But Asmodeus is nearly as much a god of civilizations as was Abadar or Aroden, because people can be so much more Lawful Evil when they gather into larger and wealthier (but not too wealthy) cities.

One might think that radios would enable larger and more tyrannical empires, if a greater weight of other gods could no longer oppose Asmodeus about that...

But that is not a reason for Asmodeus to want radios.

That is a reason for Asmodeus to want telegraphs.

The problem with telegraphs, in fact, is that the knowledge behind them leads to radios.

Radios lead to voice radio broadcasts.

And while radio broadcasting is only the very beginning of what another civilization might perhaps have called "social media", even that much sociality of media is more sociality than Asmodeus wants to see.

Voice radio broadcasts make politics much more national.  To a much greater degree in the presence of radios that can be attuned to voice broadcasts, ordinary people turn aside from the governance of their little towns, and become obsessed with the doings of famous national politicians; and not only caring, as they do at all times, about whether a draft or a tax might be about to strike their village.  Gossip about kings and queens displaces gossip about mayors.

In democracies, republics, and countries where a significant number and variety of factions have power, the presence of national radio broadcasts will polarize all politics behind a handful of flags.  The whole people of a radio-enabled country become like the residents of Oppara, Taldor's great central city, lining up behind one of four and then just two major chariot-racing teams.  Factions and journalists compete to capture the minds of villagers listening to the local broadcast radio, searching the space of possible arguments for memes that will appeal to and exploit average villagers; and those villagers in turn will be exposed to much more virulent memes, brewed in faster-bubbling cauldrons.

This makes people a little more Evil.

But it makes them a lot more Chaotic.

The net effect is not to Asmodeus's advantage.

And should that technology tree advance to the point of actual television, the collapse of all once-great countries into ruin cannot be more than a century or two delayed.

If the squirrel were still part of a functioning Church hierarchy, Asmodeus might have tried to extract utility from this situation by conveying orders to the squirrel's superiors.

As it is, though, the pet squirrel had been on thin ice already.  Asmodeus has by now gathered that the squirrel got itself incredibly lost by being flung around by an Outer God; and those are rarely working to the benefit of Lawful Evil.  Insofar as one can ever generalize about Outer Gods, at all, ever, most Outer Gods are more "get off my lawn, physics" Chaotic than "I hate coordination" Chaotic.  But that Their thralls do not detect as Lawful Evil is not just a quirk of Pharasma's classification system.

You have outlived your positive expected utility to Asmodeus, tiny pet squirrel.  Hopefully you and everyone you were working with die as soon as the Endure Elements and Planetary Adaptation run out.

Bye-bye.

He goes to Merrin, as soon as he trusts his voice to speak at all, and not break in a way that would convey vulnerability, because they may perhaps be on an important time limit if this leads Merrin to think of anything she did not think of earlier.

Esta does not know what his face might be showing.  Perhaps it is showing nothing at all.  It would be nice to think that about himself.

I have proven unworthy of Him -- the words come to mind, and then also in that same moment a thought surging up from somewhere that had been very deep and buried, why bother --

He sticks to the simple fact, put into words.  It requires the least thinking to decide how to phrase, if there are no other goals.

"Asmodeus dropped me as a cleric."

Oh that's hilarious. Great work, Merrin! 

Seriously, Kalorm?

Shut. Up. Not. Helping. 

(It seems unlikely that anything Merrin did or didn't do, in her handling of the conversation, was a deciding factor here? Especially when you narrow it down from the set of all sounds Merrin could have made with her mouth to, like, the subset of responses that would in any vaguely plausible world be things she might actually do or say. It was probably overdetermined by alternate-Estha finding the destroyed Bag, and by the Outer God's gameplan. She was in some sense trying to steer for this, not necessarily today but eventually, but it's probably not actually causally downstream of her own clever planning.) 

(...And she can keep telling herself that as many times as she wants, and it won't affect the ground truth one way or another, that apparently Merrin doesn't want to have been - meaningfully responsible - for Estha losing his god.) 

Merrin tries not to show too much of an emotional reaction, because it doesn’t seem like it will help the situation if she projects being upset or being happy about it.

“Did you hold onto the Create Water and Purify Food spells or no?” she says, because that’s quite immediately relevant to her planning. If Estha can no longer make water then she should go fill the reservoir on the new topside still now, while she’s still immune to temperatures.

He still feels like he has those spells, but as he tries to Create a small amount of water, it feels like he is blocked from casting it, missing some key element of himself that would let the spell unfold from inside him.  The part of himself that reached out and extended toward the divine, and with itself could stir some tiny piece of the divine or what relies upon the divine, is gone.

"I can no longer cast orisons."

It's interesting how much this doesn't, on an emotional level, actually feel like an enormous negative update about their situation. It's obviously correct for Merrin to be calm and matter-of-fact about it, but it's also not even hard. 

(It's probably relevant that one of the possibilities here - specifically, Aspexia Rugatonn showing up with a Gate - seemed vastly worse for Merrin's future prospects than just eventually dying of micronutrient deficiencies on a weird exoplanet, and that seems - well, she can't rule anything out, she does not understand the causes of any of the things happening enough to be confident, but it seems significantly less likely. ...It might also be relevant that being upset and stressed sounds unpleasant? And Merrin, as much as anyone, prefers to avoid unpleasant hurty thoughts, and so if her brain is going to helpfully do some dissociation for her, she's not going to argue with it on that matter, at least not until the straightforward urgent work is done.) 

There are...a lot of plan updates to be made, and some of them are going to take careful thought and a fully awake and reasoning Laeirthe, but Merrin's immediate thoughts are concrete and logistical. They're...actually fine on the scale of the next planetary month, she thinks? The shelter is good, summer won't kill them. She already knows what she can eat from local biomass and where and how to find it. Water is the only survival constraint requiring any really time-sensitive actions.

It's still daytime, and it's still going to be daytime for a while longer - 53 days after Merrin's arrival on-planet, the days are now almost 40 hours long, and the outside temperature was irrelevant until just now but it's going to be heatstroke-risk temperatures from now until well after dark. On future days they can simply wait to do still-refill trips until the cool part of the night, but the problem with that right now is that then they wouldn't get still-produced water until the next day is heating up, which, because this planet is awful, would mean waiting like 48 hours. 

(Also, if Merrin were in Estha's position right now, she would probably kind of want some space? So perhaps it's convenient that Merrin needs to do an urgent water-carrying mission, not that she's going to argue if he offers to accompany her but she's the one with the power armor.) 

"Okay," she says. "I can make enough freshwater with my still, but I need to actually fill it with seawater and I should do that really soon, before my Endure Elements wears off and while it's still hot enough to make some freshwater before sunset. How long ago did you last top up the water tank, it'll disappear after 24 hours, right? ...I should eat as much of the Created food as we can while it's good, since I don't think we can actually preserve it with magic, though I already have ice from last night in the icebox so we could try that. I still have the Share Language for a while, so I should memorize and I can write down as much vocabulary as I have time for, though I think I'm going to want to mainly speak the one you were Sharing before, I had time to actually learn the grammar structures for it. I'll need to plan a harvest mission on my own, but I have some preserved stores and some live snails to process, that's not urgent." 

Pause. 

"...Your magic items still work, right, and you don't actually need to eat? Do you need to drink water?" It feels pretty silly, now, that apparently she never registered the answer to that question, but it was just not at all relevant before, when they had Unlimited Magic Water, and now they don't. 

Some part of himself, Esta realizes, had thought that his magic items would stop working too, had been trying to prepare for that.  But of course there's no logical reason for that.

"There is no reason that would change."

His belt and headband continue to function in ways he can immediately feel.  But Esta is suddenly afraid to point that out to Merrin, now that she knows him to be unable to defend what was his.

"-- and I put only water from Create Food and Water into the water-tank, no water from Create Water.  So none of that should disappear."

How strange, to look back and realize how much he had been expecting to be abandoned, before he was abandoned; how little he had meant it, all the times he had told himself it was only just to prepare against the remote case that the planar distances grew wider.

(Esta does not think this because there are no remaining approved thoughts besides "Hold still and wait for your execution", and so all that he does now is being done mostly without thinking.)

(What, because she might just try to take his possessions rather than negotiate about borrowing them like a normal and sane person? It would genuinely simply not occur to Merrin that stealing Esta's magic items against his will is even an option on her action menu! If it did occur to her - or, perhaps more plausibly, to Laeirthe - she would quickly point out to herself that, whether or not he has spells, alternate-Estha is still a man who is significantly bigger and stronger than her without her armor on and probably still weirdly-difficult-to-injure, so it's not even obvious if she could win a fight, and also there are pragmatic reasons to avoiding fighting with the only other living sentient being on her exoplanet, in addition to the principled component that Merrin would describe as her own sense of Law if she were thinking of it that way, and the non-pragmatic part where Merrin has intensely avoided fights in general for her entire life because she's conflict-averse. But, in fact, the concept that she could have such a fight is nowhere near Merrin's mind, and it's also not going to occur to her that reassuring alternate-Estha that she won't steal his stuff is an option, because who would do that.) 

His clarification about the water earns him a smile! 

"That was smart. ...And in that case I don't think I have any incredibly time-sensitive actions, and should wait for tonight to go out." It's not an optimal tidal window for transit in and out of their cave, they did not end up having enough days of Stone Shape to build a back exit to the surface (and probably wouldn't have even if Merrin had only focused on that, it would have required moving a whole lot of stone so Merrin thinks she endorses her choices about how she did use the ones available), and it's silly to risk her Endure Elements running out and her suit climate control failing if she doesn't have to because she has at least a full planetary day's worth of water in the cistern that will not disappear on her. 

...So what does she do next?

It's actually rude that Merrin no longer has a good excuse to go do some physical labor, she could badly use some time to process things on her own while moving her body if it's correct to go process on her own she can do it anyway and just, like, do pushups in a side room. It's probably not right at this moment the correct path of action. 

Alternate-Estha does not seem incredibly....okay. This is very understandable and also kind of inconvenient for Merrin and for about two seconds her brain is tempted to be irritated with him over it and it's almost instantly clear how silly this is and she stops. 

Laeirthe? Ideas? 

Move over, give him space to think - 

...Well, maybe alternate-Estha will be slightly more willing, at this point, to tell Merrin any facts about Asmodeus' enemies?

Which Laeirthe would obviously like to know in the long run, for their planning, but it MIGHT CONCEIVABLY be very relevant in the short run. Because maybe there are other gods native to Golarion that aren't terrible? Who Merrin would get along with? And Laeirthe has gathered that clerics don't start out nearly as powerful or broadly useful as alternate-Estha, but he's also gathered that the spells they most urgently need are not the very high-circle ones. The water-creation and the food-purification are the lowest circle that spells can be. 

It's a pretty long shot, since they continue to be on another planet very far away, and given that even Estha's cleric specialabilities did not give them a route off the planet, Merrin having the starter pack definitely won't, and that probably makes her a poor investment from the point of view of a god with problems on their own planet to focus on. But it seems obviously worth trying. 

Uhh Merrin isn't sure why any Golarion gods would want to invest in giving her specifically magic powers even if she were on the right–

WHY IS SHE LIKE THIS 

SERIOUSLY

Merrin is a Protagonist now and it's just embarrassing to still have some sort of bizarre reflexive need to internally disclaim her own coolness and awesomeness every time it comes up. Get over it already. 

AUGH okay yes Merrin did in fact start to realize ON HER OWN halfway through that thought that she was being silly. The imaginary people in her head don't have to YELL. 

Is it really that urgent, it feels really awkward to have that conversation right this second

Yes! Obviously it's time-sensitive! Not the water, but the Created food that Merrin cannot eat all of before it starts decomposing unreasonably fast and becomes unsafe. Also, any conversations about anything are going to become moderately higher-friction once Merrin's Shared languages run out and she needs to fall back on the vocabulary she's actually had time to memorize. 

(Though, speaking of that, she's saving the suit audio from today, right? And hasn't been manually deleting any recordings, so she'll have as many days' worth as the suit can store? She can probably get some value out of re-listening to herself having conversations in the other languages, which she'll probably understand enough of to remember what conversation it was and get further hints toward the vocabulary she no longer recognizes without the Share Language spell.) 

Right. 

Merrin is an adult and, apparently, a protagonist now, and she can handle some social awkwardness. Enough to state her - well, Laeirthe's - idea out loud, at least, if not to keep pushing very much. 

"This seems unlikely to work given the distance and the fact that it doesn't actually solve getting off-planet," she says out loud, her tone conversational, "but are there other gods that might - like me?" Wow what a stupid-sounding way to put it, but she doesn't actually know what would be an idiomatic way to say it and does not feel like doing linguistic introspection to figure out. "I don't actually know how - becoming a cleric - works, but I think it's an obvious idea to try, given how I'm trying to be ambitious now and that might even be what the Outer God was playing for." 

Is he allowed to answer this?  Esta doesn't know.  Figuring it out seems hard.  All of his short-range goals and heuristics seem invalidated and/or to know that any next thought he thinks will probably be a heretical one.  Even that would be easier for his mind to process if there was any remaining clear reason to follow any of those rules, as is of course itself a heretical thought.

"I'm not sure any god but Pharasma would be able to see us now, if they didn't already have sight on us here, or the memory of this location."  How strange, that the part of himself that goes on talking is able to infer things like that, without Esta being able to think.

Maybe Asmodeus Himself could not see here with the connection to His cleric severed, unable to retrieve Esta no matter how he prostrated himself.

"Pharasma's concerns as they are commonly told are Birth, Death, Fate, and Time.  Her instruments in Golarion usually receive access to the domains of Death, Healing, Knowledge, Repose, more rarely Memory, Resurrection, Souls, Thought.  Her worshippers are midwives and morticians, and expectant parents will seek to placate Her, though I cannot imagine why they would think She would listen to such fair-weather pleas from such small things."

"-- You would need to be Lawful Neutral or Neutral Good in order for Her to cleric you under the usual rules, but if you have been paid for all your healing work rather than doing it from beneficence and self-sacrifice you may already be Lawful Neutral."

All of that is reminding Merrin that she in fact has a HUGE number of unanswered questions about Golarion, in particular the "souls" thing - and the afterlives in general? she has not actually gotten an explanation of how that works or why it's a thing, she feels like at some point she absorbed a vague implication that there were more of them than just Hell but she doesn't think that was explained in more detail - also what are the domains, what do those words mean, she can dredge something up from the word-associations but that's mostly leading her into an exploding fractal of additional questions that she sets aside so she can actually listen to what Estha is going on saying. 

"Obviously I was paid for healing work but I do think I'd be more inclined to do it without being paid than most people in dath ilan, and it's just that dath ilan would never take that as a reason not to pay someone for labor," she says, sort of absently. "...Is there meant to be some kind of obvious implied relationship between the domains you listed, I might just be missing it from lack of context." 

Merrin feels like Pharasma did come up before, the name is familiar - right, there was something something about Mariona realizing her Evil in a form that "Pharasma would damn her about", which - Merrin thinks, after a moment of linguistic introspection - implies that Pharasma is responsible for sending people to Hell? That does not have great implications about how genuine an attempt Merrin can make to request specialabilities from her, but it's also possible that Merrin is just very confused about everything. Hmm, and there was "Nethys is probably the closest thing to an Outer God in nature, if not in power, among the deities short of Pharasma" whatever that even means, Merrin did not ask or even manage to internally generate further questions at the time because there were about five thousand other things to have questions about. 

Linguistic associations with the name "Pharasma"...she's getting a vague sense of being-in-charge, as though Pharasma is the executive of all the other gods? Which would fit with Pharasma being able to see the furthest, sure.