"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???? 

Well, if he were designing the universe, it would be a thing, and he would do it

More seriously: maybe it's not! They know rather little about the exact mechanics of what sort of entity a "god" is, in Golarion. But it's an example of the sort of possibility that someone properly ambitious would think of and investigate, along with several hundred others, and while Laeirthe is tempted to immediately dive headfirst into Merrin's Share Language vocabulary for linguistic analysis of any terms for god-creation, that would perhaps be prematurely narrowing the search space. 

Maybe there's some kind of useful synergy between magic and technology that they haven't happened to stumble upon yet, and dath ilan could offer an alliance to Asmodeus' enemies. Maybe there are already other gods on the planet who have more values in common with Civilization and could be parties to such an alliance. Maybe there are forms of alternatephysics-magic that are accessible with just thinkoomph, no gods required, though admittedly if that's the case it seems more likely that dath ilan is in a different "material plane" with different physical laws than Golarion, because if the local physical laws included that possibility the probably someone would have noticed by now. 

Maybe Asmodeus is vulnerable to nuclear weapons. Laeirthe has the sense that alternate-Estha has, perhaps, not fully considered the extent of what might be possible with technology. 

One thing that Civilization would definitely not do, is concede that it's impossible and silly to try just because someone whose information on his own planet is likely quite filtered said so in a stern voice. 

OW HER BRAIN that was, like, a lot of Laeirthe!thoughts happening very fast and even with the cognitive enhancement effect Merrin is feeling a bit overclocked by it. 

(Kalorm appreciates the phrase 'Deranged Good'. That's pretty great. It might be his new motto.) 

Merrin feels sort of dizzy. It's a really weird feeling, apparently, having tried to decide with sheer force of will to simply get over a core loadbearing limitation in her self-concept, and now she's not really sure who or what she is. 

"You're probably right, I don't know what Asmodeus is," she says. "I think you don't really know what dath ilan is, either. I think if you were actually, really picturing a planet of a billion people where the median person is significantly higher on mentalabilities than I am - with the corresponding implication for the upper end of the distribution - and, also, most people are wildly better at being ambitious than I am, and my armor is not actually even impressive by the standards of technology I've actually seen, let alone what would be possible with a focused research effort on a particular objective. And they really wouldn't consider 'that's laughable' to be an argument against trying."

And her current prediction is that, in this imaginary hypothetical, dath ilan would find allies in Golarion? It doesn't sound like Asmodeus has already won every fight with all of his enemies? But it's not like that would be a crux for Civilization, or for her, on the question of 'given the choice, do you work for Asmodeus or try to fight him', and it maybe puts the conversation on more adversarial grounds than it needs to be? Merrin isn't sure, her opaque social intuition is just not obviously returning that this is a good idea to say. 

She shrugs. "I expect it's beside the point. Civilization isn't here, and neither is Cheliax - yet, at least, I guess your executive might still show up with a Gate and then you get everything you want. If I had to pick a single top guess about the - direction, theme - of the Outer God's game, it's that it wants to keep putting pressure on me until I grow some ambition - which my Estha would think is pretty funny - but that's only a guess, maybe the Outer God just wants me to get tortured forever and thinks that would be funny." 

Is that a parallel, in the doomworld timeline alternate-universe, did alternate-Estha also tease Mariona about– probably it was something WAY more depressing and upsetting than that and Merrin does not really want to know. 

"Anyway. I'm not holding back a brilliant plan right now that I don't want to tell you, I actually haven't thought of anything yet. I'm obviously not going to conclude there isn't anything until I've spent a lot longer thinking. But it probably makes sense for you to take the headband back now, while you still have Baseline and Cultural Adaptation, in case that helps you think of something that a Deranged Good person would actually go for? I won't freak out about Hell, I'm over it." 

Where 'it', to be clear, is not 'Hell is bad', but a different thing. Merrin is fairly sure that she's in fact not going to have an instant breakdown.

(She's going to be leaning heavily on the power of dissociation, and her fallback if that's insufficient is to carefully use 'if she gets upset then it might result in awkward social conflict, Oh No The Horror' to suppress having emotions in front of Estha without suppressing her ability to think, which she is fairly sure would not be considered healthy or entirely wise but, like, whatever, who's going to chide her about it? The Moon?) 

It might be a very bad idea, suggesting anything that makes alternate-Estha better at thinking, when his current stated goals are opposed to hers. It's a gamble. She's gambling that there isn't an extremely obvious way, that she's failed to think of but that he might still think of in time, to combine technology he knows about and magic he still has to contact his executive right now. But...Merrin cannot actually think of another line of argument to take with him that her opaque social instincts think she should put weight on. And she can't dump him on her Estha, but maybe she can make him think some of the thoughts that her Estha would have, while he still has dath ilan running in his head. 

(And then what?) 

(Merrin has no idea. She's trusting Future Merrin to be a sane, clever, and agentic person and deal with whatever her future options are. Even if she doesn't get the headband back. She was a person who was capable of having thoughts and generating plans before she was cognitively enhanced, and she will be afterward.) 

Why is she so eager to give back the headband?  That is not how people and headbands usually work --

Oh right.  Mariona hates hates hates Eagle's Splendour, which is why Esta prepares it every time he can spare a 2nd-slot before meeting her.  And of course one doesn't cast Owl's Wisdom on a 2nd-circle cleric, and even 3rd-circles are mildly warned against that before they get to 4th (though if you need the +2 to WIS-based checks, you need it, so it's not a strong warning).

"If 'growing more ambition' is what you meant by {Protagonist Growth Arc} you could have just said that, young lady.  I am thoroughly familiar with Mariona's difficulties in this area and their lack of response to either positive or negative incentives, though I hadn't thought them so extreme as to interest an Outer God in the challenge.  One sign of 'ambition', by the way, will be when you are reluctant rather than eager to remove a headband that makes you more than you were."

"But I will be glad enough to have it back."  Esta holds out his hand, deciding to forbear to mention how much added difficulty there would be in removing the headband if Merrin did not voluntarily take it off.

LOL 

Huh, is that why he thinks she wants to give him back his headband? 

.......Is that part of why she wants to give back the headband? Was she just rationalizing with the whole 'maybe if she makes him think properly with Cultural Adaptation up he'll generate what dath ilani Estha would say and be less incredibly frustrating to argue with' claim? 

Maybe a little bit! Laeirthe has never been accused of not being properly ambitious and he is feeling pretty reluctant and grabbyhands about letting go of the delightful headband of Enhanced Existence Of Laeirthe, and would be tempted to push back if there were in fact any chance of them holding onto it permanently, but in fact it was specifically a loan and he had figured it would seem friendly and cooperative to offer it back rather than delaying as long as possible until alternate-Estha got annoyed. 

...If that is alternate-Estha's fairly confident interpretation, though, then Merrin could perhaps say with some reluctance that she would consider trying it on again later if Estha wanted to offer it. 

(And then the headband is off and Laeirthe is so much quieter and it is, in fact, kind of a relief to have less of an entire additional person trying to occupy her brain, and to instead have peaceful mental silence.)

....Is she in fact reluctant? - well, right now Merrin's brain is tired, she's pretty sure that the enhancement was - imbalanced? in some way? - and she pushed her...raw processing speed? her something - well past the usual limits of comfort. Like, she wasn't even doing any mental math and yet if she were presented with any math right now she might scream. 

"I guess if you wanted to offer to trade it back and forth later so we can take turns trying to think of plans, I'd probably be up for that," Merrin says, not quite sulkily - she has too much dignity for that, and so would Mariona - but she genuinely isn't in this moment at all eager for it (or at least the part of her that would be eager has been shut up by the current lack of headband.) 

"Well, congratulations on your {Protagonist Growth} then," says Esta, smiling, as he takes back the headband.

Deliberately showing the smile feels very unnatural.  Even when he's negotiating outside Cheliax he doesn't smile like this, nobody would believe it.  But also, Esta has been WORKING ON THIS GOAL FOR A WHILE, and even if this is not actually Mariona, it is a sign of HOPE if he ever does get back to Cheliax and resume his crafting of Mariona.

He puts the headband back on, and is less weak and unreflective.  Has he been stupid in the last few minutes?

...he has probably been too much going with the flow, and not steering hard enough for the part where he finds some concrete hope for getting back to Cheliax before the next time he prays to Asmodeus.

"Talk to me about dath ilan," he says.  "Suppose that Sendings can reach them.  What, exactly, do you imagine them being able to do?  My Ring of Perception does have some spellsilver and could in principle be melted down to make a useful minor magic item, if a more accomplished crafter was standing over my shoulder and telling me exactly what to do.  But trading 25-word messages back and forth, which is all Sending allows for and only one exchange per spell, I don't see how dath ilan could master item crafting from scratch and inside a dead-magic plane, no matter how Cunning the most Cunning person on the planet may be."

...Cultural Adaptation, is it remotely true that Merrin is actually low in mental stats for dath ilan?  That's got to be just one of her personal insanities, right?