Esta orders that part of himself, or that spell, or whatever, to shut up.

And gets to the point.

"But those details may not matter.  I don't think the way out of this is that you find a flaw in the work of an [Outer God] to project a dreamworld that would seem plausible to you.  That can provide a [circumstance bonus] to a [Will save], but it is not what drives the ability to [disbelieve an illusion], it is not the core of a [Will save].  That is a matter of wanting to see what is there, to assert your real self against the things that are trying to [enchant] you, [compel] you, [transform] you, modify your memories, blind or alter your perceptions.  And now that I come to say it, if I were wiser I would have had you practice that, against such lesser spells as might be resisted by a [Will save], if your memories of your practice in it were eliminated."

"But the core of it is very simple.  You assert yourself against the forces that alter you, and, in this case, will yourself to wake up from the dream."

He switches to speaking Taldane, Mariona's birth language, against the hope that there is any spark of it or its memory left inside her, to hear him speaking the language she has spoken all her life.

"So wake up."

"Because you don't actually have that dreamworld.  You have an alien planet and it does not even help you, it does not bring you pleasure or success, to imagine that you were once from some terribly pleasant place."

"Even on your own terms, you're never going back to dath ilan.  You have no tuning fork for its plane.  Why go on pretending that it exists?  All you have of it is some unformed chaos that an Outer God wove into impossible armor and impossible toys, and supposed knowledge that you cannot test nor confirm.  And to accept that dream is to deny everything that reality might have offered you."

"My Merrin might not have thought she had much, but she had more than this, if you can wake up from this dream and let us return home to it.  Because it is the nature of this game, I would guess, that we cannot go home until you wake up and face the reality you found unpleasant.  It may that the reason I cannot call from the Astral-adjacent planes or get a reply to my Sending is that we are literally trapped inside your delusion.  There's magic like that, and when an Outer God imposes it, it may be that I cannot break it with just my own Will save."

"So wake up, Mariona, and return to yourself.  By your Law I bid you, wake up, and return to the oaths that you took to defend Golarion against the onslaught of the Worldwound.  I call upon your Evil, Mariona, I invoke in you the sin of pride, that not even an Outer God should think that you would prefer clinging to a pleasant memory you can never touch, than to come back to reality and Golarion and attain your full potential there, to return to the ranks of Asmodeus's tyranny and rise there to your proper place, Mariona Durán, priestess of Asmodeus, of Infernal Cheliax, whose soul belongs and will always belong to Hell, in spite of all dreams and lies!  That's an order, Mariona, and Hell won't be happy if you disobey it, any more than I will.  That's an order, Chosen Durán, and in Asmodeus's name I command you, wake!"

"Wake, you fool, you pathetic incompetent!  Wake!  Wake up and

MAKE

YOUR

FUCKING

WILL SAVE!"

And from his own head Vicar Esta removes his Wisdom and Splendour headpiece, and puts it upon the head of Mariona Durán.

Creation doesn't usually go for declaring things 'impossible'.  Some challenges have higher Difficulty Checks than others, that's all.  In a way it's very Irorian about that.

Esta is trying to call upon the Power of Asmodean Friendship to restore Merrin's memories of being Mariona Durán.

In Creation's terms, this might correspond to a base DC of 20,
+5 for Esta not actually being Asmodean Friends with Merrin,
+20 for Merrin not actually having the memories Esta is trying to restore.

Very little is 'impossible', in Creation, but there are some things you can't do just by rolling a natural 20.

There were a whole lot of new-vocabulary-related additional questions that Merrin was very diligently not letting herself get distracted by, while Laeirthe took quiet mental notes to follow up on this and that and that, and then - 

Merrin knows a reasonable amount about her own weaknesses when it comes to social pressure. There were tests for that. There are some ways in which Merrin performed unusually well - it was quite difficult to socially-pressure a tiny Merrin into, say, going along with her peers in a plan that might harm another student in order to win points in a game or something - but tiny Merrin did worse than usual on pushing back if an adult authority figure were announcing a rule that she was supposed to be uncomfortable about. And certainly tiny Merrin was more or less paralyzed, including in her ability to think thoughts, if anyone - especially an adult - was ever actually visibly angry or shouting or otherwise scary in her presence. 

Which proceeded not to come up very often at all, because most dath ilani adults wouldn't do that. But critically ill patients are not always at their best, and Merrin does have training now in continuing to think and remember her own plan and goal even if someone is being socially scary in her vicinity. 

However, Merrin is not in a situation that lends to being at her best on that dimension. And so when Estha abruptly started being really superheated scary, Merrin was, embarrassingly, mostly frozen in some sort of ridiculous social panic and having trouble fully parsing a lot of what he was shouting at her let alone reasoning further about it, at the moment when he put the ??thinkoomph-enhancing headband?? on her. 

He calls upon her what? Her soul belongs to what? She's a priestess of what? 

Oh, wow, that's fascinating. Laeirthe does something that feels like the cognitive equivalent of stretching after spending a lot time curled up in a small box. 

Merrin? What seems to be the problem over here? 

The problem is AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!

Which, it turns out, if examined, will break down into about 25% mental flailing about the actual...request? order? whatever that was? 

And a much larger 75% mental flailing about how something Very Extremely Bad will happen if she doesn't figure out the correct thing to say that will get Estha to calm down and not be mad at her. 

Well, Merrin is probably not wrong to be finally successfully noticing that perhaps alternate-Estha is not entirely a friendly ally who has reasonable goals that she shares and can be relied on. Laeirthe has kind of been trying to point out for a while that she ought to be more paranoid about his intentions. 

That being said, her RESPONSE to feeling like someone might be hostile is, uh. Not helping. Can she stop that? 

No?????? She can't just stop being freaked out???? Not when the thing she's freaked out about is RIGHT THERE AND NOT EVEN SLIGHTLY RESOLVED????????

Wow, Kalorm thought Estha was cool for like one day but it turns out that in fact Kalorm was right the whole time and he sucks. 

Merrin could probably roundhouse kick him in the face right now if she wanted? He's totally not going to see it coming! It would be pretty funny. 

WHAT THE RADIOACTIVE CESSPOOL WAS THAT KALORM?????? 

(It was, at least, enough of a thoroughly unexpected thought-pathway to have jarred Merrin sideways out of the frozen mental-white-noise social panic.) 

Okay. Good. They can do this. 

Merrin 100% knows how to stop having an emotion if that emotion is not helping her achieve her goals. How about she pretends it's an Exception Handling sim, okay? She can repurpose the calm-down-stop-having-unhelpful-emotions subroutine she would use in that context. 

IN WHAT POSSIBLE WORLD COULD THIS BE AN EXCEPTION HANDLING SIM 

EXCEPTION HANDLING WOULD NOT DO THIS TO HER 

....still, Merrin is capable of noticing that being upset so loudly she can't think is not, in fact, helping with any conceivable goal she might have in this situation. 

Calm down calm down calm down where's the calm down lever she can't find it - 

- does this work? 

....It's kind of super weird that Laeirthe can do anything that affects Merrin's physiological-emotional responses in her actual body, he's a fictional character model, but, sure, she'll take it. 

Okay. Calm Merrin. Emotions on hold. This is not actually a sim probably except maybe it is one being run by an [Outer God] but either way Merrin can access the mental motion there. 

She could ask Estha to repeat whatever he just said because she kind of was not in a state to process it, but that sounds like it might result in scariness, so what if instead she just tries to retrieve and replay her auditory loop, she did catch some of it successfully - 

...that we cannot go home until you wake up and face the reality you found unpleasant...

...that we are literally trapped inside your delusion... .

...By your Law I bid you... ...oaths that you took to defend Golarion... ...Worldwound...

...call upon your Evil... ...sin of pride...

...return to the ranks of Asmodeus's tyranny... ...priestess of Asmodeus, of Infernal Cheliax...

...whose soul belongs and will always belong to Hell...

...Hell won't be happy if you disobey it, any more than I will...

...Wake, you fool, you pathetic incompetent...

It's not actually any less upsetting - honestly, the content is more upsetting now that less of Merrin's brain is taken up with the contentless-upsetness of someone being mad at her - but. Emotions on hold. Over there, on the other side of a glass wall, where she'll go when she's done the sim and it's time to debrief. 

Does she remember...any of that...? 

Is it actually relevant whether she remembers it? 

...okay, yes, kind of, because if what Estha is talking about did happen to her, and she can retrieve the memories of it, then she has a source of information that isn't just Estha - maybe, kind of, provisionally, there are a lot of places to keep holding uncertainty here - 

- but, like, does whether or not Merrin successfully "wakes up and remembers" that past, actually affect what they do from here, in her future? 

Merrin kinda feels like it depends what she’s positing she remembers! Also whether there’s any mentalistmagic mind control here!

…But, sure, it’s a good point that trying really hard to “wake up” and “make her Will save” and remember a hypothetical past in the Doomworld Setting (because that is definitely the vibe she’s getting about the alternate-universe now) is not necessarily the same decision as, uh, committing to obeying Estha’s orders on everything else.

She will try to remember. 

Don’t forget she also has the language-translation spell. Multiple new languages! 

Information garnered that way might be hard to distinguish from a half-buried memory, so Merrin should take care to update cautiously and hold onto uncertainty about what it implies for the broader Realityconfiguration, but it’s information.

What can they dig up about the definitions and connotations and associated/related nearby vocabulary for: Hell, Asmodeus, Evil, Infernal Cheliax?

It’s probably going to be spiders but Merrin does not, actually, let her preemptive flinch stop her from having the thoughts or asking the questions.

Hell:  The #afterlife# where worthy souls get tormented until they stop being so pathetic, and worthless souls get tormented until they collapse into unmoving agonized blobs that get used as building material.

Asmodeus:  The unilateral dictator of Hell, to be worshipped and feared, the ultimate commander of your life and existence, the source of all correct and approved thoughts and ideology.

Evil:  One of the two central virtues alongside Law, to be selfish and triumphant in hurting others.

Infernal Cheliax:  The country that is Asmodeus's tool and possession on the Material plane, proudest and mightiest of countries, home.