"If Cheliax is playing the game that way, they could put kids outside Cheliax so that I couldn't solve the problem by destroying Cheliax... from the standpoint of dath ilani storytelling, a plot development like that - isn't, trying to signal you to destroy a larger area of landmass on one planet, it's saying - you have to fix everything, no way out but fixing everything."

"I'm hearing that your current self, as opposed to the self who sent you here on a memory gambit, doesn't have a plan for beating the deadline."

"I definitely think we should fix everything but I do not see a way to fix everything in the next month. Or do you mean - it's all right for the kids to exist, so long as they'll grow up in a better world?"

"Probably the intended reading."

"You mentioned a compact with Asmodeus and seemed to think you could get Dispater on our side, what's that whole part about?"

"Do you, Carissa Sevar, conquer territories or hearts in Hell's name, be you fairly judged by Hell's Prince to be the most prime mover in such conquests, such unsold and unclericed souls from those lands and peoples as enter into Hell calling your name, in death as they called it in life and did you and Hell more service than disservice, shall pass into your custody or the custody of those in Hell you name your slaves or allies;

and when you have conquered three-quarters of Avistan all such souls out of Avistan shall be yours as well; when three-quarters of Golarion is yours, all such souls out of Golarion; when three-quarters of this plane is yours, all such souls out of this plane; when three-quarters of Pharasma's Creation is yours, all such souls out of Creation; while Hell's dominions of those lands and peoples last; and all this be annulled should you fail finally after death in being acknowledged by Hell as a Hellish Power, or should the yield in strength and wealth from those souls granted you be less than He accounts as ordinary from His subservient Powers of Hell; or should the Prince of Hell fairly judge you to have entered His despite in death or life," she says, once again, from memory. 

"...so the obvious avenues to cheat are to, uh, in some meaningful respect conquer most of Creation, which I am not entirely pessimistic about but which would need time, and to get someone else named Hell's Prince - probably Dispater - who'll evaluate me more favorably, but even before I do that, if I conquer anywhere, people who go to Hell because of me and calling my name are mine, and safe, unless I look like I'll never become a power in Hell, and according to Aspexia Rugatonn I have a lot of cultists. 

I hadn't had much time to think of a plan but the fragments of one that I had were that I'd enhance us both as far as possible, ask for your help figuring out how to close the Worldwound, which is - the sort of thing that someone on the path to ascension would do, it'll make my cult take me much more seriously, declare it my territory and those who go there my possessions, and then reach out to Dispater with a contract for confidential negotiations, where He can't use anything learned from the negotiations to hurt me. My impression of Dispater is that He enjoys indulging me, if it's not obviously stupid, if it grants Him pride and respect in Hell, and I've already had as much benefit as I can from that in my current position but if I did something epic and impressive, He'd be willing to indulge me again. 

If the Worldwound doesn't work I could instead seize Cheliax, which proves my Asmodean bona fides all right and which I feel less averse to now that I know this entire situation is Abrogail's fault more than I already thought it was. That doesn't count towards my conquests but it does count towards how cool Dispater thinks I am. And if neither of those work I could probably start actually conquering other countries, except if I do that I have responsibilities to everyone in them so we'd have to be really sure of subsequent steps of the plan.

Anyway, once I had a impressive track record as rising Power-of-Hell, I'd bring a confidential negotiation, tell Dispater I intend to overthrow Asmodeus, and see what He says. He's not bound to obey Asmodeus and He runs Dis - not well enough, but closer to not being stupidly wasteful, He'd be willing to run it in an acceptable way, He wouldn't destroy the world about the rules changing. And He's, you know, a devil, He respects strength and He respects trying to rise to your place. I think He'd help me if there were something compelling in it for Him. I think at INT 29 I can compact with Him safely.

I am assuming here that you have some fraction of a plan to kill Asmodeus already, because none of what you're doing makes any sense if you don't. But I am assuming that it's a bad plan that runs unacceptable-to-me risks and we might need to think of a better one. In particular, I'm worried you just - don't mind - that Asmodeus might release Rovagug - uh, it's reassuring, you saying you don't want to kill people, I'd gotten scared that you'd just decided to - be ilani and clean up this whole messy little bit of reality -

- but, uh, I'm not helping with a plan where Asmodeus might release Rovagug. I want to fix the world, not be worse than any Evil ever to scour it."

He sits silently for a while.

"What - counts as conquest, can I tell Golarion that every country in the world needs to acknowledge you as Empress or be destroyed, and pay you, I don't know, 1% of tax revenue, and then you can collect all the Golarion souls going to Hell and then - I have not been able to find out, what it would take to get to other planets, other planes - does this plan basically work?"

" - Iiiiii think that plan might work but I have moral reservations about it!!! I realize that's rich, coming from me!"

"I, too, have reservations.  Mostly that this does not fix enough.  Also that it sounds like the sort of thing where more than a quarter of Golarion might be stupid about it, or countries would ban your cult just to be, cruel, so people couldn't call your name in life, there's the question of who you could name your slaves and allies in Hell that would - treat people remotely acceptably - whether you can become acknowledged by Hell as a Hellish Power without torturing people."

"I'll put on my Intelligence headband instead of my Splendour, augment Wisdom, and think about it, I suppose.  Probability this was memory-gambit Carissa's plan?  I see tropes in fewer places than I once did, but am still somewhat alert for them.  On tropes, memory-gambit Carissa's plan will be the one that actually works, whatever it was, because we don't know it, and all of us are dancing to her tune."

"....10%? I don't think everything turns on my compact with Asmodeus. Like you said, it's not enough. We have to overthrow Him, not just let me steal everybody. But I do think that everything might turn on whether Asmodeus, when you do whatever you're doing and it would be helpful now to know what that is, thinks there's any interesting Asmodeanism in the world from there or not, and my compact might matter for that. Also it might make some marginal gods be against destroying the world. 

I do think memory-gambit Carissa had figured out something I haven't yet rederived, something that made her - even more desperate than I feel right now - and maybe this conversation is a waste of time until I rederive it, which I do think I can when I review all my notes and think."

"Yes, well, on the trope theory, you can't do that, or won't do it successfully even though you think you have, or if you derive it then it will no longer be possible for it to work, unless it's reasonably the case that the viewpoint could've shifted off us before that happens..."

"I do not think I am actually smart enough to think through the important parts of this, even with new crystallized mental skills, without swapping to my Intelligence headband and using an Owl's Wisdom."

"I don't think I believe versions of the trope theory where you can't think thoughts if Something is paying attention. I think if the other Carissa deleted her thoughts it was for more concrete reasons surrounding people who were definitely paying attention, such as Dispater, and Cheliax. - headband seems like a good idea."

"That Keltham is - colder."

"If we're going to talk about - us, at all, we should do it, before then.  The reason I'm running +6 Splendour and no Intelligence or Wisdom is because - that's about as much as is left, of the Keltham you knew, for him to exist again and speak to you."

- nod. 

"I don't - know what to say. What I did to you was awful. I loved you, and I used that to hurt you, and I wouldn't forgive me, if I was you. I do want you to forgive me. I think when I made the plan to buy the souls back, to get the Wishes, one of the things I was hoping was that you could forgive me, if I could fix it, but even if not for the babies, I couldn't really have fixed it. I could say that they'd have sent me to Hell to be tortured eternally, if I'd done anything different, that I was being mind-read near constantly, that Abrogail would tease me about things she'd read in the transcripts she was having made of my thoughts, that I was only half-there, only half-thinking, my entire life until the moment in my bedroom where I realized that probably no one was reading my mind -

- but I don't know. I want to have higher standards than that, I guess. It wasn't literally an unsolvable problem.

I don't need you to forgive me. I don't need you to be angry with me, or not be angry with me, or forgive me, or not forgive me, or hurt me, or not hurt me. I just need us to save the world. Whatever - whatever you need from me, to do that, to make sure that this stupid stupid awful thing doesn't cost everyone everything - you have it, of me, forever, if necessary. And I'm sorry."

"The Keltham you knew, the one who could have forgiven you in any meaningful sense, is effectively true-dead.  Though I suppose, from your own moral perspective, you wouldn't see it that way.  To you, being conscious, existing, having qualia, is everything, no matter what the form of that existence.  Never mind memories, emotions, purposes, relationships between people, what they care about, who they care about, what they aspire to, who they believe they are in their models of themselves.  A lemure in Hell that doesn't remember its name or anything of its life isn't just as good to you as the original person, I suppose, but you'd say it's - 90% of the way from Abaddon to Nirvana, on the Nirvana side of the utility interval?"

" - I don't know very much about lemures. A four year old who doesn't remember anything of being three isn't effectively true-dead."

"It's funny.  I thought I'd - accidentally killed off anger, inside myself, but - there is absolutely something in me that wants to hurt you, right now, not in a cuddleroom way.  It wants you to know how Keltham felt just before he gave up and augmented himself, not because he wanted to stop existing as himself, he wanted to go on existing, but the children in Hell mattered more to him than that, because he wasn't that selfish, in the end.  And the part of me that, doesn't hate you, but wants you to hurt, wants you to understand how much, what happened to him, is something that dath ilani are not, in fact, trained to put themselves back together about, after that, without assistance.  Survive, sure, go on functioning, sure, but not put themselves back together, that was supposed to involve a therapist who knows things that not every dath ilani gets taught as a child.  You, Cheliax, Golarion, hurt Keltham to the point where he didn't want to be in the world anymore, and that was why he could, for the sake of the children in Hell, make the choice that would cause him to effectively stop existing as himself, which, I guess, is something that Carissa Sevar can never understand or experience real sadness about, because to her, Keltham is still Keltham even if he's a lemure."

It is completely true that while she isn't sure about a lemure, Keltham is still Keltham when he puts an intelligence headband on and she does not actually feel sadness or guilt about Keltham putting an intelligence headband on. About the fact he was in pain, yes, about the fact that it felt to him like giving up and he was willing to do it anyway, yes, about the fact he put an intelligence headband on, no, because that's in fact not death and not even a bit of death, any more than learning new math is death. 

She is not going to say that. It doesn't seem helpful. 

She's also not really sure this is on her? Would Keltham not have done it if she'd defected with him to Iomedae on day one? 

She is not going to say that either. 

"Keltham, you know that - if Rovagug ate the world, people would die true deaths, and - even if your appearing-elsewhere thing is right, there are lots of Hells out there, 'I'll do whatever I want with people' is a less complicated way for a mind to be than sharing all of human values, most places are probably bad - if we fuck this up you'll be sending children to hells. Young ones. Pharasma doesn't judge eight-year-olds Evil."

"Save it for colder Keltham.  Possibly for when both of us are INT 29.  You'd need a lot of background, including a lot of material that I had to rederive myself from realizing that Civilization must have hidden it and why they did, to argue with me about the population statistics of Larger Reality."

"I understand, Carissa, that there are many, many senses here, in which what happened to me, was not entirely your fault.  There were, by your own lights, maybe also by mine, worse things that would happen to you, if you refused to play along with Cheliax.  You had options like walking out on Cheliax with me right there at the Worldwound, but you were twisted and warped by things smarter than yourself into not seeing those options, not thinking of them then or maybe even now you haven't thought of them.  There were gods messing with your life.  There were, with great probability, things above gods messing with your life at least a little.  You didn't choose this story, They did."

"It's possible that even if you'd gone to the nearest church of Iomedae right there at the Worldwound, that I would have just found out about the children in Hell, earlier, and been even less prepared for it.  That I'd have augmented my abilitystats the same way for the same reasons, and ended up doing the same kind of damage to my emotions and my, me.  Even if I was taking it slower.  Even if I hadn't been, then, in so much pain.  Even if I hadn't known, yet, the reasons why I shouldn't accept help, and somebody had tried to help me make it through.  Maybe the worst aspects of this all turn out the same for me, either way."

"The fact remains that you, no matter how forced into it, chose something, that dealt a kind of damage to me that is separate and additional from getting to Golarion and finding out that there were children in Hell, the damage of, daring to trust somebody, of telling yourself that you need to have courage, to fall in love, and finding that courage, and falling in love, and being betrayed in, if not literally the worst possible way, probably a worse way than anybody in the last hundred years of dath ilani history has ever been betrayed."

"It's probably nothing to Golarion.  It probably doesn't compare to a mother slowly watching her child die of sickness, knowing she'll never have the money to resurrect them, never be able to find them in the Boneyard.  It certainly doesn't compare to a single soul going to Hell."

"So you'll never, really, be able to understand the hurt that you dealt, or consider it as something very significant on the scales of your, utilityfunction, apart from what it meant to your emotions, which are just your emotions, and which probably hurt you a lot, but you did it anyways because of your utilityfunction, which isn't even something I can disagree with, I would not have wanted you going to Hell rather than betraying me."

"I am not, in the end, able, to tell you, that you, chose this wrongly, I just want, to say all these things to you, and make you feel hurt, because you chose it, and the only reason I'm doing that, when I can't tell you the algorithm you should've used to choose differently, is because, wanting you to hurt like that, is one of the last pieces and last wishes left of Keltham, along with a lot of best wishes for you that I am probably not going to act on."

- all that and she is mostly, somehow, terrified about the part where even though he has pointedly not confirmed her Rovagug-worries he has been rederiving things about the population-statistics of Greater Reality. 

Set that aside for a moment and listen to Keltham; you owe him that. 

(If he were, as he claimed, not Keltham, you wouldn't owe him anything.)

(Set that aside for a moment too.)

"I don't think it was a small hurt, for whatever that's worth."

I do think that you're dangerously wrong about the entire concept of being a person - not the time for that, either. 

"And I don't think I weighed up the magnitude of the hurt to you against the other things I wanted, and decided it was worth it. I'd respect myself more, if I'd decided that. I just didn't let myself decide at all.

What - are your best wishes, even if you don't want to act on them anymore."

"For you to live happily ever after with your Keltham, of course.  What else?  Excuse me."  The man in front of her reaches up and wipes Keltham's tears away from his eyes.

"Wasn't obvious, see, because I've never met anyone who wasn't Chelish and Chelish people don't say things like that. But yeah, I don't think we're going to get that one. We'll have to settle for getting it for everyone else."

"I'm mostly hoping they're almost entirely not real, which would make a mockery out of some of my own past life decisions but, even so, I'm mostly hoping they're almost entirely not real, the everyone-else.  And those are issues that you did not, last I knew of you, like to think about, or confront as possibilities, so chalk it up as one more thing to talk about when we're both INT 29."

"Do you have a reason to think that - yeah. Okay. Once we're enhanced. 

If you're - not Keltham - 

- then why, from your perspective, would I want to work for you?"