"That would be good, thank you. Bread and chicken should be fine". Tanya mentally adds chickens to the list of Earth species that successfully colonized other planets. She'll remember to stay away from the local potatoes; those things are dangerous enough back on Earth.

Tanya's notes: summary of Jon's summary of locally available information (pending detailed review of orb recordings)

1. This planet is a managed reservation / colony / coliseum / sadistic research project, appropriately named The Cage.

2. It's populated by many (tens?!) species of intelligent aliens. Also includes humans, chickens.

3. Interstellar multispecies civilization styles themselves 'gods' (properly: devils, but must be careful around locals), sets up local churches to themselves. Clear similarities with religions Being X claimed to have influenced on both Earths. Highly religious society results (as on Earth?)

4. Divine factions claim to be opposed but cooperate with treaties enforcing status quo. Including not sharing technology or information with locals.

5. Tech level much lower than Earth. Magic level much higher (unsurprising since not a novel field of research). Local magic comes from gods and is limited and rationed.

6. Gods control resurrection/reincarnation, Hell+Heaven ultimate carrot-stick. (Good incentives, gods must intervent to prevent all locals from being rationally prosocial?)

7. Counterpoint: gods incentivise constant (in)fighting, insane risk taking by all individuals.

8. Teleportation widely available. Civilization survives in enclaves warded against it.

9. Mind control and editing. Not perfected (society survives) but very different incentives, balances. Must trust people absolutely to let them near you, and outisde cities they teleport. Magic defenses exist but imperfect and also hard/expensive.

9b. Gods can read minds, can they control / rewrite minds? (Wiithout prayer?) (Does cursing count as prayer?)

Tanya's notes: problems

1. Must ally with locals powerful enough to protect from mind control. Hard to know who to trust. Available work likely dangerous, incl. by making me a target for other factions.

2. Extreme lack of local context and information. Jon's info is adversarial: divine factions likely lying / manipulating local info to unknown extent. Locals trust gods, Jon repeats only the things the locals trust. Learning what locals believe (and what they actually know) likely to take years (!) and requires trusting them to teach me, pick subjects.

3. Missing memories. How and when did I come to this planet? What did I do here before today? Who knows about me, wounded and brought me here, why? Why tongues spell? (Bracers?)

Did I plan / want this before memory loss? Is arrival timing coincidence with attack (unlikely?), same group behind both?

Only obvious lead is local (magical) help, but them knowing the answers bears unknown risk.

4. Did someone (past me?) edit / create my memories or personality? Why? Could I have implanted triggers/controls? 

Again only obvious lead is local help. They have an interest in me staying an ally, not reverting to unknown personality. (Past me would have planned for that)

5. Long term, require assurance/help/services from at least one local faction (church?) to not be tortured in next life. Biggest problem is who to trust and if they can deliver.

Local church acceptance may require worship / mind control. (Lastwall better?)

6. Possible Being X / other devil Being adversaries.

Tanya's notes: resources

1. Combat ability. Unknown risk against real enemies & when they adjust tactics. (Need combined arms doctrine!) Downside: orb lifespan unknown, optimistically years, def. not decades. (Type-97 in service: 50 1st batch, 8 replaced early mfg issues, only 4 defects in 3 years since - with regular maintenance at base!)

Locals presumed to lack adv rev-eng and mfg needed to maintain/repair/replace. Type-97 would be v. hard start for local industry. Also, gives away massive advantage if orbs usable by local mages (trade good?) 

(P.S. do not become test pilot again)

Conclusion: value declines over time, should strike hard and fast if at all, need to find best value/opportunity. Research later if at all.

2. Knowledge / tech transfer. R&D, entrep. cost money. Need local partners, also for knowledge of local market and tech base. Should sell some knowledge upfront if offers are reasonable, trade rest for shares. (Too many options to choose well! But can share all for marginal profit.)

Any tech shared creates losers & winners at first, can make enemies, makes me a bigger target.

Confounder: some divine factions opposed to improved tech (to the extent of marking me 'evil'?), true stances may not be known locally.

(P.S. same for combat, obvs.)

3. Money owed by Terendelev (actual value still unknown). 

(P.S. get straight answer from T. re: legal status!)

4. Ability to contact Earth? Not clear if good idea even if possible. (Probably disaster for Earth).

5. Value as a worker (non mage) - unknown. 

At around 30 minutes after Terendelev leaves there is a knock on the door.  It is someone with a big chunk of chicken (leg, thigh and part of the breast) and a half loaf of bread, and a large water skin.  They also have a bedroll and plenty of parchment and ink, including multiple colors of ink and labels indicating usage (for magic?).  The person delivering it very pointedly avoids looking too closely at Tanya or her things.

Another hour after there is another knock.

“May I come in?”

Parchment and ink? You mean the thing that comes in pots, leaves horrible indelible stains when spilled and doesn't like freezing? Tanya would appreciate a fountain pen (unsuited for field conditions, thus a marker of staff officers) but in the meantime she trusts her pencils more than the spiritual descendant of a feather.

"Come in." She got past the guards but does she know about the white bear?

She closes the door behind herself.

“Passcode ‘white bear four’.”

“I’m Anevia Tirabade, I handle some of the intelligence work within the Eagle Watch.”

She thought about introducing herself as Irabeth’s wife, but apparently this child (they are almost definitely a human child and not a youthful halfling or something) is really sensitive to information being withheld, so she’s going to limit how much misdirection she uses.

“Which do you want first: information on your legal status, a report on how much information about you has leaked, an update on the general state of the city, general background information?  Or you can tell me about yourself if you think it would help… I got Terendelev and Jon’s summary, but they were kind of confusing?”

She says that all casually and calmly, as if discussing the weather.

It will be informative which topic Tanya picks.  And Anevia isn’t that confused, she thinks she has a workable initial picture of Tanya, but she might have a little more leeway if Tanya thinks she is confused, and which details Tanya explains again might also be informative. 

Jon is tagging along, he finished an initial briefing of Terendelev!  He is planning on letting Anevia do most of the talking.

"Hello" - uh, she still doesn't know how to address people here. What the hell, this woman is here to answer her questions. "How should I address you?"

"I think a very brief summary of my legal status, then the information leaked about me and the likely consequences, then more details or other topics informed by that, including a few of my own priorities. I'll tell you about myself when it seems important to allow you to explain things, although of course it's fair to dedicate some time for your own questions. It's not urgent for me to learn about the city's status if I can't do anything about it during the next day and if it's not a reason for me to leave."

“You can just call me Anevia.  Do you prefer Tanya, or Von Degurechaff?  Jon and Terendelev aren’t exactly, well, attentive to all the human stuff with noble titles.”

She tries to keep it ambiguous whether she thinks it is silly of Jon and Terendelev to not care about titles or that noble titles themselves are silly.  Her read on Tanya isn’t sure which way Tanya will lean… maybe both?  Tanya thinks of herself as pragmatically military, but pragmatically wants the advantages of her noble title?

"Degurechaff, please. I don't mind omitting the title because I'm used being addressed by my military rank, but if that's customary here than I suppose von Degurechaff it is." There, that counts as breaking the ice, right?

(If Tanya had spent a minute ruminating on what noble titles tend to mean in primitive societies she would of course have insisted on it!)

“Von Degurechaff then.  The short pragmatic answer is that anyone would be insane to arrest you or even harass you too much, given that you basically singlehandedly saved Terendelev and this city.  Prelate Hulrun is paranoid but even he should bow to pragmatism.  The Queen, and a lot of other people, will be very upset with him if he manages to somehow annoy you into leaving, or even just inconveniences you too much in a way that leaves you annoyed with us.  And although technically your noble title needs to be acknowledged by Mendev first, both the Inquisition and the Eagle Watch need authorization from the local Count to arrest any nobility, so you’re covered that way also, as again, you’re the savior of the city, I would imagine all the relevant people would be more than eager to acknowledge any and all foreign titles you might have.”

She is trying to anticipate if Tanya’s going to get pushy or demanding once she realizes her status.  Best to figure that out sooner rather than later.

Would need permission from the local Count... to arrest a noble...?

This kind of two-tiered system of justice is an insult to everything Tanya stands for and an insult to the very concept of personal liberties! Germania granted legal privileges to nobles, certainly, but they couldn't get away with crimes - with a few exceptions for uh, dueling and... something... - anyway, nobles could very definitely be arrested by the police!

...on the other hand, it's very convenient to benefit from in her hour of need. Is it really a crime against justice if she just... partakes of an existing system for a while? Individuals are meant to conform to systems, right? She's not depriving anyone else of due process by allowing herself to be exempted, is she? Besides, insisting she should be tried by the laws of (ugh) commoners will probably just get her an extremely unfair judgement. And if the privileges of the nobility make them immune from persecution by the church, she wants them.

If asked Tanya will answer forthrightly: all men should be equal before the law. But as long as inequality exists, one should position oneself favorably before attempting to fight it.

...wait, Anevia said 'Inquisition and Eagle Watch' and Tanya pattern-matched that to 'church and state' but there is another way to interpret that, isn't there -

"I'm glad to hear that. What exactly is the Eagle Watch? Are you in charge of enforcing state law?"

Alright she thinks she read that reaction clearly enough, and she can test it…

“The city technically has a guard separate from the Eagle Watch, but they are underfunded and undermanned and known to be corrupt and for the most part the other authorities in the city kind of ignore them unless they are making problems or doing something blatantly unjust we can intervene in to stop.  The Eagle Watch acts as both a military force and law enforcement and has a pretty wide charter to enforce Mendev’s laws as we see fit.  We only act on a subset of the laws.  We make it clear which laws we act on and how we act on them… Mendev has some excessively open to interpretation laws, and even some that are outright contradictory, and then there’s bullshit like sumptuary laws…”

She’s gauging Von Degurechaff’s reactions, even otherwise pretty pragmatic nobles may make the case for stuff like sumptuary laws.

The city is under military law ...no, it has the military enforcing ordinary law? And said military is openly contemptuous of the regular police force, and implies they say as much in public? Whether or not they're right, this is a terrible indictment of the local state of affairs! Anevia even went so far as to criticize state law, and there's really no way for that to be a good sign. This state is either weak or incompetent or both and may be facing a military coup.

(Tanya has no strong opinion on sumptuary laws, never having lived with them. Aren't they something like uniforms and rank signifiers for civilians? That can be good, right? Anyway she's much too engrossed by the military officer committing borderline treason in front of her!)

"I... see. And what is Terendelev's status?"

Von Degurechaff didn’t react to the line about sumptuary laws… because she was worrying about everything else?  That’s fair.

“She has a number of official powers under this city’s charter, including a seat and vote on the council.  She also has a lot of soft power, she invests in a lot of businesses in the city at very generous rates and donates to a lot of charitable causes.  She is a major donor to the Eagle Watch.  Not that we would let that influence us in a way against our charter.  And it probably wouldn’t come up, Dragons tend to be more fixed on their alignments than humans or other mortals and Terendelev’s Lawful Good.”

No wait, Von Degurechaff didn’t know about alignments before today.  She needs to clarify. (Anevia’s face doesn’t show this slip up.)

“And she’s been consistent in acting as Kenabres’ patron for over two centuries, so she has a really solid reputation.”

So she's a magnate and local patron, as Tanya first thought, not a state official. A very well established and respected one. That's great for Tanya's prospects! 

So, to sum up: the law's a mess and the police is corrupt (or widely believed to be corrupt); the state, instead of fixing either of these urgent problems, has resorted to sending in the military to maintain the law (but didn't actually disband the police); the military only enforces some laws (with an unknown amount of latitude); the Church and/or its inquisition, and also the nobility, have their own laws. There is theoretically a Queen in charge of all this but it is undeniably, at best, a huge mess.

And Tanya's legal status is "enough people owe you a favor (and implicitly hope for more favors) that they'd be crazy to legally prosecute you". Of course that's much better than the alternative, but personal favors shouldn't be the only way to be safe from the law! This is supposed to be a "lawful and prosocial" faction?!

...Tanya hopes the Church won't turn out to be the actually-lawful organization here, that would be so depressing.

"I see. My condolences on the - legal situation you are forced to manage. Should we move to the next topic?"

“Yes.  Moving on to the question of your secrecy.  So first, the bad news…”

She glances at Jon.

“Basically Deskari himself probably had the awareness to try to determine as much as he could about you in the brief time he had as he was retreating from your attacks.  Demons normally lack discipline and logic, and Demon Lords aren’t much better if I understand correctly, but Demon Lords have superhuman minds.  And I don’t know if Jon correctly connected the points for you… Demon Lords are basically demigods.  That means they can empower clerics… and so Deskari can read his clerics’ minds to look for clues to make inferences from.  And he probably has a grudge against you now.  Before today I would have assumed he couldn’t come to the material plane himself, and even if he doesn’t risk coming after you himself he can send visions to his clerics to direct them to kill you.  And he might directly commission demonic assassins.”

This is basically what Jon explained to her (she isn’t a theologian or demonology specialist herself), but she thinks she can do a better job adapting the explanation to Tanya and getting it into human terms.

“Are you following so far?”

Demons clearly lack discipline (it requires training) and maybe they lack logic, but they have a nobility? (Nobles that Mendev apparently recognizes as such, at that?)

...demigods are the children of a god (or, well, 'god') and a mortal, or sometimes mortals raised by the gods to a lesser divine rank. So this Deskari either has powerful 'divine' patrons or is himself the son of a 'god' (or just someone like Jon?), and either way he has access to the magic-granting and thought-reading abilities of a divine faction... Well, there's no reason some factions wouldn't patronize the 'demons' (she wishes she knew the proper name, this is getting annoying), what with their system rewarding fighting and insane risks. Maybe it's that 'chaotic god of war' Jon mentioned.

"Deskari likely bears a personal grudge regardless of my future actions, and has access to 'divine' resources and his own followers," she summarizes. "And he has already acted outside your expectations. Go on."

“Right, the impression I’ve gotten is that you had a lot to learn about the implications of a divine resources, but you have the basics and enough to follow-up.”

“So, the good news is that on the mortal side, people have no idea what to make of today’s events.  There are all sorts of wild guesses and rumors going around.  A mostly right answer is buried in among them, but not firmly connected to any close first-hand observations.  The most popular theory is a divine miracle in the form of an angel with powerful and nearly unlimited light magic.  The people that saw you enter the cathedral and noted the related timing have mostly kept their mouths shut.  One guess I got one of them to make was that you are some unique type of angel-summoner or angel-caller, and this person only shared that much with me when I said I would keep their guess secret and only share it with people that already knew any related secrets.  The rumor most similar to you going around publicly is ‘foreign archmage’ but people who know how magic works assume that can’t be right because even a well prepared archmage would have run out of spells that powerful much sooner than you.”

Good, she sounds at least minimally competent.

"Suppose someone knows it was me, has seen my face or heard me talk to Terendelev before the attack, or collects evidence from people who have. What's the risk profile, from Deskari or other actors? I don't have nearly enough context on locally available magic and other weapons and what can be done given preparation. As for defenses, I understand the city is still not warded from teleportation and buildings like this one are only secure through obscurity?"