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carissa, somewhere else
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She has Comprehend Languages up, but not Tongues. She decides that's probably ideal; if she doesn't speak, she can't say anything wrong. She bows her head and stands to follow the guard.

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...Good? 

Actually, NOT good, actually this is kind of horrifying and surely Altarrin doesn't intend for her to be feeling this way, and if he does then–

(Ketar at this point runs into some of his own compulsions, and stops thinking in that direction.) 

He could try to reassure her, but actually it seems more useful to dash ahead and try to pass some kind of vaguely useful report to Altarrin before he meets with Carissa. 

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(Apparently he needs to start keeping a much closer eye on this particular junior Thoughtsenser?) 

Altarrin thanks him absently for the report. It adds new emotional flavor but does not really add new information

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The mage-guard seems unbothered by Carissa's lack of verbal response, and just escorts her out of the room (with a cadre of other guards taking formation around her) to a rather nicely-appointed bathhouse. There are fancy soaps, and perfumes and oil for her hair, and servants to help her dress and do her hair afterward. 

 

(They're not reading her mind for most of it, just for the last couple of minutes, once Ellitrea is back from taking a nap, and then while she's being escorted back down another set of hallways to Altarrin's suite and formal dining room.) 

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Carissa is very cooperative. Her thoughts are that she is safe safe safe safe Altarrin has no reason to kill her safe safe safe safe. She does not even contemplate escape; that's for if she thinks she's in danger. It is objectively pathetic and contemptible to risk your life over anything that isn't itself a risk to your life.

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Altarrin very badly wishes that he were as absolutely trustworthy to keep her safe as - the person she (is almost-deliberately pretending that) she thinks he is. 

Her life is almost certainly not in danger right now, at least, because he's taken relevant precautions.

It's going to be much harder to keep her safe while also making full use of her spellcraft abilities for the good of the Empire. Though it...would be basically fine, actually, with the sort of thoughts she's currently allowing herself to think, most of them about just how harmless she is... 

He wants more than that, though. This woman from another world isn't just someone with alien magic. Or even just unusually talented at crafting powerful magical artifacts of which Velgarth has never seen the like. She's the person who met Keltham of dath ilan - and Altarrin is fairly sure, at this point, that that wasn't at random - and she's the person who, with that influence, decided to personally fight the god of Hell. 

So he has to talk to her. In a context where she feels allowed to have thoughts at all. Which would already have been hard, and - seems maybe even harder, given the assumptions she is apparently making based on the particular deception he's running here. 

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A couple of minutes after Carissa is escorted in and offered a seat, Altarrin walks in to join her. He's smiling. 

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She's smiling too! It's a very convincing smile. She looks, for all the world, relaxed and at ease and perfectly happy (and very pretty). She's cast Tongues on herself; with Glibness, she can probably make sure she doesn't say anything dangerous, and it's good to retain the option of being able to communicate if you're in some weird situation that requires it. 

 

She thinks there's lots of inferences to be stored in the expressions of her guards as they brought her here, the servants who helped her get ready, the make of the dress, but she's not making them; all the world's entangled, and there aren't safe inferences, aren't any that don't reveal everything once you start following them. The only inferences that are worth that risk are those about the Archmage-General. Ruthless, patient, clever. The sort of person who'd do well in Cheliax. She's valuable to him; he won't break her on purpose unprovoked, and she ought to be competent both to not provoke him and to make sure he doesn't break her by accident either. 

 

"My lord," she says, and nothing else; no one's been irritated with her for silence yet.

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He's still getting everything Ellitrea can pick up relayed to him. It's distracting, but at this point his full attention is on this room and Carissa; he can handle it. He has some notes in his pocket on topics to come back to later, if he ends up losing track, but he doesn't think he will. 

Altarrin pulls out a chair at the dining table, opposite her, and sits down. Tries to look as harmless as he can manage (which he is not, in fact, very good at.) 

He ducks his head. "Call me Altarrin, please." And let her make whatever inferences she's inclined to make (or inclined to not allow herself to make which is even worse) from that. "I am curious how our Palace compares to the places you have seen, in your world?" 

It's a somewhat confrontational question given Carissa's current frame. Altarrin is aware of that, and doing it on purpose. 

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Does he want her to be naive? To be competent? To be a challenge? How to straddle those...

"In Golarion, my lord, I was a support wizard for Her Majesty's Eleventh battalion at the Worldwound, a crack in the fabric of our universe where enemies pour forth from the Abyss. It was important work, and I was honored to serve my nation, but there is little of luxury there. I had occasion briefly, in my service on the spellsilver refining project, to visit our capital, and it is a beautiful place, but one whose workings are a mystery to me; I like to think myself a quick learner, but a royal court is not a permissive place for learning by experimentation. Your palace is as beautiful, and more mysterious."

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(She is clearly not being fully open, but Ellitrea's relayed Thoughtsensing report is actually making it more confusing rather than less. That is enough for now, he thinks back at his Thoughtsenser, loudly, thank you.) 

And then - what to actually say, in answer? 

 

"I am definitely glad that our world has no problems so ongoingly alarming as the Worldwound! I would assume our Palace is more mysterious, since it is in an entirely new world! ...Though I think there are many ways to learn other than direct experiments, which might be unsafe. I believe you, that you are a quick learner."

Smile. He tries to make it reassuring, even though Carissa is hardly going to be reassured much if he succeeds. 

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All right, possible explanations: the place isn't actually Lawful Evil, and he feels like he needs to make this unambiguously a quid pro quo of some kind. It's not the Asmodean way to do this; the Asmodean thing to do is exactly how he pleases and if Carissa's able to play for anything she wants from there, good for her, and if not, bad for her. But she can imagine how a place would end up as terrifyingly full of assassins and intrigues as this one and still have some vestigal Neutrality. 

She's of course not going to tell him if he's doing it wrong; if she can leverage this into getting something, great. 

Separate possible explanation, not incompatible with the first: he likes his girls apparently willing and most people don't have the Bluff to fake it. Do compulsions not work well for that? Charm Person does just fine for most people, is Carissa's understanding, though she personally always had a rule that if she found herself liking or trusting a man she should pretend, indignant, to have made her Will save, and walk away....

Third possible explanation, he's toying with her, in which case she probably wins more points by seeing through it. Damnit, she doesn't want to be ilani here where it's not safe but it's harder if you aren't thinking to make decisions clearly, and that's the mistake she was making all along, right -

 

Fine. What percentage of people like their girls apparently willing? She has no idea, say it's half, that's not off by a factor of 10. What percentage of people like toying with their prisoners? ...say half again? This is hard to do in a culture you've never come into contact with before. Has she observed anything that's more likely in one world than in the other? The bath points towards 'toying with her', she thinks, maybe 2:1. Something about his expression feels like he's not toying with her; how likely is it he can bluff her? Probably 10:1 that he can; he's an important figure in an imperial palace. 


Collect more information, Carissa; when you don't understand reality go out and look at it. 

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"Perhaps you could help me find my footing here."

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Altarrin would really prefer not to be toying with her. He...admits that he is, arguably, toying with her, but he has to, for the benefit of their unseen audience - so that, by the time he leads her to his bedroom (shielded against scrying and everything else, including things that no one else alive knows how to shield against), certain assumptions will already be well-established... 

 

(He's very tired. He would really prefer it if this didn't take so long.) 

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Servants come in and serve food and wine. 

(Ellitrea hovers out of sight and reads Carissa's mind.) 

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"I am certainly hoping that I can help you find your footing! To start, I noticed when I was examining your 'Bag of Holding' -" 

 

And he's off on a detailed explanation of planar mechanics, which he's not delighted about various spies overhearing, but it's a neutral-enough topic, not suspicious for him to be discussing, and hopefully it should keep the conversation going for a while. 

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Okay she has absolutely no idea what that's pointing to!! Who toys with people or flirts with them by talking about planar mechanics?

 

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More data. If she's going through her wine very quickly while they talk does that seem positive or negative.

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Well, it's not like he had initial intentions to push in one direction or another. It might be a little inconvenient if, by the time he can pull her off to his absurdly-well-shielded room, she's too drunk to have sensible thoughts at him and he has to wait, but at the same time it's probably making a better showing for their unseen eavesdroppers... 

(And it is, in fact, well established in the eyes of the unseen observers that Archmage-General Altarrin, who likes to invite his female political prisoners for dinner in his quarters, also prefers to flirt with them by bragging about his extensive knowledge of magic, which is what this should look like from the outside...) 

He keeps talking, occasionally giving her encouraging glances in case she has questions, and when the main course is being cleared away for dessert he slides her chair closer to hers, and refills his wineglass along with hers. 

He hates this that is not the point of anything, right now. 

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:Is everything all right?: Ellitrea asks him. 

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Not really, no. For so many reasons, but this current situation is among them. 

Yes. 

I would appreciate if you tell the servants to hurry this up. 

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Dessert can be hurried along. 

The servants also apparently interpret this as including "refill both of their wineglasses faster". 

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Carissa doesn't, actually, want to be too drunk to do any steering. She's not that scared - Abrogail Thrune wouldn't toy with someone like this, and she thinks anyone who would toy with you like this also won't hurt you as much as Abrogail Thrune likes to - but it's a bad idea to be in a position where she can't maneuver at all.

Maybe he can just assume she's a bit of a lightweight. She will flop cooperatively on him when he scoots closer. "'s a very good dinner. I suppose you're so important to the Empire! I'm so glad that I landed on you."

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"I am pleased to hear you like it! I, too, am glad that you landed on me. I think you will be so valuable - and you are so very impressive in other ways, as well -" 

Which is not false and also he is mostly only saying it out loud for the stupid unseen audience. 

This is if anything his fault - he was among the first people involved in the now-longstanding tradition of "scrying your enemies constantly", and the counters and counter-counters involved (so much effort wasted on the Empire's mages learning better scrying or communication-spell techniques, and better shields against the better versions, ad infinitum) - except he's not, in the end, sure how wasted it was after all, because it seems to have mattered a lot that the Empire is so much more powerful and competent and prepared than all of the other powers other than the gods around them. 

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Even before Ellitrea's relayed commentary he already suspected that she was less tipsy than she appears on purpose. But he's still inclined to hurry them along toward his bedroom as soon as he can manage it gracefully. 

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