Or maybe this is all a trick and a test.  Does she pass? She doesn't think she failed. 

"Hello?" she says cautiously to the empty room. "I am an obedient Asmodean and will take over the world if Asmodeus wants me to."

To be clear, they're not necessarily going to go along with this, depending on what else Carissa thinks she's supposed to do, from here.

But at least the very first step of the Plan... doesn't seem like it obviously disadvantages Cheliax, so they may as well go along with that, and see what next step Carissa derives from there.

No, Carissa will not be told that she was being watched; let her wake up in apparent solitude.

Then she'll have the revelation that she's a cleric of Irori and should've realized sooner for the third time today!!

- and then start fretting about whether she has enough Splendour to pull this off. It seems like the kind of thing that could be pleasing to Asmodeus, but only if executed properly, beautifully. If she immediately collapses into a quivering puddle in the presence of Dispater which is what she expects will happen then that doesn't seem very satisfying. 

...good point.

There's a very obvious solution to this problem and Abrogail hates it.  The Crown of Infernal Majesty is nearly specialized on this.

The problem isn't just the temporary suffering or the lese majeste, it's that if Abrogail does that again it becomes a recurring trope.

Maybe she can send along the crown to be held by Aspexia in reserve, whereupon Sevar would look pathetic if she needed that and not just +4 Splendour, which by tropes would bring Sevar near the edge but enable her to finally triumph.

Carissa is thinking about whether she can make herself a specialized magic item for the task. Glibness might help at all, but it's really not the right thing; this is a performance, not a Bluff. You can't bluff Dispater and she isn't actually planning to try; the case for giving her all these Wishes is that she is worth them, and that Asmodeus will prosper by her having them, and that Lawful Evil's champion can't be weaker than Keltham's, or they'll lose, and can't be stronger out of Hell's desperation or generosity, or they'll lose, and so must be stronger because she sold her soul at the correct price and got more in exchange than even Keltham has access to in the short term.

...ring of eloquence? Could you do that as a sword? Is she relying on crafting as a crutch rather than just being a better Asmodean? A devil at her intelligence and splendour would not collapse into a puddle in the presence of Dispater. 

(Keltham wouldn't either but that's because he is a dumbass.)

Okay, why wouldn't a devil at her Intelligence and Splendour collapse into a puddle in the presence of Dispater? Is it something about the nature of devils or is it just that they'd have experienced more horrible suffering and would therefore be tougher? Abrogail wouldn't collapse into a puddle in the presence of Dispater, what would Abrogail be doing. ...'having much higher Splendour than Carissa' is at least part of the answer.

...or she'll let Carissa think. She could do that.

Carissa's thoughts are brighter now, the contrast to her thoughts of last night quite visible.  Overt reason, sleep deprivation; trope reason, she wasn't allowed last night to figure out her own plan.

She could go for more Splendour and less Intelligence, borrow the +6 headband back from Pilar. Aside from her entire self flinching away from the idea of being even slightly stupider during an important negotiation, that might be wise. 

And the general reason to not be stupider during a negotiation is that you'll get cleverly trapped. But soul-sale contracts are standard, she does know the standard, and conveniently some other Carissa who erased herself did all the work on figuring out what to ask for.

...did that Carissa erase herself just so this Carissa would have no ability to retreat from her ask because of not knowing what went into it. 

....that Carissa is cool. 

Yeah, okay, if some allied Carissae can erase themselves to improve her bargaining position then this one can go in with more Splendour than Intelligence. Her job is to deliver to Asmodeus the victory over Irori that He must have wanted ever since the contest over Carissa began, and get the things that she needs to win over/defeat/corrupt/whatever Keltham. 

She also wants Olegario's soul, and Abarco's, for very different reasons, but if the negotiation-planning Carissa didn't ask for that then there's no margin in the plan for it.

They can suggest something about options purchased with the mispriced spellsilver before interplanar prices of record finish adjusting, but dear Carissa is not allowed to own the souls of her Securities now.

She's not thinking about how that'd make it easier to betray Cheliax! She just feels that she should own everyone that's ever had power over her and is carefully not extending the principle too far. 

All right. Does the note say anything about timeframes? Is she going today? 

No; they weren't sure if Sevar would be ready to go today, so Aspexia didn't request all those spells.  If Sevar gets her Project in order today, and doesn't need to create any magic items that she can't just yank into existence in eight fucking hours because Carissa Sevar, then she could go tomorrow.

(Abrogail would not, usually, hurry even that much, on something of this magnitude.  But she has some reason to fear that Keltham might decide to destroy Egorian, or, if he's made the more difficult deduction/recollection, all of Cheliax, in less than a month from now.)

She'll put in the request to buy a Ring of Eloquence, then, and - make sure the Project's in a stable state in case she's gone for a week. She is not sure how quickly one can get an appointment with Dispater, and she has learned her lesson about leaving her Project with insufficient instructions. 

...she's not actually sure how to put Maillol back together and feels vaguely sick about that. 

Oh, good.  Abrogail does so like it when a lesson needn't be taught twice.

Mostly, the way you put people back together after torture is by torturing them correctly in the first place.

Possibly she should've practiced on a bunch of random people first but the impulse to do that felt like the weak, flawed impulse to not have to hurt people who trust her not to, and she's trying very hard to ignore that one. ...well, there's an ilani saying about this, if you aren't making errors in both directions you know which direction to move in.

YES.  PRACTICE IS REQUIRED.  If you want to be good today you need to have already practiced yesterday and probably for a while earlier.  You would think Carissa Sevar would understand this even if it was about torture instead of Spellcraft.

Carissa is not confused about this she's just not sure if, being in fact unpracticed, she should've refrained from hurting Maillol. Well. She'll try fixing him and learn something from that.

Every Project section should get priorities for the next week and next month, and notes on under what circumstances they can be promoted.

Pilar will be charge of discipline/researcher safety complaints. Routine mindreadings will include asking whether people sabotaged anyone else's work, or acted against what they understood to be the interests of the Project.

The new ilani will get a morning lecture on corrigibility and an afternoon lecture on using probabilities to think. 

And an emergency tailor should be brought in, to get Carissa's outfit fitted such that Avaricia has nothing to say.

When Carissa emerges from her bedroom (or demands food be brought to her, should she be so inclined) she'll be told that Aspexia Rugatonn requests word by Project Lawful's evening Teleport on whether this expedition is to occur tomorrow after dawn, or later; Lady Sevar can make an appointment with the Queen if she has matters to discuss, else a Teleport to Project Lawful awaits her.

Oh, and here are some of the Queen's private notes on torture.  Nobody's ever understood them and the Queen has given up on trying to explain to anybody.

Oooohh, that sounds like a challenge. Carissa loves challenges. 

She is ready to return to Project Lawful and begin her preparations. 

A very respectful Security wizard will escort her, then.  He doesn't turn into pudding in Carissa Sevar's presence; he's also been exposed to the Queen a fair amount, and Carissa Sevar isn't that much scarier.

Carissa remains blissfully ignorant of the full force of the rumors spreading about her in Egorian and does not think to ask the Security wizard for tips on not melting into a puddle. It does occur to her to summon some slaves when she gets back to Project Lawful and ask them.

...how is Carissa Sevar asking, exactly?

Well, she'll summon them and then ask them to tell her how they avoid turning into a puddle around terrifying people. She's in a hurry, she's not planning to make this complicated.

This first slave seems to have interpreted Carissa Sevar's question as a demand to know why they aren't more scared of her, and has prostrated themselves on the floor frantically babbling about how they meant no offense they only do their jobs they are very terrified they will always be very terrified from now on, since that apparently is what is being demanded of them.

Well that's totally unhelpful!!!!!! No! She doesn't want them to be more terrified! She wants to know why they aren't! 

....she hasn't given them any training in believing her when she says things, has she. They have literally no reason to do that.  It sounds so incredibly inconvenient and time consuming to convince them, she didn't even succeed at it with the Project students....

...probably you cannot be terrifying enough that no one dreams of crossing you while not being so terrifying it impairs them in doing their jobs. Inconvenient.