Imaginary Carissa is flustered! (Real Carissa is having lots of fun and can't even explain to herself why.) "I feel like you're making this into - obviously if it's your slave, and you want them - limbless and chained to the wall, or something - you should get to do that! I'm not trying to convince you to do otherwise! I suppose I do think it's nice that some people don't want that, and want nicer things than that, but I bet you think so too; after all, you're in an Asmodean tyranny where you get to be a baroness instead of being in a Kuthite suffering-country where no one gets to have fingers. Metaphorically."

"Well, that's the whole difference between Kuthism and Asmodeanism, isn't it?  In Kuthism everyone suffers; in Asmodeanism, you can be a noble in life, or a devil in death, and get to cause a lot of suffering while doing little suffering yourself.  There isn't an option in either system for being little-harmed yourself while not dealing harm.  Those who never want to cut off a slave's fingers are bound to end up fingerless themselves."

"Managed to hurt anybody yourself?  Because with an attitude like that, I bet you didn't enjoy it properly even if you did."

"You don't know anything about me." But she does not sound like someone with a lot about her behind that angry answer.

Mostly the Baroness doesn't know what kind of victim this is, and whether she made any progress at all on hurting her, and something about her seems to not quite fit because what would somebody like that be doing here and failing to deduce what kind of place they were in from seeing a fingerless tiefling already...

The Baroness walks off without saying anything at all by way of departure, the last little bit of injury she might be able to manage.  You're either a hurter or one of the hurtees, and she tries with her every act in life to make herself one of the former.

There's now an interesting overhearable conversation nearby, the sort where people are talking in voices not particularly meant to demand attention, but loud enough that somebody else could join their conversation if they wanted.  It looks to be a noble, a high-level fighter, and a cleric of Asmodeus; and if they aren't all walking into a tavern, they're at least standing near the drinks station.

Noble:  ...sign that the accursed wizards are taking over the whole fucking country, I'm telling you.  They go off and figure out how to make an expensive wizard thing more cheaply and suddenly they're the key to world conquest?

      Fighter:  Aye!  If spellsilver had always cost a tenth of the old price, nobody would think anything of mining it so.  If only warriors had always lazed about and made an attack every minute!  We could pretend now to speed up to an attack per round, and we'd all be the center of attention.

   Cleric:  There's something to what you say.  Not much, and not necessarily good, but something.  I notice some concern myself that the Queen is handing out Intelligence headbands to the nobility -

Noble:  Yes!  Exactly!  It'd be one thing if that were a free action, but you've got to take off your Splendour headband to put on an Intelligence headband, and we need those!  I never thought I'd see the day when an eighth-circle sorceress started to go along with the wizards on Intelligence being everything!  Who's to say that Intelligence is any more important than Splendour, in life?  If Intelligence is everything then why doesn't Nefreti Clepati rule the world, hm?  It's we nobles who run things all over Golarion, and that's because Splendour is just more useful than Intelligence to everyone who isn't a wizard, everyone living in real life.

      Fighter:  Aye!  Who's even to say that an Intelligence headband is any more useful or important than a belt of Strength or Constitution?

   Cleric:  Me, for one.  I'd say that.  At least if we're talking about those who'd rule.

      Fighter:  There's many a king that wouldn't have attained their throne without a Belt of Physical Might.

Noble:  Once you have the throne and can afford to hire bodyguards, Strength becomes not quite as important, after.  If you can trust the bodyguards, that is, which is a matter of Splendour.

      Fighter:  Did I take a throne, I'd put a Splendour headband on myself, but I wouldn't take off my Strength belt after.  Being strong changes you, there is a confidence that comes from being able to punch through iron and outlast a stone statue.  If you cannot outfight your own bodyguards, it changes how you treat them and how they treat you.  There is no mind without body, even petitioners must manifest one for themselves.  I'm surprised and dismayed to find myself the only advocate here of the commonsense position that all six abilitystats are equally important in life.

   Cleric:  It's easier to sound wise than to be wise, as the clerics say.  There's a reason why wizards do say that Intelligence is most important in life, clerics that Wisdom is most important, sorcerers that Splendour is most important, and fighters argue that all six abilitystats are equally important.

      Fighter:  Namely, we're in a profession that actually uses more than one abilitystat, allowing us to appreciate that more than one such might have an equal place in life, and that the gods made all six to matter equally.

Noble:  No, it's because 'Strength matters as much as Intelligence' is a fucking stupid stance for anyone except a fighter or a farmer, which can only be justified under cover of arguing an even stupider proposition which would imply that Dexterity matters as much as Splendour.  You can get by on Strength 7 as a duchess, if you must, but try out Intelligence 7 and you'll be dead by evening.  My objection to the Queen's plan is more that, once you're smart enough to not be one of the stupid people who never matter to anything - once you're smart enough to qualify for the inner circle of people who matter at all, as they know that among themselves - it doesn't help to be any smarter than that.

      Fighter:  Wouldn't it be amusing, though, if people put on Intelligence headbands, and the first thing they realized with all that wit would be that Intelligence doesn't matter any more than Dexterity after all?  Ha!  Ha, ha, ha!  Wouldn't that be a daggerthrust through their pride!  Oh, sometimes I do slay myself with my own wit.

Noble:  If only.  But, I believe the other person who matters at all, in this conversation, had something they wished to say, about how they were disturbed that the Queen was handing out Intelligence headbands and demanding they be used?

   Cleric:  Well, yes, it's that if the problem is nobles being stupid in the ordinary and colloquial sense of stupidity, I'd expect that was better fixed by enjoining them to put on Wisdom headbands, not Intelligence headbands.  Nobles being idiots are usually more headstrong than truly uncomprehending of the correct way, I think?  No decision that a noble faces is ever as complicated as even the most basic Spellcraft, after all, nor requires any mathematics more complicated than the arithmetic of tax records.  What's needed is not the cleverness to grasp a complex remedy, but the perceptiveness to understand that some simple remedy is correct.  I pray that this is only an ordinary matter of the manufacture of Wisdom headbands lagging, and not that the Queen has truly set such hard-to-understand priorities on the abilitystats needed for effective rulership.

      Fighter:  Did we ask the Queen's new fucktoy yonder, she'd no doubt say that Comeliness, the seventh abilitystat unrecognized by magic, is the most important thing in life, and that struggling nobles should make themselves more comely.

   Cleric:  And you, by your own lights, should agree at least that Comeliness is just as important as any other abilitystat?

      Fighter:  Nay, I draw the line at six.

Are they failing to notice that cheaper spellsilver helps with literally any feature you might choose to enhance, and with any other magic item you might want to buy? Or is the idea that since they could afford their favored enhancement anyway, making it cheaper does them a disservice, since now lesser people will have it too?

Imagine living like that. 

A strikingly handsome young man in a dress uniform taps her on the shoulder, which is more forward than anyone else has been; she spins around to blink startledly at him. 

"Forgive me," he says, "but I overheard those guests over there speaking of you with appalling disrespect, and I wondered if you meant to confront them, and lacked only for anyone on your side. For if so, I would delightedly defend you."

Hell was real. This is all - fake, a performance, people trying to show each other how Evil they are - she doubts Asmodeus can even see it -

"Oh, would you? I'd be so grateful!"

And he takes her arm and drags her into the conversation. "Forgive me," he says, "but I caught the last of what you were saying and had to emphatically disagree. There is no question, to my mind, that beauty alone would be insufficient to bring a woman to Her Majesty's attention; surely this striking lady has many other talents as well, and need only tell us of them."

" - oh. I, um, that wasn't my objection, I just thought they were being rather crude. ...and I thought they'd forgotten that spellsilver being cheaper helps with all those things they were talking about.

Except prettiness, I suppose, since there isn't a magic item for that.

...so maybe someday every peasant will have a fancy headband and a fancy belt of strength and beauty alone will distinguish us."

He laughs, gently. "Not Intelligence, then. Spellsilver being ten times cheaper, or even a hundred times cheaper, would not have peasants going around in headbands; and even if headbands were free we wouldn't hand them out to peasants. Some people it's a favor to them, really, to let them go on being idiots."

"Is it?"

"Yes! Why, say that that shackleborn there had failed to understand what was being done to him, and thought that all the viewers were friendly, and that he was going to be set free any minute now; would you enlighten him?"

"No one could be that stupid."

The noble blinks amusedly at the two of them.  "I'm certain that at least one person right here at this party is that stupid.  It's really just a question of who, and when they figure it out."

  The cleric sends the noble a quelling look, and speaks rather more sententiously than before.  "If all in this world did wear headbands the equal of the Crown of Infernal Majesty, it'd change nothing but the fraction of wizards and clerics; there'd still be fools to the slaughter, they'd just be smarter fools, and smarter butchers walking about to slaughter them.  Asmodeus doesn't will that it be so; He only wills that we understand it to be so."

"Well, I think the peasants might not be Asmodeans if they were smarter! They might notice it wasn't in their interests, to be the ones who suffer forever!"

"I would say, well, Her Majesty also obviously did not pick you for your political opinions, but actually I suppose she might have."

Noble:  "I'd say the obvious solution was not to give headbands to peasants, even once there's that much spellsilver about.  But if Osirion is handing out complicated farming machinery and giving headbands among theirs - I suppose if any countries who try that all end up like Galt, that'd be one answer to how we're to win this great game that's beginning."

     Fighter:  "I hear tell that Carissa Sevar, who's said to be the inventor of the 'production line' of headbands, did also invent the Geased earring.  I'm no wizard, but it's an obvious thought to stack the Intelligence boost and the Geas into one item, if that may be done, once you're handing out headbands to peasants."

   Cleric:  "Intelligence is to think of stacking a Geas into the headbands.  Wisdom is to see that you must arrange matters so that the peasants don't have any alternative but to obey or suffer worse, no matter how smart they become."

"But if you're not more intelligent than them, you will think you've arranged matters so they have no alternative to obedience, when to them you're like a bear who has treed a tasty adventurer - sure, as far as your bear-mind knows, they're really truly stuck in that tree, but the adventurer is barely inconvenienced because there are so many solutions the bear can't think of. A horde of peasants who are wizards, even if you've Geased or threatened them all into line, is alchemical fire - the slightest contact with air and up goes all of Cheliax in flames."

   The cleric nods, showing a deliberate grim smile.  "Yes, the problem is that right now we have headbands and they do not; giving headbands to all is equivalent to taking away ours, in how it changes the structure of power.  I can only hope that with so much spellsilver and wizardry it becomes possible to build +8 or +10 items, as expensive as the +6s are now, to preserve the present balance of power between the strong and the weak.  Or mayhap Project Chemistry will learn to refine diamonds like they refine spellsilver, and with so many wizards we'll gain a 9th-circle to Wish up the rulers."

Noble:  "Eh.  I don't see why we couldn't just sweep every farm with Detect Thoughts every week, if we had a second-circle in every settlement.  We do chain soldiers and wizards to the Worldwound, by such means, including those wizards who perform Detect Thoughts themselves.  We can chain smarter farmers to their farms."

"Seems better than putting all one's hopes in Project Chemistry or whatever they're calling it these days pulling off a second miracle as great as the first."

   Cleric:  "If there's anything that Project Chemistry and the Scientific Revolution have promised us all, it's that we won't live in an age of just one miracle."

      Fighter:  "It's which miracles we'll get that I worry of.  No cleverness of wizards and alchemists will ever obsolete hand-to-hand combat, of that I'm certain.  But if one's got to swing some mechanical horror more complicated than an enchanted sword, next year's warriors may need more balanced abilitystats than I.  More Intelligence and Dexterity, less Strength and Constitution... and I might think to keep up with the right belt and headband, but the trouble is, my enemy'll have belt and headband too."

Noble:  "Sir Pascual, why don't you apologize to this lovely lady for calling her a fucktoy, and let her be off with her equally lovely defender?  I'm sure there's an interesting night ahead of them, one way or another, and I wouldn't want us to distract them further."

      Fighter:  "Aye, fair enough.  I apologize for naming you fucktoy, nameless thing of the Queen's."

"I would say I forgive you, except I think the Church said recently that's a heresy." 

"I've actually no idea what you mean by that," the man says, as he tugs her away.