Esta, at WIS 22, does now have a sense that he may have just thought as many as several things that will turn out to be stupid.

Esta, at WIS 22, is not going to ignore that feeling.  By his age, any high-ranking Asmodean priest has already been tortured about both jumping to conclusions and about failing to see the obvious.  The combination tends to leave strong impressions about the dangers both of thinking too fast and of failing to see what is before you.

Possibly some of all that reasoning may be wrong, there.

...but it does explain that strange look of -- fondness? wistfulness? longing? -- that crossed Mariona's face, when Esta mentioned his surprise visit of four months ago (on his time), and that it had involved an amusing amount of pain.  Esta had meant amusing to him, but...

At the very least, Esta should keep in mind generally that Altered-Mariona may remember a very strange relationship with 'Estha', and he should tread cautiously around it.  Even if, here and now, it seems to add up to her being solicitous of his desires.  Because it may well be that, mere pathetic affection, and not fear of him or obedience to Asmodeus's tyranny.

So now, Estha is now going to think about all the things he should be thinking about!  His brain has learned that thinking about how Mariona got altered is the sort of thing that potentially leads to pain if he is not careful in what he thinks.

The most obvious thing Esta should be thinking about is the complicated loadout of spells that Asmodeus has sent him.  Possibly Esta should have done that earlier and before taking any actions, really.  Maybe that Liberating Command was meant for some future event and Esta has now wasted it, since it really doesn't seem like it was necessary... or maybe that superfluity is itself an illusion... or maybe Esta would've hesitated too long to Cure Light his hands and that would've been an error...

This is foolishness.  Esta needs to think about his godchosen spells in a more organized way.

He could start from the most powerful spells, but there is one first-circle divination and one fourth-circle divination that he doesn't recognize at all, and the second-circle Augury he got looks importantly different from a Spellcraft angle.  Arguably, Esta should have prioritized thinking about those strange spells first and above all, in retrospect; it's just that he got so many godchosen spells landing on him at the same time --

Esta's mind shuts down the excuse-making.  Torturers who can read your thoughts are very unimpressed about mental excusemaking.  It does do a little to untrain the bad habit.

What is unusual about the Augury?  Is it possibly a special version that could work without the material component, 25gp of incense which Esta does not have on hand without his Holding Bag?

Is Esta the level of archmage who could figure out the answer immediately?  If not, Esta needs to roll Spellcraft, DC 25.

He could also roll Knowledge (History) or Knowledge (Religion), DC 10, if he prefers.

Esta will take 10 on the Spellcraft check, because to realize that he even needs to make the other sort of check, he'd need to already know the answer.

The alter-Augury spell still looks like it has the hooks that are meant to grab onto a material component, the incense that Esta doesn't have.  The spell just has this... whole set of other hooks, completely unfamiliar.  And other parts yet, now look substantially less like Commune, almost like the spell is not talking to his god at all...

Esta is a fucking idiot.  He's not in Golarion anymore.

Prophecy is not shattered in this place.

And that fourth-circle spell isn't a divination.  It's the divination.  Divination, the spell from which the very school of magic took its name, which no priest in Golarion has received from their god since that past century.

...it also needs 25gp of incense he doesn't have.

Then what the Abyss is that first circle divination?  Esta is now noticeably more motivated to figure it out.

He takes 10.

Then he takes 20.

Then he starts rolling against Knowledge (Arcana) instead, in the sense of subvocalizing a long rhyming list of every 1st-circle cleric spell taught to the barest apprentices, that he has not sung these last three decades.  For a cleric, unlike an arcane caster, needs to know of every spell they might request from their god, and cannot content themselves with only remembering what they have inscribed in a spellbook.

It doesn't really look like anything on the list??

Well, but there are some spells that Cheliax leaves off the list, in the song taught to its little clerics.  Esta ought to consider if it could be any of those --

Ohhhh that's Cultural Adaptation!  Esta has sometimes spoken for the Church to Cheliax's rare visitors, but not at the level of diplomacy, intrigue, or spycraft where he would be using that spell.

(It is sometimes mentally disturbing to young clerics if they gain too much intuition, too quickly, about how cultures other than Cheliax work.  Though their use of daily spells is tracked in any case.)

...is he supposed to use that spell on whatever Dark Tapestry culture Mariona now carries around inside her head.  Is that actually a good idea.

Well, if Asmodeus sent him the spell, it is probably a good idea??

Does it even need to be explained why this is a GENERICALLY USEFUL spell for VERY LOST SQUIRRELS assuming that Asmodeus has NO IDEA WHERE THEY EVEN ARE, or doesn't want to pay intervention costs on adapting the toolkit about it?

...speaking of communication spells, why does he have two Share Languages.

BECAUSE ASMODEUS SENT HIM A GENERIC FUCKING LOADOUT.

Either they will encounter some other entity by the end of the day / spell-granting period, or they might do so; or, alternatively, it is important for some reason that Esta share more than just Taldane with Mariona.

Or, of course, something has gone wrong with the spell-granting process.

Or Esta does not truly remember how it works.

Maybe Asmodeus is not here and Esta was imagining Him and these spells all came from Y̵̢̛̳̞o̵̲̺͑ǧ̶͚̼͕̯̂_̶̡̘͍̺̔̉̾̕S̶͚͍̈̍͗́ͅo̸̢̖͂̌ͅt̶̝̯͙́͗̚ḧ̸̺̯̱̦̃̓o̵̟͑̀̚t̵̠̣̻͌h̵͓̚ sending them over and giggling to Itself.

Commune, Divination, and Augury all require incense.  Esta was given all three.

This in some sense seems like the sharpest knife to cut the puzzle.  It implies Esta will get back his Holding Bag, before the end of the spell-granting cycle; and before Esta can cast Divination to help him search.

...Or alternatively, there is some way for Esta to make acceptable incense out of the stuff of an alien planet?  This seems very improbable, Esta knows the rare and expensive ingredients of divine incense, but not all the ingredients or how to turn them into incense.  Let alone how to substitute alien components; and intuitively, it doesn't seem like they should be anything easy to harvest even on an alien planet, the point is that they're costly...

And if Esta could not get back his Bag, this day, it implies that Asmodeus does not know that Esta has lost his Bag and has no incense.

Now, Esta has had beaten into him, by proxies of the Most High if not her own person, that Asmodeus does not know everything and it is costly to Him to learn.  But if Esta tries to treat this huge load of godchosen spells in the usual way, it reflects an amount of intervention cost that would imply Asmodeus at least trying to check -- on this planet where prophecy still functions -- if Esta had access to rare and expensive material components.

He hasn't even been given Locate Object, which would be the obvious spell to pick up on his Bag immediately, if it were anywhere within nigh a thousand feet of where it had been lost... well, nigh 2000 feet, for that they could move further along the riverbed before casting, and then also try to walk before the spell ran out.  But still; Esta has not been given that spell.

Is there anything else he could use to find the Bag?

Planar Inquiry.  200gp per rough circle-equivalent of the outsider called.  It is an offering, and Esta would only need to decide which of his desperately needed remaining belongings to sacrifice to it.

...The trouble is, Esta does not remember off the top of his head, what sort of devil -- or any other kind of outsider -- would have the supernatural ability needed to know where his Bag of Holding had gone, and tell Esta so upon the spot.

For his domain 6th, Planar Binding, in the form that can only call a devil.  It is a spell that Esta uses only rarely, because frankly he lacks the Splendour for the spell's usual use of tormenting a weaker devil into submission.  But perhaps it could be abused somewhat to call up a devil without Planar Ally's usual payment, if you were sending them strictly about Asmodeus's business...?  But finding his Holding Bag might not be that?  If the spell could be used so freely to bypass Planar Ally payments, one would expect it to be used to summon forth contract devils about soul-sales, as benefit Asmodeus and themselves.

...maybe he summons up one of Hell's more knowledgeable bureaucrats about the Planar Inquiry, and it then knows how Esta is to use the Planar Binding to obtain the sort of devil that could, and would, find Esta's Holding Bag?

If they don't accept "Asmodeus wills it", this would take a frankly greater degree of helpful cooperation than Esta associates with Hell.

The intended use is that you TELL THE DEVIL WHERE YOU ARE and if there is ANYTHING OF INTEREST ON THAT PLANET TO HELL, and then the devil GOES BACK, and Hell KNOWS WHAT HAPPENED IN CASE IT IS INTERESTING AT ALL.

This is why the loadout does not include a Day 1 Plane Shift.  It might be better for the squirrel, sure.  But most of the expected value of an Incredibly Lost Squirrel is not in retrieving the squirrel, but in the squirrel landing someplace interesting or valuable to Hell.  Getting the squirrel back is a distantly second-best consolation prize.

And Esta goes on thinking about his other seemingly godchosen spells, for a time.

He weighs the act, concludes he is sure enough of his reasons, and puts his Rings back on, though the Ring of Sustenance will take a while to work.

He does not use his Greater Make Whole on his armor, without having yet asked Mariona about its other possible uses.

He uses one of his Comprehend Languages to read all he can, of whatever writing is on any strange thing about this place; does he learn anything from that?

He tastes of the water in Mariona's reservoir, to see if it is is a fitting place to conjure the nice pure water from his Create Food and Water; is it?

The water tastes like distilled water that has been stored in a plastic container. (The type of plastic used in the weatherproofing sheeting Merrin's gear included has been extensively studied in dath ilan, and is not known to have negative effects on human metabolism to be exposed to very small leaching from, but it's in fact meant for weatherproofing shelter and not as a component in a freshwater still, and unlike her actual drinking water collapsible containers, it has not been thoroughly optimized with a lining that doesn't affect the water flavor at all.) 

Most of Merrin's written reference materials are in digital form and can be accessed on her reader tablet or her multipurpose display screen, both of which Merrin has been using only when she really needs to and which, the rest of the time, are carefully packed away in a sealed storage box to minimize their exposure to temperature swings and humidity and extend their useful life.

There's still quite a lot of random Baseline text to skim, but it's mostly in the form of labels, inventory sheets on her storage boxes, safety checklists, and maps. 

Some of the latter are standard-issue from her kit; on those, and on the labels, the text is almost impossibly regular and perfect, each letter-form almost identical every time it appears. Some are handwritten, on a substance that...isn't not paper, but isn't like any paper Esta will have seen before. 

(Only some of the paper Merrin had in stock is the ultra-durable waterproof paper. The tradeoff isn't so much that it's more expensive to manufacture than other types of paper – it is, but when Exception Handling is equipping a highly specialized endurance medtech, even for simulated training purposes, that is not really the operative constraint. But Merrin had expressed finding the specialized everything-proof paper mildly more annoying to write on and was also mildly annoyed that she couldn't casually crease-and-tear it to separate notes and needed scissors, and so she did also have a supply of more ordinary dath ilani stationary, which is not immune to degradation from exposure to humidity swings. Her cave has kept it out of the UV, but for anything she wrote up more than a planetary month ago, the paper is now very slightly discolored and starting to curl a tiny bit at the edges, and anything she wrote more than three planetary months ago is now rather weathered-looking.)  

....Honestly Merrin has at this point created enough handwritten reference material to run out of easy places to put it. The survey map and star map live taped to the lids of a couple of her boxes, but a bunch of others are directly affixed to the woven-seaweed ceiling struts, including:

- Her fourteen-step "preparing for an ocean harvest mission" safety checklist.

- Her reference materials on empirically-confirmed-safe methods to process her local foodstuffs, and the maximum daily grams she's empirically determined she can tolerate for the questionable ones.

- Her calendar-chart tracking day lengths, solar angles, daily peak and nightly low temperatures over time, and solar output.

- Her tidal model chart (prominently described as Version Four; she's been continually refining her predictive model of the tidal amplitudes as she noticed discrepancies with the simple "moon perigee -> apogee -> perogee" and realized she also needed a term for the solar syzygy effect).

- Her careful "energy budget" calculations for available battery power for her various equipment. 

Yes, that is exactly the sort of paperwork that his Mariona would produce, if half her mind had been replaced by the madness of the Dark Tapestry.

It has numbers for accounting and numbers for logistics and numbers for eldritch truths about celestial bodies.

She has invented her own constellations to draw on alien skies; and named them in her sparkling new Dark Tapestry language, that has precise words about all of that nonmagical medicine his Mariona has always been so fascinated by.

..."Merrin", it says on the maps, and Tongues does think that sounds more like speech in her new language.