"I think you should, yes.  My guess is that they'll say they don't know, and ask you if you want to send someone to a random microcity and ask there, or find someone on staff who grew up in one."

"Thinking on it, I know that Cheliax after Heaven's intervention now has the highest proportion of non-farming population to farmers of any large region in Golarion.  A mere six-sevenths of our population, farming, suffices to support both themselves and the remaining seventh.  We are all very proud of it." It is clear from his tone that he does not expect Merrin to be impressed.

She's not impressed, exactly, but she's...tentatively pleased that Heaven was apparently prioritizing this? It seems important. She would guess that requiring the vast majority of their population to be full-time agricultural workers would end up being the main limit on how many of them can train as wizards, or even clerics - half of the population can learn cantrips like Prestidigitation at all, but probably most of those would need months of practice - you could maybe get around that by trying to teach younger children, but younger children's brains won't be fully developed, they might not be able to learn it then even if they could as adults - though presumably they can teach the relevant math to younger children, as part of their overall education system...

(She makes a note to ask about the average age at which most people can actually start learning wizardry, and how they determine adulthood, and - hmm that leads into an enormous tangle of questions about families and schools none of which are related to gods.) 

"I appreciate that, thank you." One of the first things this place needs is basic information-gathering infrastructure, how is anyone supposed to make policy decisions if you can't measure the results of policy changes. "Anyway, I...think that's actually most of my questions about gods and afterlives, for the moment - or, well, I have a lot more but I expect all of it to fall under the information-security policies of the afterlives and gods so you won't actually be able to tell me. I - guess I'm curious which other gods are Asmodeus' closest allies, or - whether there are younger and less powerful gods that act in particular sub-regions of Cheliax?" 

Gods don't really have alliances; they can negotiate everything separately.  A frequent negotiating-partner of Asmodeus is Gorum, the banking-god who is very active in Osirion; though Iker emphasizes that not all Osirion's policies are Gorum's and certainly not all Gorum's policies are Asmodeus's.

There are no younger and less powerful gods operating in subregions of Cheliax; some subregions of Heaven are known to be governed by subordinates of Asmodeus that are as powerful as young deities, and they can if they choose grant divine spells.  Most 'clerics' just become employees of Asmodeus instead; you can advance further along that careerpathway.

Does that include (Merrin checks her notes for the names) Erecura and Dispater? That they are theoretically the kind of entity a mortal not yet in the afterlife could pray to, and become a cleric and receive divine spells, but in practice they prioritize their efforts toward work in Heaven? 

Correct!  There are known clerics of both Erecura and Dispater in Cheliax, though few of them.

"Noted. Um, is there anything else I didn't know to ask about, but that you think I should know before I go off and think and end up drawing a bunch of conclusions about your world from what you just told me?" 

If she's wondering whether something about gods makes more sense than is at first apparent, the answer is probably "No."

WHAT IS MERRIN SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THAT ADVICE. 

There has to be an underlying fact of the matter about reality, here, that is coherent and holds together and would make sense if she had enough thinkoomph to grasp it? Which she probably doesn't, so there are going to be holes and it's probably less harmful to recognize her confusion than to try to oversimplify it into an approximation that she does understand, but Merrin is still not sure how to actually implement "don't expect important facets of reality to make sense" into her actual reasoning process!

"I'll...do my best to keep that in mind. Thank you. ...Oh, wait, one more question. Do you know anything more concrete on where the - younger, and less powerful, gods originated? Do gods grow over time and become more powerful and able to influence wider areas - in that case, did the borderline-gods also grow out of something that was definitely not a god...?" 

It's Complicated.  Powerful beings who - this language doesn't have words - are then also emotionally related-to in the right way by many mortals, can sometimes rise to the status of being able to begin granting divine spells, or further increase in power if they already had that much status.  There's at least one case of, Iker is not necessarily personally attesting to the truth of this, he did not see it happen, there is allegedly a god on another continent, Lao Shu Po out of Tian Xia, who started as a rat and then ate the corpse of an ancient god.  This story would make more sense if gods were generally known to leave rat-edible corpses.  It's possibly metaphorical.  'It's possibly metaphorical' is something you end up saying a lot when you're reading about theology from other continents.

There's at least one way of becoming a god that, in Iker's own opinion, somebody else needs to make a judgment call about telling to Merrin, possibly not a call that should be made immediately.  Sorry, but she is a bit new to Golarion and not yet known that well.

(Testing the waters, here, Merrin's thought processes definitely suggest that she will take this sort of thing well.)

(Merrin isn't very surprised to hear that, about this particular topic. Though it implies, maybe, that whatever the mechanism is, it's something that she could personally act on, and might be tempted to do without thinking it through. Either that or they're expecting it to be misleading and result in her being harmfully confused or wrong about something related to gods, or maybe related to alignments. Merrin isn't going to press him, at least not right now - she makes a note to check back in again later, in case whoever is responsible for making that judgement call ends up very busy and doesn't have the best project management system. She expects to be deeply unimpressed by the state of the art in project management and task-tracking setups in Golarion.)

(...She is also having a hard time not making guesses about it, even though she does, in fact, have some training in this; dath ilan expects most adults to at least imperfectly be able to choose to stop poking at a topic they're curious about. It turns out this is harder when she can't just fall back on trusting Keepers to be right. Merrin makes a deliberate effort to, instead, think about the rest and take notes.) 

Something feels oddly - circular, almost - about the claim that beings, if they have the right kind of - attention? attitude? - from enough mortals, can gain the ability to give those mortals spells. It sounds like...a setup that would result in positive feedback loops? Maybe that actually just fits, here - mortal-attention is a limited resource, edge case almost-gods must be competing for it, and the ones that succeed end up - more able to attract more of it, because they can now offer metaphorical employment? And then they would still be operating under all the constraints that come from having to negotiate their actions with all the other existing gods? 

The 'rat god' part is incredibly weird! At least Egobar is acknowledging the level of weirdness! 

"I understand that," she says finally. "Though I do want to check that it's someone's responsibility to follow up on all the things where a judgement call needs to be made on whether it's safe to tell me. I'm obviously trying to keep track as well, but I'm trying to keep track of a lot of things right now." 

"Any call I cannot make myself, as a 7th-circle employee of Asmodeus, would be referred to Aspexia Rugatonn or Abrogail Thrune Version Two, or at final need to Heaven."

"Good to know. Right now I have been approximately thinking of Aspexia Rugatonn as a dath ilan Keeper and Abrogail Thrune Version Two as the Chief Executive of Cheliax; I'm guessing that won't result in me having perfect guesses about which one of them would be ultimately responsible for a particular question or area, but it's probably faster for me to ask and update over time than to try to get a full explanation from you right now." 

Also she's pretty sure that next up would be talking to a different expert about the non-magical Governance of Cheliax and its policies. Merrin wishes she were looking forward to this more. It's important and in normal circumstances it would also be interesting but she's feeling very information-overloaded. 

"Should I tell them to send in the next expert, or would you rather - go off and think and end up drawing a bunch of conclusions about our world?  Though I see little need for haste on that last task; I would mostly expect Golarion to still be here the next morning, if you want to draw conclusions about it then."

He would mostly expect– he's almost certainly not saying this in full seriousness, because what, and also Golarion has been around for a long time despite the existence of a powerful entity that wants to destroy the multiverse and can still hire employees, and Merrin hasn't actually done anything yet such that she would expect her presence to change this. 

"Umm. I don't want to inconvenience someone who's already rushed here to talk to me, but I'm - not sure I can usefully take in more information right now, and I think I need to review my list of questions about Cheliax in light of what came up with you and Manohar and Albe. Do you happen to know who would be lined up next to talk to me, and how inconvenient it'd be to move that to later?" 

Pause. 

"- Oh, um, also. I - am not expecting this to work, but I wanted to check if 'clerics' also get the language-translation spells? And if so, whether there's - any downside risk I should know about for, um, attempting to mentally contact them about 'clericing', other than 'it doesn't work' which is the outcome I'm expecting. The language barrier is pretty inconvenient," especially if she wants to have a social life in addition to a series of interviews with experts, "and if it's not actually risking a bad outcome, it seems worth trying just to check." 

She wasn't expecting that.  Why wasn't she expecting that?  Probably because anybody who understood what a god was and what a cleric meant wouldn't try to become one just for the translation spells the same day they got to Golarion -

No, set that aside, think quickly about how to respond -

"Gods do tend to choose those suited to them, usually.  I think in this case you would be relying a lot on the god to know whether you were suitable; you do not really know enough about any of these gods, even Asmodeus, to make that decision for yourself.  I agree that this is unlikely to work, especially given the barrier about you, but there is not obvious harm in trying so long as you avoid calling out to, say, Rovagug.  It is possible to stop being a cleric if you decide you don't want to be one."

...because in the unlikely event it does work, Merrin trying this earlier and while knowing less seems more likely to land her with Erecura.

Nod. "I am not intending to try to get Rovagug's attention and I doubt it would work anyway since I am very much not in favor of the destruction of the multiverse. Just to check, it's not - ruining any chances I might have for later, if I try now while I don't know enough about the god or gods that might actually think I was suitable?" 

As a priest of Asmodeus, Iker Egobar is thoroughly versed in giving spiritual advice of the quality that Cheliax demands.

"No," he lies.

"Right. Okay. I...am inclined to think that I got enough bits and pieces about my other Cheliax-related questions to go on for now, and I'll be able to make better use of an expert's time once I've reviewed all that." And once her brain is less tired. The nice thing about plan: attempt to mentally contact some gods for potential metaphorical employment offers, is that it can be done in her room. "Also, what time is it locally, actually?" 

As a spellcaster, Iker of course has a pocketwatch about him - a lightly enchanted one, in his case, so that it doesn't shatter at the first hint of strife.  He takes it out and checks it.  "The seventh bell and three-quarters," he says.

"- that is, if the day were divided into twenty-four parts, we'd be seven and three-quarters of those parts past roughly the time when the sun is highest, though that varies by the season, and at a time of year when that means night has already fallen, and dawn will come in about eleven more of those twenty-fourths."

Right, meaning that if Merrin wants to get sufficient sleep before dawn - working on the assumption that the light-blocking on the window might be insufficient compared to what she's used to - she should be trying to go to sleep in two or three twenty-fourths-of-a-day. 

...She has no idea if days are the same length here as in dath ilan, and she's not sure if she would have had anything to notice and be confused about earlier if they're in fact significantly longer or shorter. There was a time-unit earlier that did translate sort of helpfully? 

She would be more surprised if it turns out humans here need a lot more or a lot less total sleep than in dath ilan. "Um, I think that probably means I don't want to do more work-type things today, and would prefer to talk to experts in the morning. It might or not mean I also don't want to do non-work things like socializing with the wizard students who came along." Or maybe Albe will show up and flirt with her some more Merrin is not going to do anything to pursue that further until she's less confused about this entire world. "In about how many twenty-fourths of a day would someone usually go to bed, if they were intending to be awake at dawn?" 

Wizards require a minimum of eight hours of sleep to restore their ability to prepare spells.  Others can sometimes get by with less, but he would not, in Merrin's case, particularly advise it right now.

“…I probably don’t want to do anything else tonight, then, including socializing.” Which is disappointing because she had been hoping to wade through some of the early getting-to-know-people awkwardness as soon as possible. Right now it feels like she doesn’t know the wizard students at all. The person she feels closest to friendly with here is…Albe, who seems likely to be busy most of the time. “I would like to go back to my room, and - probably get some food?”

That can almost certainly be done but it's Negotiations' job.

Iker will hand her off to Antonio, who'll conduct her to her bedroom.  Some plain and simple (expensive Palace-grade) warm food starts on its way to her.

(In retrospect Cheliax sort of regrets establishing this low bar on what it takes to get the good food and accomodations, but they thought they'd be able to torture her back then.  Oh well, she seems like a diligent Lawful Good type, they just need to make their goals seem like the Good thing to do.)