....A few planetary days ago, it would have been transformative for Merrin to find this particular cave. There's a spot that's clearly been dry for years! It has ventilation to the surface and even a tiny bit of natural light! It's free of radioactivity! Even in the heat of the afternoon, it's only gotten up to a perfectly comfortable 16° C! There's a set of interconnected pockets that could easily be turned into a cave shelter with multiple rooms! 

She could almost certainly survive a planetary summer alone, without magic, in this particular spot. Put the solar panels up top and run cable down through the crack, set up ventilation and a radioactivity sensor, sleep here in the afternoons and venture out for her work at night. 

It doesn't change anything now. It does not contain the Bag and so it accomplishes nothing. 

They keep going. 

He's running Detect Magic every moment, with or without Locate Object active, though sometimes on the occasions when they run Locate for a stretch Esta takes a break.  It requires that much more concentration, but Detect Magic might pick up the form of a torn and ruined Bag whose contents had been lost forever, which might or might not still register to Locate Object.

Logically, this can't possibly work!  And it sure hasn't worked so far!

Estha out of dath ilan might've taken that state of mind as a cue to stop and examine what he was doing and look for some other way which wasn't that.  For Esta out of Cheliax, having to perform a thankless task with no prospect of reward at its end feels like much less of an error signal.  Isn't that what most of life feels like most of the time?  You do the thing anyways, or someone punishes you, possibly even yourself.

And eventually they get back to the camp, a little while past the late-afternoon low tide point, very nearly a full 23 hours since Esta finished his last prayers.

Merrin had a Heal which reset her to more gloriously fully rested than she’s been in months, but that was very nearly a full 24 hours ago. The journey back was a lot more arduous for her than for Estha in the boat; she was the one swimming ahead to scout for obstacles and then back to guide him to shore for cave-peeking. It was mentally draining, too, as the only one with the mapping software to keep track of their location and record observations. Merrin may be something of a stamina monster but she is, in fact, tired. And low on suit battery, so she can’t even reasonably crank it up to maximum power assist for the hike back up the bank. 

“I’m going to need a nap before I finish the maps,” she tells Estha, without any particular self-consciousness about admitting to weakness; where she’s from, very few people could do what they just did at all. 

And she’ll step out of the suit to plug it into the solar-filled main battery, put on a doompunk robe rather than sit around literally naked (she's neither cold nor self-conscious about nudity, but everything in the cave is kind of gritty, because she's behind on cleaning, and uncomfortable to sit on with bare skin), and somehow scrape together the energy to unpack the Created food and eat until she can’t eat any more. ...And then, somehow, the energy to squeeze all the pee out of her suit pee-absorber, rinse it in a bit of her precious freshwater, and leave it in the sun to bake dry all the way, because late afternoon is a much better time to be handling that task than the middle of the planetary night. 

(Merrin does technically know that the spell Create Water exists. It came up! But in that conversation it was rather overshadowed by a much more memorable-to-Merrins spell, so she did not immediately rethink all of her water-related prioritization heuristics, and at this point she is simply too fried to think any new thoughts. She’ll be embarrassed about it later when she catches herself on it.)

And then she collapses into the sleeping bag. 

They should probably think about–

TOO

TIRED 

LATER 

Esta doesn't particularly realize that Merrin is regarding freshwater as a valuable resource; she didn't mention that part to him.

He'll eat his own portion of Food, and drink some water; and then throw all the remains of yesterday's old Food away from their sanctum, as far he can heave it.  That stuff rots fast, once it starts to rot.

He renews Endure Elements and Share Language on Merrin, and Planetary Adaptation on himself.

And then, before it's time to pray, Esta will try to put his mind into a state that Asmodeus might maybe be able to see better, from far away.

Esta had some time to think about this issue, while they were drifting down the river.  Part of his mind had to maintain concentration on Detect Magic, but only a part.

What is it, actually, about Esta, that is shaped like Asmodeus and His concerns?

Whatever it is, it hasn't been getting a huge amount of natural exercise while Esta is on this alien planet far from Cheliax's tyranny and the Church's slaves; in the sole company of an Outer-God-touched woman who seems to wobble, in some alien way, between seeming Lawful Good and Chaotic Good.  A woman whom Esta does not presently dare to try to discipline, nor rebuke, nor dominate by more than the occasional sentence of assertion.

It would be little wonder if Asmodeus was having trouble seeing Esta, in his prayer, for more reasons than distance.

Esta has nobody here to tyrannize.

And there hasn't been anyone visible nearby who might tyrannize him, for three days.

Esta has previously held himself to excel in all of Asmodeus's concerns, of tyranny, slavery, pride, and compacts.  He is a 6th circle, after all, and very few priests are; why should he lower himself to specialize?  Someday he plans on being Most High, since that is what a proud Asmodean would plan on.  Come that day, all Asmodeus's concerns will be Esta's concerns.

Now Esta is far away and Asmodeus is perhaps having trouble seeing him.  It's not, in fact, a problem that Esta has ever had before.

Now, the question of which his Lord's concerns are most Esta's own, the question of what might make Esta belong in Hell, is a knowledge-question on whose actual true answer his welfare depends.

It might seem strange, that it was never before to the advantage of a 6th-circle Asmodean cleric to wonder truthfully what part of himself appeals to his Lord.  But Asmodeus rarely promotes a cleric just for being Asmodeus-shaped.  Maybe it happens on other planets, but not in Golarion, where He is constrained more by His intervention budget than by the power He is willing to expend.

Asmodean clerics do often obtain their first initial clerichood in that way, by being some tiny bit Asmodeus-shaped or at least pleasing in His sight.  For them to obtain their 2nd circle that way is far rarer.  Asmodeus promotes you not on the basis of His sympathy for you, but on the basis of you fighting in enough combat to make it cost less intervention; and then, His further expectation that you'll prove useful if promoted.

Trying to make yourself more Asmodeus-shaped would significantly help only two sorts of people: seminary students desperate to be Chosen at all, and 7th circles hoping to be designated by Asmodeus as Rugatonn's successor.

There is a wordless part of Esta that calculates what is advantageous for him to believe, about what aspects of himself make him a good priest of Asmodeus.

For Esta immediately after he was Chosen, as a 1st-circle, the most advantageous thing for him was to believe that he had the potential to excel at every Asmodean dimension, to study all Asmodeus's concerns with INT 16, and with WIS 18 shape his thoughts to the correct thoughts to have in every way.  It was advantageous for Esta to believe about himself that at least on a merely mortal scale, he was proper in every way, deficient in none.

At 4th, it was advantageous for Esta to believe he was the sort of exemplar priest who would not be relegated to a mere Church specialist in some particular Asmodean concern.

At 6th, it was advantageous for Esta to consider himself as someone who'd be seen as a candidate to become the next Most High and overseer of all the faith.

Now on an alien planet, for the first time in his life, that wordless part of himself has calculated that there would be an advantage in Esta knowing what was actually true about Esta's Asmodeanism, so that Esta could better comport himself in prayer to be seen by Asmodeus across some great distance.

It isn't particularly needful for Esta to know that all of this is what's going on inside his mind.  At an augmented WIS 22, it is well within his reach to notice, if he rolled Perception about it; but Esta does not so attempt to roll Perception on his own thought processes, that is not what his WIS is for.

But if Esta did happen to perceive the nature of his own thoughts, it would hardly come as a shock to him or shake his faith.  Esta is not originally under the impression that he goes around trying to believe true things.

(And if what follows would sound strangely familiar, in other faraway places -- the Dark does often converge to one of a handful of similar forms, anywhere the Dark is rising.)

The Church of Asmodeus teaches implicitly from earliest seminary, and explicitly starting from the 4th circle: that to believe what is advantageous to believe, is urbane, sophisticated, clever, wise, and the way of the winners.

And the proof of this doctrine is the wealth that you gain, at 4th circle, and your tyrannical power.  If you doubt your own superiority, you can just go find some naif who spent their lives in naive service to the Good gods, hoping for a pleasant afterlife; and listen to them scream and beg and plead before you Maledict them to just the same Hell you'll go to yourself, but with more unimpressed devils.

By believing what was useful to believe (says the Church of Asmodeus to its 4th-circles, after they have cast a few Maledictions and damned themselves almost as thoroughly as soul-sold wizards) you rose in the world's tyranny, the only real game that real people play; people who claim to be playing some other game instead, are trying to console themselves for being losers at tyranny.  You have become wealthier by far than the naive people who go around naively imagining that they try to believe what is true.  You can hurt them, and that's the proof that you're the winner.  Anyone who tries to claim otherwise is resentful about how they don't get to be wealthy 4th-circle clerics of Asmodeus.  The deniers are sour about how they didn't get to win -- defined as hurting other people even more than you get hurt yourself.

It is a central teaching of the Church of Asmodeus to all Cheliax that the reason why stupid people try to be Good is not because they justifiably believe they'll get Heaven or Elysium, but because they're desperately lying to themselves about their likely eternal fate, knowing themselves for failures at the games of Hell.

In much the same way -- says the Church to its 4ths -- people who claim to try to believe true things, are consoling themselves for not being made out of the sort of urbane cleverness that gets to be a wealthy winning 4th-circle Asmodean cleric.

Reveal to Vicar Esta, in his ordinary Chelish context, that he had believed what was useful for him to believe?

He'd be offended if you suggested that he didn't.

He would laugh at you, if you claimed to work harder than him at believing only true things instead; why, of course people believe what seems appealing to them, for what other basis is there for belief, and for a thing to be useful is part of its appeal.  Esta would laugh at you even harder (if he had not bored of you by then, and sent you off to pain) if you claimed that by examining arguments you could arrive at truth.  For of course all people accept those arguments that appeal to them, and of course for the conclusion to be useful to believe is part of its appeal.

Somewhere far away, an Estha who now and then grieves for his true-lost Merrin, knows better than this.

Merrin on her exoplanet knows better than this, though she would have to scrape at her memory to remember how it is conventionally put into words.

A few Irorian wizards in particular Vudran temples, and some Abadarans of rare circle, and a Nethysian lich who is not mad, and ancient dragons with headbands, and of course the gods; they all know better explicitly.  All have a mathematical concept of what distinguishes truth-preserving inference steps from non-truth-preserving inference steps; they all know in math what defines a best weight of quantitative belief shift, as an ideal to look up to.  All therefore know, say, that to mock an attempted argument with a particularly delicious insult is not evidence of anything.  You can defeat true arguments around as easily as false arguments that way, and indeed in practice the truth is often more vulnerable to mockery than lies; for the truth cannot freely optimize itself to be proof against mockery, while lies can much more freely mutate.

But in the Church of Asmodeus in all ranks short of Gorthoklek, Lrilatha, and Aspexia Rugatonn, there is nobody who is allowed to know about the idea of a valid argument.  It is a heretical concept, if you're not Aspexia or her appointed heir, because it implies that there is an arbiter other than the Church's say-so of what is good to believe.

Perhaps no mortal human of human born can really believe the Church is the arbiter, in their heart of hearts.  But they can be impressed in their hearts with power, and be convinced to look away from truth; toward games of wealth and cruelty, that they have been told that they are winning.

That game's obvious and proper objective is to make sure that you and everyone else end up believing what it is advantageous, to you, for you and everyone else to believe.  In that game, a delicious insult is most certainly a legal move, and as good a reason as any to end up believing or disbelieving something, because it is informative about which side is winning.

To believe useful things is what is useful, by the very definition; and it is also urbane, sophisticated, clever, and wise; and only naive losers nursing their sour grapes pretend they are doing anything different.

It is one of several ways that the Church of Asmodeus has converged with postrat Twitter.

Vicar Esta is in some ways a grand success story of the Church of Asmodeus's training methods, after a century of refinement post-apocalypse.

Esta didn't need to begin as excellent Asmodean raw material in order to end up a 6th-circle Asmodean cleric.  He just needed WIS 18 and to be born in Cheliax.

Starting with a nearly arbitrary input student, the seminary takes in that raw material.  It beats them into obeying orders about what to think, and finding it terrifying to think otherwise.  It monitors their thoughts to make sure it worked.

With pleasingly reliable regularity, the seminary student obeys and forms a self-reinforcing Asmodean thought loop and gets Chosen.  If it only worked half the time, Cheliax would search for better seminary training methods instead.

And what's really going on inside the new-made cleric?  What deep things inside them, if any, are resonating with those thoughts they have been forced to think?  Which exact fears and hopes are pinning any of those thoughts in place?  Church doctrine below the level of Rugatonn says that it isn't important, and is a stupid question to ask, because who cares about all that stuff that no slave is allowed to talk about and that doesn't show up directly to Detect Thoughts.  It is bureaucratically illegible, is what it is, and the Church's spite is upon the whole topic and subject matter.

If you minimize the importance of wordless preferences and dispreferences -- if you tell everyone not to waste foolish thoughts about the matter or consider it important -- then it will be unimportant and powerless, or so they tell themselves.

It is one of several ways that the Church of Asmodeus has converged with LLM training methods.

Anyway!  For the first time in his entire life, Esta is now honestly asking himself which parts of himself are actually Asmodean, at all.

Esta isn't in fact worried the answer will be "none", which is part of why his brain will let him consider the question at all.  He is a 6th-circle cleric of Asmodeus.  There's got to be something in there.

Even if Esta does already know, in a wordless part of himself that wordlessly forbids itself to be seen even now, that most of the beliefs and emotions inside of Vicar Esta are empty and hollow and mirages of what is supposed to be there.

What part of being Asmodean does Esta enjoy?  He enjoys it all, of course.  But what part does he enjoy?

What part of Asmodeanism resonates with Esta and feels natural to him?  All of it, of course.  But what part feels unusually incredibly exceptionally natural, in the sense of it actually resonating with his nature at all?

Esta had some time to consider that question, in a suitably altered form he was allowed to ask himself, in a long slow drift down a river, that is in some sense the longest stretch of quiet thought that Esta has had in three decades -- not counting, for obvious reasons, those hours of prayer in which he could feel the observing presence of Asmodeus.

There was a time, not long after Esta made 5th-circle, when the 6th-circle who was his supervisor in the faith commanded that Esta go do some nonstandard Evil that only Esta and not most other priests would enjoy, such that Esta would actually enjoy that Evil.

That was when Esta acquired his habit of casting amusing Bestow Curses on women he found attractive, and who had otherwise come to the attention of Church or Crown in the capacity of deserving punishment.

Esta had been surprised -- and then, by quick decision, he had felt gratified, and amused with his own naivety -- about how many social doors in Egorian that had opened for him, once he had a reputation for being actually Evil and not just socially-obligatorily Evil.

...the thing is, that one Evil hobby that Esta made his own after being instructed to find one, and which he genuinely does find amusing, is not really...

Lawful Evil.

It's, you know, Abrogail Thrune's kind of evil.

To the point where Esta would not have dared to acquire that hobby below 5th circle, because he would have not been valuable enough to the Church to shrug off the prospect of Abrogail II noticing the affair.

You could make a case for it as Chaotic Evil, really.

It's not Hellish.  It's not Asmodeus-shaped.  One can't imagine Asmodeus doing that.

It's just a kind of fun which proves to people like Manohar that someday you might be as horrible as they are, and are maybe worth inviting to social outings accordingly.

There was only one real Asmodeus-shaped thing that Esta found inside himself, in the end; but it is a large thing, and maybe enough for Asmodeus to see Esta more clearly across some unimaginable distance not of spacetime alone.

So Esta kneels, in the approved posture for prayer, and feels inside himself the contempt that is not quite as respectful as hatred, but as cold or as searing as hatred ever was.

It is the doctrine not merely of the Church, says the Church, but Asmodeus Himself, that every mortal not only needs but deserves all the torments of Hell, that even if it could be made not to hurt, Asmodeus would still have it hurt, because the mortals deserve it.

Esta thinks of his subordinates in the Church, of his superiors in the Church, of his competitors in the Church, the officers he has worked with in the Crown, the nobles he has met, peasants he has met, prisoners he has met, shoemakers in the streets of Egorian -- his brain very briefly tries on the concept of considering one of the women he is mentoring, and then after detecting a flash of conflict, suppresses that exact thought and forgets it was ever there,

so that Esta can believe himself sincere,

when he kneels before Asmodeus and feels searing contempt for every single mortal he has ever met or heard of, that they deserve all that Hell does to them, for their incompetence and failure and stupidity, and if the price of that was Esta's own torment he would pay it, that Asmodeus's will be done.

This is the Lawful Evil that is in him for true, that makes him belong in Hell and to Asmodeus.

...Asmodeus can see, like, 15% of that giant mess of mortal concepts, maybe, on a good day.

Asmodeus doesn't torment tiny squirrel-sized things because Asmodeus is bigger than them and therefore better.  Asmodeus heaps all Hell's torments on them because they do not do what He says, despite threats and actual punishments, and assume the unacceptable posture of those torments making them weaker, as if they or some distant creator of theirs thought that weakness would get Asmodeus to back off from punishing them.

Abadar would never accept an unfair division of gains from trade, if someone offered a trade that left them both better off but only made Abadar an unfairly tiny bit richer, no matter the cries of 'You'd still be better off for accepting the trade than refusing it!'  No more would Asmodeus ever accept 'my mind won't actually devote that much theoretically attainable effort no matter what you threaten' nor 'I will perform worse if you punish me' as a reason not to threaten someone or a reason not to follow through on that threat.  There are things that matter more than attaining maximum expected utility in actual reality, to Asmodeus as to Abadar. 

The squirrel does not want to heap vast torment on its fellow tiny things for the same reason as Asmodeus.  The only part of this Asmodeus can see, at all, is any stray thoughts about how part of the deservingness of that torment is from weaker things refusing to yield to the rightful threats of stronger things.

Having thus comported himself in a deeper and truer Asmodean shape, can Esta successfully convey across the void that he wants more Locate Object, Imbue With Spell Ability, and Word of Recall, before Esta spends the rest of his hour of prayer trying to get across the Word of Recall concept?

Asmodeus will eventually pick up on the Word of Recall part; though the squirrel seems fainter to Him than when it was mostly trying to follow His orders, instead of whatever strange thing it is doing now.

Have some spells, pet squirrel; refreshing spells you used, dropping and replacing most you didn't.  With the exception of Commune, because seriously, get word to Asmodeus or Hell if you can.