"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."

"Why do stories even work like that, Abrogail?"

"Because it's boring to watch a character talk about what they intend to do, and then watch exactly that happen.  So any plan that they talk about out loud - or think about, where the audience can hear them, if it's a book instead of a play - can't possibly go as they plan.  Conversely, for a plan to actually be successful, the audience can't know what it is, or the character perspective if they're reading a book."

"So if Sevar isn't allowed to think about her plan, it would follow that we're in a book, because otherwise we could just tell her not to talk about it out loud."

"I don't know if that follows in any real sense and I don't know what I'd do with the thought if I did.  We aren't actually in a book or we'd - see letters about us, I suppose - you know what I'm trying to say, Aspexia."

"I'll think on this decision and go off to Nidal to consult Gorthoklek on particulars, should we decide to do it.  And make good use of my sudden sense of aggression, by which I mean, seething rage, by seeing how many enemies I can kill in a way that is unnecessarily complicated and pains them before they die."

It is a beautiful day in Cheliax, and you are a confused Carissa.

You've just awakened in one of Abrogail Thrune's guest bedrooms - not the aftercare room, as might have unfortunate connotations; a normal doompunk bedroom that's clearly of the Queen once you've had a little time to grasp Her Infernal Majestrix's tastes.

There's a note next to you from Abrogail Thrune!  It says that your other self came up with a splendid plan whose details you've unfortunately failed to rederive even with Owl's Wisdom, possibly because you were tired and frightened and trying too hard to figure out why you'd erased your memory; and there's a surface rationalization for why you erased it, which, of course, you can't be told; but realistically this all ultimately happened because tropes: the hypothetical audience would be bored if you knew what you were doing before you did it.

Step 1 of your own plan is for you to go to Hell in order to renounce your secret clerichood of Irori directly before Dispater and sell Him your soul; for two +6/+6/+4 headbands and 30 Wishes; some of which will be used to pay Keltham what the Project owes him; and also make sure that Hell controls ambiguities in his Wish interpretations; and so this doesn't bankrupt Hell's budget to buy souls in Golarion, you're going to try buying back the Project Lawful girls on whom you don't have options, at their ultra-high bona-fide prices in Hell, but paying in spellsilver whose god-agreement price relative to Hell's budget is lagging behind its price drops in Golarion.

(There is in fact somebody standing by reading your mind, with a Modify Memory to be used if necessary.  You could always wake up again, if required.  But you're not being told this.)

What.

That's...too many Wishes? Is she worth that many Wishes?

She's going to have to conquer the entire planet to be worth that many Wishes!!

And if she has that many Wishes she probably can conquer the entire planet. 

She's going to have to send Keltham the money for his option. That - stings a bit, probably just because of the reminder - he was so happy -

- but she was never counting on it as a path out of Hell. She doesn't want a path out of Hell.