himself, and has a good understanding from having done it herself, she can shape him LE. 

....Cheliax has to pay him anyway, they've dragged out the negotiations a lot but they owe him really quite a lot of money, and he's offered to pay 200k for a Wish scroll from an LE person, and they'll win a dispute over whether a payment denominated thus is fair. She'll meet Cheliax's obligations to him and also cause them to interact again, under circumstances where she can seduce him.

...that's not actually a terrible idea.

If nothing else, Aspexia Rugatonn is impressed by the temerity with which Carissa Sevar proposes this!

The further details of her reaction feel hard for Carissa to model; Aspexia knows more about the strategic faceoff between Osirion and Cheliax than Carissa does, has hard-to-guess thoughts about tropes and what she thinks they say about an augmented Carissa facing off an augmented Keltham for control of Golarion while trying to seduce him.

She... plausibly... lets Carissa go to Dis and sell her soul first, and then demands details of the seduction plan from re-augmented Carissa before approving whatever Carissa really wants to do with Keltham, and gets sign-off from Abrogail.

That's probably fine, the really important thing is the souls and Carissa can fucking make them both headbands if headbands are important, but is there another justification, an easy improvement in wording that makes this less suspicious - oh. Since the Wishes are Hell-granted Hell will have interpretation rights over whatever Keltham is planning to do with them, which might be important; in her judgment he's likely to be trying things that are very dangerous and inventing his own wordings. 

(Does that lead Aspexia to the conclusion he's trying to destroy the world, though...)

Actually there's a different problem with it, (though the interpretation-rights thing is clever, she should include it).

An INT-29 Carissa will notice that Keltham is trying to destroy the world even if she's trying not to think.

She'll tell Aspexia not to let her use the Wishes right away, which also conveniently accounts for why she might not come up with a seduction plan. (The Wishes will still be hers by right and contract; when she defects she'll have access to them.)
 

And why should Sevar not be immediately Wished up to +5s?

If you've solved corrigibility that's a safe thing to do but Carissa hasn't, yet. And bets she can do it with just the headband.
 

It'd be nice to think of more justification than that.

Keltham has talked a bit about 'abortability' as a desirable property of plans (though oft an over-expensive one).  If soulsold Carissa can't hold her loyalty together wearing a +6/+6 headband, it's less wasteful to downgrade to +6, than to try to curse her Wished-up abilities lower.

Obvious enough she's not sure it's worth spelling out but better to anticipate Aspexia's lines of thought, maybe. 

The Owl's Wisdom runs out. 

That's fine. Just fill in the middle section of the letter and write the corrigibility insights she's been thinking of while she works through this.

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).

And the rest of the letter is already written. 

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

 

And in the corrigibility notes:

Devils shouldn't have sufficiently strongly-held priorities they'll pull out any stops to achieve; here's a sketch of why.

Devils should prefer plans that are not weird (Carissa is aware that in this respect a crippled beggar is closer to Asmodeus than she is). Here's a sketch of why.

Is that all, is that enough -

At INT 24 (even without the extra WIS) there's insights into corrigibility you can get swiftly, once you're no longer not-seeing anything that you wouldn't want to happen to you personally in Hell.

But Carissa's time limit on using Modify Memory to erase from the time she started looking inside herself, instead of her earlier resolution to think about corrigibility, is fast-approaching.

- oh, and Aspexia will ask Abrogail. She could write a letter optimized for persuasiveness to Abrogail but it'd look different and there's not enough time - she'll just have to gamble - she could add a bit to the existing letter, there's an obvious thing to point to for Abrogail, but she actually thinks it works best if Abrogail's the one to think of it -

Right, last step. 

Now.

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

She reads it all a second time.

She skims the corrigibility notes.

It's a lot further than Asmodia got!