WOW WHAT THE FUCK okay that's too big a number and Merrin's brain is skittering sideways instead of directly perceiving it and maybe for the moment she's going to LET IT DO THAT. 

"...Through the Share Language spell?" she says. "It's possible I'm accessing Mariona's memories without recognizing it as that - if you're confident that the Share Language spell shouldn't work this way then at least from your perspective it would be evidence I did used to be Mariona - but my subjective experience of Share Language is that it gives me meanings and connotations if I introspect on it, and it seems to do that even when the concept doesn't exist in Baseline."

Merrin is speaking sort of distantly, now, without much emotion.

"I suppose I should check the accuracy with you. Hell is the afterlife where worthless souls get tormented until they collapse into unmoving agonized blobs that get used as building material? Asmodeus is the dictator of Hell to be worshipped and feared and you're only supposed to think thoughts he approves of? Evil is - okay, I think this definition is at least incomplete, but being selfish and enjoying hurting people."

Quite remarkable how she can say all of that without flinching or stumbling in her speech or dissolving into a hole in the ground, but Merrin is in an extremely weird headspace right now, she's on the other side of the thing she agonized over saying that was somehow worse than jumping out of a plane and now she's - jumped - and she doesn't really know what she's feeling. Maybe she's angry? Merrin almost never gets angry so she's not really sure what she's like when she is. 

"And Infernal Cheliax is a country that Asmodeus runs in - not an afterlife - and I infer that it's where you and Mariona lived. ...Is that substantially more information than the translation spell effect gives you for Baseline, for vocabulary terms that don't have a counterpart in any of the languages you previously spoke?" 

"I don't know how much is Tongues and how much is Cultural Adaptation -- but, no, that's not more information than I've been getting about dath ilan, if I'm not remembering that.  I didn't know Share Language could do that, but I don't know it can't... it's perhaps some artifact of the sheer amount of unfamiliar information being translated, usually when we use this spell on Golarion it's between two cultures that mostly talk about similar things and just need the words mapped."

"Your basic theology is accurate.  Worthy souls become devils, worthless ones become paving stones.  Though to be very clear, since I am talking to someone who has perhaps never understood the very basics and grew up in a very different society, the claim 'you're only supposed to think thoughts Asmodeus would approve of' means 'Hell won't be happy if you do otherwise', it is not a moral claim inside Good's framework."

"Possibly when all of this is done, and it becomes evident how I could have done better, I will on my return be punished for not thinking of the exact things I should have said to fool you about that, and instead going off and swearing on my Law to tell you the truth -- as lasts through the duration of the Tongues spell, say.  But in fact we two little mortals are presently trapped in the unknown machinations and purposes of an Outer God, and to try to cleverly fool you about things for slightly more advantage accruing to myself, when I don't even know what kind of advantage I should be trying to win from you, would in my opinion cross the line from Asmodeanism into Stupid Evil."

When Esta was a little baby naive fresh 1st-circle graduating seminary, he was privileged to hear a graduation lecture from an 8th-circle of Asmodeus, who might have been Rugatonn's successor had Felandriel Morgethai not soul-trapped him.  That 8th-circle told them all, in that lecture, that they could rise very high in the Church's esteem and trust by simply not being Stupid Evil, over and over, every day; and that those few of them who found it possible at all, would be shocked at how few others could ever distinguish the difference.

Esta has ever since held this as a guiding star of his ambitions to rise in the Church, and he has never found Marçal Ferrer i Dalmau's advice to steer him ill.

Yes, that's probably how you got as far in the Church as you did, on account of being the sort of person who could even have a dath ilani counterpart that Merrin would recognize, despite not actually having very much passion for Lawful Evil per se.  In terms of what you actually like rather than believing you like, you like Law and you separately like doing Chaotic Evil things to women; and you are never, ever going to be chosen to replace Rugatonn regardless of what any of your superiors have let you think was plausible. 

Esta dismisses the thought because it is useless regardless of whether it is true.

See, he’s not treating this as maximally adversarial. It could definitely be going worse! There’s something here to work with! 

Sure, fine, it could be going a lot worse! He hasn’t gotten mad and…hit her, or something…and they’re talking and even exchanging something like arguments with content, and he’s treating her as someone with nonzero negotiating power - and, in fact, he’s pretty screwed if he murders her and then doesn’t keep getting spells or get rescued by his executive.

He’s probably pretty scared, actually. 

Wow that does not even slightly help to notice. 

…Okay, so what does she SAY. She doesn’t know how to argue within his…frame…and even with the headband-enhancement it feels slippery and slimy and kind of crazymaking to try to engage with it, it felt like it was made of - derision - as much as logical content, and Merrin is not good at this, okay, there’s a trope where villains go through a Protagonist Growth Arc where they stop being villains but Merrin is not qualified to make that happen, here, she’s just a simple medtech who isn’t that smart and maybe her Estha, the dath ilani one, could get somewhere with his Evil alternate-self but Merrin is just straightforwardly outclassed…

“Just a simple medtech” LOL did she completely forget the part where there had to be an entire RULE so widespread that it showed up to Cultural Adaptation, just to remind people not to tell Merrin how cool she is because she would be LIKE THIS about it 

Maybe that’s evidence that dath ilan isn’t real and was only a dreamworld and really she’s not any cooler than the Evil version of herself

The headband does not even let Merrin pretend to take that thought seriously. She doesn’t really think that. 

Why can’t she persuade Evil Merrin to stop being Evil instead. That also sounds absolutely mortifying but she feels like she would be able to get traction on it.

…but that’s not the Reality that’s there to be interacted with, is it.

“Is there anyone in Golarion who does make decisions on the basis that doing bad things is bad and it’s not that complicated?” she says. “Even if you think they’re stupid and will lose?”

Merrin can maybe sort of conceivably imagine believing that the world was doomed to suck forever and any attempt to change that was futile, the part she can’t wrap her head around is looking at the horrible doomworld and being pleased about its doominess.

"Oh, definitely.  I don't quite see how it would be to my advantage to provide you with additional details about their identity, but if you have a reason it's relevant to escaping this planet or any of my other interests and you promise me that's what you're actually going for, I'll trust you about it."

"I should mention that if you're trying to carefully figure out how to work around to asking me if I'd be willing to abandon Asmodeus, the theologically approved answer is that I'd sell Him out in a heartbeat, if you can seize direction of my soul and afterlife, or seize ownership of Hell itself, or otherwise demonstrate that you have greater power and threat to hold over me than He.  This does in fact strike me as a very sensible reply."

"But it is not in your interest to shake my faith, considering that Asmodeus does not continue giving spells to those who no longer serve Him.  He is the very epitome of not being Stupid Evil."

LOL that’s a blatant plot hook 

Merrin feels like she’s been TROLLED BY REALITY right now.

Esta, could he hear these thoughts, would note that in all utter honesty he was not fishing for, and did not even conceive of, such a response.

(Did he spend as much as six entire seconds querying his Cultural Adaptation(dath ilan) to get a prediction of how that would come across to a dath ilani who has read literally any fiction? 

Because, uh. Yeah.) 

Okay but Merrin cannot REMOTELY DO THAT 

...On what grounds, exactly, is Merrin pre-emptively deciding, on less than thirty seconds of considering it, to defer to Evil Estha on the claim that "Asmodeus is the winner and we're the losers and that there's no morality to it beyond the fact that He is more powerful" blah blah blah? 

It might not be possible. Reality is not required to only present her with winnable fights. This wisdom Laeirthe knows from - okay, fine, from his fictional backstory, but he does think it's the sort of wisdom that was included because it's often an important truth to be aware of. Maybe the Outer God's game will not, actually, give her the opportunity to even try to defeat Asmodeus and seize ownership of Hell and fix it. 

But if Merrin is pre-emptively deciding she's not allowed to want to try because only protagonists who are at least this cool get to do that and she isn't, then: no. Just no. 

Yeah, seriously, what? Kalorm doesn’t even like this guy and he’s still 100% on Team Steal Him From Asmodeus and if that takes beating up Asmodeus and taking ALL of his stuff, well, that’s epic so obviously they gotta try. And there’s not some kind of coolness bar to meet before you’re allowed to think that, because that’s stupid, but also Merrin WOULD TOO be cool enough. 

Um.

Merrin is in fact aware that her brain is doing something silly here but it’s been doing that for a long time and she has no idea how to just stop???

She just needs to decide to get over it. The only person preventing her from getting over it is her. And now is a great time! They’ve got the headband of self-awareness! 

…Moving on from that, because it’s a distraction from the main topic here.

(Whatever Merrin was just thinking, there, it didn’t take long - only thirty seconds - but, if Esta tried a Sense Motive roll, it would have turned up some rather less Mariona-characteristic vibes.)

“I’m not expecting you to share information that you don’t believe is in your interests,” Merrin says, and she’s oddly - not cheerful, that’s not right, but - like some source of internal tension is gone. “Just trying to wrap my mind around what you think your interests are and how your planet can possibly be in any kind of stable equilibrium as described. I suppose the culture gap goes in both directions, and it’s hard for me to make sense of any of your reasoning. I understand how you would be afraid of the consequences of not serving Asmodeus, in the incentive structure you described, just - not how you cross from there to actually wanting to cause more of Asmodeus’ goals to be achieved? …You said a thing about ‘faith’ and I think Share Language isn’t quite conveying what you mean by that because I’m confused.”

Merrin could admittedly maybe unconfuse - and probably upset! - herself by staring harder at the Share Language shades of connotation. But hearing Estha’s side of it might give her more information, while he still has the culture of dath ilan in his mind.

It's in fact a different sort of word-meaning as might prevail on some planet where all the gods were only made up; it means not 'belief without evidence' but rather 'whatever sort of emotional relationship a cleric of a god typically has to that god, which facilitates their choosing and their continued clerichood, as is usually also held by that god's unempowered worshippers'.

"My faith is my belief that Hell will hurt me very badly, in my afterlife, if I slack off; and that Asmodeus will abandon me and leave me powerless, if I cease to serve Him.  Previously my faith was also upheld by the temporal rewards of being an Asmodean 6th-circle, and by expecting my Church to hunt me down, torture me for a few weeks, and kill me, if I tried to leave the Church.  But those aspects of my faith are weakened on this planet -- though not at all severed; Aspexia Rugatonn could still show up with a Gate."  Possibly that is why Asmodeus has felt more distant it would speak ill of Esta if his faith were that fragile and therefore this cannot be the case.  "Those are the primary tenets of my faith, what dath ilan would call the crux; but it does not hurt that I can see the rightness of a universe in which incompetence is punished by pain, and more competent people get to command the less competent; nor do I see the sense of spending my life to benefit others who will not repay me."

That sure was the answer to a question! Probably a more detailed one than Merrin could have gotten by introspecting on linguistic associations.

She was sort of looking for an answer to the question of "why are you so invested in and committed to your horrible job in the horrible doomworld, when it seems like it cannot possibly be rewarding enough to make up for all the horribleness", and it's not...not...an answer to that question, and yet apparently that was not actually the underlying confusion because Merrin is still confused. 

Is she actually confused? Or just mad? 

Kalorm does not think this is very confusing. It's definitely infuriating! 

Yeah, okay, fair. Merrin is not really confused - at least not about alternate-Estha being like that, she has a number of unanswered questions about why Golarion is like that, which seem pretty hard to answer when Estha has his current set of incentives around what to tell her and - 

- and also she should probably not be operating on the assumption that everything he thinks he knows about his planet is, like, true? 

Merrin isn't incredibly well-versed in the common narrative tropes around villains having a Growth Arc wherein they decide to stop doing bad things, let alone the less common tropes, because she doesn't really enjoy reading the part of the story before the Protagonist Growth Arc. But she thinks that one of the standard patterns is to have a character realize they were wrong about a matter of fact, or missing a key piece of context, and updating that false belief turns out to shift a lot of their decisionprocesses such that they no longer endorse all the villainy? So there's a trope-logic argument that perhaps Estha is not an entirely trustworthy source of facts about his planet even if he's telling her the truth as he knows it – and, separately, it seems like there's probably a normal-logic argument that it SURE SOUNDS like the doomworld torture god would not be incentivized to let his employees in his doomworld country to have accurate information on his enemies. 

...what are the other things that alternate-Estha could be wrong or missing key context about? "Himself" is an obvious one, but Merrin's opaque social intuition is inclined to be especially tiptoe-y around any argument that he doesn't really reflectively endorse working for Asmodeus, and she's - not actually sure? Her Estha wouldn't but they have thoroughly established that this is not her Estha, even if he...acted surprisingly not-obviously-Evil over the entire last month? Given what she knows now it does actually seem surprising! Was it all just that, an act? Did he actually spend the entire last month resentfully wishing he could torture Merrin and refraining only because it would make her suspicious and he was hoping he could instead find his stuff and transport her back to Infernal Cheliax with her still fully cooperative? 

(Merrin still vaguely wishes she could swap places with her Estha from dath ilan right now and make HIM deal with it. Pragmatically, he has some conversational skills that Merrin has not invested much in and also, like, probably an advantage to figuring out what the flaming sewage is going on in his alternate-self's head. But that's not an option she can open up by whining about it loudly enough in her head, so she's going to simply not do that.) 

He could be wrong about the ultimate structure of Reality and what other things it contains other than horrible doomworld timelines? 

"Would it change your mind about anything if you had additional evidence that dath ilan is just as real as Cheliax, and might be possible to contact?" she says. "I would certainly feel less conflicted about working together toward contacting dath ilan's Governance, if there were a way to do that." 

It seems like proooooobably not something that will end up being an option available to them within the Outer God's game, based on her starting circumstances and...vibes...but Merrin isn't sure of that! She's not sure of very many things!