"Unless you've concealed the true power of technology, I don't see what dath ilan could do for us even if a Sending reached them.  They don't have Plane Shift or a tuning fork for whatever plane we're on.  Even if we're on the same plane, they don't have Scry to get an eye on our location, nor Interplanetary Teleport to get here and evacuate us.  Am I wrong?"

Cultural Adaptation thinks that if he asks an average dath ilani for a list of people who might be able to teleport to a distant star, he's failing to blend in by doing that, and not because he should already know their names.  But this, Esta will forbear to say directly; it will be interesting information if Merrin lies.

(Not that Esta would hold that particular lie against her.  He's already expressed to her that Asmodeus might stop giving him spells, if Asmodeus sees in his mind that he has no way to get home.  Lying to him in order to create reasonable doubt about his potential return, so he keeps getting spells, would be at least slightly cunning of her, and not of itself injurious to his interests.  He would have encouraged Mariona had she shown the initiative to try such a strategem at all, against him or anyone else; trying a less obvious or more Evil plot could come later.  Unfortunately Merrin has even less chance than Mariona of beating his Sense Motive; but she might not know she wouldn't.)

“I'm not specifically aware of a secret Governance project working on faster-than-light space travel,” Merrin says. “But I wouldn't be, since: secret. It's the kind of thing that technology could do if the physical laws of the universe were amenable to it. If we are in the same plane, and I could transmit my star chart to them, that's the kind of thing they could use to locate us," okay, not easily, maybe only if she could send high-fidelity video imagery of the night sky from this planet and she has no reason to think that Estha has a spell for that, "and - if dath ilan really exists, and Civilization really has the capabilities I remember, they would have a lot of resources to throw at something this important."

And, of course, from Merrin's perspective, the point is not really whether she personally gets rescued, the point is that if dath ilan knows about Hell then she can hand off the problem to the real adults.

...Which sure feels, right now, like a reason that this will absolutely not end up being possible, because that would not be a satisfying conclusion to the narrative arc of "Reality will keep trolling Merrin until she becomes properly ambitious". Oh, and also she would need to persuade alternate-Estha that dath ilan had a high enough chance of defeating Asmodeus and taking over Hell for it to actually be in his interests to contact them. 

That's...not really why she said it, she doesn't think? Merrin's opaque social intuition is not entirely sure why she said it, but - maybe because she wanted him to have as an available thought that - what - that there are places that (might) exist in a larger Reality that aren't stuck in an equilibrium of inexplicable horribleness? But she does not super have the impression that it landed that way, and she can't blame him, it's not an argument, it's just - vaguely gesturing at the vision of a world being better and "isn't that inspiring, though?" and it's not at all surprising, actually, that this isn't compelling by itself. It would be compelling to Laeirthe in his original setting, she thinks, but Laeirthe is only complicatedly a villain. 

Shrug. "I don't have any reason to think we can contact them, just - feeling out the space of plans we might in principle both agree are preferable to continuing to be stuck on this planet." 

"I would say that it's not entirely clear that it would be to my own benefit to have the Planet of Highly Competent, Extremely Lawful, Deranged Good Extremists brought in on this situation.  But Cultural Adaptation is laughing at me inside my own head about how absurd it is to imagine {Governance} breaking any reasonable compact we made, struck on their behalf by one of their {Exception Handling medtechs}.  Cultural Adaptation thinks that I don't need to work out a very careful compact because we could just handshake on doing a reasonable compact after they showed up, and they'd keep that deal too.  I have to say this is not particularly {updating me in the direction} of dath ilan being a real place."

"...Cultural Adaptation also seems to think that one of Governance's priorities would be evaluating their ability to annihilate Asmodeus or force Him to submission.  Cultural Adaptation doesn't think that an average dath ilani would consider it very dath-ilan-like for me to laugh in their face about that.  Now I can't ask you why the fuck Governance would imagine they could take Him, because you don't know what Asmodeus is, and I do.  But is Cultural Adaptation malfunctioning, or am I missing something fundamental about why a government of admittedly very Lawful mortals without magic would think they could take on a god?  Bearing in mind that it is not heretical to kill Asmodeus and usurp His place if you actually can."

It is certainly heretical to imagine that one little planet's government could take down Asmodeus, but it is not load-bearing for that to be heretical, because it's just stupid.

Stop talking about "Governance".  The relevant party here is Civilization.  You stand out as un-dath-ilani every time you talk about Governance instead; they're much less powerful than Civilization.

Esta has heard dath ilan say this before and Esta is going to ignore it as strange unhelpful advice because one cannot cut a deal with some kind of weird Arodenian ideal even if a lot of Governance's subjects hold it in common.  Somebody with the power to keep a deal has to actually sign a piece of paper, or respect a compact signed by one of their Exception Handling medtechs on their behalf, and Esta is not interested in dath ilan's contrary theology.

(It still hasn't occurred to Esta to ask Cultural Adaptation whether an average individual dath ilani stranded on a distant planet with a suit of armor and a crate of medical supplies would start searching for paths through time that could take out Asmodeus.  Why would he ask that?  Why would anyone literally ever think that?)

See? Merrin should give alternate-Estha credit for not actually being an idiot or incapable of generating original thoughts, even without his headband of enhanced cognition.

Would it in some ways be more convenient from Laeirthe's perspective if he were more of an idiot, such that they had any hope of scheming around him? Sure. But that does not seem to be the Outer God's game, here, and it would be a less interesting game. 

....What would Civilization do, if Merrin were able to get a message back? 

- nope, rejecting the answer of "Merrin cannot possibly have any idea because she isn't very smart" – like, sure, Civilization could do better than her, but she hasn't even tried thinking about it for five minutes. 

Research project to determine if it's possible to create a deity that shares Civilization's values. Obviously. 

What

What? 

Why would that be a thing????