She was expecting Merrin's thoughts to show spikes of fear, horror, anxiety, or possibly particular thoughts glowing with pleasure and happiness, as her thoughts steered around the question of whether she deserved more importance or pay than she had.

What she's actually seeing is thought processes that sound so reasonable that she's finding part of herself questioning whether she's even actually looking at a mind-controlled slave.  Or just somebody with INT 16 and WIS 20, who would be among the first called in if a portal was found to Golarion, who in some perfectly normal way thinks of herself as a below-average individual unsuited to most jobs in her society, who gave nearly-all of her income to what she was told was a charity, and just happens to never look or think about the amount of wealth she's supposed to have from her supposed job, and subsists off the proceeds of prostitution from her secret sadist 'boyfriends' - Merrin is apparently a public spectacle, often performing in some form of arena whose details are hard to make out, but definitely with crowds betting on her, and yet her emotional sense of her own place is that of some unimportant functionary -

On a purely intuitive level, her high-powered Detections are telling her that these are totally normal thought processes and maybe that's what mind control just looks like when you somehow do it without any magic and this is the most fascinating and impressive feat of slavemaking that she has ever seen.  Ever heard of.  This is a thinking curious INT 16 WIS 20 grandmaster-level professional slave who has no idea what she is.

Part of her is still not sure that this isn't just actually how dath ilani society works because that is how totally reasonable and uninfluenced Merrin's thought processes look to Detection if you ignore everything about where she ended up.

...how one would go about breaking this person out of her current mental prison - and into a more interesting one, of course - is something where she'd just have absolutely no idea where to start, if she can't use real torture.  It seems very clear that the false world Merrin lives in is going to be complete and consistent; that any simple questions "But what about..." or "Isn't it funny that the end result was..." will be met with totally reasonable answers, followed by suspicions as to why this question is even being asked and totally reasonable reasons for Merrin to stop listening to whoever is talking to her.

"Forgive me if my curiosity is painful," says Albe, "but - I am wondering what accommodations and - even luxuries - you might have had, then?  I thought, perhaps I should ask now, before you grow to miss them too much."  They couldn't have been literally feeding her slaves-bread, right, that wouldn't make sense for a slave this expensive.

She was expecting Merrin's thoughts to show spikes of fear, horror, anxiety, or possibly particular thoughts glowing with pleasure and happiness, as her thoughts steered around the question of whether she deserved more importance or pay than she had.

What she's actually seeing is thought processes that sound so reasonable that she's finding part of herself questioning whether she's truly looking at a mind-controlled slave.  Or just somebody with INT 16 and WIS 20, who would be among the first called in if a portal was found to Golarion, who in some perfectly normal way thinks of herself as a below-average individual unsuited to most jobs in her society, who gave nearly-all of her income to what she was told was a charity, and just happens to never look or think about the amount of wealth she's supposed to have from her supposed job, and subsists off the proceeds of prostitution from her secret sadist 'boyfriends' - Merrin is apparently a public spectacle, often performing in some form of arena whose details are hard to make out, but definitely with crowds betting on her, and yet her emotional sense of her own place is that of some unimportant functionary -

On a purely intuitive level, her high-powered Detections are telling her that these are totally normal thought processes and maybe that's what mind control just looks like when you somehow do it without any magic and this is the most fascinating and impressive feat of slavemaking that she has ever seen.  Ever heard of.  This is a thinking curious INT 16 WIS 20 grandmaster-level professional slave who has no idea what she is.

Part of her is still not sure that this isn't just actually how dath ilani society works because that is how totally reasonable and uninfluenced Merrin's thought processes look to Detection if you ignore everything about where she ended up.

...how one would go about breaking this person out of her current mental prison - and into a more interesting one, of course - is something where she'd just have absolutely no idea where to start, if she can't use real torture.  It seems very clear that the false world Merrin lives in is going to be complete and consistent; that any simple questions "But what about..." or "Isn't it funny that the end result was..." will be met with totally reasonable answers, followed by suspicions as to why this question is even being asked and totally reasonable reasons for Merrin to stop listening to whoever is talking to her.

"Forgive me if my curiosity is painful," says Albe, "but - I am wondering what accommodations and - even luxuries - you might have had, then?  I thought, perhaps I should ask now, before you grow to miss them too much."  They couldn't have been literally feeding her slaves-bread, right, that wouldn't make sense for a slave this expensive.

She was expecting Merrin's thoughts to show spikes of fear, horror, anxiety, or possibly particular thoughts glowing with pleasure and happiness, as her thoughts steered around the question of whether she deserved more importance or pay than she had.

What she's actually seeing is thought processes that sound so reasonable that she's finding part of herself questioning whether she's truly looking at a mind-controlled slave.  Or just somebody with INT 16 and WIS 20, who would be among the first called in if a portal was found to Golarion, who in some perfectly normal way thinks of herself as a below-average individual unsuited to most jobs in her society, who gave nearly-all of her income to what she was told was a charity, and just happens to never look or think about the amount of wealth she's supposed to have from her supposed job, and subsists off the proceeds of prostitution from her secret sadist 'boyfriends' - Merrin is apparently a public spectacle, often performing in some form of arena whose details are hard to make out, but definitely with crowds betting on her, and yet her emotional sense of her own place is that of some unimportant functionary -

On a purely intuitive level, her high-powered Detections are telling her that these are totally normal thought processes and maybe that's what mind control just looks like when you somehow do it without any magic and this is the most fascinating and impressive feat of slavemaking that she has ever seen.  Ever heard of.  This is a thinking curious INT 16 WIS 20 grandmaster-level professional slave who has no idea what she is.

Part of her is still not sure that this isn't just actually how dath ilani society works because that is how totally reasonable and uninfluenced Merrin's thought processes look to Detection if you ignore everything about where she ended up.

...how one would go about breaking this person out of her current mental prison - and into a more interesting one, of course - is something where she'd just have absolutely no idea where to start, if she can't use real torture.  It seems very clear that the false world Merrin lives in is going to be complete and consistent; that any simple questions "But what about..." or "Isn't it funny that the end result was..." will be met with totally reasonable answers, followed by suspicions as to why this question is even being asked and totally reasonable reasons for Merrin to stop listening to whoever is talking to her.

"Forgive me if my curiosity is painful," says Albe, "but - I am wondering what accommodations and - even luxuries - you might have had?  I thought, perhaps I should ask now, before you grow to miss them too much."  They couldn't have been literally feeding her slaves-bread, right, that wouldn't make sense for a slave this expensive.