What is surprising is the nature of the summon. It's an absolutely enormous bird with a lizardlike tail, brightly colored feathers on its back and wings, and an unusually scaly and featherless body.

There is also a woman in some unfamiliar red-and-black military uniform on its back.

Like every other non-Jubjub member of this situation, she is in fact surprised. Getting Plane Shifted into another Material-ish plane by a mis-cast combat spell, and then subsequently arriving plausibly as part of a summon, is not supposed to happen. She's not supposed to be summonable and she doesn't feel the sense of safety she hears that summons feel. And something important feels missing, though she doesn't have a good feel for what, but whatever it is has got to be way less important than the SHEER QUANTITY OF DAEMONS HERE. Gods fucking devour it.

She'll try to cast Fly on herself, because she doesn't seem to have a good path to staying on or climbing off of this bird-monster and you don't want to be grounded during an aerial battle. Thank Asmodeus for her concentration practice.

Get oriented.

There's a bunch of fae and forest-dwellers fighting the daemons. Adventuring party with a paladin at the center of the mess, which is a problem for Future Carissa if she has the privilege of existing. She's behind some perimeters, which is good, but the perimeters aren't very solid and they certainly aren't aerial. There's some shouting in what sounds like Sylvan.

Party repositions, including a lantern archon. Apprentice wizard does some spellcasting. Party wizard also does some spellcasting with a rod, which is apparently a Haste effect even though it doesn't look too familiar. (This applies to the bird-monster but not Carissa. She's going to be glad for that Fly spell.) Lantern archon targets the Jubjub with a ray, presumably a friendly one. Winged jackal tries to drag some green guy out of a tent full of daemons. Lightning hits a bunch of daemons. Land in the distance starts getting tangly. Wall of force shows up. Trees and treants and centaurs attack some daemons, two of which fall. Largest treant shakes off some daemons.

Specialist thanadaemon teleports to the birdcage area and the team is finally ready for the ritual! They get to work. Another thanadaemon beats up Devarre (the green guy) with an energy-draining quarterstaff. Genthodaemons in their role as combat generalists move and defend the bibliodaemons. Astradaemons go for Vinroot (the largest treant) again, and get in a decent attack before ending up entangled with each other.

Wizard's apprentice hands the plant adventurer what looks like some pre-measured packets of powdered silver.

And a significant amount of power very visibly flows through the plant adventurer, expending the silver, and causing the not-in-touch-range very large treant to look significantly more combat-ready.

Seems kind of like an obscure lower-circle variant of Death Ward specifically targeting daemons Carissa saw a while back? But that's touch-range. And if you'd had an anti-daemon ward prepared, wouldn't you have used it earlier and not bothered putting ranged metamagic on it? It has a duration in minutes, not rounds.

The power has flowed and now the plant adventurer seems to be trying to communicate with the bird-monster. Probably a ranger or druid, then.

Bird-monster moves at speed a bit southwest of the songbird enclosure.

The adventurers seem to be trying to be out of an 80'-ish radius of the bird-monster. Does Carissa want to join them?

Also, that same conspicuous and strange power goes through the presumably-a-paladin, leaving her dusted in silver. Same casting motions the plant used for the daemon-ward-ish effect.

Yes (while hastily shoving her red pentagram into a pouch). And she'll target herself with Tongues.

This is good timing on her part, because the bird-monster is opening its mouth.

Screeeeeeeeeeech

The screech is definitely loud. That part is easy to describe. It also feels deeply unforgettable. It pierces straight into the soul, even from the distance Carissa and the adventurers are at. Even time and thought seem to briefly stop during the screech, which you'd think would be detectable via spell durations, except those may have paused in their countdowns to admire the bird.

Everyone in the radius Carissa just left, except for the Jubjub, is stunned. One of the thanadaemons has vanished. The ritual seems thoroughly disrupted.

Oddly enough, the screech doesn't seem to have disrupted Carissa's hearing at all.

Her head does hurt, though, and there's spots in her vision, and she feels kind of dizzy. Probably this is normal, though, and she shouldn't look weak in front of the adventurers coordinating things.

She'll turn to the wizard and speak in … she thinks it's Sylvan. "Not a standard summons, do want the daemons gone. Orders?"

More lightning strikes on daemons. Largest treant does something with a beam that doesn't work very well.

Wizard's apprentice casts Message on Carissa. "What are your capabilities?"

Vinroot continues being unfortunately resistant to energy drain. Genthodaemon generalist drops in on the dryad circle. Bibliodaemons teleport in on the planned targets for informational cleanup and the, er, unexpected surprise entity of unknown informational state.

The cacodaemon with Kenchlo's soul reports to the Obcisidaemon, who stabs it and the soul gem within before teleporting off to more thoroughly resolve the issue of Kenchlo.

She can't mention Infernal Healing, can she. Ah well. "I have Haste, Summon Monster 2, Resist Energy, Rope Trick, Greater Detect Magic, Comprehend Languages, Feather Fall, and cantrips. I'm also a skilled crafter who would be happy to work for you as payment after this."

Things are terrifying and her vision is getting even worse and she wants to hyperventilate but she will not, because she needs to look valuable to the higher-level adventurers to have the best chance of living through this.

Green guy heals the paladin, who uses lay-on-hands on herself, probably ending Carissa's uncertainty. Paladin hits daemon hard. Wood-textured snake summon shows up and attacks another daemon, not that effectively. Wizard casts a spell, dumps another daemon in a pit, rushes towards some fae. Winged jackal attacks a daemon, not that effectively.

Carissa is included on a message channel. "Bibliodaemons are trying to mess with our books. I'm trying to get out of their range." A different voice cuts in. "Bibliodaemons are the weaselly ones. Death by paperwork. Stronger than they look. Report attempted memory alteration."

Jubjub claws and bites a thanadaemon. For no clear reason, its plumage shifts wildly before settling on purple and white spiral polka dots.

The plant is apparently a druid, because ey has just turned into a dire tiger. Specifically, a celestial dire tiger. Which is now getting in the weasel, er, bibliodaemons' faces.

The fight is getting beyond Carissa's ability to track at this point. Bibliodaemons are teleporting? The loud bird swallowed a thanadaemon whole except for its staff? Something something wind and lightning? Someone's talking over message… oh, huh. Yelling 'report'. That's probably important … but daemons are important too…

Carissa manages to mutter "dizzy…" over Message before losing consciousness. She's starting to look kind of blue.

Well, that's bad. And also makes little sense, the daemons haven't been prioritizing her and there's not any obvious poison going around. For someone who looks like she's asphyxiating this person is still visibly breathing. …well, maybe something with breathing isn't working.

The party is not going to lose another person today, especially not an outside-context person. Mythic power to spontaneously cast Concealed Breath.

And the person looks stable, at least for a bit.

And now the party has an unconscious surprise foreign wizard who doesn't need to breathe. And their attempts to suppress the Bag of Holding so as to keep the books in its associated extradimensional space Away From Daemons haven't succeeded yet. Well, perhaps the stable casualty should also be Away From Daemons. Dividing effort is a massive hassle, but her nose and mouth get covered so that she hopefully doesn't try to breathe void, and she gets shoved into the bag, and then the bag entrance isn't.

Some informational cleanup of the books happens anyway, as the bibliodaemon team was issued glasses suitable for targeting extradimensional spaces. While this would allow them to hit the unexpected entity with memory spells, they don't actually know what memories to target. They'd like to just kill her, but they don't have suitable attack spells for this. No, given the constraints it's better to focus on the books.

The Jubjub is very loud and very good at disrupting the ritual and otherwise turning the tide of combat.

It is utterly unacceptable for the bibliodaemon team to be captured intact. They know too much. The ones who can manage it smash their glasses before self-destructing. The ones who don't are still set to self-destruct on unconsciousness.

The ritual is not erasing itself as much as it should, but there's nothing to be done about that.

And eventually, the daemons can no longer fight, though a fair number of them manage to fly off while invisible or teleport off before being neutralized.

The Jubjub is somehow still here. It is also being fed. Food is good and important. Daemons are not filling.

(Daemons are the disposable part of a healthy and balanced breakfast, in that you'd better dispose of them if you want to stay healthy and balanced to enjoy your breakfast. Digestion not recommended if you are not a Jubjub.)

The bag is working! Time to take the wizard out of the bag. And check on the books.

Somehow, the wizard actually looks better having spent some time forcibly prevented from breathing.

"Can we get a Diagnose Disease over here?"

Yup, someone can be found for that.

The unconscious human wizard has extremely strange biology. Like, "not made of elemental matter" strange. It's really closely analogous to normal human biology on a broad structural level, though! Brain looks weirdly shaped but apparently that's normal for her.

Also, she's recovering from … something analogous to a systemic vital air deficit, but for not-made-of-elemental-matter people. Presumably because she can't breathe vital air? But she's not a water-breather either.

She's probably going to need more Concealed Breath or something until someone figures things out, and this cleric is not that someone.

Can anyone else cast Concealed Breath. Or give or sell a single charge of an S4 Pearl of Power or equivalent. Or do a specialized Life Bubble.

If the adventurers will pay for a Restoration scroll so the cleric has a free slot for it.

Yeah, fine. Whatever. …and sorry, cooperative wizard, but we are going to insist on searching strange people under the circumstances, especially those dressed in Asmodeus's colors. Hopefully this is just a fluke.

This is not a fluke, there is an unholy symbol. What a mess. The person can get some spare clothes that shouldn't have any potential surprises, but is going to get restrained and have her spellbook confiscated. Conveniently(?), "prevent the patient from breathing because that seems to make things worse" and "prevent the prisoner from performing verbal components" go together here.

Also, let's maybe delay waking her up until we've recovered from the fight. And pump her full of nonlethal damage to make sure she doesn't wake herself up. And sleep. Sleep is important.

The fight went great! The Jubjub Bird is amazing! …also, Kenchlo is very, very dead.

And the sum total of evidence is strongly suggestive that soul senescence did not exist prior to the Sealed War of Aiquzall, which would explain the importance to the daemons of book-redaction, bard-destruction, and self-erasing-ritual performance that looked kind of like weaving a daemon into the souls of the 'songbirds'. The one memory-modification attempt that went through made a party member forget book titles, but this isn't actually a big deal. Unlike the book tampering, which unfortunately is, most of those weren't backed up.

Now that there are more spare resources, a containment setup can be finangled. A Lesser Geas, a less hasty configuration of restraints, and someone's telepathic familiar is available as a relay, since preventing breathing and somatic components also prevents speech. It's … irritating … to be planning to spend this many S4 slots on Concealed Breath, but at least it's doable with leyline boosts. Dream Feast isn't a great long-term plan, but it's fine in the short term.

And Carissa can wake up, with memories of the battle, followed by vague dreamy memories of impressively delicious food that don't really have much context or make much sense.

She also can't see things, or hear things, or move, or breathe. For some unclear reason, this last issue is not causing her to suffocate.

…

There's a message in her head, now. «The daemons you encountered earlier have been defeated. We are going to ask you questions. You may respond to us on this channel.»

If they're sustaining her without breath and using telepathy they're almost certainly also reading her mind.

«Understood. I am a member of the Chelish military, signatory to the Worldwound Treaty. Kidnapping me from the Worldwound is likely a violation of your paladin's god's treaty agreements.»

«What is the Worldwound?»

Well, that's an unexpected question. «The Worldwound is a large planar tear between the Abyss and the Material Plane, located in the former nation of Sarkoris.» No response. Do they just want her to keep talking? It's not like this is secret. Pretty much the opposite, really.

«In northern Avistan.» Well, whatever, it's a safe topic to talk about.

«Nearish to the northern pole of Golarion.»

«Golarion, you know, the planet Rovagug is imprisoned in.»

«Rovagug is a powerful god who wishes to devour everything, whom the rest of the gods worked together to bind?»

What is up with this team's interrogation script, anyway? She'd heard Good people were too squeamish and picky to do decent interrogations but these people aren't even trying.

«Tell us about the gods.»

This question seems more like a trap. «What about them?»

«Tell us what a god is.»

«Gods are being of incredible power and intelligence, capable of granting Their followers divine spells. They focus on particular domains, typically live in an Outer Sphere plane, and are typically strongly aligned. For example, Lord Asmodeus lives in Hell, has the domains of tyranny, slavery, pride and contracts, and is Lawful Evil.»

«What other gods are you most familiar with?»

«Abadar, god of trade and cities, Lawful Neutral. Calistria, goddess of lust and revenge, Chaotic Neutral. Cayden Cailean, god of drunks, Chaotic Good. Desna, goddess of dreams, Chaotic Good. Erastil, god of farming, Lawful Good. Gorum, god of battle, Chaotic Neutral. Gozreh, god of nature, Neutral. Iomedae, goddess of destroying Evil, Lawful Good. Irori, god of monks, Lawful Neutral. Lamashtu, goddess of madness and monsters, Chaotic Evil. Nethys, god of magic, Neutral. Norgorber, god of crime, Neutral Evil. Pharasma, goddess of birth and death, Neutral. Rovagug, previously mentioned, Chaotic Evil. Sarenrae, goddess of the sun and healing, Neutral Good. Shelyn, goddess of beauty, Neutral Good. Torag, god of metal and dwarves, Lawful Good. Urgathoa, goddess of undeath, Neutral Evil. Zon-Kuthon, god of pointless suffering, Lawful Evil.»

A pause.

«How did you get here?»

This is probably the best time for a while to see how her captors respond to a bit of uncooperativeness. «By accident.»

«Where were you trying to go?»

Apparently they just aren't going to ask for more details on that. «I wasn't.»

«So you're saying you weren't trying to go anywhere, correct?»

«Correct.»

«Would my captors care to tell me anything of their identity or goals? Or why I'm not breathing?»

«You can't breathe the air here. We think you fell unconscious earlier from trying.»

Another pause.

«Which should have had noticeable symptoms before full unconsciousness that a sensible combatant who wanted to not be eaten by daemons would have given their co-combatants notice of. Luckily, you're alive anyway.»

If they're upset they're free to torture her. It's what you do with prisoners you're frustrated with.

«We will also tell you that our goals involve getting rid of daemons.»

Ah, the Get The Prisoner To Trust You script. Well, she doesn't plan to trust them, but the counterpart to the script is trying to get your captors to be vaguely fond of you, which shouldn't hurt. «Well, that's a pretty decent goal. Daemons are the worst, huh?»

«They're pretty awful. It'd be nice to have more capacity to prevent soul destruction.»

«Well, Lord Asmodeus has a place for everyone in Hell, at least.»

The telepath is now asking many, many questions about Pharasma, psychopomps, Abaddon, and other matters of public record.

Well, this continues to not be data she's not supposed to share, and it keeps her mind off of any possible Chelish state secrets. She can talk about matters of global public record aaaaalllll day. (Or night, whatever, apparently being too Good-aligned to torture someone doesn't mean you won't disorient them.)

The title 'Horseman' sounds vaguely familiar but she's not actually very familiar with the power structure of Abaddon. She was privileged to serve Hell by fighting demons, daemons didn't really come up much and she was accordingly not given detailed briefs. Except that Awaiting-Consumption exists. Horrible place, it'll be much better when Lord Asmodeus conquers it.

Abaddon is invading Thuvia through the House of Oblivion, but in a pretty low-key way. They'd probably appreciate foreign aid.

Pharasma sorts people into afterlives based on where they fall on the Lawful-Chaotic and Good-Evil axes, except if people sort Neutral Evil she gives them their choice of Hell or the Abyss instead of Abaddon, and the Neutral afterlife is her realm, the Boneyard, which she mostly tries to get people out of quickly by having them develop other alignments. She doesn't like it when people interfere with her sorting or make there be a lot to sort all at once. She doesn't like abortion or infanticide because babies take a long time to develop alignments. Pharasma doesn't personally preside over every single case, there's a court system.

Psychopomps, uh, work for Pharasma. That is the main notable quality about psychopomps. Presumably her court judges are psychopomps, and such. Sometimes they interfere with undeath.

Pharasma isn't lawful. She leaves the psychopomps a fair amount of discretion, and her procedures are messy, and such.

Outer Sphere outsiders are immortal unless struck down in combat or such. The afterlife is ideally forever, which is why it's reasonable to pay some up-front costs in unpleasantness to be better at the afterlife later. She hasn't heard of curses or diseases causing soul disintegration.

What about astronomy and calendars?

The night sky is, uh, starry and has the Godsea? Specifically, it is dark, with lots of little points of light called stars, and a glowy band, called the Godsea or the Moontail or the Sun Road or such. If Carissa were untied and could see, she could sketch it.

The Sun is very consistent and doesn't do weird things like splitting into multiple suns that she's heard of. Golarion's year length is 365 days, except it's not quite evenly divisible into days so every four years they have a leap day. The Absalom Reckoning calendar is standard and many countries including Cheliax use it. It divides the year into months of variable length ranging from 28 to 31 days. There's not really any obvious pattern to the length variations. The months do not contain a whole number of weeks. Month lengths are kind of similar to lunar cycles but not really the same.

No, she's never heard about Lord Asmodeus not liking the calendar. Why wouldn't He like the calendar. Maybe once He conquers the world, he'll want to rename the months so they're no longer named for lesser gods He defeated?? She also hasn't heard of other gods not liking the calendar.

Does Carissa know how to control illusions?

Ye…es? But right now she can't cast anything.

Her captors would like her to mentally activate an illusion item of theirs that they can touch to her skin and create a model of the night sky.

On the one hand, alleged novel magic item type! On the other hand, this is probably a trap to get her to count as 'willing' for some totally different effect.

Well, these people keep not torturing her. «I'm not comfortable doing that without being able to verify the nature of the item.» Which would also mean she would get to look at a novel magic item type!

If they uncover her eyes and give her more motion with one hand and put her at an improv writing desk, is she a) even willing to draw the sky for them at all and b) going to do anything stupid.

«Yeah, sure. And no, I'm not, you clearly outlevel me.» She's going to be way too monitored to try anything right now, they'll presumably have to step down security eventually. Or alternately she's wasting the time of a high-level Good adventuring party indefinitely, which is also beneficial to Hell.

The Carissa is repositioned. When the eye covering is removed, she's in … a pretty ordinary-looking tent that appears to have specifically been set up for blocking off Carissa's sightlines, as it's basically empty, and restrained in a seated position with a collapsible desk in front of her. Paper is secured to the desk so she won't need a second hand free to secure it, and there's a pencil on it. There's a hand on the back of her neck, and given that she can see the druid and the paladin it's probably the wizard who's the one behind her. She still can't hear anything. Her uniform's been swapped for some ill-fitted clothes she didn't bring with her. The paladin doesn't have any holy symbols she recognizes, just a weird overcomplicated wrench.

Her hands are still restrained. «What hand do you draw with?»

«My right hand.»

And now her right hand is not restrained, and she can reach the pencil and draw on the paper.

«For clarity, you want a drawing of the night sky, not a star chart.»

«We'll take both if you can manage a star chart, we have plenty of paper.»

«Only a rough one.» Which she will now draw.

The druid will replace the sheet of paper with a fresh one.

«Want this drawn inverted for more accuracy?»

«Yes.»

Drawing of the night sky. It's very full of stars, which are points of variable magnitude, and there's a hazy band across it. Also, a moon is there.

And now she is restrained as previous again, which means it's time for even more seemingly inane questions.

Inane questions are answerable.

Given the nature of their relay, Carissa doesn't have the capacity to figure this out, but the adventurers have now delegated question-asking duty and are discussing their findings.

"This doesn't match with the Fellnight records at all."

Yup, it sure doesn't. Does Griffie think the prisoner was being honest?

Ey does.

That matches their impressions.

In the long term they may want actual trust and that's going to be a pain to work out with an Asmodean.

The barrier should go down within the week and they can make the Upper Planes handle this.

True, true.

Seriously, though, a psychopomp-god ruling all afterlives and cutting off daemons from their supply? What gives? Is that really a plausible way for an alternative to be? And what is up with that sky? It doesn't match the swirls of Old Aiquzall, but it's brighter than the postwar sky and the band is maybe Old-Aiquzall-ish sort of but not really.

Yeah, it raises a lot of interesting questions.

Also, why is her Asmodeus cool with such a messy calendar? Axis hates it when calendars are like that, and Asmodeus tends to join with the Axiomites on things like this to show off how orderly he is, so why would he be okay with this mess?

Maybe the Lawful coalition can't alter the sun's orbit or the day length so they're pretending they don't want to?

Well, that's a hypothesis, sure.

Meanwhile, Carissa can explain how resurrections work. She thinks that the Church of Abadar sells them to pretty much anyone who can pay and nobody else is really sanctioning them for that general policy, but she's not the most up to date on the actions of the churches of lesser gods. Especially if they're ones who are sane enough to be Lawful and recognize the might of Lord Asmodeus and don't oppose him much so she doesn't need to expect to fight their followers.

And eventually…

«Hey. Are you going to cooperate with us re-casting the spell for you to breathe or do we have to knock you out for it?»

Could just be an excuse to get her to fail a save against Detect Thoughts. «I'm not challenging your capacity to knock me out for it, but if you want to not do that for some reason I'm going to insist on actually observing everyone with line of effect to me.»

There is a touch on the back of her neck, and an experience like a somewhat gentler version of blows with a sap or a really wimpy version of Admonishing Ray but delivered very directly and repeatedly.

And while she's down, she'll also get hit with Dream Feast again for whenever she actually gets to sleep. She had some rations on her but those should probably be emergency reserves and it's probably a pain to eat without doing any breathing.

Healing a bit of nonlethal damage is trivial, she'll be back up in no time.

Where is she, why can't she see or hear anything–

Right. The really weird interrogation.

Since her captors like trivia, would they like a bunch of Asmodean doctrine?

Yeah, sure, why not.

Unfortunately, this thrilling recitation is interrupted by Carissa being picked up and moved at speed.

Into a range where, despite her ear coverings blocking all other noise, there is an audible Screeeeeeeeeeech

«We spotted an astradaemon, er, high-power daemon, but it ran off. You're in the safest area we can find now that isn't alone and senseless in a Bag of Holding.»

«If you'd prefer to be back in there you can be, though. You can expect a screech like that about once a minute if you're not. You probably should be there for sleep. We're investigating a Rope Trick for noise mitigation but since you can't breathe any better in there than in the bag you don't get priority access to it.»

Either she can stand this, or she can't, but if she can't she doesn't want to reveal that it's a good way to mess with her. «I'm fine telling you about the glory of Lord Asmodeus from out here, thanks. Don't suppose we could work out a deal where you let me get into fighting condition in case some daemons come back again?»

«The Jubjub Bird can eat astradaemons pretty easily and you're not that powerful a combatant.» Also, trying to make deals with Asmodeans is deeply frustrating and to be avoided if feasible.

Well, then a lecture on Asmodeanism can continue. With frequent interruptions. Her ears don't hurt even after hours, but she's not sure she's really hearing this through her ears per se.

And eventually she'll ask to be moved somewhere quieter. The worst these people seem likely to do is say no.

Sensory sensations that at least fit with being placed in a Bag of Holding, followed by silence.

And sleep.

And Carissa dreams. She's back in Cheliax, and she's been invited to some minor noble's dinner party for nebulous reasons, and keeping track of all the guests is terrifying but the food is amazing and there's a lot of it. Someone keeps pouring her more wine and looking at her insistently, to her dismay, but it is good wine and she can't exactly refuse it. And she's being led to a bedchamber, and threatened into … drinking several large glasses of water? Weird kink and/or poison administration method.

And then she wakes up, breathless in utter silence and darkness and still probably in a Bag of Holding, and feeling sated for unclear reasons. Her throat isn't dry anymore. But the dinner party was clearly a dream, none of it really made much sense. Eating and drinking in a dream isn't supposed to make you actually less hungry or thirsty. Probably some specialized spell. She'd love to see the pattern for it.

Is there anything to be gained from feigning unconsciousness? Probably not. «Hi.»

…right, no comms within the Bag. Presumably they'll pull her out at some point. It's a reasonable time to pray.

Lord Asmodeus, please guide me to act towards Your will. If it best serves You that I distract a silly paladin and her party, I shall do so, and if I would better serve You elsewhere I ask that you grant me an opportunity to do so. Please shield Your loyal tool from daemons such that she may serve you in this life and the next. I yearn to see the day when You conquer the other gods and show them the errors of their defiance, particularly those of Abaddon, who seek to destroy that which ought to be Yours, not merely withhold it. Et cetera.

She can keep going for a while.

As with every other occasion she's prayed to Asmodeus, He does not deign to personally respond to her. Entirely unsurprising.

Eventually she'll just mentally recite passages from the Asmodean Disciplines.

Sometime after waking, there's a feeling of being pulled out of a bag, a greeting, and shortly after the now-familiar screech.

Which is apparently from a Jubjub Bird, whatever those are. What's another non-classified topic. Do her captors want to trade information on daemons for information on demons?

«Sure. You've done a lot of talking so we'll go first here. Remember the gargantuan daemon you saw with tusks and feathered wings that teleported off after stabbing one of the really little daemons? Well, that was an Obcisidaemon. They're also called 'genocide daemons'.» Followed by a list of known capabilities.

Why are they giving info first. She's the prisoner. Why are they even going along with this exchange at all, really. «Deskari is said to be the Lord of the Locust Host and the Usher of the Apocalypse. He's the main demon lord of the Worldwound, and tends unusually towards cooperation with his father, the King of the Wind Demons. His areas of concern are Chasms, Infestation, and Locusts.»

And the informational exchange can continue.

Asmodeus and Cheliax are pretty cool with more people knowing stuff about demons. Though really this isn't exactly hard-to-find information.

Tangentially, has anyone noticed that there is a Very Loud Jubjub? It'd probably be a great nest-building partner for another Jubjub, because it is so very loud. Isn't this incredibly attractive?

Yes, Carissa has noticed there is a very loud Jubjub Bird. It'd be impossible not to. However, like other non-Jubjubs, she does not consider loudness an attractive quality. Building a nest along with the Jubjub has not even come to mind once.

Yeah, the same goes for everyone else here.

Also, uh, wow, this bird has a seemingly bottomless stomach. It's not like not conjuring food for the Jubjub was a sane option, it'd just go hunting then which would be even more disruptive, but this is kind of a pain. Conjuring a feast to celebrate the hero of the day is one thing. Seeing Bountiful Banquet produce a single massive loaf of bread and then watching the recipient ask for seconds is another matter. Hopefully it'll move along soon.

Ah well. If they cannot properly appreciate its sheer Jubjubly prowess it's their loss. The food is good, and it'll go to the Fourth Place soon. Hopefully it got through to the summoner about how their thoughts about swords were backwards earlier, but it's not sure, the topic was hard to explain.

And eventually the conversation loops around to «Why do you serve Asmodeus?»

«Well, Hell is going to conquer the other afterlives and enslave everyone. So it makes sense for me to want to be in the shape most useful to Hell that I can manage, because Hell is only going to keep the parts of me that are useful to it, and I like existing. And Lord Asmodeus is right, that mortal minds are flawed in a way that His devils are not, and I don't want to be like this forever.»

«Why do you think Hell is going to succeed in doing that?»

«Well, Lord Asmodeus killed Aroden, and His country Cheliax is the greatest on Golarion. And people who do things sanely are generally Lawful Evil, so while some people keep their heads down enough for Neutral or appease Pharasma enough for Good, and some people don't do the sensible thing and aren't Lawful, the soul distribution not only favors Evil but we're getting a higher quality of soul.»

«Tell us about Aroden.»

«Aroden was the patron deity of humanity. Lawful Neutral. Ascended god, used to be human. He was prophecied to bring about an Age of Glory, but instead Asmodeus killed him and prophecy broke and now it's the Age of Lost Omens. He meant to, with the Chelish people as the agents of his will in Golarion, reign over the whole world. Cheliax was his country before it was Asmodeus's.»

«Elaborate on prophecy breaking.»

«Well … it used to be that gods could make uncannily accurate predictions about the long-distant future through means besides looking at the present and guessing how things would go, right, and also they could grant lesser versions of that power to their servants and some wizards could manage it themselves. And now they can't. Because prophecy broke.» She's not quite sure what there is to explain or if this is answering their question properly, here.

There is not a pause, because the adventurers wrote a long list of questions so as to not have suggestive pauses to indicate surprisal or such. Instead, there are questions about Lamashtu.

As an enemy of demons, Carissa does know some things about the powerful demon-god, yes.

And what about Torag and Gorum?

Far fewer things. Not all that mission-relevant.

As usual, they don't press her on the subject and instead move onto other topics. They'd like to hear in extensive detail about her understanding of Law and, ideally, of Asmodeus-Axis relations.

She's more familiar with the former than with the latter.

…and even more questions about Pharasma, actually.

Creation is a bubble maintained by Pharasma keeping out the really really Outer Gods and such.

How would she describe Creation in general terms?

The Material Plane has lots of planets around lots of stars and most of them are inhabited by intelligent life of some kind. Other planes include the Inner Planes, which is where elementals are from, and the Outer Planes, where gods tend to live.

The planets are around stars?

Y…es? That is how planets work.

And what are elementals like?

They're beings of fire, earth, water and air. They're smarter than animals and less smart than humans. They can be summoned, and bound for industrial applications sometimes.

So, what would she say a water elemental or an air elemental is like in terms of physical composition?

«They're made of water and air, respectively.» What is with this question?

«Describe water and air.»

«Water is a transparent liquid at the current temperature. 'Transparent' means you can see through it, though it's a tiny bit bluish in a way you only really see if you have a lot of it. Liquids are a kind of stuff that will move to fit the shape of a container they're in but are hard to compress or expand. People and animals tend to drink it. There's a lot of water in nature, salty in oceans and occasional lakes and non-salty in typical rivers and lakes. Sometimes drops of it come out of the sky, which is called rain. It freezes solid when it's somewhat colder than this and boils when it's a lot hotter than this. Unlike many liquids, frozen water takes up more space than liquid water. An air moves to fit the shape of a container it's in and will expand to fill space and can be compressed. The most common airs on Golarion are 'vital air' and 'fixed air'. Humanoids and animals inhale vital air and exhale fixed air, and fire also turns vital air to fixed air, while plants turn fixed air to vital air. The atmosphere is vital air. Other airs exist, some of which are poisonous and some of which are flammable and such, but I'm not an alchemist so I don't know much about those.»

«Describe oceans. Has Asmodeus given you any commands about them?»

«Oceans are bodies of salty water that cover most of Golarion's surface. There are fish there, and aquatic people, and such. People sail boats across them. If my lord Asmodeus has personally given me any commandments about them I'm not telling you. There's nothing that's a matter of public record, though presumably He prefers that Cheliax fight pirates who interfere with the slave trade and travel by ocean as a means to conquer other lands? But it's not like anyone has gone around yelling that, it's more that this makes sense given my understanding of Cheliax and Lord Asmodeus.»

«So he hasn't commanded you to not get salt from the ocean, or sail boats across it, or fish from it.»

«I would not expect Cheliax to be that far out of accordance with His will, no.»

Seriously, what is with these questions. Her top explanation is "people think Cheliax's wizard-production rate is due to being able to boost at least some facet of Cunning cheaply, and they want to know how specialized it is", but that's not, actually, what she thinks is going on, it's just that it's an explanation. (No, telepath, Cheliax is just richer than you because we have the backing of Hell, so we can afford to check the Cunning of a lot of peasants and educate the best of them.)

«What is Cheliax's relation to Asmodeus? You may stick to matters of public record.»

«Lord Asmodeus is the patron of Cheliax where I am from. He has made Cheliax safe and prosperous enough to offer magic education to everyone with potential. The people of Cheliax become Asmodeus's servants in Hell when we die.»

«Is this a common pattern in Golarion?»

«Osirion has some kind of god-king of Abadar, I don't know the details. Lastwall belongs to Iomedae. But both of those places aren't as rich as Cheliax.»

Questioning continues with various breaks. Would Carissa like to cooperate with pacing around in a tent while being stared at, or do other exercises that don't involve hand movements? Someone's clearly put together a schedule for adjusting Carissa's position even if she's not interested in exercises, but she may also initiate this process. There is a music box, someone could play a music box over Message at her, if that would help with sanity? It would, uh, be interrupted by screeches though. Sorry about that but they don't want her being eaten by daemons. Also, may they adjust her sleep schedule to include multiple chunks of at least one hour instead of one long chunk? Operational resources are constrained but if stuff is necessary for Carissa sanity and not a security risk she should let them know.

Exercising seems good for staying a useful tool. Why are they asking her about her sleep schedule, they can obviously do what they like. She would really like to in the short term have an agreement where she is not restrained in the event of a daemon fight and in the long term they might want to contact Cheliax about prisoner exchanges.

She can go in the Bag of Holding if the daemons show up again, it's a fairly safe place to be if you're not attached to breathing, but she really isn't offering enough value as a combatant to be worth the risks involved in dealing with Asmodeans.

She's a really good item crafter? They could have sex with her if they want?

…they also have a really good item crafter and don't really want to have sex with her.

Devour it. Well, she can have a schedule of answering inane questions and exercising and sleeping in multiple phases and praying to Lord Asmodeus that He allow His tool to safely reach His side in Hell.

Her dreams are all weirdly full of delicious food, which would make sense given that she's not being fed and starving people tend to be food-obsessed, except she doesn't at all feel like she's starving.

And eventually there comes a time where she is neither in total silence nor listening to screeches every minute or so.

The adventurers have finally made contact with Heaven, and Carissa has been moved from the near-the-Jubjub area to the near-the-Star-Archon area.

The astradaemon has been tracked down and summarily destroyed. Other high-power runaway daemons weren't findable. Heaven has gotten a full writeup of the Rhoswen incident describing a lot of evidence for the entire thing being a Charon plot. The unbleached gnome has been persuaded into retirement. The polymorph-victim 'songbirds' are transferred, Heaven thinks there's prospects for recovery even if their memories are gone.

"We'd like to move our prisoner to a better facility. She seems to be a very, very foreign Asmodean wizard. We've been keeping her restrained and distracted so she doesn't try anything but it'd be nice to not spend multiple S4s on keeping her from asphyxiating. Also we should really get her up to speed, she's very anti-daemon which we think may be a usable path for redemption."

Yes, yes, send her through the Gate or go with her, your choice.

The adventurers cross the Gate into Heaven with the prisoner.

Something feels very wrong. It's like the world itself is trying to lull her into a false sense of security, and it feels harder to think. Focusing on memorized prayers to steady herself only makes it significantly worse.

Also, there's a headband on her now, which actually momentarily hurts when donned but doesn't hurt after that. It's not helping her cognition any.

…they're using a cursed item on her? She should have tried to escape earlier, as difficult as that would have been.

A moment of disorientation, and she's being untied and turns out to be in a cubical room. The floor, walls, and ceilings are mostly checkerboarded with blue and green squares, but at the edges there are instead blue and green stripes parallel to the edges. The room is lit vaguely lit from nowhere in particular. Her magic feels distant. Someone winged is leaving through a door in the ceiling, out of jumping range, which closes and fades back into the ceiling once they leave. A sign that she can read without recognizing the letters is present, reading 'Furnishings may be available upon request'. The room is otherwise featureless.

…this seems waaaay more expensive than some restraints and a tent and way less improvised than a Bag of Holding. Why this.

She takes an experimental breath. It works, in that her lungs fill and empty, but her body doesn't feel any different. She holds her breath, and isn't tempted to let it out until she remembers that it might be nice to check how her voice is working. She hums. Her voice is a bit out of practice, but it's still basically fine. She stretches her arms and hands and paces around the room. She experimentally prods at the headband, which doesn't budge. The irritating feeling of being forcibly lulled into a sense of security is still present, even though she tries to shake it.

«Hello, captors?»

"Hello, captors?"

There is a voice from nowhere in particular, but she thinks she hears it in her ears, not her mind. It's perfectly comprehensible.

"Hello, Carissa. We are saddened by your distress."

She thinks she has a guess, at this point. She doesn't like the guess. Still, reasonable to ask. "Who are you?"

"You have not yet been cleared to receive names."

"Fine. Where am I?"

"You are in an Upper Planes prison whose precise location is unlikely to be disclosed to you in the near future, unless we are blessedly incorrect in our understanding."

Nervous, feigned confidence. "Abducting Worldwound soldiers is a violation of your treaty obligations. Return me at once."

"We are unclear on what treaty you believe us to be violating. Please describe which 'Worldwound' you are referring to, so we may further check."

A pause. "If this clarifies anything, you do not currently appear to be serpentine. Is this unexpected for you?"

This again, but with an additional even weirder question. "I am not normally serpentine. The Worldwound is a large planar tear between the Abyss and the Material Plane, located in the former nation of Sarkoris, which is in northern Avistan, a continent of the planet Golarion in the northern hemisphere. Golarion is the planet Rovagug is imprisoned in. Rovagug is a powerful god who wishes to devour everything, whom the rest of the gods worked together to bind."

She sounds kind of tired.

A longer pause.

"We are not aware of any such treaty, as we are not aware of any planar tear in any former nation going by that name in any continent going by that name."

"Try asking Asmodeus. I'm sure he can help you remember."

A much longer pause.

"Asmodeus is not familiar with any such treaty either. If you wish to escape, please keep in mind that that fraudulently claiming Asmodeus agreed to things is a very dangerous activity."

"I intend to fully cooperate with my lord Asmodeus's will to the best of my understanding, including by following the orders of His clerics and devils. Feel free to hand me over to Hell if you're concerned I'm failing in this."

"I rather hope you take this positively, but you are unlikely to wind up in Hell."

"Is there anything I can do to convince you not to place me in stasis?"

"Containment costs are currently high because of uncertainty about your origins and capabilities. You are likely to be moved to lower-cost containment in the future as these uncertainties are resolved, not stasis, unless you manage to lastingly increase containment costs substantially."

She takes a somewhat condescending tone. "My soul is the property of Lord Asmodeus on my death."

"While Asmodeus's church may have told you such, we detect no method of enforcement on you, let alone one sufficient to pull you out of here. Devils often mislead about these matters."

"I'm Lawful Evil."

"Yes."

"Why am I worth a risk of opposing Pharasma to you?"

"We do not know which devil Pharasma is. Given this, we doubt they are capable of posing a significant threat to us."

"Pharasma is not a devil. She is the Neutral goddess of birth and death, protector of Creation, whose psychopomps sort souls into afterlives in the Boneyard based on their alignments. Due to Abaddon's actions against her, she offers every soul she would otherwise send there their choice of Hell or the Abyss, reducing their soul intake. Who are you and why are you impersonating an outer plane."

"There appears to be a deeper level of confusion than anticipated here. While we will not answer any questions that present security concerns, you may ask questions and we will attempt to help orient you."

"Are you claiming I'm not in Pharasma's Creation?"

"If we have understood your claims correctly, yes."

That sure is a claim. She'll review her memories of the really weird questions she was asked.

"Why wasn't I able to breathe the air earlier?"

"We have not yet identified what substance you are made of. Presumably the concept which is being translated as 'air' means something rather different to you than it does to us. Thus, the air here isn't compatible with your biology. We're magically sustaining you anyway, and we've told the air here not to interact with you too much, so it's safe for you to let it pass through your lungs."

"How do the sun and other stars behave on the Material Plane here?"

"Stars emit light and orbit the planet. The sun is the closest star. The activities of stars relate to conditions in other planes, and can be studied by astronomers to make guesses about extraplanar conditions. Astronomers also study other aspects of star functionality, such as how this relation works at all."

"Planet, singular? And my last interrogators asked me if I was familiar with the sun splitting into multiple suns, does the one here do that?"

"The sun here has done that under unusual and unfortunate circumstances. Thankfully, only a few people died of it, aside from the instigators. And yes, there is one planet."

"Who, uh, were the instigators? What did they do?"

"Some very unhappy and misguided Psychopomps. The exact intentions of their plan are not publicly known, but it involved tampering with the Positive Energy Plane. It at least appears to have gone poorly for them."

"So you're saying there are psychopomps but no Pharasma."

"Yes."

"What are local psychopomps?"

"A psychopomp is one of a pair of primary classes of results split off from the mortal soul during death, specifically the counterpart to a ghost. In terms of composition, a psychopomp is formed from bits of soul energized during the death, specifically parts often glossed as 'philosophy of death', combined with more general soul material and energy that it competes with other things for."

"What exactly happens here to the mortal soul during death?"

"That's a broad question. Is your true query more specific?"

"What determines what afterlife people end up in? Furthermore, your statement somewhat implies that the mortal soul gets damaged by death, can you elaborate on that?"

"A mortal soul accumulates influences during life. These derive from both actions, such as the choice to help or hurt another, to keep a promise or break it, to pray, and from environmental exposure, such as being near others' rituals. There are spells which can affect this, such as Atonement, which removes unwanted influences from the soul, and Malediction, which applies fiendish influences. When a mortal dies, these influences pull them in the directions of associated deities. Additionally, divinities intervene to varying extents after a mortal's death. At minimum, when a soul drifts close enough to any plane typically classified as an 'afterlife', some mixture of the plane itself and forces from the plane will pick up the soul. This sometimes goes further. For instance, Heaven will sometimes issue or sell promises of retrieval upon death up to various limits of effort and risk."

Well, that's certainly different. Sounds like a mess, really.

"Soul damage happens on death as well as during various other circumstances, and is difficult to compensate for. We do our best with the arrivals we get, but there are … misfortunes."

"What are the effects of soul damage, typically?"

"Memory loss, loss of motor skills, personality damage, reduced intellect, et cetera. At a certain point, cessation of existence or worse. You appear concerned. Is this due to your recent daemon exposure?"

"On my arrival in the associated Material Plane here, I felt as though something important was missing, though I was distracted from this by the presence of a daemon fight. I am now concerned that this represents soul damage. The records of my previous captors would be more accurate than my memory is, if you have them, but I believe I was not a priority target for the daemons during the fight and in fact spent most of it in a Bag of Holding."

"We can do medical examinations. Is that your preference?"

"Yes."

"Understood. We'll let you know when we have results."

"Do you in fact have records from my previous captors?"

"Yes."

"Do you know if the local Lord Asmodeus wouldn't like the calendar I described there, and if so why?" Also, if Asmodeus is so great as to exist outside of Pharasma's Creation, why isn't that mentioned in the Asmodean Disciplines? Presumably He has His reasons. She hopes she may one day be a devil with the power to comprehend more of the majesty of His will, though being held prisoner by this Upper Planes seems like a setback there.

"The local year and various subcomponents of it all form whole-number durations, which is appealing to Lawful deities."

"What does the night sky on the Material Plane here look like?"

"We can display an image of it here, if you'd like."

"That should work."

There is now an image in the middle of the room. It shows a starfield on a very black sky, significantly sparser than Carissa is used to. There's no equivalent to the Godsea.

"What are clerics' typical reasons for refusing to sell resurrections?"

"Inability to channel the relevant power, lack of training in evaluation, concerns about long-term impact on the patient, or, in relevant cases, concerns about the patient's long-term impact on others if the cleric doesn't have access to containment."

"Long-term impact on the patient?"

"Resurrection is one of the aforementioned events that cause soul damage."

"What are the worse-than-nonexistence soul damage outcomes?"

"A central example is becoming something rather like a daemon."

Being a daemon sounds better than total nonexistence to her, but she's not a fussy celestial. "What's the state of prophecy?"

"That's a very broad and strange question. We are not sure exactly what you mean by it."

"Does prophecy exist?"

"Yes."

"Why wouldn't Lord Asmodeus want people to fish in the ocean, or get salt from there, or sail across it?"

"The ocean is an anomalous location. No god remembers and will admit to placing salt within it, but it has something salt-like nonetheless. Given this and other more concerning reasons, we and others including Asmodeus discourage the extraction and ingestion of ocean 'salt'. Fish from the ocean may have odd biology with unknown interactions, and sailing across it is a high-risk endeavor, airship travel is wiser."

Well, she's out of questions that could plausibly be used to orient her, at least for now.

The sourceless voice breaks the silence. "Does your species not use furnishings?"

"No, we do."

"Do you simply not want any?"

"Why are you asking?"

"There is a sign offering furnishings. Were you unable to read it? Many species use furnishings, so it seemed nice to give you some."

Right. Celestials. Might as well see how they respond to absurd requests. "Well, I'd like a bed with linens and a down quilt and pillows and some curtains to block out the light, a setup for disposing of bodily waste, a chair, a table, a Prestidigitation item if I'm not to be allowed my own magic." Does she actually want a fire. Not really, the temperature here is very even. "Some changes of clothing. A comb. I'd like some dining utensils but I'm not sure you're ever going to offer me actual food. There were rations in my bag when I arrived, if you need a reference." What has she heard that nobles tend to have. "A bathtub that fills itself with hot water and perfumed soaps and lotions, and towels. Some music boxes or self-playing instruments or such."

The sign about furnishings and the starfield image are no longer present, and the room now contains:

• A canopy bed. The curtains are open, but look like they'd be pretty solid light-blockers if closed. It does have sheets and pillows and a quilt.
• A table with an upholstered chair at it. The table has:
  • Some folded clothes
  • Forks of varying sizes and numbers of tines, one of which has a side kind of like a blunt knife.
  • A knife that looks more capable of cutting bread or meat that is not also a fork
  • Spoons of varying shapes and sizes, one of which has a hollow tube as a handle
  • Two smooth tapered sticks
  • A small pair of tongs
  • Flexible hollow tubes, including a very small scourge made of multiple hollow tubes which merge into one tube in the 'handle' area
  • A range of sizes of bowls, plates, and cups
  • A really large pile of music boxes
• A chamber pot, but attached to the floor for some reason.
• A bathtub, with taps and a door in the side, a built-in seat, and built-in shelving with bottles and bars of soap.
• A cloth mat on the floor by the door of the bathtub.
• A towel rack, with towels.

"What effect do you want a magic item to provide?"

What. Who does this.

Even if she were an honored guest she wouldn't expect this kind of speed. Also, that's kind of an absurd amount of dining utensils. Also, why is there a knife and a scourge? People don't just give those to prisoners. Is the scourge somehow supposed to be a dining utensil? How does eating with a scourge even work? And why does the bathtub have a door in the side, wouldn't the water leak out? She also didn't request a specialized floor towel but she can at least follow the logic there.

"A cleaning effect."

There is another item on the table, and the voice explains its functionality.

She starts poking items. None of them are illusory, except maybe the music box's music, but if it's a figment that doesn't mean it's not a working music box. None of this makes sense.

"Why are you doing this?"

"To be nice."

"Isn't this expensive?"

"A bit, but not very. Why?"

"You aren't even trying to appease Pharasma, so why are you doing slightly expensive things to be nice to prisoners?"

"Do you believe that Asmodeus tortures his followers to appease Pharasma?"

"No. He does it to discourage failure and to forge them into better instruments of His will. And Pharasma calls this Evil, because Evil is what it is called when you pursue ambitions without specifically tracking what will appease Pharasma."

"Well, then, you have reached a Lawful Evil afterlife."

"What is the non-Pharasma-appeasing constraint you are working under that means you have to do slightly expensive things to be nice to prisoners?"

"Limited budget."

"I'm not asking why these things aren't free for you to do, I'm asking why you have to do them."

"Well, we want people to be happy and have things they want and such, so if we skipped lots of opportunities for that, then we wouldn't get things we want."

(Carissa's thoughts are muddled and her focus is poor when she contemplates service to Asmodeus. Easier to focus on her curiosity about this world, her concerns about soul damage, whether they'll give her a Detect Magic lens if she asks nicely, how comfortable a hot bath might be… Really, anything non-Asmodean that springs to mind.

(For context, this is not a specialized curse targeting Carissa, as much as it may be an effective way to manipulate someone who values cognition to the extent she does. It is a property of any strongly aligned plane that it mildly interferes with cognition opposed to its alignment, and while this can be prevented through various means, mitigating it for a prisoner would generally not be in line with Heaven's interests. Carissa is not in Eritrice's realm, and while even outside of such places manipulation like this is not common, it's generally considered justified and advisable in handling, say, loyal Asmodeans.))

So though the cleric she answers to would consider it a mistake, she asks "Why do you want that?".

"That's a question with many answers. Personally, I'm ex-mortal, and I think during my life I liked myself better when I acted towards the well-being of others? Like it was the person I wanted to be, when I could afford it, and now I can afford more of it. And the Upper Planes are decent afterlives, people strive to come here, and we have to patch them up with the materials at hand, which does affect their personalities, but even before that … it's pretty common, for people to flinch when they see others suffer even when they know what they're seeing won't happen to them, and feel proud and happy about their generosity when they share crops from a good year with their neighbors, even if the norm is essentially a form of insurance and they wouldn't send their spare grain across the continent for free."

Carissa has seen people flinch like that. It's a pattern of stupidity that can sometimes become heresy, if left uncorrected, but it's not that hard to correct when caught early. This usage of pride seems outright heretical, though. …which reminds her, this is probably a wrong line of questioning. Why is it hard for her to focus on things like that?

"Do you know why it's hard for me to focus? I wasn't having this much trouble earlier."

"What is your understanding of planar physics in Pharasma's creation?"

"It's never been an area of focus for me."

(She's not lying. Furthermore, the planes she'd be most familiar with would plausibly be Hell and the Abyss, where 'it's hard to focus on good thoughts' as an environmental constant is, for the typical occupant, utterly swamped by the actions of the local fiends and probably not salient as a planar trait in particular. If that's even how things work in what she calls Pharasma's creation, it might not be.)

"I'm not fully familiar with the conditions in Pharasma's creation, but locally, the situation is as follows: the forces of Hell promote various cognitive hacks, which produce benefits to them as an entangled side effect of their usage. On the Material Plane, this primarily works out to giving them additional power, while enabling people to think in the way that Hell taught them to. The power of Hell is interfered with here, and those entanglements mean that the thoughts themselves are also weakened. It is one of the more blatant vulnerabilities of Hell's teachings, though it is likely that they have given you many excuses for the more subtle ones. A mirror effect does actually apply as well, Hell has to resort to interfering with the otherwise in many ways more effective method we encourage. You are most likely intelligent enough to be able to use techniques that fall under merely Lawful influences, without regards for harm or help to others, neither tyranny nor freedom. For example, you may wish to consider pure math or pure spell design. Not as taught through threats, but as the underlying work that contributes directly. After all, neither threat to oneself nor concern for threat to others is on its own enough to enable one to figure out spells, it merely provides motivation to do what is the core of the work, and that core of the work is untouched, at least here. If you were in a realm like the Abyss, you would find that while the idea of tormenting someone might come easily, both you and your victim would find the math of going through the actual spell quite difficult."

So they're causing a captive whom they know is a wizard to experience cognitive difficulties immediately when thinking thoughts they don't like. And claiming it's environmental and not about prisoners, which would be an insultingly obvious lie from anyone who isn't a celestial especially given that she's wearing a cursed headband, but this is way too competent a use of incentives for celestials.

Getting out of the habit of thinking Asmodean thoughts is a trap. Developing a flinch every time she tries to think one is also a trap. It's not obvious how the latter can go that much more wrong than causing the former, though.

(And of course celestials mistakenly think that the celestial way is better. This is barely worth noting.)

She really wants to inspect the headband. (The thought that it might be useful for figuring out how to make cognitive boosts conditional on intent of cognition, which the military could really use, is slightly frustrating to think through. The thought that she didn't know this was possible and it sounds really technically interesting is not.)

"Understood."

Maybe scourging herself will help her to focus on Lord Asmodeus's will? She'll try the weird hollow tube scourge.

This is the worst scourge she has ever used. It's incredibly lightweight, so it's hard to apply much real force with it, and the handle is excessively narrow and smooth, which becomes particularly salient when it slips out of her hand. It's hard to characterize the effects of it as painful at all.

This has not helped her to focus on Lord Asmodeus's will.

At this point she's now curious about the other objects here, and this is as good an excuse as any to check if the knife is actually workable, which realistically would be hard to do discreetly.

The knife looks plenty sharp and can cleanly cut her hair, but refuses to even scratch her, which suggests it's generally useless as a weapon. The tub water ranges from bracingly cool to luxuriously warm, and she can't access whatever heating apparatus it uses. The water and liquid soaps actively refuse to get near her mouth or nostrils, and the solid soaps are utterly tasteless, which displays some significant control over the elements. (The water refusing to go in her mouth is confusing until she remembers the claims that the elements here aren't actually compatible with her physiology.)

Scratching herself isn't really the best method but she does, at least, have a cleaning item, and even if the angels let her give herself some disease they clearly aren't inclined to let her die of it, since they're not letting her die of … whatever's up with the air. She didn't feel like she was suffocating before she fell unconscious, this could all be a lie, but it's a complicated stupid lie at least by the point where she's in a specialized containment facility with a bunch of magic conspicuously going around.

She does a thorough self-cleaning, which is not as dramatic in its effects as it could be, probably because someone was prestidigitating her clean while she was restrained. And then she gets to work.

It's slow, and tedious, and not as effective as if she was working with proper implements, but it does, actually, work, her fingernails are not incapable of injuring a cooperative subject.

Pain is painful, if not actually amazingly so; tools are useful and she doesn't have them. It does not allow her to focus on the majestic will of her lord Asmodeus as much as she might have hoped, but this is about what she expected.

This situation is a mess. She doesn't, actually, have a plan for what to do if held prisoner by Heaven or some incredibly wealthy organization impersonating them. They're confusing enough that it's unclear what to signal to them for the best outcomes here. They want her to believe that they can just hang onto her soul, against her will, indefinitely, while keeping her conscious. Which is quite a claim, and she can see why they would make it, if she believed it it'd be useful to get her cooperation, there's a reason Cheliax is so conspicuous about its use of Malediction, but also this is just not how death works.

Not how death works in Pharasma's domain. Which they're claiming she's outside of. She didn't spend very much time having expectations about the outside of Pharasma's domain but if she had it wouldn't have involved humanoids and beds and lantern archons and Asmodeus. The beds might be telepathy but she did, actually, personally observe some humanoids and a lantern archon and cacodaemons. Though possibly those memories should be discounted due to mysterious fainting and the, uh, mentions of memory alteration even within the scenario, though she doesn't think removing those would be that hard.

If they wanted her to be maximally eager to believe the claim about her being stuck with them they wouldn't be claiming that death inevitably involves soul damage no matter what she does, they'd bring up an offer that if she's incredibly useful she could pursue lichdom or such even though they're normally against it. Letting the prisoner sit around being terrified of inevitable doom, then offering them a conditional path out is in fact a valid tactic, it just doesn't really mesh with Heaven.

Eventually, her contemplations are interrupted by the usual ambient voice. "Are you in a good position to discuss medical results?"

"Now's as good a time as any."

"What's your understanding of soul anatomy?"

"Not great."

"You appear to have some personality damage, as well as some memory loss. Neither of these look targeted, and they appear to have been a one-time event, not an ongoing condition. You don't appear to be experiencing accelerated aging either."

"Is aging rate a property of the soul?"

"Yes, and given that you were in a fight with thanadaemons it could easily have been accelerated. Furthermore, the adventurers who turned you in to us claim that the thanadaemons were causing aging in others beyond legal limits."

They're acting like they're on a script where the answer would be some kind of bad news. She doesn't know what the state of law is regarding daemons at home, but if their script calls for answering questions she may as well indulge them, get a sense of what they want her to be thinking. "What's the state of law regarding daemons around here?"

"In the Upper Planes and most other jurisdictions, daemonic activity is locally considered illegal. However, the amount of force that may be brought to bear in opposition to daemons, as well as the extent to which one may engage in activities they would consider provocative, is limited by interplanar law reflecting the balance of power between Abaddon and other factions. Thus, daemons may reasonably speak of legal rights to devour souls or such, even in an environment where local law enforcement will make some attempts to impede this."

"In the particular case of senescence, a typical entity's rate of senescence is not to be reduced by a factor exceeding 72, nor increased by a factor exceeding 64. The adventuring party that sent you here claims that thanadaemons performed a self-erasing ritual to induce senescence in previously immortal entities, which would be an increase of more than a factor of 64."

How very specific. "Does that also apply to cases like ascension and undeath?"

"You have not yet been cleared to receive information about ascension. Undeath repurposes the forces behind senescence, but is more disruptive to various forms of continuity than it superficially appears."

Meanwhile, a conversation between archons and axiomites is occurring. Calling the security discussions 'negotiations' would be an overgeneralization, there's some well-used confidentiality protocols that have a long history here.

(This conversation can in this medium be best depicted via a reductive and warped summary, if less reductive and warped than a summary of god-conversations would have to be.)

"So, we have a captive Asmodean and we'd like to convince her of some true facts for deprogramming, and we thought she might trust one of your guys."

"Look, you know our agreement with Hell where they agree to direct mortals to cooperate with us is conditional on us not selling you this exact service. Why are you calling?"

"The Asmodean isn't local."

"You should really be looping Axis in on this properly, but even if you're not going to, you already know perfectly well that cross-Alternative Hells coordinate."

"The Asmodean really isn't local. These are our findings on her material composition."

▶ Attachment: d530-561d-ce79-48cb-bcc4.txt

It is not, actually, the case that Axiomites are emotionless. For instance, this one is concerned and frustrated.

"Do you have the Far Realms entity in containment? What about everything the entity got into contact with? You should really bring Axis in on this. Whatever licit advantage you're planning to get out of this, we can pay you for it."

"Yes, of course we have her in containment. She's been in contact with a lot of stuff, though, we can't quarantine the entire–"

"If you and Hell would just collaborate more and give us more funding…"

"We've had this discussion before. Now is not the time."

The Axiomite can signal sighing. It's a good interface. "Moralists. Someday you're going to send us all back to Aiquzall and you're not even going to think you made a mistake."

"Anyway, we don't think your agreement with Hell actually covers this distant an Asmodeus? According to her–"

Why is Heaven gendering the Far Fealms entity? The application of familiar genders to exotic entities is a step on the path to overestimating the compatibility of such entities with local reality! Did the entity manage to manipulate Heaven into gendering the entity due to some type of pronoun-infecting power?

"You TALKED to the Far Realms entity? Why isn't the entity in stasis?!"

"–the 'Asmodeus' in her … region … had an entire country of mortals, and yet she's been really poorly prepared to engage with us and her understanding of Asmodean theology is this."

▶ Attachment: 9b2a-8da1-f64d-4504-99e6.txt

"I am not reading that and if you were sane you wouldn't either."

"You're not going to remember this."

"I'm not supposed to remember this, yes. Are you really going to try to claim that nothing involved in the Rhoswen incident is usable for forcible circumvention of many methods of memory erasure? Does no particular problematic phenomenon spring to mind? Suppose, for instance, that the Far Realms entity rode into our reality on a Jubjub Bird, whose screech is known for evading memory redaction among other anomalous phenomena?"

"Jubjub Birds are deity-like entities. So far as we can tell–"

"I do not want to hear that entity's name."

"–our unfortunate indoctrinated Asmodean is not."

"Do you want to continue trying to play reference class tennis, or are you going to accept that we don't want to interact with your insanity on the terms you're offering?"

"We'll contact you again if our terms change in your favor or circumstances otherwise merit."

And the interaction ends.

(They're not even confident an Axiomite would help. Carissa's claims about Hell-Axis relations described them strangely distant.)

Meanwhile, Carissa has been thinking. Her captors really seem to be saying she shouldn't anticipate an adequate afterlife or undeath no matter how cooperative she is. It's not clear why they want her to think this – wouldn't it make much more sense to say she's stuck with them forever with her soul intact?

Given that this claim is kind of disruptive to her planning algorithms, she's falling back to the fact that if her captors were regular people them giving her a bathtub and clothes would clearly mean they want her to make herself attractive to them, and the celestials' insanity doesn't seem to suggest any opposition to her bathing, so she's taking a bath.

The bathtub is straightforward to operate. It provides a really, really comfortable bath. The soaps work, if through magic and not normal alchemy, and the scents are pleasant and go well together, if unfortunately illusory. The heat transfer is real and very comfortable. Despite Endure Elements working for Worldwound conditions, Carissa hasn't been this deeply warm for a while.

Does she want to use some bubble solution, a washcloth, a comb, some water jets, or that sort of thing?

Even after reading the writing on the bottle, she is not really clear on how bubble solution will make her look prettier and, after trying the water jets, is also confused about those. She will use the washcloth and the comb, as she is familiar with the functionality of both of these.

She finishes bathing, drains the tub, opens the tub door, walks out onto the floor towel, dries with more of the towels, and has a look at the clothes. What's on the top of the clothing pile?

Some richly dyed indigo silk garments and a pair of matching-color but non-silken slippers. They're not actually all that skimpy or form-fitting, but they'd probably be a great texture to put on your concubine. (Because they're just, generally, a really nice texture, and having too many annoying rigid bits would also make them bad pajamas.)

The slippers wouldn't be very good outdoor shoes, but even if this cube has a well-defined outside and isn't just its own demiplane with some tiny control booth or something, there's no real reason to think that such an outside would have a floor.

She'll put them on. Being dressed in her uniform hasn't helped much. Maybe if she wears their clothes it'll at least make her captors think a little less 'untrustworthy Asmodean' when they look at her. (And it would actually be really nice to wear some other clothing. Prestidigitation cleaning or no her uniform isn't suitable for constant wear.)

She stretches and runs her hands over the fabric sensually. (It's not a hard script, it doesn't take much of her focus.)

What's a phrasing for this that doesn't disrupt her captors' "pretend they aren't threatening the prisoner" thing.

"What would you need from me to prevent me from accumulating soul damage going forward?"

"Under typical circumstances, we would say we definitely could not make you such an offer if you were not interested in stasis. In the context of other allegations made against Charon, it may be the case that if we successfully demonstrate you were not previously subject to soul senescence, it would not be found to be a treaty violation for us to offer you preventative care. However, that still leaves implementation in question, and given that this has historically been illegal, we are not experienced in this domain. There was in the past year a case in which an entity was found to have performed successful reversal of soul damage, but that entity's identity is not a matter of public record."

"If we were to pursue this process, it'd likely involve invasive inspections by Axis that they'd require your cooperation with, and might end up involving you testifying at a hearing or such. If you got what you wanted, it might ongoingly constrain your actions beyond the constraints you'd experience if we chose to let you go without modifying your soul – there's been terrorist activity targeting other somewhat unaging entities in the past, and while it was allegedly carried out by psychopomps whose numbers are now diminished, the terrorists appeared to have external backers."

"Furthermore, no matter how cooperative you are, we cannot guarantee success in this matter."

She's following along at first. "Welll, this normally isn't an offer we can make, but maybe in a very special case…" is a perfectly reasonable haggling statement. "That entity's identity is not a matter of public record" could mean that they're trying to imply they can find the entity, could also mean they're being vague in the way that any Lawful plane would, probably the latter. "We need your consent to invasive examinations and for you to testify for us and you should really stay here" also make sense as things to say.

There isn't really any clear way to parse "no matter how cooperative you are, we cannot guarantee success in this matter" as fitting within the "we don't want to make threats or set conditions openly, but…" framework. Which maybe means it's actually true? It's not clear why you'd say it if it wasn't true.