"I... can't really imagine what life is like without any clerics," he offers with a weak smile.

[What do clerics do? Modern human society has replaced many tasks with machines. I think alternate solutions to the same problems people face might be seen in different societies.]

"What he said," agrees the green Magical Girl, who has failed to give a name so far. "Geez. That would be like... Falling into a hole and learning that lightning isn't a thing anymore, wouldn't it? I think clerics are really important in the stories I've heard that include them."

"Clerics - provide all the things divine magic does and arcane magic hasn't figured out yet. Healing, curing disease, raising the dead, making clean water, making crops grow. Probably a lot of rarer stuff I'm not thinking of. Plane shift, for visiting the afterlives. And spells that asks their gods questions. Those are the important ones."

"But most clerics don't just sell spells, they - promote the things their gods want. Abadar does banking, Erastil farming, Nethys magic - he's the god of wizards - Sarenrae fights evil... There are hundreds of others. Without their help, all those things probably wouldn't get done nearly as much. But, um, there are also evil gods, so if both were gone that might be fine actually, I don't know."

Ahmose has indeed noticed she hasn't given a name and has no idea how to ask for one politely! Being deep in conversation without someone whose name he doesn't know and is too late to ask is a horrible circumstance that happened to him bizarrely often in Sothis. He dreads the moment he has to refer to her when talking to someone else. Asking Jasper her name later will be mortifying but so will asking her name now so he's not doing that either, just dreading it inevitably happening.

"Well, some witches and magical girls are pretty good at healing. Succubi too, I guess. And modern medicine is no slouch, though it's not as convenient as magic. We... Don't raise the dead very much, unless they're very fresh and mostly intact. Clean water is a tech thing, crops too. I should show you a YouTube video on it... There are priests that talk about what they think their gods want, at least."

Wait, what?

"You have succubi for healing? The demons?" This is weird enough that it makes him completely ignore for the moment the other things one might want succubi for, if one could trust them with anything at all.

Oh look, return of the blush. It's lighter this time at least.

"Well, sure! Succubi are really good at biomancy, generally. I, uh, pay 'em to keep me thin and fit. Fighting shape. Lots of people do. Magical people anyway. They're... I don't know if demons is even the right word? Some are pretty evil, and some are basically fine, especially if you have a written contract."

This is extremely confusing and contrary to everything Ahmose has ever heard!

"Contracts are for devils, not demons! I mean - do they follow contracts? Demons are chaotic - no, not that, how do you say - what is wrong with this language - what do you call the... dead people are judged on two measures and sent to one of nine afterlives, one measure is good versus evil - what, not that either? What do you call them? The - axes on which the nine afterlives are arranged?"

"We don't believe in afterlives, remember?"

"You don't believe... that there are nine afterlives, one for each alignment?" Do they think everyone goes to the same place? That would be so weird.

"No. You said good and evil. And law and chaos? Are those 'alignments'?"

"Yes! Good and evil, chaos and law. Neutral between each two, a grid of nine. But - if you don't know about alignments, and you can't detect them or talk to the afterlives, how do you avoid Hell?"

"Hell's not... A thing. And the people who believe in Hell, who, who fucking use it as a threat to make people conform to their own ideas, deserve to go there if anyone does."

[I think you're getting a bit heated, Sporty Lime! Ahmose thinks Hell is bad.]

"I- Ugh. I have history with this shit, I'm not unbiased, okay?"

"Hell isn't, isn't something you deserve! It's something that's done to you! You need to avoid it, like you'd avoid the plague, or - it's categorically the worst thing there is!!!" She clearly doesn't get it. There are probably not enough exclamation marks in the universe to explain Hell if you haven't been raised in its shadow. And he's so, so tragically un-splendid.

"Prove to me Hell exists, then. Prove it. Because I don't believe it. I think- I think what happens when we die is oblivion, just, not existing, which, is worse than Hell for some people and not for others, and- I don't believe in Heaven either. I can't. Let alone a bunch of other extra ones. There's nothing I've ever seen on it but wishful thinking at best and manipulation at worst. Since I don't think Hell exists, or Heaven, all I can do is- Be, and try to help people where I can, and- Damn, I should be in the big ritual sink right now, Jesus Christ." She is holding back tears.

"I really really do!!! Want to prove it to you! Because it's so important! You can be a perfectly normal good person and then go somewhere bad because the Judge isn't good or lawful and she has rules you can't guess, that's why you need her priests to tell you about them!!" Ahmose is close to crying himself.

He looks at Jasper. "I, I have to go back. Back to my world, and then bring the priests here, bring the gods - we have to make the planar portal work. We have to."

[I'm afraid as Cute Guardians, we don't actually know if you're correct, or if the gods would be good for this planet. We will certainly help you investigate responsibly, especially if you trade your help to us a little bit. But the thing is that if any gods have operated on Earth before, we can't tell for sure. There are things that might match what you are describing, but they're rare and inconsistent. The prophets Jesus Christ and Mohammad did actually perform things that were declared miracles, like creating food and drink or rising from the dead or curing leprosy or using powers of prophecy, but it sounds like you think MANY priests can do them. Such things are very, very rare on Earth and we can't take it as definitive proof that a god, or multiple gods, exist. Have you considered that these gods may have had influence over your previous plane and world, but not this one?]

"Obviously they don't have any influence here! Clerics with spells and miracles is what their influence looks like! It's what happens after you die that's the problem!"

Ahmose is so, so deeply glad that Jasper is taking him seriously and the Really Serious People Running Things are smart and will do the right thing, because he really, really can't do this himself.

"Of course I'll cooperate and trade and - I, I'll do" - anything, he barely stops himself from saying, because that is not how you negotiate with non-Abadarans, but it's true, he'll do almost anything - he won't go to Hell himself, or - he'll do everything he actually can do, to save these beautiful free people from damnation.

"At home we have the whole government working on this, they track how many people go to Hell and they set policies to get better results and make sure everyone knows how to avoid it - it's the most important thing the government is for, probably - I can't do it myself. I'll tell you everything I know and, and I'll try to convince you it's true, but I really really need to - get people from Golarion here to help you."

[I've asked someone to increase the urgency of our arrangements to get a big boat and someone to keep you safe from the ocean so you can try going home. I still don't know how quickly they will arrange it. Are there other things we can do which might point at the existence of afterlives, other than scrying or visiting them?]

"...I think you've been fooled and lied to." Following this announcement, Sporty Lime stomps away from the kitchen, leaving the portal looking at a green-furred Puchuu who leaped off and shook itself as she left.

"You can summon outsiders from them. Wizards can do all those things. You - don't really have wizards either, do you. I'm... not enough of one, I can't reinvent all the spells myself..." Oh gods, has he failed to help a whole planet of people because he spent a year tinkering with his spell instead of buying a spellbook staying in Sothis to study?

- Oh no. "What - did she mean?" He looks helplessly at Jasper.

[...When Sporty Lime was growing up, the priests at the church she and her family visited every week said that some things mean you're going to go to Hell, no matter what. Things like not believing in the story of Jesus Christ, or not praying correctly, and some other things that I don't think she would want me to tell you right now. But this hurt her a lot, because she thought she was going to go to Hell, and everyone disapproved of her a lot of the time because she did things like wondering whether the Bible was translated correctly. Eventually, she decided that the priests were just lying in order to manipulate people, and she thinks the same thing happened to you.]

"Oh no. That sounds terrible." Making someone think they're going to Hell when it's not true is awful even though the priests presumably believed what they told her. "None of those things sounds Evil though? Or, well, it's most that they don't sound relevant to judgement, but maybe there are reasons I'm not seeing..." The opposite of correct prayer is - maybe praying to demon lords and granting them power? He's now even more concerned about what she's doing with those succubi! 

"Would it help if I told her I know praying correctly and believing in things aren't important? But I'd have to understand the details first, and I don't want to pry, and - anyway I'm not a priest! That's why I want to get some real ones! I really really can't just - teach you all the right things myself!!"

[I think you talking to each other about what you believe could be very good as long as you both try to be calm, respectful, and open-minded! Right now you have reminded her of a difficult time in her life, so she might want to calm down for a few minutes first. Remember that right now she has a strong prior that people who say things about the afterlife are probably wrong. She probably also thinks you are wrong.]

"I'm only repeating what all the mages back home say, they can't all be wrong about it. But I guess I can understand if she thinks it's - wrong to believe something very important if only one person she actually meets says so and he doesn't have any other proof. Could you please... tell her that she can talk to me if she wants to? And maybe the things I believe aren't the ones she'd be so upset about." It's sort of obvious that she can talk to him if she wants to, but saying it explicitly helps sometimes; people interactions are Hard.

"To be honest Hell is very very scary and it's - correct to be upset about it. About even a chance of it happening. I don't want to make her or anyone feel bad or, or think about horrible things, if it doesn't actually help anyone avoid Hell! And - I'm probably really bad at teaching people these things. I should just focus on trying to get home."

[Everyone CAN be wrong about things. Lots of people just believe what other people say. It depends on how many people are actually checking. I would predict that where you're from a lot of people cared a lot about the afterlives, and a lot of them checked, so you're pretty confident. But like I said, we can't check. All our checking on afterlives has been inconclusive and contradictory enough that it's hard to be sure. I'll tell her you're still willing to talk.]

"A lot of people definitely checked on the afterlives, the government does statistics! And it's not just for checking, people talk to the afterlife planes to learn things and get help and even if they're not asking about the afterlife aspect it would get out if they were wrong about it." He sighs.

"Where did you want me to put this portal? I'll make it very small so I have power to make other ones, so choose somewhere people won't accidentally miss seeing it and cut themselves. On both ends, I guess. And tell me if you want to prepare portals to some other places too."