Tilt. If she gets into some kind of trouble she'll feel like an idiot; fifth circle wizards aren't actually invincible, if you take them by surprise.

In she goes.

There's a wizard maintaining an arcane Detect Magic, standing in one corner of this large windowless private office, with a Lawful Neutral alignment and maybe 3rd or 4th circle by the strength of their aura.

Other notable room fixtures include a chandelier set with red-orange-yellow gems and crystals, lit in its center by a bound fire elemental; and the Petrified body of a slender woman with a pleading expression, from whose desperately outstretched hand now hangs a cloak and an umbrella.

Grandmerchant Taravind has a quick word with the wizard, his eyebrows climbing as a result, and then bows deeply towards the beautiful, crowned, highly magical woman now in his office.  He doesn't speak, for it's said that in Hell the most dangerous thing speaks first.

"I am told that it is to your credit, that a cult of mine now exists in Indapatta."

"I should hesitate to claim more than that I doubled or trebled its size, compared to what might've been, and much of your core following would have come to you either way, I imagine."

"May we speak frankly?  Urvihat in the corner yonder will say nothing of anything that passes here, and I promise the same if you do."

"You have my word that I will not share your words with anyone." If there's something important to be told to Keltham or anyone else, Ri-Dul will say it. We're all Lawful Evil here; that's fair play.

"I'll ask plainly, then.  How much of all this is real?"

"The pact with Asmodeus is real. Neither of us lose anything if it goes unfulfilled, and I suspect it serves Asmodeus for it to be known, whether I make any progress towards it or not. It will delight devils to notify people, I think, that they failed to meet the conditions that'd make them Carissa Sevar's, even if such conditions are real and I a true power in Hell. 

The cult is useful to me because I intend to ascend. I might or might not conquer some planets first; we'll see how various plans work out."

"By compact they need only serve yourself and Hell in life, and call your name in life and death, do they not?  So your disciple said.  And what do you intend to make of any souls that come to you in Hell?"

"Underlying the lessons circulating as mine there is theory related to devil-making. I understand why Asmodeus made them without creativity, without perfectionism, without all-surpassing ambition. But I don't like what it made Hell into, I don't like that so many with Evil in their heart try to suppress it all their lives lest they end up there.

I see his aim, and I can achieve it while preserving more of what makes a mortal Lawful Evil and deserving of Hell in the first place."

"Mm.  I harbor some resentment towards the current Prince of Hell, I do admit.  Being a merchant in the slave trade means you cannot buy your way into Axis, as do so many adventuring villains whose activities are far less useful and economically important than mine own.  Each slave I trade is accounted more Evil than my entire profit donated to charity would be Good."

"I would consider it reasonable to go to Hell, if Hell would only treat me the way I treat my slaves.  They aren't punished if they don't misbehave, I train them in ways that make them more profitable, I feed them plainly but enough that they can put on muscle if not fat.  I do my best to sort them into occupations suited to them, as is profitable, and I'd say in most cases, kind.  I don't sell girls to brothels until they're of age, or underage boys either.  Many succeed in purchasing back their freedom or winning it as favor from a kindly master.  If they lived an eternity I imagine they would all be free in time."

"I only inflict finite discomfort on slaves who pass through my hands.  I refuse to accept that endless extreme torture is reasonable justice for that.  Even Good, by all accounts, agrees with this."

"I've summoned a contract devil to see if I could negotiate a more reasonable fate, but the degree of servitude they wanted to Asmodeus and Hell in exchange was frankly unacceptable to me.  I am simply not that fearful of taking a Plane Shift to Abaddon at the end of my life."

"We may be able to reach some amicable arrangement, Master Sevar.  Indeed, we could almost have been made for each other, I'd hope.  But I'd have a great deal more specificity of you, first, on how you'd treat my soul if it came to you in Hell."

"It's interesting, that's not the story people told me when they were telling me how Lawful Evil you are. But letting aside who deserves what, which always seemed too Good of a question to be interesting to me - yes. People should treat their slaves in the fashion that maximizes their output and their motivation; in a way that gives them the opportunity to improve themselves and become more valuable and the incentive to do so.

You can shape people with torture, and sometimes you certainly should, but if people will get tortured no matter what they do they do worse. It is my intent to make every soul I own better and more valuable, to give them the means and the reason to grow, to let them rise by their own strength. But I don't, in fact, know your strength, so I'll make no promises about how far it'll carry you. Those who served me in life, and are presently dead, live in comfort and pleasure in Hell at the moment even though it took some doing; that I swear. I'm not going to turn them into shattered blobs of flesh later unless they really make a point of giving me no other way to make use of them at all; that I swear also."

"Those who served you now live in comfort in Hell?  This I hadn't heard."

"They're in Erecura's Gardens until I can go and get them. What my acolytes say of me is mostly true, but it's little of the truth."

"Mm.  And what would it take to earn the same treatment, myself?"

"They did some things of great value to me; one of them is owed at least a third of the credit for the fall in spellsilver prices" by keeping Keltham engaged for at least that long. "There is still much of value that can be done for me, but not nearly as easily; on my current shopping list, for instance, are Wishes, and a headband only slightly inferior to mine for a useful research assistant, and a conversation with someone who has travelled the Great Beyond to other worlds, and a Wish wording or set of Wish wordings that'd close the Worldwound, and some skilled high-level adventurers who could help me cleanly handle a succession dispute in my home country of Cheliax. It might be that my favor can be bought with just the cult in Indapatta, especially if anything comes of it, but a wise person wants more surety than that of attaining anything of particular importance to them."

"Those asks are considerably advanced beyond the arenas I do fight in, Master Sevar.  What treatment can I earn in Hell from only backing your cult in Indapatta?"

"If I succeed, you won't suffer except in the course of normal punishments for the sort of misconduct usefully corrected with pain, and will have the chance to retain who you are and try your own hand at shaping slaves in Hell. If your cult here impresses me greatly, I'll see about buying you protection in Hell."

"What is the greatest intensity, greatest duration, greatest frequency of punishment that'd be applied to me at any time during my eternity in Hell?  Master Sevar, it's said that you were an Irorite priest albeit a Lawful Evil one, before you turned to this course; I know a merchant's ways might seem disdainful for you, but protection without specificity is no protection at all, in contracts."

"I don't condemn intelligence; there's rather too little of it anyway. Should this be in my power, I will do to you nothing that you have not done to another, for no longer than you did it, at no less provocation; does that suffice?"

"I'd have it be specific that it was nothing I knew had been done to any slave that I legally owned, during the time that I legally owned them.  And that I'm entitled to skip burning in Avernus before coming to your hands; even the devil I tried to negotiate with offered me that much."

"Sure, I won't do anything you know has not been done to any slave that you legally owned, while you legally owned them, and I won't sell you except under circumstances where you'd have sold someone, and I'll exercise as much screening of buyers as you did. It amuses me, Master Taravind, for your eternal fate to be substantially bounded by how much the story you tell about yourself is true; I have no hesitations about slavery, but some annoyance at delusion."

"I sold none to apprentice torturers, and I was offended to be asked.  I'd have sold none of mine to devils at any price I was ever offered.  Can we have the explicit understanding, then, that I'm not to be sold to any devil - or at least none who doesn't agree to abide by all these same rules?"

"Yes, I'll agree to that."

"And this is to be mine in exchange for supporting your cult in Indapatta?"

"I'll compare it to the cults in other cities with less cooperative sponsors. If I'm convinced, evaluated fairly, you've done me a substantial service, and I do become a Power in Hell with the right to all those souls that call my name and do me and Hell more service than disservice, and you are among them, then you'll be treated in accordance with the terms I just described, and sold on only to anyone who agrees to them."