Dear Abrogail:

I am working on an important alchemical research project with two humans. Unfortunately, neither of the humans is focused on what actually matters here! Instead, they insist on spending a bunch of time on stupid boring human mating rituals. One of them (a wizard) keeps booping the other one on the nose with Dancing Lights. They keep making faces at each other. One of them said something that wasn't even about sex and then the other one got so flustered that he spilled an acid on his foot. I thought that this would prevent this behavior going forward but instead they tenderly stared into each other's eyes while doing Infernal Healing. 

I don't care if they have sex while they're not working but while they're working they should focus on the job! Which is much more interesting than them rubbing genitalia on each other and squirting fluids!

One of them tried to murder the other one this morning, which I would naively think would prevent romance. Is this normal for humans?

(If it matters, I am a gnome.) 

Sincerely,

Levrolurment

Dear Levrolurment:

You're never, ever going to understand humans and need to stop trying.  Events on this project are a classical symptom of why non-Asmodean societies can never get anything done:  There needs to be a stronger power who dominates your whole project, and punishes anyone who tries to mate on the job.  If nobody on your project has the power to do this, and it's too late to add somebody with that power, then your project is doomed.  Everywhere that isn't ruled by fire and lash is just an endless fleshy desert of humans making faces at each other instead of working.

Dear Abrogail,

I am an instructor at a wizarding academy. One of my students has fantastic tits and I've been fucking her. She also looks great wielding a whip, but she's usually in the middle of the pack academically, so I want to give her a few "bonus points" now and then so I can watch her beat the idiots more often. My colleagues think this will make the whole class work less hard; I say that surely even teenagers can't be that lazy and stupid, and anyway I run this class not them. Who's right?

Dear Instructor:

Cases like this are exactly why the Asmodean system runs on threats, not rewards.  Giving her "bonus points", rather than threatening to take away the points she's otherwise earned, even if the reason you're doing it is to get off on watching her beat others, will inevitably lead her to think she can slack off on her wizarding studies because you'll give her bonus points for fucking you.  Which, in turn, leads to a fundamentally unhealthy relationship in which she's gaining bonus points and you're gaining sex, instead of you winning and her losing, at which point you might as well move to Osirion and worship Abadar.

Taking away the reward-of-punishing-others* that the best students have justly earned won't demotivate them if you otherwise put enough fear into them.  But it'll make the most clever and Asmodean students in the class hate you, and even as a teacher that's not a smart place to be.  As a headmaster, I'd be even more annoyed with a teacher who started faking his pet into the best performance bracket.  This is something you could easily be caught out about, if one of the smartest and most Asmodean students had a favor owed with the headmaster - you won't be able to pass a test to see if your pet's performance was real.

Consider adding additional punishment sessions for idiots you're pretty sure are going to fail anyways, and letting your pet whip them to your own heart's content.  

(*)  Two syllables of Infernal loanword.

Dear Abrogail,

A paladin of my acquaintance foiled my schemes for advancement, and as a result I have devoted the next phase of my life to constructing a false identity, earning her trust and scheming her annihilation, as one does. Unfortunately, she's flirting with me, and I've heard that Good people sometimes do that for reasons other than wanting to exploit people. Do you have any advice for how to recognize 'love' in Good people, and if it really is love, what interesting thing I can do with this situation other than kill her and get it over with? Her actual support for my plans would make them far too easy to be interesting.

Sincerely,

Disgruntled

Dear Disgruntled:

Kill her and get it over with.

There's a stage of life, wisdom, and experience where you can afford to tempt a paladin to fall in love with you, but you're not there yet.  If your original goal was to annihilate her, and this required you to construct a false identity instead of just hiring a Malediction-assassination combo on her, you do not have the project slack to do anything else besides killing her.  If killing a paladin would be boringly easy you may have the leisure to consider a more complicated plan that crushes her or corrupts her before she dies - not if killing her is in any way still difficult for you, or requires an even slightly elaborate plan.

Dear Abrogail,

My girlfriend recently got back from a tour at the Worldwound. I knew she was probably going to sleep with other people there, and that doesn't bother me, but ever since she got back, she's been a total child about basic parts of our relationship. At first, I figured she was just readjusting to civilian life, but last night she told me that "Mintod actually cared if she was having fun" and then froze me out for the rest of the night. If she wants to fuck a paladin at the Worldwound I'm not going to stop her, I think a lot of them get off on pretending to care about their partners, but it's ridiculous for her to try to bring that sort of thing into our bedroom. How do I explain that her expectations are unreasonable for normal people?

Dear Cucked:

It sounds like your essential problem is that your girlfriend, a Worldwound veteran, has enough power in your relationship that you can't just force her to serve you in the bedroom, and she doesn't, in fact, want to just serve you in the bedroom.  If a Worldwound veteran demands a partner who pretends to care for her, then, let's face it, she can afford to keep one.  If you're weak enough that she's the source of most good things in your life, pretend to give her what she wants and maybe you can delay the day when she dumps you for somebody better at pretending.

In time, your ex-girlfriend will become disillusioned with pretenses, but then she'll go with somebody younger and handsomer than you.

Dear Abrogail,

My husband is incredibly machostic and kinky. Yes yes lucky me, the issue is that I can't figure out how to actually displine him. I beat him hard enough that I was worried about having to use some of his salary on healing and he just said "harder mommy". I'm worried he's pissing my off on purpose at this point. I tried withholding sex but apparently he like "tease and denial" whatever that means.

PS

Economically I really married up so I don't want to ditch him but we aren't rich enough to afford lots of infernal healing or anything like that.

Dear Unlucky,

He's not trying to piss you off on purpose, he just has a pain tolerance high enough that you need to either (a) get lessons at your local temple in how to cause great pain without a healer being required afterward or (b) accept that he needs to be with somebody who can afford to heal him afterwards.

Even with those temple lessons being subsidized, it's admittedly a lot of work and I'd understand if you didn't want to bother.  In that case, consider asking your husband to voluntarily enslave himself to you, and then selling him to somebody who can afford either the time or the healing spells to use him properly.

Dear Abrogail, 

I am one of the top students in my wizarding class and am considering acquiring a partner to ensure that sexual frustration doesn't distract me from my studies. Unfortunately, the overlap between classmates who aren't smart enough to be a threat to be while not being so pathetic that they aren't entertaining to be around seems to be negligible. How do I find someone intelligent enough to be interesting without being sufficiently close to me in the rankings that sabotaging me would plausibly benefit them? Should I give up and start looking for a toy outside the school?

Dear Top,

The reason why school-external and inter-year romances are so heavily discouraged, is exactly to prevent you from finding an outlet for your sexual frustrations that isn't competing with you and doesn't require complicated plotting.  Your problem seems unsolvable because I ordered rules set in place to prevent it from being solved.

If you find a clever solution, write me back about it and I'll give you a prize before I put in place new rules to prevent it from happening again.

Dear Abrogail:

I had a subordinate I previously believed to be minimally competent. However, in his first day on a sensitive task without my direct supervision, he almost killed his charge, almost caused his charge to see through the lie we're maintaining by forgetting obvious facts about the world, ran out of Detect Thoughts and Hold Person, hired a gnome, and failed to murder a teenage girl who turned out to be an incarnate of the empyreal lord Immonhiel.

While I know the appropriate response to this (torture), what can I do to prevent myself from making such a serious mistake about a subordinate's competence in the future?

Dear Cursed:

A single one of those problems might indicate an incompetent subordinate.  At the point where your subordinate's list of follies includes "failed to murder an incarnate of Immonhiel", I think you need to step back and realize that, in fact, very few subordinates are competent to reliably murder incarnates of Immonhiel.  Whatever position you assigned this person to sounds so heavily cursed that I don't even know, without further examination, whether Aspexia Rugatonn would've done any better.

Obviously I'm not saying that you shouldn't torture him for his failure, but it sounds like you have a project drama problem that goes far beyond the competence of this particular subordinate.

Unless he is regularly in the habit of hiring gnomes and failing to execute empyreal incarnates on projects previously lacking drama, in which case I recommend execution.

Dear Abrogail,

There's a charming young wizard of my acquaintance who possesses an astonishing array of useful skills and talents, not to mention a pleasing temperament, and I deeply desire to make him mine forever.

Unfortunately, he's decided to throw every resource he can muster into a war of vengeance with a terrifyingly powerful force beyond even his abilities, and I haven't been able to talk him out of it. I'm confident that if he continues it's going to get him killed, probably permanently. If I abandon him I'll lose him as an asset, I don't control him securely enough to make him reconsider, and he's too useful for me to want to allow him to be dead.

Do you have any suggestions about ways to deter him from his hopeless war without either driving him away or allowing him to destroy himself?

Sincerely,

C.L.

Dear Possessive,

Honestly, in your shoes I'd just resort to mind control.  Is his enemy Lawful Evil?  This sounds like a situation where you could both benefit from the sort of compact where you sell him out so he gets taken alive, and they enslave him and mind-control him for you before handing him back.  The mutual benefit doesn't make it un-Asmodean so long as somebody else loses.

Dear Abrogail,

I’m a wizarding student with high grades and I am reasonably feared by my classmates. My life is going perfectly well, as far as I can tell. However, while I do enjoy torturing others, and I do want to enter a proper Chelish relationship, I just can’t see the appeal of sexual activity. It seems incredibly boring. Is there something that I’m missing? Can the same level of manipulation be achieved without romance? Is sex really necessary for a proper Asmodean relationship, or can setting people on fire be used instead? That seems much more enjoyable, frankly.

Thank you,

Studious

Dear Studious,

I've absolutely been there.  Well, I am there, really.  Wasn't always, but sex became boring after a while.

If you can manage to stand kissing people, it works surprisingly well to provide an additional victim for the relationship and kiss your partner while the victim you provided gets used by them for pleasure, in which case they're often able to credit that pleasure to you as its proper source.  You do need to be there and doing the kissing.

Consider also that if sex is boring but not aversive, you might very well start to find it interesting, providing that somebody else is having a sufficiently interesting reaction to it as part of larger events, or that you're carrying out the sex as part of some larger plan that you enjoy.  That's worked for me too.

If neither of those work for you, I recommend looking for somebody who can respond appropriately to being set on fire, even if you don't have sex with them.  To be clear - this should go without saying, but I've had problems with bizarre misinterpretations of my advice in the past - I don't mean somebody who consents to you setting them on fire and not having sex with them, I mean somebody who responds romantically to that.  There's a huge difference!

Once you're a high-enough level wizard to have access to the trio of Detect Thoughts, Detect Desires, and Detect Anxieties, and deploy them at sufficient power, you may find that you are able to derive some shadow of sexual enjoyment from experiencing the intense emotions of other people.

Dear Abrogail, 

A man I have had my eye on for some time has recently been acquired by one of my rivals. Do you have any suggestions for how to, in the course of ruining her socially, avoid reducing the social capital and therefore usefulness of the man in question? Or should I write him off as a casualty and settle for someone slightly less desirable?

Dear Vengeful:

I'd really need more details on the situation to have any idea!  At this level of generality, the main thought that's coming to my mind is to make it look like he betrayed her for you.  Other women will compete for him less, after that, but not in a way that reduces their respect for you.  He'll know the truth, obviously, but his alternative options to you will be much reduced.  If he's not flattered by the romance of the effort you expended to arrange to trap him, then yes write him off.

Dear Abrogail:

I am a wizard student. My brother is weak and pathetic. He stutters. He can't stand up for himself: whenever another student hits him, he just stands there and cries while snot drips down his face. He is the lowest-scoring student in his class at least a third of the time, maybe half, and he cries when punished too. Everyone treats him badly, and no matter how much I explain to him that everyone is going to treat him badly if he acts like that, he won't stop. What's worse, the other day I caught him giving his pocket money to a person we know whose baby keeps going hungry. When I protested, he said that she needs it more and his pocket money always gets stolen by other students anyway!

I normally cast Acid Splash on anyone who hurts him and isn't in a position of authority over him. I sit next to him and check his answers on his homework and hit him whenever he gets it wrong. I know he is a drain on me and I should stop caring about him before his weakness destroys me as well, but I have not been able to stop myself from wanting better for him. Do you have any suggestions?

Dear Pathetic:

Your brother is going to end up a paving stone in Hell no matter what he does.  He has no other options but that.  What's your excuse?

If you're going to be so Good, why don't you try being honest on top of that?  Tell the headmaster of your school that you're being distracted by compassion for your brother, who obviously isn't going to end up a wizard, and who's just acting as a punishment sink to prevent other students from needing to really try.  Ask for your brother to be failed out of school now rather than later, so you're not being distracted anymore.  You can always tell yourself that you'll come back for him later once you've struck it rich.  It'll be a lie, but the part of yourself that engages in this idiocy will believe it.

Dear Abrogail,

I've just started wizard school and would like to redefine myself but am having some trouble doing so. I have an image in my head of who I'd like to be: suave, dangerous, mysterious, a bit shocking, someone who knows everyone's secrets and how to use them. And I feel like I've got about... half of that. I sure am mysterious, because nobody knows anything about me! And I do shock people sometimes, because when I say something interesting they're surprised I had anything to say! I've figured out a lot about my classmates, but what good is that when I miss my opportunities to use it? I need to get bolder, but I don't know where to start! How do I project the image of myself that I want other people to see, instead of aiming for subtle and ending up at forgettable?

Dear Forgettable:

There's two ways to look impressive:  One, have a lot of Splendour, two, actually be impressive.  It sounds like the former plan isn't working out for you.  Absent Splendour, before you can try to be enigmatic, you need something to be enigmatic about.

If you have a lack of natural talent to complement your lack of Splendour, I really have no advice for you.  Because you see, in that case, you don't deserve to be happy, and I don't want you to be.

But if there's anything you can do, that you could be enigmatic about once you'd done it - whether that's making it to the top of the class, or conquering your apparent betters with blackmail - go do that.  If you're any good as a wizard, eventually you'll be able to cast Eagle's Splendour so you can be enigmatic without any actual accomplishments to back it up.

DEER ABROGAIL

I HERD THAT YUO KILLED YUOR FATHER WHEN YUO WERE SIXTEEN. MY PARINTS ARE DED BUT I WOOD LIKE MY FOSTER PARINTS TO BE DED. HOW DO YUO KILL PARINTS AND DOO I HAVE TO WATE UNTIL I AM SIXTEEN, I AM THREE AND I DO NOT WANT TO WATE THAT LONG