"Anyway clerics are a pretty regular phenomenon and they don't all agree on anything else," says Belmarniss as they leave the library. "So it'd be very weird if they were all in on a conspiracy about how they prepare their spells by praying and lose their powers if they get too far off from their god."

"They could be genuinely mistaken. But what you're describing isn't implausible. Clerics of different religions, who can't agree on anything else, and get magical powers by praying. It's possible the only thing the god or gods agree on, or want, is that they should be prayed to."

"I'm not sure they'd have to agree on each other getting prayed to, it seems plausible it's just a convenient way to dispense spells and collect intel. Oh, and, there's reportedly a fake god, running a country on Lake Encarthan. I have only the very cursory explanation of this so you'd want to look into it courtesy of someone who'd know, but presumably everyone agreeing that that one specifically is fake has some basis of some kind. It's definitely not that real gods aren't supposed to run countries, theocracies are a thing and Aroden died in the process of trying to come to the Material to rule in his own person and probably would not have been called fake if he'd pulled it off."

"Oh, yes, that's what I meant, that the gods might only have in common wanting to be prayed to." The one she met certainly seemed to be a disgruntled employee. More importantly: Belmarniss doesn't seem to be a true believer in the local religions' validity after all! Tanya has great respect for someone who has learned to apply correct skepticism even towards things their society considers sacred truths, especially if atheism isn't common here. (Even if she had a whole century in which to do it.) Belmarniss is going to be an incredibly valuable human resource for whoever hires her, hopefully in a country where people are less prejudiced against all drow.

Fake gods aren't news, both in the sense that every religion thinks the others' gods are fake and that plenty of historical rulers demanded to be worshipped as a god. (Did the Roman emperors and ancient pharaohs claim to grant miracles? Tanya has no idea. The Japanese emperors didn't as far as she knows, but then the Showa Tenno had to make a big announcement about not being divine after all, so she suspects even that might have been a slight postwar revision of history.) It's a bit more concerning that Belmarniss implies some other theocracies have rulers whose divinity isn't openly called fake in books, but presumably that means they're more powerful in various ways?

...well, one obvious way in which supposedly-divine rulers are lying is they all die of old age. Ascend into Heaven, sure, but everyone knows they'd rather not do that if they could. "Are there other rulers around who are supposed to be gods? Are they immortal and superpowerful, or - something else someone might expect of a god, that mortals couldn't do?"

"Apparently the pharaoh of Osirion is, not even a ninth circle cleric of Abadar, but a cleric of Abadar who got up to eighth overnight, which to be clear is not a normal thing that just happens sometimes, and they like to put about that he's an 'aspect of' Abadar but the Nethysians tell me that it won't bother the local Abadarans to say he's not, they have a separate Abadaran church for within and without the country for conflict of interest reasons."

Pfffft. A Gott in Osirion, is it? Well, that makes it clear enough how seriously to take these claims.

"Going back to the question of clerical spells - I don't want to dismiss the idea that something, or some one, is behind it. I know that external - creatures, or beings, for lack of a better word - can empower mortal spells if they feel like it. This may be the case for some of them, if not all. I'm more questioning their theology and beliefs which presumably claim to be god-given, beyond the brute fact of empowerment. And what they do in order to receive it, the ways it changes them besides just making spells available."

"So - uh, are you saying, 'just because a god said it doesn't make it a good idea', which, like, yeah, literally everyone knows that, gods come from all over the alignment map and disagree on everything, or are you saying you expect there to be lots of schisms within each religion because you believe they are not being steered coherently by their gods."

That's a weird way to put it. "Each god has a church that worships them and disagrees with the other ones. This can be described as 'everyone knows the gods disagree and are not to be trusted', but it can also be described as 'almost everyone trusts their god.' That's what I'm used to, but I'm not sure if that's what you mean? I expect schisms are fairly common but more importantly I expect the pre-schismatic church to be just as wrong as the new sect. Maybe they're not being steered coherently, or reliably, or even at all. In my experience, people will make up commandments and beliefs and ascribe them to their gods. It would probably take very determined, uh, steering to prevent that."

"That doesn't answer my question! If we ask around and discover schismatic Shelynites do you expect them to be just as wrong about what Shelyn has to say or just as wrong about, like, things, objectively, in general."

"...I expect - better to say that I fear - that they will be wrong about some things, like all people. But that they will incorrectly claim some of their opinions come from Shelyn herself, and therefore are not subject to debate, because she knows better than mortals or because it's the price for their powers or because it's morally right for her to tell people what to do, or some other reason. So the way they'll be wrong about things will be much harder to correct, because they'll think changing their minds means abandoning their entire religion. And they may try to enforce their opinions on others more than they otherwise would, because they're so sure they're right and important or just because they think their god commands their religion be spread. ...that's presumably not a concern for Shelyn's followers, if they're pacifists, but it applies to most religions. The new sect will argue and fight with the mainstream church, wasting resources and reducing cooperation. And they'll both be wrong, or at least both just as likely to be wrong, even if it matters for some reason what Shelyn actually wants."

"Something about the way you are approaching this is batshit but I am not sure how to figure out what."

A rational argument from an outside view can often appear that way. At least Belmarniss is engaging and not dismissing her out of hand.

"If you figure out a reason you think I'm wrong, be sure to let me know! I am reasoning from the example of religions on Earth, where these patterns are well known and have many examples; I know very little about religion on Golarion. But I haven't seen anything that indicates otherwise, so far."

Religions that really are guided by Beings might be even worse than the things humans come up with, although that's a tall bar to clear.

"I think you perhaps should... not... reason from religions on Earth, because of the thing where it makes you sound batshit and we already know this is a very different place from Earth? But this is another area where my being from underground is impairing in getting specific about what's wrong, I'm used to clerics being like, yay various demon lords, and everybody else being like, sure, if you keep the clean water coming and sell us healing spells, and I think people relate to it differently up here even if it boils down to something similar economically."

"I don't have any context on demon lords besides demons being the ones invading the Worldwound. And I have to reason from something; I'm not going to make any big decisions based on it, but I don't think assuming I know absolutely nothing about 'religion' and 'gods' is better. What specific thing sounds insane to you?"

"That's the thing, if it were any specific element I could identify I'd say that, but it sounds sort of like... I'm going to make up something stupid, do not over-index on this example, but it sounds sort of, in general pervasive batshittery level, like, what if you came from a planet where rocks were people and ambulatory people still did mining and building with them and you had lots of explanations for why they'd do this and perhaps even delude themselves about rocks not being people as a self-serving belief so they'd feel better about all their various rock ownership and rock usage and obliterating diamonds for Raise Deads and so on, and when you came to a planet where rocks just literally are not in fact people you assumed all of that was going on behind the scenes to explain all the very recognizable rock usage and on top of that decided that mind-affecting spells are all lies because they're omitting to work on rocks?"

"Are you saying that gods are real, so it's simpler to conclude the churches are mostly right about what their god wants and - that the churches and religions are caused by the gods, the gods shape them, so they're a reliable guide? My point is that, having observed a world where religions are not due to gods, and assuming people behave in broadly similar ways on Earth and Golarion, religions don't need gods to explain them. Specific details like religious commandments don't need a god literally commanding something to explain people believing a god did, because they do it all the time. I can look at the rocks and try to figure out if they're people or not, but if I only look at the humans who think rocks aren't people that doesn't tell me much, because they're liable to think that either way. I think for churches to be broadly correct about the gods, the gods would have to do a lot of continued interventions to keep them that way. If there are gods."

"Well, right, and the continued interventions are picking out clerics and giving them spells and probably sometimes sending visions or messengers but that's rarer."

"Picking clerics sounds like a very inefficient method of transmitting information. It might be a sign that someone was right about something but you don't know about what. Messengers would do it, do the gods reliably send messengers who can prove they're from the relevant god?"

"It's rarer! I would not call it 'reliable'! I guess if we can think of something else the Nethysians want enough to cast a third circle spell for us they might scare up a Planar Inquiry but that's just gonna be a generic outsider of some kind, not a handpicked divine messenger, probably, I might be lowballing the value of Planar Inquiry. Clerics are all, like... a type of person? Not just in the same way wizards are all mathy cunning sorts, like, clerics cast from Wisdom and that's not none of what's going on but they're also per each god a type of person who's lined up right, I think more so with real gods than with demon lords because real gods can be pickier."

"How do new clerics even know which god's they are, if they don't just assume they're clerics of the religion they already belonged to or most liked? If musicians mostly worship Shelyn, and any new cleric who's a musician tends to assume Shelyn empowered him, you get a church of Shelyn that thinks she really cares about music, but maybe all that's happening is that musicians come together out of their shared interest, with the community being reinforced by religion. I'm not saying I think that's probably the answer, I'm just pointing out that - there doesn't seem to be any definitely clearcut proof, only roundabout inferences. And that's what I'd expect to see if gods weren't actively and unambiguously directing their churches, so people had to come up with all these indirect explanations. What does Planar Inquiry do exactly?"

"If they haven't been trying for someone in particular I guess they'd... try different holy symbols? Some spells need those for clerics. The Nethysians have that weird mask thing, for instance, wouldn't work if they swapped symbols with another kinda cleric. Planar Inquiry's a calling spell, calling is like summoning but instead of a remotely piloted fake body it's really present for the duration of the spell so it can stay longer."

"...can you explain holy symbols to me? I'm not sure what you mean. Earth religions have holy symbols but they don't have magic."

"Some spells are cast with words, some are with gestures, you've seen both. Some of them also have ingredients, but people can learn to do without those if they're not stuff like gemstones or incense, I have done this so you don't see me pulling out a dried glowworm every time I want to cast Light. Actually people can also learn to do without words, or without gestures, but unlike skipping the ingredients that makes the spell a circle higher. And some spells want foci, objects you use to cast the spell but still have afterwards. A lot of cleric spells, and cleric versions of spells that others can also get, want a holy symbol as a focus, and it has to be the right one. They also need them to channel energy. Usually people have 'em on a necklace."

"By the right one you mean the right one for their church, like a mask for Nethys? If clerics all have the same spells, but each one can only use the ones that need an implement - sorry, a focus - with a particular god's symbol, which also matches a god who would plausibly pick that person according to their church... I assume it's been tested for clerics to try all possible other holy symbols to exclude the case they can in fact use several. That does sound like strong evidence that the - something or someone, which we might as well call a god, is empowering each church's spells. I suppose it's still possible for the same entity to be behind many or even all churches, or for the entities to collude in other ways... But I think that's pretty convincing evidence on that score."

This world is infested by people empowered by alien beings, who pray to them for an hour every day and so have their thoughts contaminated in any way the beings please. It's hard to feel terrified when she's been living in this world for weeks without anything terrible happening, but objectively speaking this is probably some kind of disaster!! And so she really needs to settle -

"That makes it much more important to know what the gods are actually doing or want! You were telling me about their putative messengers?"

"The putative messengers are I say a third time rare! Do not expect them unless you become really important! - Also I don't know specifically of that experiment having been done but I bet you can get a Nethysian to demonstrate failing to cast Light with a few other symbols tomorrow at no extra charge if they can't point you to a book which says it's been done, because of the kind of person Nethys seems to go for."