Some years later...

Tanya struggles towards consciousness. There's a sharp pain in her chest and she can't see or move - she's being jostled, carried, she was wounded - brought back by her men? she can't recall any details, can't rule out she's been captured, she has to resync her orb has to get back in the air, up up up, she can feel magic all around her -

(If she was captured they'd take her orb, except - the thought fails to complete -)

Every time she tries to spin up the orb she loses her grip on consciousness and she claws back -

"Heal," a voice says suddenly very clearly.

It looks like Terendelev's Heal managed to fix her.  He takes a moment to puzzle over it.  If it was merely that she had that much adventurer toughness he would have at least seen a little progress from his own cure spell, so it must be magical in nature.  A wound magically resistant to healing isn't that strange.  But the woman's attire and equipment are also strange.  The safe guess for the unusual is some form or another of demonic plot.  His current best guess for the latest ongoing demonic plot is a systematic false alarm to get them to waste resources and disrupt the festival.  He could already see it playing out.  The city's real defenders would expend some scrolls and potions and wear themselves down going on high alert, the demons and cultists would laugh it up at how manipulable the Desnans were, and the Desnans would offer some half assed apology if they even bothered with that much.

"Who are you?  What were you doing outside of Kenabres?  What is your equipment?"

He would normally prioritize thoroughly looking at her alignment, she has multiple pieces of equipment he doesn't recognize at all.  Even with all the insane impractical gear adventurers come through with, he thinks he should at least have a guess what more of her equipment is.  Detect Magic.  

The healing and the clear questioning are enough to stop Tanya from immediately bolting into the air; she does jump up from the litter and onto her feet. 

These people don't have uniforms or any insignia that she recognizes, they're not Germanians but could be Federation or the Council or any number of partisans. The Federation army isn't so incompetent they'd fail to recognize her as an enemy - no that's worst-case thinking, some of them probably are that incompetent. Mage healers are rare, nobody would heal a random stranger - this isn't a hospital, field or otherwise - 

"I'm Tanya," she says, it's a Russy-sounding name and unlikely to clue them in if they're not already. "Who are you and where are we?"

Detect Magic will see a pair of bracers (abjuration, weak) and a - something inside her clothes or maybe just inside her (universal, strong).

What are these things strapped to her hands. They look almost decorative but if these people put them on her they may be relevant to healing her or something? She'll refrain from tearing them off for the moment.

(Tanya has no concept of magical restraints. If you don't want a mage to cast, you just take their orb. Her orb is fine and she is busy pouring mana into her barrier and spinning up her flight spell. This will draw the attention of any mages here but when they come calling she will be ready.)

He wants to get a closer look at whatever that strong aura is, he isn’t remembering any standard item that would look like that.  What’s even more worrying is all the rest of her gear that doesn’t have an aura.  If she’s an adventurer it would be a bit odd to spend all her money on a single powerful item, so maybe she’s concealed the auras of the rest of her gear?

He realizes she is casting something.  Silent and stilled so she’s a powerful caster, or she has some exotic style or form of casting, or some combination of both.  He continues to concentrate on his detect magic to try to get a better feel for her casting.

She's probably disoriented from whatever demon attack injured her.  Terendelev can tell she is casting something just from the feel of the magic, but can't identify it.  She'll ask Hulrun afterwards what he saw with his detection.

"Peace, both of you.  You are in Kenabres, at the Worldwound.  Prelate Hulrun is concerned for the city's safety.  Why don't you take some time to collect your thoughts.  Enjoy the festival, and then the Prelate can ask you some questions later?"

That spell felt entirely unfamiliar and had no visible effect.

Tanya speeds up her reactions so she can think. (It'll be visible that something is wrong with how she moves, she never practiced doing this stealthily, but he chose to show her that he's a mage and so he knows she's one. And they let her keep her orb, which is an incredibly weird thing to do with a stranger unless you have reason to assume they're an ally!)

She was... unconscious and then roused abruptly? Or she lost her memories - no, she was on a litter, there's blood on her shirt and her chest still hurts. So she was healed magically, presumably by this man.

It's better to keep questioning these people instead of random strangers, even if they (reasonably) think they can question her in turn. Her priority is to know where she is, how she got here and why, and whether the locals will turn hostile if they realize she is Germanian. They weren't speaking Russy, her accent is terrible and would give her away - 

...what language were they speaking? She... doesn't remember speaking Germanian but she also doesn't remember speaking any other specific language - shit, her memory is bad. She really really hopes it's passing trauma but she's rapidly getting a terrible premonition.

She has never heard of Kenabres or anything called 'the worldwound', and the people here look remarkably... rustic. There's an archery competition and - Halloween costumes? (Isn't that a States tradition? Well, it must have come from somewhere.) It's a welcome surprise to see something as peaceful as a harvest festival, she hadn't expected to find one within three days' flight but it stands to reason that any remaining pockets of peace and prosperity would be located where she isn't.

"Can you tell me how I came to be here? I don't remember how I came to be wounded and I wasn't conscious on my way in." That's safe enough to say, but the risky part - "I'm afraid I don't recognize the name Kenabres, can you say how far we are from the closest major city and in which direction?" She's not quite asking 'what nation are we in' but that's only diplomatic cover, not actual cover.

Terendelev notices the signs she is speeding up.  A still silent haste, so this woman is at least 5th circle or something exotic.

"Kenabres is in Mendev... which is a kingdom in Avistan, on the border of the Worldwound.  Nerosyan is the capital of Mendev" 

She is careful to talk slowly and clearly.  It is kind of odd an adventurer could come to the Worldwound without learning of Mendev?  Maybe her memory issues are more severe, or maybe she is still disoriented.

"And you were brought in on a stretcher ...where did the people that brought you in go?"

He's not believing it.  Adventurer's regularly lie about their past, often for stupid reasons, making his job more difficult.  And this isn't even the first time he's heard "mysteriously lost memories" for bullshit adventurer backstories.  Of course, it's also a lie (or technical truth, with the right spells to interfere with memory) cultists might try.

Terendelev's question alarms him.  He gestures to some of the guards.

"Start looking for whoever brought her in.  Take them in for questioning."

He starts detecting alignment, cycling through Chaos, then Law, then Evil, then Good.  He can detect alignment without the slightest nonmagical tell he is doing so.  It'll still take a few rounds for each detection to resolve with the full set of information, so he'll stall for time and try to catch this women in a lie or incongruous detail.

"What do you remember about yourself?  What Gods do you worship, why are you at the Worldwound, what is your last memory?"

He isn't bothering to hide the skepticism in his voice.

Tanya is moderately Lawful Evil.

"I don't recognize any of those names, Mendev or Avistan or the Worldwound, and I don't know why I am here. I remember... fighting, but I do not remember being hit." She needs to go through the recordings on her orb but it can only play them back, it doesn't summarize. 

What language are they speaking. Her mind insists it is not any of the ones she knows, which is obviously absurd - she thinks the word 'hello' in every language she's aware she knows, Germanian Francois English Russy Ildonian Lebadonian Akinese... Waldstatte uses the same ones... Ispagnan? 

They are all as she remembers - her knowledge of languages seems unimpaired - and then she imagines saying 'hello' out loud and she gets a completely different phoneme! What the fuck!!!

Shit, speaking in tongues is a religious thing, isn't it. She doesn't know much about it, the nuns who brought her up didn't mention it but that just means it's not a Catholic thing and she already knows Being X isn't Catholic.

She does not worship any gods but the only nation where that would be an unproblematic answer is the Russy Federation and even they don't normally make it a priority concern. (Also, 'gods' plural?) Saying she's Christian will force her to pick a denomination and she's probably not in Catholic territory; she stays silent.

(She still has no idea what he's doing with that magic but he's definitely actively doing something!)

Did whoever bring her here just dump her in front of the local healer and leave? Even if they had pressing duties, they ought to have taken the stretcher! Also, "take them in" sounds wrong, is he implying they should be arrested - well, as a matter of military discipline he may be right, but this place really doesn't look very... military?

...she can't get out of saying anything at all about herself - well, she can, but probably not without refusing to acknowledge the local legal authorities or something. But she can try to get some more answers before she takes the plunge.

"What are the Kingdom of Mendev's relationships with the great powers of the world - the Unified States, Russy Federation, Albion Commonwealth, Francois Republic, Germanian Empire...?"

There are many small kingdoms in the world but the only one that matters to her is Ildoa and she's pretty sure she's not in Ildoa (because she can think in the Ildoan language and this is not it???) - there are some self-styled kingdoms subject to the Commonwealth but she'd have to fly past half the Federation to reach any!

Okay, this might be the result of some sort of accident with teleport or planeshift?

"I'm sorry I don't recognize any of those places."  What is a polite way to suggest maybe other continents don't know of the regional powers of... Tian Xia?  Arcadia?    Nevermind, she'll try to provide context with the least number of assumptions first.

"Mendev is in the north of Avistan.  South of Avistan is the Inner Sea, in which is the city of Absalom, which holds the Starstone and is where Aroden, Norgorber, Cayden, and Iomedae ascended."  

Distant adventurers should have at least vaguely heard of the Starstone even if they somehow don't know of the Worldwound?  This woman is speaking fluently, but she might have had a tongues up?  Actually, if she is running low on duration on Tongues, they should figure out what to prioritize and/or find someone that has a Share Languages available.

"Are you speaking with a Tongues?  Do you have a guess how much duration is left?"

Well, she's Lawful at least.  It isn't impossible for demonic cultists of odd temperaments and backgrounds to read Lawful, but there is one way to rule that out quickly.

"Are you willing to swear that you neither serve nor ally with with nor compact with demons, demonic powers, or demon lords?"

Irabeth and Terendelev often seem upset at the idea of pushing against people's Law like that, but Hulrun doesn't care if he causes a demon cultist to stop reading Lawful and in fact views it as a good thing.  He'll go back to concentrating on Detect Law so he can see if she suddenly loses her Law.

She obviously doesn't have a tongues up (or else is concealing it, which would be suspicious), but he hasn't had a chance to explain to Terendelev what he saw with his Detect Magic.

Obviously she is speaking with her tongue - is the woman really asking if she's speaking in tongues???

Is this what it feels like to be actively contaminated insane. Should she just resolve not to speak in languages she doesn't know - she really can't see how that would help and also she can't just decide to stop understanding them!

"I swear I'm not serving or allied or... compacted... with demons, demonic powers or demon lords, and never have," she says smoothly while reeling inside. This is easy and also true. Unfortunately that's the only easy part.

"I confess to some... confusion, regarding the language we are speaking. I don't seem to recognize it and - even if there's something wrong with my memory, it does not seem possible that I've forgotten learning an entire language to fluency - I apologize, I realize this sounds absurd."

"What is today's date, please?" There's no way she forgot multiple years. For one thing, she would have grown at least a little!

Tanya continues not to recognize any of the place-names or local cultural heroes referred to.

He relaxes just a touch at hearing her oath.  The rest of what she says is even more absurd though.  Probably she's "just" a patsy for some demon sneaking into the city, but he doesn't think he's heard of any memory alterations that would hold up against a heal.

"It is the 16th of Arodus 4718 Absalom Reckoning."

He'll start with pointing out the obvious contradictions.

"You can cast spells Silent and Stilled but you've never heard of Tongues or Share Language?"  His skepticism is obvious.

Actually, he's wasting his time.  "I'm going to lead the search for the 'people' that took her in." 

He looks around and then jogs over to some guards to give them instructions.

She'll take over here then.  She'll start with a detect magic of her own. 

If Tanya is paying more attention now, it is notable that this spell features loudly and clearly enunciated words, with spoken syllables, sweeping arm motions, and intricate hand gestures over several seconds that occur in synchrony with the way the magic is shaped and released.  Tanya's translation spell is also suggesting the etymology of the syllables of the words for "detect" and "magic" are related to the spoken syllables.

"What magic items are you carrying?"

It's certainly noticeable that she's doing this - traditional local ritual, or whatever it is - but words and motions can't affect magic, so Tanya mostly ignores them. ...if it's a magical detection spell it's not like any she's ever seen but she's not an expert in non-combat spells let alone foreign ones. She's never heard of spells called 'silent' or 'stilled' and if the other two are meant to be names of spell formulae the implications are -

There are no spells that (safely, reliably) affect human brains on the level of knowing things! Admittedly magical research is proceeding at the pace of the world's fastest technological revolution (so far) and who knows what the other countries are keeping under wraps, but if she doesn't know it means Imperial Intelligence doesn't know, or doesn't think it likely she'd encounter any in the field - perfect knowledge of a language would be useful for spies if nothing else - did she somehow... fly into a foreign secret magical research center during her period of memory loss... and was mysteriously injured and then healed by local language-spell researchers, who are not under military or private-company secrecy so probably academics...

That is absurd on several levels, not least of it being that anyone qualified to be a magical researcher would recognize the countries she named! Who even uses a calendar in its fifth millennium, the Jews?

"I have a computation orb." Which the woman already knows, of course. "No other items that interact with magic." 

...this talk of magical items is more evidence of the magical researchers theory; a lot of industrial equipment interacts with magic and so do the (very bulky, not man-portable) specialized military magic sensors and radars, but researchers are the only people Tanya knows who habitually carry magical devices in their pocket.

Is she lying about or overlooking the arm bracers?  Or well, she said ‘interact with magic’.  It’s a particularly exact wording.  

The computation orb is probably the strong universal aura (maybe a silent and still metamagic effect, like a metamagic rod?), but before addressing that, Terendelev will give this woman room to correct herself.

“And do you have any magical items with effects other than interacting with magic?”

Like an abjuration effect hiding the rest of your gear’s magic?

"I am... unsure what kind of items you mean." Is this because of the language - "I am using my magic and nothing on me is interfering with it in a way I can detect. And I have no items meant for magic to be used on or with them, aside from my orb."

"...since I was unconscious for some time it is possible something was planted in my pack or elsewhere on me. I do not recognize these," she points to the bracers, "and I would not normally put on something like this for decoration." In fact she's going to take them off now, on general principles. Thoroughly going through her pack will take some minutes but there's nothing in there she particularly needs to keep secret (apart from some written materials that she can refrain from opening) and she should really verify whether she has everything she remembers carrying, or possibly something else stamped with a future date from her perspective.

“I appreciate your thoroughness, under the circumstances it seems prudent.  And yes, your bracers are a magical item, some type of abjuration effect.  Give me a few rounds and I will attempt to determine what they are.”

She concentrates on studying them.

“I think it’s a protective effect, simultaneously granting a minor armor effect and effecting fortitude, reflex, and will.  It is luck-based, not resistance like a typical cloak.  It’s a nonstandard item, luck effects on items are rare.”

So it wasn’t hiding or concealing anything which is a relief, but it is a puzzle why someone would just give this woman such a unique item and why she (apparently) doesn’t remember having received them.

She looks over the rest of the gear.  Some of it seems standard, but some seems strange, and the style and make of even the standard items is unfamiliar.

“Is the rest of your gear in order?”

Rummage rummage. "It is as I remember it, to a cursory inspection at least. I do not know how to use these items, or recognize them from your description." 'Luck-based' presumably means they are probabilistic in some way.

Tanya hasn't heard of anyone using magic through items (two of them in this case!) separate from their orbs and it sounds like it would be very hard to do in combat. The main downside of standardized orbs is that you can't modify their spells; researchers probably do make one-off custom items sometimes, although these have no moving parts or other similarity to orb technology that she can see. Some industries probably do have dedicated apparatuses - not important.

...enough of this. The other man has left and this healer (researcher?) seems friendly, so there's no reason to put off her most pressing question.

Tanya creates an illusionary orb of the Earth with the continents and major nations' borders and capitals marked. It's three feet across, enough for quite a bit of detail although she doesn't remember enough geography to provide that detail for most of Africa and South America. "Could you please point out where we are?"

She looks over the globe carefully.

“This area looks vaguely like the Inner Sea?” She points to the Mediterranean Sea.

“But the overall shape of this continent is wrong for Avistan.” she point to Europe. “And I don’t think these match Garund or Casmaron either?” She points to Africa and Asia.

It would explain the differences in magic items and some of their miscommunication so far, but “- are you a human? I wasn’t aware any other planets had humans, but I suppose Elves look relatively similar and they came from Castrovel.”

On the one hand: multiple planets? Elves? ...Space travelling elves? Tanya being on another planet? No, something is definitely wrong with Tanya's mind (she suspects she knows what) and it is so much simpler to assume she is insane, or the woman in front of her is insane or lying, than that everyone in her the world is utterly wrong about fundamental physics.

On the other hand, Tanya is possibly the only one in the world with personal experience of another world beyond that. Instead of pseudoscientific babble like 'alternate dimensions' or 'timelines' would it not, in fact, be simpler to assume both worlds exist in the same universe? (But they appear to themselves to be in the same place in that universe -) In which case there would, indeed, be two worlds planets with humans on them. And as some scientist or other has remarked, two is not a natural number.

Did Tanya - do whatever she felt she had to do and then, in her contaminated state, prayed to that bastard who - sent her bodily to a different planet somehow? (With a chest wound -)

She knows too little. She will entertain this extremely provisionally and gather more information.

(From the outside, it is evident that she is shocked and then spends several seconds in subjectively-much-faster-than-that thought.)

"I am a human. I am not entirely sure what that statement means because of the language issue and because on... my planet... humans are the only intelligent species and no other species looks very similar so the question would never arise. I don't know what 'elves' are." (The word translates for some reason but she has to draw the line of remote plausibility somewhere.) "We know of other stars and planets, astronomically, but have no positive evidence for life on any of the other planets in our own system and our technology does not yet allow interplanetary let alone interstellar travel, does yours?"

This cheerful harvest costume festival certainly doesn't look like a spacefaring society but Tanya is now a tiny bit uncertain about this, which is a lot more uncertain than she'd like! 

“We know multiple other planets around our sun are inhabited.  A greater teleport is insufficient to travel to them, there are inconsistent legends of a 9th circle teleport that can.  Multiple plane shifts can get to them, but this is inconsistent, there is some complication with planar adjacency and dimensional structure that makes two plane shifts insufficient and you need to leverage multiple planes, and divine treaties limit the ability of non-Chaotic planes to deliberately enable this travel.  A Gate with the appropriate technique might be able to directly reach other planets?  Sending can only intermittently reach other planets.  Again with limits and inconsistencies related to planar structure.  A standard Wish wording should be able to transport people to anywhere in creation but that is too expensive for standard trade and communication.”

She takes a moment to think over the options she described.

“I’m not an expert on any of these topics, merely well read, a specialist in the relevant forms of magic might be able to tell you more.”

Also, Terendelev is skeptical, but in the event this woman is telling the truth it would be quite a shock to discover she is stranded and that humans exist on other planets.  She’ll hold off on trying to poke holes in this story.

“You are short for an adult human… I assumed you were fully grown based on your proficiency with magic?  You could be a halfling?  I’m not actually sure tongues wouldn’t mistakenly identify label you as human if your species was most similar to humans but shorter.”

"I am not quite fully grown, and also short for a human of my age." She is fourteen years old, but saying that tends to leave the wrong impression. This planet presumably has years of a different length anyway. "I don't - recognize most of the technical terms you used, except that some have apparent literal meanings which I am guessing it is better to ignore than to rely on. ...and my planet does not know of spells that could impart knowledge, such as of a language, but scientific magical research is less than a century old and has advanced rapidly in that time."

"Forgive me for being blunt, but if all this is true then linking another planet and its civilizations to those already communicating would be of paramount importance. You mentioned a spell too expensive for ordinary use, but even one or a few instances of transporting a single person could enable communication of knowledge of enormous value. I obviously do not know if I personally have any valuable knowledge or locally-useful skills to pay for transit," in fact she doesn't know if her entire planet does, "but trade between unequal partners is still beneficial regardless of comparative advantage." Does that still hold when the trade is very intermittent and in non-material goods only - the math does but the transaction costs could be too high - she shouldn't try to guess, she should see how the locals react.

Tanya really hopes she's not playing the part of a naive native exposing her world to colonization by an interplanetary civilization with superior technology, but - these people who healed a stranger probably aren't worse than the alternative which is the fucking commies, and they are her only ticket home. She hasn't yet thought through why she even wants a way back home where there's a murderous losing war waiting for her, she just knows she does. (Being interplanetary ambassador would be a terrific upgrade from her last posting but she is not in fact specialized in diplomacy other than the gunboat kind.)

"Your planet's magic must have advanced quickly, your 'computation orb' looks quite impressive from what I can tell."  She still hasn't figured it out but she can tell it is something very intricate and general purpose and somehow has internal moving parts relevant to it's magic?  It's not entirely unprecedent, armillary amulets have turning rings, but it is very unusual. 

"You should talk to the church of Abadar.  Finding and promoting beneficial trade opportunities is one of the primary interests of Abadar.  They would probably have both the resources to finance a Wish and a strong interest in enabling inter-world trade."  And they would have the resources to identify a fraud or madwoman long before it got that far.

That sounds wonderful except for the word 'church'! And Hulrun asked what gods she worshipped, and - she missed it at the time, but didn't the woman call Hulrun a prelate?

How do you end up with a highly religious interstellar civilization? Her world is also highly religious (perhaps not for much longer, if projections from her first world hold) but people in developed nations know to separate religion from business! It's not that she doesn't want churches to be devoted to trade, it's that she doesn't want traders to belong to churches! Tanya is a firm believed in progress and the conquest of ignorance by human rationality, so it's very distressing to see a more technologically advanced civilization be so culturally retarded!

...of course she'll talk to this church of Abadar, she knows how to deal with religious people. She was raised in a nun-run orphanage, for Christ's sake! But they did it literally for Christ's sake and not for the sake of themselves, Tanya, or society in general. They provided a valuable service to society and she is hardly about to castigate them for it, but it would have been so much better if everyone involved had done it for clear-headed rational reasons and not because they thought a sky bogeyman told them to do it. Tanya has met the sky bogeyman and he didn't care whether she had run an orphanage!

Deep breath. Bright fake smile.

"Thank you for your advice. If you will indulge me another moment, I have a request. If it wouldn't inconvenience you, could you show me or direct me to irrefutable evidence that I am on another planet? For example, if I could talk to an alien - someone of a clearly nonhuman species - that would likely resolve my remaining doubts much better than seeing novel magic however unprecedented." And better than knowledge of a language, which could be due to a spell they claim exists but also claim they didn't cast on her or could be related to her period of missing memories.

"There are plenty of nonhuman people just at this festival."

Sure enough, although most of the crowd is human, there are a few shorter people with pointed ears and colored hair, a few people with green or purple skin, and various other exotic traits.

"Although I suppose you can't rule out transmutation magic?"

Terendelev is assuming from the silent stilled haste effect (at least that is her best guess as to what it is) this woman has used that of course her civilization would have powerful transmutation magic.

"Actually, what is possible for your magic, maybe a common and affordable spell would be good enough evidence for you?  You actually already said something that made me think your divination magic must be very limited."

It would be convenient if a commonly taken for granted spell like prestidigitation would serve as firm evidence.  Speaking of which, Terendelev should be thinking of some tests and checks on this woman's claims.

Short people with colored hair? What is this, a rubber-forehead old TV show? Tanya knew short people with colored hair in her first life! She grew up (for the first time) in modern Tokyo and has proper respect for the truly alien!

"I... assumed those were costumes, or magical illusions? None of them look very different from humans... You said it was surprising that there would be humans on other planets; I find it even more surprising that there would be alien species so similar to humans and yet different! Unless they all share ancestry in the very remote past?"

As for magic, well. "For myself, I can produce light and heat, fly - a much more complex spell than simply pushing objects - detect and analyze magic, create audiovisual illusions which are obviously magical, protect myself from light, heat and kinetic impacts... Those are all general-purpose and commonly used." That is to say, her other spells are not general-purpose because their only purpose is war. 

"But there is an enormous and quickly-evolving field of industrial magical applications, much of it proprietary or outright secret. I am far from an expert in even what is published publicly, but there are likely hundreds of custom spells in use. I've read of spells being used to fix nitrogen, electroplate steel, refine various minerals, investigate underwater... The main constraint on magic use in the industry is the availability of mages," because the thrice-damned war has everyone digging down all the way to C-rank; "many things are possible but not economical because they cannot be scaled."

"The only things I'm certain haven't been invented are those I would have encountered for myself. If there were magic for sharing knowledge directly with people, even if it was limited to languages or a few other specific subjects - does this mean everyone here knows all languages, do people still need to learn things -"

Tanya is briefly rendered speechless by the prospect of magic replacing the entire institution of education.

"Your magic sounds like abjuration, evocation, illusion, and transmutation primarily.  Detecting and analyzing magic is usually divination.  Magic on this planet also includes conjuration, more varied divinations, enchantment, and necromancy.  I... don't actually know what most of the industrial magic you described is.  Would seeing a priest create water be enough to convince you the magic here is substantially different?  It is a orison for priests, so they can recast it at will.  Which actually brings me to another misunderstanding you seem to have but I'm not sure of the exact source of the confusion... higher circle casters are uncommon.  Share Languages is second circle, Tongues is third for arcane casters (fourth for divine casters).  All of the interplanetary travel magic I mentioned earlier is fifth circle or higher."

Terendelev is unsure if this woman's planet hasn't worked out caster circles yet (possible if they are all spontaneous casters... although that would somewhat imply no divine casters, which would be even stranger)?  Or if they don't have proper spells and instead rely on supernatural abilities that aren't quite spell like (which would explain the silent and still magic)?  Or maybe this woman already meant to imply that higher circle casting was uncommon when she mentioned the availability of mages?  And there is still the possibility this is a demonic plot of some kind... the only thing Terendelev can think of is as a pointless distraction but if you had a new unprecedented memory alteration spell you would think you could find a better use for it than a distraction even if you are a demon cultist.

"And I'm sorry, I think amid all the confusion I failed to introduce myself.  My name is Terendelev.  I am the protector and patron of this city."

...this is an important person! Someone rich and powerful enough they are the patron of an entire (small) city! (And interested in magical research?) Who is spending her valuable time talking to Tanya, not even telling her to make an appointment with her secretary, because she sees something in Tanya - perhaps an opportunity for investment or patronage? What incredible luck!

She gives a little bow. "It is an honor to meet you. I am Tanya von Degurechaff, a citizen of the Germanian Empire." Thank you for taking the time - no, she doesn't know the local forms of politeness; Terendelev may have given her name expecting Tanya to become more formal or more deferential, or alternatively for her to stop wasting Terendelev's time with lengthy digressions, but she'll have to clearly signal which.

"I'm afraid I don't know what those classifications mean; perhaps researchers from my planet would know. Magic can be used to condense or distill water or create it in a chemical reaction. I haven't heard of water or any matter being created directly out of magical energy, although I am not sure we've ever had a reason to try."

"We classify mages into four ranks according to their mana capacity and innate aptitude for using it, which predicts which magical implements and spells they are likely to be able to master. It is a relatively crude system, designed for tracking child mages into different educational or career paths; there are large variations of skill which emerge later in life and large returns to good education and long practice, although mana capacity is approximately fixed. And of course the orbs and their industrial equivalents keep being improved; the best mage is only as good as their tools. Better mages are exponentially rarer in the population, similarly to other heritable traits like height or intelligence."

Orisons? Priests? Do these people have some kind of religious strictures about using spells more than once or whenever you want to or something? Did their mythological god-figure create water like Jesus created fish and bread and now only priests are allowed to use that spell??? What the fuck, multispecies interstellar civilization? (Tanya is much better about keeping her confusion and revulsion off her face now that she knows she is talking to someone whose favor may be important.)

"I am pleased to meet you Tanya von Degurechaff."

A claim to a noble title slightly raises the odds this is some sort of scam, but it would be unlikely Tanya could retain a Lawful alignment running such scams (assuming Hulrun detected a Lawful alignment and that is why he asked for and was satisified by an oath).

"Does 'mana'* capacity not grow with high intensity, high stakes usage?  And you are saying it can start out higher?  Even sorcerers, with innate magic that develops in childhood, still need those conditions to grow past first circle.  For spellcasters of most species, in the best case the ordinary mundane challenges of life are enough to get to second circle over several decades but not any higher.  Or are you saying you can identify people with the potential to grow more easily as early as childhood?  The rate of high circle spellcasters does drop off exponentially, but the common sense explanation is that many die using their magic in high stakes situations, as opposed to an exponential curve in underlying innate potential."

It is a common observation that adventurers don't all grow at the same rate, for a lucky few a single adventure can push them half a circle higher, for most it is slower, and some reach their limit for no sure reason.  Techniques for identifying an underlying factor to this in advance would be extremely valuable, even if high potential casters still needed to adventure to grow stronger.  Of course, most of this is academic for Terendelev, her best bet to grow stronger is to simply live longer.

*Terendelev can recognize the word as an academic term for generic pluripotent magical energy, but it isn't common terminology as typical wizardry only interacts with generic magical energy in a few ways that are actually useful.

"I think mana capacity grows in during early childhood... I'm sure someone must know this but I personally don't; I was tested at age eight and it typically doesn't grow by more than a quarter after that, unless the early growth is stunted by poor health or diet. Skill is the real differentiator; I am a very good mage but my mana capacity is merely average. And skill can be predicted somewhat, on a population level, but there will certainly be individual exceptions to predictions made in childhood."

"It is certainly true that skill best develops and best proves itself in high-stake situations, and many mages do regrettably die, but that is as far as I know a general property of human learning, not one specific to magic."

"...My apologies, I just realized that age in years of my planet means nothing to you. Hmm... Men normally stop growing at age eighteen, and women at fifteen. Puberty starts between twelve and fourteen, younger for women, later when people are malnourished. Most people live to be sixty, many to seventy or eighty but most are infirm, very few past ninety." Here is an illusion clock, her orb can't tell her the date but it works as a precision watch while she's using it so these are accurate seconds. "There are approximately thirty-one and a half million of these divisions of time in an Earth year," she says.

Terendelev takes a moment to do some mental math.  She counts off the how many time units are in a round, then works that out to a day, then a year.

“I think your years are only a few days longer than ours?  And those ages sound right for humans.”

“It’s not just magic that scales with the right kind of experience (but magic is notable for effectively scaling close to quadratically).  Toughness scales linearly, both in how much it takes to hurt someone and how much it takes to heal them.  Ability to resist magic also scales linearly, but not so steeply as to dramatically outweigh underlying aptitude or good training.”

Is this somehow not true on Tanya’s planet?  Terendelev takes a moment to try to think of fundamental basic context to provide, then remembers something very obvious.

“Actually, assuming your story is true-“ she didn’t mean to word it like that but the urgency makes her push past it.

“-the most urgent thing for you to know is that this town, Kenabres, is on the border of a vast extraplanar tear to the Abyss and is regularly under assault by demons and mortal collaborators.  Thanks to the Wardstone and my presence here they usually limit themselves to subversion and sabotage.  I had assumed the people that brought you in were simply undisciplined adventurers and that’s why they failed to make a report, but Hulrun was concerned you might have been used as a distraction for infiltrators.  …Based on what you’ve said of your magic so far, the most out of context magic demons have would be enchantments.  In addition to that, they have a wide range of innate magic, high innate durability and resistances, technically nonmagical abilities like poison, and of course general aptitude for combat.”

Tanya understands less than half of that but the part that she does understand very clearly is: alert, this is a hot war border, forget magical research prepare for action watch for infiltrators!

Tracking all magical signatures within several miles and responding in a split second is subconscious by now, there's a lot of magic and she doesn't recognize any of it and unfamiliar means dangerous, she's not hiding so she almost takes off before she stops herself -

"How can I recognize demons? How can I recognize and counter 'enchantment' spells, what effects do they have? What weapons would demons likely use -" what is a generic categorization - "short or long range, slow or fast or instantaneous delivery, kinetic, explosive, light or heat? Can they fly, how fast and how high, do they have tracking weapons - am I working off a completely wrong threat model because of the technological difference -"

She doesn't question the word 'demons', she's heard plenty worse epithets for one's enemies.

She had started to reorient around tracking Tanya as a magically gifted civilian as opposed to an adventurer, but it sounds like she has some sort of military training?  Terendelev will answer her questions seriously.  She hushes her voice as much as she can, she doesn't want to alarm festival goers, although this concern isn't enough to stop her.

"Their weaponry is like typical mortal weaponry?  Swords, spears, glaives, and scythes for melee combat, bows and crossbows for ranged.  Demon weapons tend to be magical more often than mortal weaponry when they do have weapons, but most demons rely on innate magic or natural weaponry.  Claws, teeth, and horns for basically all types of demons.  Their innate magic is pretty varied.  Of some of the more common types...  Brimoraks can use fireball once in a combat encounter and breathe fire at will.  Babau use spears, have slimy acidic skin, and can Dispel Magic at will.  Succubi can shapeshift and have a range of mind control from outright completely puppeting people with Dominate Person to more frequently creating the convincing persistent belief that they are a friend or ally with Charm Person.  Dretches can create stinking clouds.  Many demons can teleport, basically at will.  All of them are resistant to common weaponry that isn't made of cold iron.  All of them have spell resistance that can make spells fail at some odds if not cast by a strong enough caster.  Actually your abilities may be less like discrete spells but I wouldn't bet on it."

"Many demons are approximately humanoid but much further from humans than anyone you can see here.  But illusions and shapeshifting are both possible. Prelate Hulrun has the ability to detect Chaos and Evil at will, and both together are a strong indicator of a demon or demon cultist, both a lack of these isn't enough, there are spells to conceal alignment."

And there isn't a way to break this gently.

"One thing that is theoretically possible with strong enough enchantments is erasing memory, although I don't know of any particular spell that would hold up to a heal and enough attempts at dispelling it."  She'll see how Tanya takes the obvious conclusion.  Making someone delusional enough to think they are from another world would actually be easier, but Terendelev hold off on explaining that far.

"I think you don't actually need to be alert against being attacked on the streets here, like I already said, Kenabres is secure enough they limit themselves to subversion and sabotage."

He didn't actually want to be the one to bait Terendelev's attention, but that is way too good of a dramatic opportunity he overhears!

He breaks the illusion on himself, impales a festival goer on one of his claws, and hurls them bodily at the child talking to Terendelev!

He's actively scrying the city in general and Terendelev in particular, so he sees that the attack has begun.  He begins his speech while he waits for Terendelev to be in the middle of shapeshifting back into her draconic form (she always changes back into a dragon if she has a moment to spare, and against himself it will just make her an easier target).  His voice can be heard across the entire city.

"Witness me, Iomedae!  Witness how my swarm devours your followers!"

Across the city, demons break illusions to attack the people around them.

It wouldn't occur to her that Deskari would come to the material plane in the first place, and indeed she begins to turn back into a dragon.

Tanya is possibly the best aerial mage in the world.

She is far from being the strongest or toughest. She uses the same orb as the rest of her men and so the exact same spells. There are veterans who've served longer than she has, who had twice her flight hours when she assembled the 203rd Aerial Mage Battalion and who have fought by her side in every engagement since. Her forty-eight subordinates are all Named aces in their own right, their mana signatures stored in all orbs used by Eurasian armies to warn of their presence on the battlefield. 

She's still the one who takes on the toughest enemies and the hardest challenges and she gets them home at the end of the day. The enemy have learned to respect the mana signatures of the 203rd, but they flee from that of the Devil of the Rhine.

A aerial mage lives and dies by their skill. The time it takes to notice a threat and react to it, the right split-second decisions made, tracking hundreds of signatures across the sky, dancing through rising AA fire and falling artillery and optical sniping spells that must be dodged before they are fired, using many spells at once with precision and without waste. 

She is not where the body was thrown, and the enemy has a hole blown through where the heart would be in a human.

(Demons have energy resistance and spell resistance and other such nonsense. Tanya was shooting to kill a mage with a barrier. It comes out about the same.)

Later she may regret her choice: fighting when she could have run, facing unfamiliar enemies with no support, putting herself and perhaps Germania or all of Earth on one side of a war she knows nothing about. Unfortunately, Tanya's incredible reflexes were not learned in situations where she or anyone else was neutral. These people are not enemies, therefore they are friends; that mage attacked, therefore he is an enemy; Tanya reacts before she can think.

Should she evacuate Terendelev - no, she's casting an unfamiliar illusion - Tanya rises on an unpredictable flight path, masked by an illusion and flanked by two others flying off in different directions - can she tell the partisans enemy reliably, shooting from above she doesn't need to worry about hitting targets behind them and she can get well over one per second but only if there's no aerial magical signatures -

He idly notes a spellcaster with a flight speed far faster than normal and a quickened illusion (he will remember her if he has time for a tertiary target), but the majority of his attention is on Terendelev.  Once he sees she is in the middle of returning to her normal form…

Time Stop

A Gate (from a carefully hoarded supply of scrolls) to the border of Kenabres, far enough from the Wardstone that it won’t interfere (just in case it’s still working that well).

An immense leap at extreme speeds so he has momentum even if the Wardstone ends his Time Stop-

-And his Time Stop has ended but he’s on top of Terendelev before she has time for a spell.  One smooth motion to pin and trip her and another to land a single but decisive blow with his scythe- 

From a mortal perspective (that has the reflexes to observe Deskari in the first place) it will have seemed he simply appeared midair near the apogee of an impossible leap.

Gigantic illusion (?) mana construct (?), impossibly strong mana signature, ballistic trajectory - it's moving Terendelev's similar (?) construct, they're not illusions, and it's hostile - the obvious reason to make huge non-illusionary magical constructs (?) is to use them to kill people, priority target -

Anything she can do with enchanted bullets on that scale will catch friendlies; she starts charging a big optical bombardment. This will make her a shining beacon to every mage and sensor on the battlefield and she'll have several seconds (times four under mental acceleration) to second-guess herself, but at least she can pay proper attention to the battlefield while zigzagging in the air.

(If only she was familiar with the local magic and her orb was built to analyze it she might have been able to find the mage casting that and attack them - where is Terendelev, is she still inside the space occupied by her construct -)

The magical signature of Terendelev's construct actually seems exactly like that of Terendelev herself!  The neck of the construct is exposed and vulnerable, and indeed the demonic construct is winding up for a decapitating blow while Terendelev's construct struggles as if its life depended on it!

Even as he swings his scythe, Deskari retains excellent situational awareness.  In between his innate True Seeing (which is superior in range to the mortal spell) and his compound eyes he's aware of a spellcaster casting a powerful spell.  But, compared to his goal of slaying Terendelev and unseating the Wardstone, whatever spell she is casting isn't worth more than a half a moment's consideration to affirm all the many reasons this spellcaster cannot be a threat to him.  For one, this spellcaster already flew up and cast an invisibility and mirror image less than a round ago, even Quicken metamagic hits steep limits on how many spells can be cast within a round.  For another, anyone short of a very specialized archmage has no chance of penetrating Deskari's spell resistance.  There are some spells that, by virtue of thoroughly separating the creation of a mundane nonmagical phenomena from the actual offensive effect, can go through spell resistance, but they are few and far between and tend to be simple physical phenomena such as acid that he can ignore and regenerate from a with a few rounds.  But all the real threats, the sort of spells that could end him in a round if by some inconceivable chance they overcame his will or fortitude (such as Dominate Monster, Trap the Soul, or Phantasmal Killer), would be blocked by his spell resistance.

She has no real way of judging how much power to apply here so she charges up to the point where even an optical spell is more likely than not to injure bystanders, which is to say about three seconds sidereal.

When using optical spells against human targets a broad beam is best, converting energy into heat instead of punching through. Against mages, the power needed to overcome their barrier is both greater and much more varied than the power required to kill them afterwards. Unable to precisely calibrate the attack, the result is often more of a bloody explosion than a neat charred hole. 

This target is probably not a body made up of 70% water which could explode horribly if turned into steam. The pavement beneath it can probably absorb a lot of heat before it melts, and even then it will stay a nice molten puddle or sink into the ground instead of e.g. explosively fling pavement stones around because there was a water pipe under them. Tanya's calculations necessarily contain a wide margin of uncertainty.

Quintessence isn’t mortal flesh or actually composed of 70% water, but it behaves mostly like mortal flesh save for far more durability (which is still vastly insufficient to withstand the intense light) and a substantial chunk of Deskari’s chest vaporizes in an immense explosion.

Throughout the plaza, glass shatters and people without the toughness of veteran adventurers die to the concussive energy.

His first awareness that something has gone wrong is instinctually twisting his entire body to mitigate the damage he takes from an explosion.  Even amid the extreme pain and disorientation he realizes that the explosion came from his own flesh vaporizing under extreme heat, heat intense enough that his energy resistance is barely a footnote.  He must have miscalculated the odds of opposed divine intervention.  It didn’t kill him, but he’s not sure he could survive a second attack of that strength, and a third would surely kill him.  

“IOMEDAE!”

Assuming that was Iomedae and he doesn’t die… the expenditure of Iomedae’s intervention might actually be in his favor.  If he does die, even his nominal allies like Baphomet or Pazuzu will leverage his year of vulnerability to make marginal gains on his domain, and other demon lords like Socothbenoth will exploit his weakness even further.

The explosion threw off his swing and instead of a decapitated Terendelev there is a great crack in the earth.  …He can work with that to achieve at least one of his goals.  With a single twist of his scythe the crack expands into a rift which reaches towards the Wardstone to drop it into the caverns beneath the city (that wasn’t the planned location for it, but it’s good enough, it is Baphomet’s minion's job now) and closer to himself a Gate to the Abyss begins to open.  He’s painfully aware the first attack must have been prepared in under half a round and that it will take close to half a round for the Gate to open wide enough for him to crawl through and escape.

She is thrown back by the explosion and is seriously hurt, but it’s far better than dying!  Praise the Inheritor!  This is why demon lords are normally sensible enough not to enter the material plane in person!

She doesn’t have that many sixth circle slots to spare but she needs to be fully recovered quickly.  Heal

It is perhaps lucky for all involved that Tanya does not know her intervention is causing the locals to praise god.

Fire effective, target retreating. A bigger shot would take it out but would take too long to charge up and cause even more collateral damage. However, the target's barrier or its equivalent should now be down - she can't make sense of these signatures but if most of her shot hadn't been absorbed by some kind of shields, the result would have been much more impressive - so she can use enchanted rounds and land them on-target.

The advantage of enchanted rounds, besides their versatility, is that they can be fired as quickly as the gun cycles; the bullets and the orbs are both optimized to apply the standard enchantments very quickly. The standard-issue service firearm for aerial mages is a semi-automatic rifle; ace mages can enchant bullets as quickly as they can pull the trigger, that is, several times per second.

Tanya's preferred weapon is a SIG MKMS light submachine gun. It can fire fourteen rounds per second if you fully depress the trigger.

She snaps off a couple of AP rounds followed by a small explosive shot straight into the wound hole in the target, all in two-tenths of a second, to judge the effect.

His raw divine profane nature manages to deflect one of the armor piercing bullets, but another penetrates deeply, even with Deskari's sheer durability.  Its velocity remains even as Deskari's spell resistance negates its active enchantments.  The armor piercing round isn't Cold Iron or Good or innately Mythic, but it has enough kinetic energy to sting even so.  The explosive shot also connects, but it relies on magic activating after contact, and this magic is snuffed out, leaving an anemic explosion that doesn't even scratch Deskari.  Deskari would avoid flinching, but he wants to avoid letting his injured portions be damaged further, so a keen observer will be able to notice him shifting his body to protect the gaping wound in his chest and ready himself to try to dodge further projectiles.

Two tenths of a second is short enough that he's still not through the Gate yet.  He can mentally direct some swarms at where he thinks the latest attacks (extremely expensively enchanted sling bullets, slung at the rate of a hasted veteran adventurer?) came from.  A sling is an odd choice of weapon for a conventional spellcaster, perhaps she is some sling analog to a sword magus?  She better hope she can sling down swarms, haha!

It is deeply unfair that the locals can negate her magic while she can't make head nor tails of what's going on! At this rate the target will escape into the ?magical hole? and Tanya will be blamed for killing bystanders! She needs that thing to stay here and stand trial for - destroying that fortress, there must have been people inside, that is definitely a hostile and a legitimate target, but her bullets didn't do enough damage and the optical spell did but it wasn't quick enough -

Its ?head? is pretty large but its legs are very thin, can she cut through them with optical spells?

She can cut off two legs before it gets through the “hole”!  The demonic construct is somehow relatively unimpaired by the loss of legs.  (Probably some type of magical flight?)  The “hole” is still open if she want to dive and give chase?

She may not have noticed them earlier, but apparently locusts started swarming with the demon attack?  The earlier explosion killed and scattered a lot of them in the plaza itself, but locust swarms further from the blast survived and are gathering again.  Some are flying up in the air (towards Tanya’s location… a few seconds ago).  Some are going towards the legs.

He can continue to direct and sense through his swarms even through the Gate, so he will risk leaving it open another few rounds.  He will have his locusts consume his lost limbs so they can’t be used as spell foci or components against him.

The follow-up attacks are confusing, why would Iomedae bother on a merely annoying and humiliating follow-up?  She’s far too miserly and conservative with her limited power to do that… perhaps he assumed wrongly and the intervention was actually Calistria or some Chaotic God?

Actually… he’s already regenerating from the first devastating blow, which is evidence against a direct divine smiting, which would cripple his regeneration.  Perhaps a less divine intervention, overcharging the first attack, the follow-ups of which took his legs?

He can dig the bullet out of himself to study later.

Why are Deskari’s swarms converging on his legs?  …To stop her from obtaining the legs by eating them!  She’ll blast the swarms with a cone of cold.  

She still has several confusions (why the incomplete follow up on smiting Deskari, how did the demons overcome the Wardstone, …how could she have let this happen?).  But she’ll focus on the fight right in front of her for the moment.

She doesn't understand what Terendelev's construct is doing or why but presumably she knows best and Tanya shouldn't interfere. The insects aren't a concern on her current trajectory, she's climbing much faster than they are and still accelerating. It's a clear day and she can snipe everyone just fine from a mile up.

She could chase the target, it's obviously a loss to let it get away, but that's not a serious option. She doesn't understand the magical hole (?) and doesn't know what's waiting on the other side and isn't about to abandon the safety of the skies to blindly chase down scalps into melee range of an enormous magical construct. Terendelev can deal with it.

...she'll stay where she can see the hole, though, and snipe through it if she gets the chance.

What else is going on around here that she should do something about, were there more terrorist attacks in the rest of the city, is her airspace still empty, visual double-check to back up the radar and magic sensors...

In the city below, combat rages… aside from occasional bits of fire and lightening and ice and glowing weapons (almost all of which are discernible as magic to Tanya’s senses) the combat is clearly low tech: swords and spears and glaives and crossbow bolts.  The demons seem to have more magic than the humans (and human like species).  There is no one seriously approaching her altitude; demons and an occasional human fly, but at speeds comparable to birds (at most) and usually only to gain minor tactical advantages in ground engagements.

Down in the plaza she flew up from, Terendelev’s construct has grabbed both of the demonic construct’s legs, and it is yelling instructions to survivors (although Tanya can’t hear them from her altitude).  A child (or maybe short human-like species) grabs a fragment of the construct’s legs and runs off with it.  The ‘hole’ the demonic construct disappeared into disappears, although there is a more mundane rift left that reaches into caves below the city.

Some demon (one that looks quite classical to earth mythology if Tanya manages to spot it: a small bipedal goat like creature) must have noticed her lower altitude decoy illusion, and manages to land a fireball on it.  The explosion of the fireball is a bit odd if you’re used to more physics-bound explosions, spreading from a point but cutting off sharply at 20 feet.

That explosive spell looks very useful! Her explosions are mostly too risky to use in a dogfight.

Pity she can't make the decoy look like she was taken out, it's intangible and can't smell of smoke and charred meat. She makes it look like its barrier blocked the fire.

As there don't seem to be any real threats, she'll fly down to hear what Terendelev's construct is saying (seriously, is she inside it or isn't she?) - not that she has to follow her instructions, but she'd really like to know whether she can still court her as a local patron or, alternatively, should leave until the situation calms down.

She could shoot all the other ground-bound targets but she'd like to be clearer on targeting parameters because right now she can only strictly promise 'anything that definitely doesn't look human, and also it turns out I can't see through local illusions'.

Terendelev is shouting orders.  "Everyone with injuries form up for a channel.  I want to take an initial group of our strongest fighters down to where the Wardstone fell within the next minute and anyone above a Cure Critical* ready to follow soon after!  Remember if you see anyone acting strangely, Prelate Hulrun and I will have Magic Circles Against Evil up soon!  Those of you able to fight but not above a Cure Critical* I want guarding civilians here, I will decide on where to direct you soon."

Her head turns to a runner to reply to some messenger more quietly than Tanya can hear.  "Have you figured out where the Prelate is yet?"

When Tanya is close enough, under 20 yards or so from Terendelev, her head snaps up as if she suddenly became aware of Tanya.  Her eyes narrow, then widen.

"Tanya?  Is that you?  Identify yourself!"

Terendelev lost track of Tanya in those first few confusing moments as the attack began, but she thinks Tanya flew away, and she recalls Tanya mentioning that she can do illusions as well as flight.

* A slang shorthand for adventurers of enough experience that a Cure Critical Wounds isn't enough to fully heal them from near death.  (With the common understanding that Wizards tend not to be as relatively tough but have magic to make up for it.)

Terendelev is clearly accustomed to command, taking control of chaotic situations and organizing emergency response, and she's used to being obeyed. The reference to civilians implies she's military and that's not the impression Tanya got earlier but if true it'll make things much easier in the immediate term.

(She expects anyone not critically wounded to guard civilians? What a touching dedication to her work duty and the citizens' welfare! Tanya applauds! But she'd rather not work for such a demanding boss.)

...Terendelev is absolutely right; whether or not she can see through the illusion making Tanya look like a piece of sky or sense her magic, not everyone else here can and they're not used to her signature anyway. Tanya is too used to working with her own men; to coordinate with foreign forces she needs to be much more explicit. She drops all the illusions she had running.

"It's me. I could keep shooting at targets of opportunity but I'm afraid of mistaking friend for foe."

That is a cautious attitude, but recalling Tanya’s background it is reasonable, she wouldn’t be able to differentiate tieflings from more humanoid demons.  (…even many Mendevians often confuse them but it is not as if they are actually trying to distinguish them.)

“If you can fly, your aid in securing the Wardstone would be greatly appreciated.  I will assign someone to call out friend and foe for you if you come with us.”

What else is most urgent to communicate quickly.

”Babaus appear emaciated (nearly skeletal), tend to be red in color, have slimy acidic skin, favor the use of spears in combat, and relevantly to you, can see invisibility.”

Did she already mention Babaus to Tanya?  She kind of defaulted to her ‘basic facts for foreign adventurers’ without thinking about how helpful it is.  What else does she need to know from Tanya, or Tanya need to know from her.

“The Wardstone normally inhibits demonic teleportation and cripples them if them come near it, obviously it isn’t working, and figuring out why is our top priority, even above securing the rest of the city.”

She mentally reviews the conversation.

“You said ‘keep shooting’?  Was the follow-up to the divine smiting you?”  Her voice shows some disbelief.

Actually, was Tanya the vector for a divine intervention?  (The attacks that took Deskari’s legs were like a more moderate version of the attacks that nearly slew him, perhaps it was a divinely empowered version?  Tanya didn’t actually get to explaining her planet’s deities.)

"I might be able to assist. Where are we flying?" Terendelev ('s construct (?)) has wings, are there more aerial flight-capable mages here? ...do they have airplanes?

"...I don't understand or don't have context on 'teleportation' or, uh, 'divine smiting'." Was that a metaphor serving as a compliment for her attack, or - are the locals often empowered by 'gods' and that's what Terendelev thinks she did, she had to tolerate that back home but she has no reason to keep doing it in a new world - "I did not pray or invoke any god or receive powers from such," she says firmly.

“The Wardstone fell into the chasm opened by Deskari’s scythe into the caves beneath the city.  If Deskari planned for this, we could be facing substantial opposition already, possibly an ambush.  But he was injured and fleeing so it’s likely this was an improvisation on his part so we will ‘only’ face hordes of demons converging on the location in the near future.  …which is why I want to establish a defense now.”

“Teleportation is instant transport across long distances.  It’s 5th circle for proper distance, 4th for tactical ranges, many demons can do so basically at will.”

She’ll focus on the more believable part now.

“If you in fact did cut off Deskari’s legs with whatever explosion or fire or searing light spell that was… you are a substantially important combatant, probably the strongest offense we have.  Even if you only have a few more it can be invaluable in slaying stronger demons.  I will cast a Magic Circle Against Evil on you and assign people to help protect and heal you.”

Terendelev is practiced at getting foreign adventurers to usefully contribute!

“Even if all you have is flying and you aren’t willing to risk yourself, just helping carry a few people down would help… we don’t have a lot of capacity for that.”

“I have a Feather Fall prepared today!”  A man with a glowing sword interjects with some bravado.

"Instant transportation at will?! At what range, is it line of sight, how long does it take to set up, can you detect it ahead of time or block it, can they fly or is high altitude safe -"

Tanya in any case wouldn't volunteer for an underground (!) assault on a possibly fortified position with zero intelligence but this is much worse than that! Even a mediocre mage could take her out if they got the drop on her! She'd fly away from the city this instant but intelligence can be vital.

All this exchanging information is taking valuable time but is necessary - she’s being an idiot.  She casts a Message.  (The verbal and somatic components noticeably sync up to the mana signature Tanya can sense, and in fact are more noticeable on a dragon).

“Sorry for not remembering to use this spell sooner.  It’s not secure enough for information that needs to be truly secret but at least will avoid revealing too much publicly, it’s about as hard to overhear as a whisper.  To answer your question, the 5th circle Teleport has a range of hundreds of miles but requires a clear detailed memory of your destination, the 4th circle dimension door has a range of over 700 feet and can be done blindly, but at substantial risk of injury.  The Wardstone network normally prevents demonic teleportation across it… but something is wrong with the Wardstone in this city, and if that causes problems for the network as a whole… the entire continent would be at risk to demons if the Wardstones outright fail somehow.  If you are willing to fly above the crack in the earth where the Wardstone fell and pick off demons from a distance- for however long your flight lasts with whatever spells you have left to spare, that alone will be quite valuable.  Some demons can fly but from what little I’ve seen clearly I think your flight is much faster.  I don’t have a lot of liquid monetary funds, but I have 7th circle casting and I will commit to paying what the Abadarans would evaluate as a fair price for your aid in this, up to the value of a quarter of my spells* for a year.  I can have someone on the ground also using this spell confirm targets for you.”

She’s taken Tanya’s focus as deliberately avoiding the question of providing aid.  Hopefully something in that speech will win over Tanya, whether altruistic concern for the world or selfish concern for the world or simple financial interest.  It’s potentially a lot of money Terendelev will owe but it would be worth it.

“I would like to know your decision in the next half minute.  This spell will allow you to reply by whisper as long as you stay within two hundred feet or so.”

And then she’s back to shouting orders and organizing people.

* technically her biggest potential income source isn't a spell but rather a spell like ability to Control Weather, which she has developed just in the past century and still isn't quite inexhaustible in using.

Very short range whisper spell? Doesn't sound very useful in combat, more like something people who spend a lot of time in meetings would want. (This makes Tania favorably inclined to Terendelev!)

She's offering to fairly pay for Tanya's services, so she definitely deserves a hearing. ...wait, weren't the 'Abadarans' a church?

Tanya doesn't want to actually put her life at risk, and with this many unknowns she'd be doing that. But if she trusts Terendelev's information...

Luckily, Tanya has more than thirty subjective seconds to consider her response. She can't keep up the mental speed-up for too long but it's been less than two minutes.

"I will provide air cover if you are sure enemies can't teleport to me and stab or shoot me before I can react." (Hopefully she's whispering correctly? Well, she doesn't think she's giving out any secrets on her end.) "That means the long-range teleport can't target me and the short-range can't be chained, or however that works. Of course I will stay illusioned too. I will still need a spotter to identify targets, unless you're willing to take responsibility for me doing my best using your descriptions. ...or if you want me to shoot anyone in an area whom you didn't preapprove, or can patch me into your secure comms."

"I can't guarantee that enemies won't be able to reach you at all.  We don't have ongoing communication spells, the spell I'm currently using is the best lower circle option for short range constant communication, Telepathic Bond is better but it's 5th circle and I don't have it, I'd be using a reserve scroll, but that is plausibly worth it if you have enough magic left-"

Even if the spell that cut off Deskari's legs was Tanya's, as Terendelev is guessing, it is plausible she's used up her higher circle spell slots (or whatever the analog is in Tanya's magic), so Terendelev doesn't want to use a bunch of scrolls on Tanya if her lower circle spells are less impactful.

"If you have secure long range communication magic, that would be valuable.  I keep running into confusions about your magic and I suspect you are capable of valuable contributions, whatever the limitations on your magic, but I want to seize the initiative on the Wardstone.  We should talk again soon.  If you come back within a 200 foot range of me, this spell will continue to work, for the next hour and a half.  You can also ask-"

Not Hulrun, the man has his strengths but a complicated sensitive conversation with a foreign and powerful spellcaster is not one of them.

"-Irabeth Tirabade is a half orc, that means green skin and teeth like small tusks on her lower jaw.  Her armor is golden color and has emblems of swords.  She leads the Eagle Watch and I think would be capable of figuring out where you can best contribute based on your abilities and the compensation you would ask."

"Any creature attacking people with horns and bites and claws is almost certainly a demon and an acceptable target and in the very unlikely event this is somehow not the case I will personally take responsibility."

In the plaza injured people have gathered within a 30 foot radius of a man who has some type of... heavily stylized computation orb?  Except the mana signature is wrong and he's brandishing it and doing some type of magic.  It doesn't feel like a proper spell to Tanya's senses, but it heals all the people within 30 feet in an instant.

Terendelev grabs two people in her front claws, another two crawl onto her back and she dives down the chasm that was opened up earlier.  The man with the glowing sword makes a running jump in time with another man at his side and they fall straight down into the chasm, but if Tanya is paying attention she can sense him cast a spell just before he lands.

If Tanya pays enough attention, she can pick up a very odd mana signature a ways down the chasm.

"I don't have secure long range communication magic," not to people who don't have a compatible orb or radio set. 

...and she's gone. Well, Tanya made a good first impression, Terendelev is definitely interested in funding or backing her, now she should sit back and let the locals sort out whatever is going on.

Instantaneous (??) area (??!) healing is a tremendous asset! If anyone not dead can be back fighting a few seconds later - aerial combat might be the least affected, most hits that penetrate barriers are kills or at least knockouts, but think of the effect on infantry! 

...or industry, research, dangerous occupations, ambulances and first responders... Tanya needs to stop thinking of the applications to war first. How about the applications to Tanya. Having instantaneous healing spell would be very much worth carrying another orb. ...she shouldn't get ahead of herself, though, it probably takes a long time and high aptitude to master or many more local mages would be carrying one.

Anyway she puts her decoys back and shoots up into the sky. Finding a single woman based on a vague description in an unfamiliar, chaotic city sounds impossible so she might as well take her time. As long as she's in the area, what can she see down the chasm Terendelev went into?

...actually. Wait a minute. Tanya is still processing the full implications of a spell of long range teleportation - not the ones to her personal safety or battlefield tactics but the implications for the world at large.

Civilization is created by people working together, organized into cities and states. 

States are defined above all by having borders, an inside and an outside, us and them. Armies, governments, roads, laws, some states have lost these for a time and recovered. But a state without borders is like a cell without a membrane: incapable of any organized action, undifferentiated from the chaotic soup, an oxymoron.

At war, borders are fortified against enemy armies; in peacetime, they filter and track foreigners coming in; they regulate trade and enforce taxes; they set apart the collective property of nations, just as real and important as the private property of citizens. The very idea of law is a mockery unless you can say: it applies here and not there; to these people, but not to them; here I will do as I will, there I will let you be.

You can't have borders if anyone can teleport past them for hundreds of kilometers at a go. You can't have armies defending land if the enemy can simply skip over them and appear in their rear! Even if only mages can do it, even if they can't take others with them, nowhere is safe, the very concept of safety may lose its meaning.

This city had an aptly-named 'wardstone' which made the teleportation spells not work, and when it broke the local authorities treated it as an existential emergency because it is. No city in this world can exist without blocking teleportation. It doesn't matter who these particular 'demon' terrorists are or whether the attackers here and now are a genuine threat; if word spreads that the wards of Kenabres have failed, every opportunist in the world will come in and they can all be here in hours if not minutes, the chaotic wastelands outside invading this small fortified island of civilization.

(Are there country-sized wards? Borders warded along their length - no, they would have to ward half a sphere - )

She wants to help these people. Not only because if they fail she'd have to traverse the wilds to find another fortified city and gain entrance to its safety. Because they're fighting to preserve civilization and that is a rational common interest Tanya has with them, for there to be more islands of safety and enlightenment and paying people for their labor in the world.

The chasm opens into a cave system which is… odd, to anyone remotely informed about mundane Earth cave ecology.  The most noticeable oddity is that the cave seems to have flora with many different strange plants, some of them even glowing, all without any sign of the cave having had a light source (prior to the chasm that is).  If Tanya is especially paying attention to details, she can pick up signs of unusual fauna as well: giant spider webs, the occasional animal tracks, leftover bones of animals, and leftover carapaces of insects far too large to breathe (according to conventional biology as understood by Earth).

Further down in the caves, at an angle Tanya can’t quite see visually, Terendelev’s mana signature is close to reaching a large mana signature (or maybe it’s multiple signatures, tightly packed on top of each other).  Actually, if Tanya focuses, she can tell it is definitely multiple mana signatures (too many to tell exactly) in synchrony.  The local magic is too different from what she’s used to for her to be sure, but it seems like some of the signatures have fallen out of sync and some signatures are outright disrupting the others.  

Terendelev has reached the multi-signature and has stopped.  Within another minute she is casting a few spells.

If Terendelev isn't in within line of sight then there's nothing more Tanya can do to help her. ...well, she could loiter and see if she or any of her men come running back out or are attacked from behind, and she'll keep glancing at the entrance while she can, but for now she wants to study the rest of the city.

(She has absolutely no expectations about the ecology of underground caves on the alien planet of an interstellar multi-species civilization! Maybe the multiple magic signatures teleported in and installed the glowing flora to decorate the place!)

How big is this city and what is outside its walls? How much fighting is visible, where is it concentrated, what do the combatants look like and what weapons do they use, can she see any spell-effects and start tying them to their magical signatures? Can she make any tactical sense of it or is all her hard-won knowledge entirely obsoleted by tactical teleportation? Is anyone using horns, teeth and claws? Are there many people answering the description of 'green woman with tusks in golden armor with sword heraldry'? (Are there still no other fliers?) 

She'll climb a mile up at least, dismiss her decoys (they'll only draw attention) while keeping herself illusioned in the colors of the sky, and take a good long couple of minutes to evaluate the situation.

Battle continues throughout the city.  The less humanoid “demons” do in fact use a lot of claws and biting to kill both civilians and soldiers!  Now that she is paying attention for teleporting, she can occasionally notice a demon disappear mid-combat when clearly outnumbered and cornered (although they are just as likely to go berserk attacking the larger group or pull out a small bit of magic).  Somewhat worryingly for the (apparent) side of human (and human-like) civilization, the demons occasionally win when attacking larger groups of humans.  On the upside, the demons are apparently much less able to coordinate than the humans.  The demons will ignore other demons in need of aid in favor of attacking lone humans or even just committing arson or other forms of property destruction.  Meanwhile the human combatants are trying to link up and form larger units.

Despite their overall lack of organization, some demons have crudely concentrated into bigger groups to attack a few targets, most notably a fortress-like building (a medieval fortress that is) and a large church-like building (which bears a large sword emblem instead of a cross like Christian churches).  She can see human defenders with similar sword heraldry (or is it a religious symbol, or badge of rank?) also converging on the “church” but they are having a hard time with all the demons.

The demon occasionally fly to retreat from humans or reposition, but they usually land soon after to engage in melee combat.  Only a few of them even bother properly swooping in with hit and run tactics as opposed to getting entangled in melee.  None of them are coming anywhere near Tanya’s altitude, they almost all stay exclusively within a few hundred feet of the ground (with a few exceptions that have gone a few hundred feet higher but still nowhere near Tanya’s altitude).  Their flight speeds are nowhere near Tanya’s.

The magic she can match to signatures continues to be sparse (more common for demons than humans) and unimpressive.  The offensive magic is barely a match for modern flamethrowers and hand grenades (and certainly not a match for modern artillery or mages).  The most common defensive magic among the humans is minor illusions and force-constructs shaped like simple plate armor.  The demons don’t seem to have any detectable defensive magic, but they can take far more damage than a mundane unprotected human can, so they must have something?  Actually some of the humans (and humanlike rubber-forehead aliens) can as well?

After a few minutes she can detect Terendelev starting to come back up out of the chasm.

It makes sense that the demons aren't well coordinated and don't bother helping each other. They're not an army, not even a barbarian horde, just a bunch of individual anarchists drawn from all corners of the earth by the prospect of violence and loot.

The ones caught clawing and biting get an immediate optical shot to the head. With complete air dominance Tanya holds their lives in her hands, and she will show them the power built by a technological civilization of people working together by strictly respecting the rules of engagement she was given. A few minutes means a few hundred targets down, if she can find that many.

When Terendelev comes back up (and she starts running out of targets) Tanya flies back down to report.

"Two hundred fifty-two enemies neutralized, eighty-one wounded or uncertain, all within engagement parameters," Tanya reports crisply once she's in whisper range. (And drops her illusion again.)

That is… nearly impossibly good news?  Does Tanya have a cantrip that is extremely long range and ignores spell resistance?  The thought that this is all a distraction occurs to Terendelev again… that many dead demons should be noticeable and difficult to fake.  Still, the chance that this is somehow real, could change everything.  She’ll try an approach that should address both.  She replies over the message.

“I think I should get you that spotter you asked for… I have an idea, follow me, we are going to the Cathedral of Saint Clydewell.  …I think I will definitely be paying you the full value I indicated earlier, possibly we should negotiate on me paying you more depending on how much magic you have left and what else you can do.”

She takes off.  The Wardstone is secure for now, it looks like the demons were not prepared for it to fall into the caverns, so this is worth a few minutes.  As for payment… she actually kind of dislikes grinding out income, but she dislikes harm to her city even more, and Tanya is apparently able to prevent a lot of it, so she will gladly commit to earning and paying up.

As she flies to the cathedral she pays attention, and sure enough, there are demon corpses along the way, slain by a searing light/explosion sort of spell.

What a promising start to a working relationship! Tanya follows, of course.

"I confess I am worried by the threat of teleporting enemies while I am close to the ground." She is rather more than worried, but Terendelev seems calm and un-murdered - not that Tanya understands her construct-spell, she won't ask about it in public, but most people in the city seem to be alive and it only takes one serial teleporting assassin! The anarchists might be deterred by powerful targets, but she saw some tactical teleportation earlier and doesn't understand why she didn't see more. "We don't have such a spell. How do you counter a coordinated teleport by a strike team, or even a lone actor with a powerful spell ready?" If Tanya could teleport on top of enemies, or out of the line of fire, it would change so much!

“Teleport requires a well studied location, so keeping internal locations of buildings secret is a cheap strategy.  There is a 5th circle arcane spell that can be made permanent that can block scrying.  There is a 6th circle divine spell that requires expensive components that can entirely block teleporting and is naturally permanent.  There is a 7th circle arcane spell that can redirect incoming or outgoing teleports that can be made permanent.  Making spells permanent is usually expensive.”

Terendelev tries to take the perspective of someone with very different magic…

“Maybe I didn’t explain circles clearly enough, or took too much for granted.  Assuming good mental aptitude (and appropriate education if they’re the type that requires it) casters start out at 1st circle.  As a very loose rule of thumb, casters deliberately trying to push to a higher circle die out at a rate of half per circle, with lower death rates for lower circles but higher for higher circles.  So Teleport is 5th circle, and, in expectation, someone committed to pushing to 5th circle would only have a 1 in 32 chance of surviving.  Except higher circles casters are even rarer, because people often chose to pursue less dangerous careers once they’ve reached a high enough circle they are satisfied with how much they can achieve or earn.  Higher circle magic opens up new ways of using magic: in addition to higher circle spells with no lower circle alternatives, higher circles enable basic magic item crafting for 2nd circles, magic armor and weapon crafting at 3rd circle, magic ring crafting at 4th.  And among most species very few people have magic to start with, in most countries, less than 1 in 100 learn wizardry, 2 or 3 in 100 inherit sorcery, 1 to 5 in 100 are chosen by the gods.  And Teleport is arcane only.  So small kingdoms might have only a single teleport capable caster, if that.”

She should clarify the really obvious.  

“I’m a dragon, we’re something of an exception to the rules: we are all innately magical, and we grow in caster circle merely with age, but I suspect the last century has pushed me a bit ahead for my age.  I’m 7th circle.”

She’ll let Tanya figure out the implications of her earlier offer of payment.  Tanya didn’t exactly jump at it as far as Terendelev could tell, but neither did she graciously refuse and enough money can smooth over a lot of things for humans (from cultures that use it).

“I was rounding up for simplicity and out of caution earlier, many more common lesser demons can’t teleport at will or even at all: Dretches can’t, Brimoraks can’t… Babau can but can’t fly so they’d have only a brief moment to attack as they fall out of the sky.”

If Tanya has any more immediate questions she needs to ask quickly, the city may be decently sized by medieval standards but it is small by modern standards and they are already at the Cathedral.  The demons attacking it earlier seem to have given up (possibly Tanya’s attacks broke their morale).

If at each 'circle' of ability half die and half of the survivors quit, then a population of a million with one percent 'wizard' mages has... a hundred thousand first circle or above wizards, twenty-five thousand second circle or above... ending with one ninth-circle wizard per million population? Plus several times that of two other kinds of mages each, Tanya isn't clear on the distinction yet but this comes out to one person in twenty being a mage of some kind - less the ones who die, but still at least three percent mages of some kind.

What an immense wealth of human resources! What glorious potential! Pity about the teleportation spells. Well, with so many mages (and a corresponding amount of researchers) anything that's possible must have been discovered long ago. The rational man doesn't blame reality for what is and isn't possible, he finds a way to turn it to his advantage.

There are anti-teleportation spells (in addition to the wardstones?), which was to be expected but is a very big relief nevertheless; buildings can be made secure and they are presumably going into one such.

Tanya isn't sure why the local training methods are so dangerous, surely someone who invented safer methods would have an enormous advantage - or did she misunderstand and Terendelev is talking about the military? Maybe the army keeps all the good spells to itself and uses a deadly training regime for some reason, like Dr Schugel - no, they'd be outcompeted by an army that didn't, even with no moral scruples you don't put a Schugel in charge of training recruits - she'll have to clarify later, it doesn't seem pressing.

Also, Terendelev is... a dragon? The word is familiar, of course, but it takes her a moment to place the concept; no modern states use dragons in their heraldry except the Akitsushiman colonies and their dragons don't look like that. The mysterious language-sense (which she still needs to investigate) is clear that it refers to the form of Terendelev's - magical construct, or whatever it is, except that she's saying she is a dragon which means -

"I thought this was some kind of magical construct. You're saying the... human-looking body was the construct and this is what your species, 'dragons' looks like?"

“Yes that is basically correct.  I wouldn’t characterize it as a construct, my other forms are a transmutation (polymorph) effect, technically not a discrete spell by the proper terminology.  This is my natural form, I can assume any humanoid or animal form, 3 times a day with no hard duration limit each time like a spell.  I have a preferred human form I favor for ease of recognition and interaction.”

She lands at the Cathedral.

Demon corpses litter the area from fighting and from Tanya’s intervention earlier.

A man in heavy plate armor with a sword emblem on it comes running up to Terendelev.

“Lady Terendelev, praise the Inheritor!  Select Nestrin was assassinated at the start of the attack, but we prevented the demons from recovering the body.  His body was dismembered, so as soon as we have the spells to repair it we’ll use our emergency scroll to raise him.  I haven’t heard word of Ser Irabeth or Prelate Hulrun or Select Eterrius.  I know Inquisitor Liotr was out of town.  Also, have you heard yet, there was some unusual miracle or Iomedae or possibly Sarenrae!  Demon smited in rapid sequence by a bright light from the Heavens!”

Aliens. Tanya repeats the thought several more times with growing emphasis. Aliens! Real ones, not rubber-forehead imitations!

(Aliens who patronize entire (mostly human?) cities, were impressed by Tanya's capabilities and are willing to offer her a handsome sum!)

She wishes she could correct the man but opsec is ingrained; she shouldn't give up the strategic advantage of having unknown powers and she mustn't draw attention as someone who killed hundreds of combatants who might seek revenge or stab her in her sleep. A lone person is a very fragile thing. Tanya isn't a citizen of a state or a member of an organization that will protect her on this planet, for all that she might shortly have disposable income.

"I will not share operationally relevant matters with people you didn't clear," she whispers in a neutral tone to Terendelev to make sure she doesn't worry Tanya will contradict her if she chooses to maintain this facade of godly miracles.

"I'll keep it on a strict need to know basis for now." She whispers back.

"Ser, I need a scroll of planar ally or lesser planar ally or if we are somehow missing them planar binding or lesser planar binding... and scrolls or casters of whatever other long duration buffs we have.  If anyone is alive and immediately available who is likely to be better than me at handling a Calling, get them, otherwise I'll handle it myself.  And..."  She should make absolutely sure not to lose her massive battle winning, potentially war winning advantage. "...all the best standard protective magical items not currently in use.  Even if we need to borrow from anyone currently dead.  You can put it all against my account -"  it might actually exceed her liquid assets (and considering the state of the city some of her not-so-liquid assets)  "I can promise you anything exceeding what I can immediately personally guarantee will be well spent even if it is lost and I somehow die this day... and on that note I need all of this handled as secretly as you can manage under the circumstances."

The man is surprised, but nods.  "As you command... but..."

A woman who followed him out casts a spell and spends about 20 seconds concentrating then says.  "She has a Magic Circle Against Evil up, no unusual auras."

The man nods to the woman.  "Follow her, and I'll have the scrolls in a minute and the items before you're done with the Calling."

She gestures for Tanya to follow, and changes back into a human to follow them inside the Cathedral.

She whispers again to Tanya. "My plan is to Call a small or tiny Angel or Archon to act as your spotter.  They would also be able to answer your questions to provide you more context, and have numerous useful magical abilities."

During all of this she is formulating a prayer to Iomedae.  Here is this opportunity, here is how I'm planning on using it, here is this way for you to contribute that is high leverage and should be low cost...

Gods can influence Planar Ally spells easily (and Planar Bindings to some extent).  It costs resources for the deity to specify an exact outsider (instead of the caster targeting an outsider through a variety of means including offerings used, other material components, secret Names, complex magical diagrams, minor rituals, and even more esoteric methods), but it is still much cheaper than a miracle and this is the sort of situation that would be well worth getting just the right outsider for.

It makes sense that some alien species would be very small compared to humans, just as Terendelev is very large. There must be a lot of opportunity for specialization in a multi-species civilization! 

'Calling' is a sensible name for a magical communication spell. Tanya hasn't seen any purely technological means of remote communication, but they're still using bows and arrows while in her world radio was developed much later than the rifle. She shouldn't carelessly draw conclusions about what technology does and doesn't exist here, magical or otherwise, or she'll be blindsided again like she almost was with the teleportation.

She's also planning to give this spotter their best protective gear; what an excellent boss! It's very unfortunate that Tanya can't use the local magical appliances that kill half the people trying to learn to use them.

Terendelev inspects the room she is lead to carefully.  It has a Mage's Private Sanctum, good.  She inspects the ritual layout.

"We'll need privacy, both for the Calling and at least a few minutes afterwards."

The room is decorated ornately with a complicated diagram.

The man is back in less than a minute.

"Scroll of Planar Ally it is our only one and we only didn't manage to use it because of the circumstance, of well... Scroll of Freedom of Movement, Scroll of Magic Circle Against Chaos - I assume you already have against Evil.  Wand of Heroism, only three charges left... we think?  Wand of Resist Energy, about half it's charges less... we lost count recently.  Scroll of Life Bubble, it's our only one... but I assume you meant everything.  I know you said long duration, but just in case, Death Ward.  I'll be back with items within 10 minutes of you completing the Calling."

He squints at Tanya, then looks back to Terendelev "Are you sure?"

She must read Evil then.  Mortals can read Evil for a lot of reasons, she thinks she has something of an understanding of Tanya, and she trusts Iomedae can choose the right outsider for this situation.

"Yes, I'm confident in her."  She dismisses the man.

"The Calling will take 10 minutes to cast, and then we will need a few minutes at least of negotiation.  I don't have this spell and this is our only scroll and an outsider's aid will be very valuable, so avoid interrupting me for anything short of lethal danger that you cannot handle to myself or to you."

"...acknowledged." She must be calling someone very important. The scroll is - a one-time invitation for contact, perhaps a one-time pad? But the man called them all 'scrolls' - not important, Terendelev will explain when it becomes relevant.

Ten minutes to send a message is - actually quite impressive, most people in Germania couldn't make a phone call to another continent much more quickly than that, and they must be using secured lines. Anyway, someone important or powerful being available to negotiate on ten minutes' notice is very impressive. She wonders if it's an important individual, an organization, perhaps this entire 'outsider' species - also not important!

Tanya now has ten minutes' worth of thinking to herself, which is more than she's had since she arrived on this planet, so she had better use them well.

To begin with: she did not, in fact, arrive on this planet less than half an hour ago. She was found outside this city, wounded and missing her memories for an indeterminate period of time. ...not more than a few months, or she'd have grown taller. (Probably.)

She spends a minute inspecting her orb's records. Nothing since the last thing she remembers, a flight to base after a routine patrol. The orb's recording ends abruptly just where her memory cuts out, and picks up where she powered it on again in front of Terendelev and Hulrun.

That shouldn't be possible. Even if she had suddenly desynced from the orb, hit by an unexpected ambush, the orb would have recorded powering down. So she, or someone with access to the orb, deleted those records. (Orbs have limited storage; aerial mages curate what they keep, their best battles and their most lasting memories, after making a copy back at base.) Someone who knew exactly when her mysterious memory loss started.

With trepidation, she powers down the orb so she can sync to the Type-95 nestled against her breast. It's as hard to use as ever but she doesn't need it to do much, not even flight, just to check the records -

Nothing. Or, at least, nothing she didn't expect. Tanya spins up the Type-97 orb and repowers her barrier while she considers.

Someone put the strange bracers on her, a magical appliance of the local kind that Terendelev recognized. Someone wounded her, badly, and left her near the city to be found or to die. Someone erased the records on her orb. Someone erased her memories. Someone brought her to this planet, a completely unprecedented event. And she mysteriously knows the local language.

Tanya hates it but she is a rational man and she does not shy from the truth: apart from the wound, that someone was most likely Tanya herself.

She had known the Empire was dying. She was even privy to General Zettour's terrible plans - not to save it but to make the emergency landing a softer one, as he put it. She kept fighting the doomed war, because she owed it to her commanders and her men, because - she had never seriously considered desertion, not consciously. It was never the kind of thing Tanya might do. Perhaps she flatters herself too much; the army is a highly optimized organization and it is quite good indeed at training its officers not to desert or rebel.

But Tanya is a rational creature. A creature, ultimately, of rational self-interest. She signed up to risk her life for a paycheck but she didn't sign up to a suicide pact. She had decided never to pray to Being X again, that she would rather die, but would she really do it if her subordinates were at stake? The Empire, the Heimat itself? So when the desperate battles came, as she had known they would, she might have used the Type-95 again. To scourge the red tide from the earth, to lead her men to safety. And then - after months of insanity, speaking in tongues and somehow casting an interstellar teleport, after doing who knows what both at home and on this planet - she was wounded outside Kenabres (how? was she not using an orb?) and this, finally, brought the mental corruption to a halt.

Last time the memory loss hadn't been this bad. Last time, she regained enough sanity to swear never to use it again. She couldn't discard or destroy it because it was precious military equipment. She might destroy it this very moment if she wasn't told not to interrupt Terendelev.

Would she even be welcome back home, if the local researchers succeeded in locating her planet?

She drags her mind back to the present. The most important, actionable thing is that there are likely people on this planet who know her, know what she can do while she remembers nothing of them. Who think she is insane, a completely different person from the real Tanya. Her foolish decisions while under the influence are likely to come back to bite her.

She'll need to negotiate pay and other conditions and she'll need to look for ways to gather intelligence on what she might have done without letting her new employers know, while they and, eventually, other factions also try to acquire that information. Terendelev (and Hulrun) aren't stupid; an accidental interplanetary teleportation, even if such a thing were possible, would not explain knowledge of the language or the local-style bracers or the chest wound or the missing memory.

She doesn't know nearly enough about them to come clean and ask their help. For all she knows, she committed terrible crimes during her time on this planet, or at least things opposed to their interests. And she can't even flee to another country or continent because this planet is full of teleporters and has no concept of 'local events' outside of warded zones.

Curse you, Being X.

Iomedae has heard Terendelev's prayer.  The fraction of her mind that caught the prayer nearly immediately associated it with other events happening in Kenabres (which already had quite a lot of her attention), which elevated it further in her attention.
She traced back through fragments of events she lacked context on previously.  A fragment of a sentiment from someone, they themselves were definitely not Good, and the sentiment wasn't quite Good but it was close enough for Iomedae to see. 

She wants to help these people. Not only because if they fail she'd have to traverse the wilds to find another fortified city and gain entrance to its safety. Because they're fighting to preserve civilization and that is a rational common interest Tanya has with them, for there to be more islands of safety and enlightenment and paying people for their labor in the world.

She exchanges information with Abadar and a few Good gods (Gruhastha caught some particularly informative bits of rational self interest) and focuses more of her cognition.  She's confident in her confirmation of Terendelev's assessment that this is a uniquely valuable opportunity.  She has 3 candidate outsiders prepped by the time Terendelev actually starts casting the spell.  One more set of sentiments from the person of interest comes through, although unclear.

even privy to - terrible plans - not to save it but to make the emergency landing a softer one -  kept fighting the doomed war, because she owed it -

that she would rather die, but would she really do it if her subordinates were at stake? The Empire - So when the desperate battles came, as she had known they would, she might -. To scourge the -

Aroden could have seen it, but she doesn't dwell excessively on this, it is another data point remembered for a variety of purposes (plans for continuing Axis relations, long terms plans to help another ascension, another note in how bad it would be if Asmodeus actually Lawfully cooperated with Lawful Evil mortals).  She decides on the Archon to send.

It's been over a century since he was last Called.  He has spent that time developing an unusually high context education and training on "high variance" scenarios.

He has been called to Golarion by a Lawful Good caster via scroll.  He has been called to Golarion without any memory locking modifications active (although he can still lock portions of his own mind well enough it would take a Enchantment and Divination specialized Archmage to crack it).  He has been called to Golarion with his full set of Golarion-allowable equipment.  He got a (very brief) vision from Iomedae of a sentiment of a mortal of extremely high interest.

He doesn't have further context than that, but those details are themselves quite a lot of context.  This is on the extreme end of scenarios he has trained for, but it is not outside his training.

He sweeps the room with his alignment detection (a slight improvement on normal spyglass archon abilities, and a slight additional cost, but worth it in the situations he is sent into), detecting Law, then Good, then Evil, then Chaos.

A tiny shadowy creature appears in the center of the circle.  It's almost like the eye naturally wants to look over it, except it is deliberately holding itself still and open in a way that makes it more visible.

Is the spyglass archon fully equipped?  Cloak of resistance, headband, ring, amulet.  That is extremely unusual to Terendelev's understanding of the rules outsiders operate on!  In between that and the spyglass archon's unusual size (perfectly sized to cling to Tanya's shoulder and whisper to her), it looks like Iomedae responded very clearly to her prayer.

"This is Tanya von Degurechaff.  She is from an entirely different planet and lacks context on Golarion, this world.  This city is on the border of the Worldwound and under attack by demons.  She has exceptionally powerful magic by Golarion standards, at least within particular areas... I haven't gotten a full description of her magic yet.  She has expressed concern about collateral damage and bystanders and ensuring she attacks appropriate targets.  So I would like your aid in acting to provide context for her, communicating her context back to me as she finds acceptable, helping her identify acceptable targets, and in general operating effectively to achieve her and my goals.  I am offering the standard payment as a donation to the local Church of Iomedae for hour-per-circle duration of your service with an option to extend to days-per-circle duration should your interactions together prove productive."

She speaks swiftly and precisely in Celestial, following the standard forms as best she can under the circumstances.

He looks to Tanya.

"You may call me Jon.  This was not my name as a mortal or how I am called outside of my duties, and this name will not serve as a truename for purposes of targeting calling spells.  Before I accept my summoner's offer, can you give me a brief summary of the rules of engagement you are currently operating under and are willing to operate under?"

His speech is in Tanya's native language, which at this point is Germanian.

He is still cycling through his alignment detection.  His initial guess (which he holds more carefully and lightly than a mortal typically would) from the brief vision of Iomedae is Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil of an Arodenite flavor.  He took a class on working with Lawful Evil Arodenites once... it was after learning that a former binder of his had been sent to Hell.

That was yet another language she mysteriously understands! Which disproves the (unlikely) hypothesis that Tanya had perfectly learned the local language during her months of lost memory. A local 'tongues' spell would explain this except neither she nor Terendelev can detect one and Terendelev said making a permanent hidden one was very expensive. Why would you want to hide a tongues spell - to avoid detection, obviously, Tanya would definitely not want to go around with a spell she couldn't mask or deactivate! (And she still doesn't understand how spells work without mages casting them.)

Here is another visibly-magical alien species! (This is presumably not what it really looks like.) Which, yes, teleported here, presumably the building's wards let Terendelev authorize someone to do that. 

"I was to neutralize any demons in the city but had an imperfect proxy for identifying them." She will avoid the prior events in the interests of being terse; Terendelev spoke the way one reports to an indirect superior. "I am willing to continue, in accordance with local law and as long as this does not seriously endanger my life; I am unfamiliar with local protective spells and the demons' capabilities."

He takes another moment for his alignment detection to finish reading for Evil.  Tanya is strongly Lawful Evil.  And, now that he is paying attention, he notices her clothes look like the the result of mass production.  He has a vague idea of the state of hundred of planets, up to date information on the general developments of over 27 different planets, and has more specific information about several high value planets (including Golarion).  Golarion only has the proper beginnings of industry in one region and rudimentary elements elsewhere.  Tanya is apparently from a high magic, industrialized planet, which is very unusual combination (for a lot of reasons).  He'll think about this more before he pushes.  As to the immediate questions.

To Tanya (still in her native language): "That is acceptable to me.  I am up to date on all the fundamentals and common forms of this planet's spellcasting and about the common forms of demons and I have a general knowledge about the situation at the worldwound."

To Terendelev (in Draconic): "I accept."

To Tanya again. "May I ride on your shoulder?  It would be convenient for staying close and I have some protective effects that operate in an area of effect constantly and some spells I can cast in an emergency.  May I cast a message spell on you?  This spell allows whispers to travel between us.  My message spell is a bit more potent than normal, think clearly of the words you wish to say and begin the slightest vocalization of it and you will be able to respond."  (The word for the message spell somehow literally translates as "message" and associates with the concept of the message spell from Terendelev Tanya has previously experienced).

She opens the door so that they will know they no longer need privacy.

"I have some long duration buffs to cast on you and Jon.  I believe Jon should be able to provide context on them as necessary."

She starts with the Wand of Resist Energy.

Ah, a hands-on examination for the prospective new employee with a senior manager literally riding on her shoulder! A really senior one who works on the interplanetary scale! Tanya will make sure to impress.

"Of course." Is she supposed to stop being military-terse and start being polite at this point? "Will you physically or magically hold on to me as I fly, or will we fly in tandem?" Pair flying in combat is an advanced skill; aerial mages train in pairs and can be significantly impaired if paired with a stranger; if she's expected to fly with an alien, he'd better be very good at it... Granted, the air was uncontested fifteen minutes ago, but that's not something you rely on. Allowing the senior manager to be injured or even seriously endangered on your interview-test-flight is an automatic disqualification!

He casts a message "I can hold tightly.  My flight speed is typical for this planet's magic, but I am unsure how it compares to your flight speed.  Also, would you be willing, to try speaking through the message by subvocalizing, and also try thinking several loud thoughts without subvocalizing, so I can confirm you can speak through it sufficiently quietly and also won't accidentally speak a thought you meant to keep private?  My message is slightly nonstandard."

"This is a deliberate message." One-hundred-twenty-seven is prime. When I first met Terendelev I thought she was a human. "Did that work?"

"...I normally accelerate at one to three gees - this planet's gravity is very close to mine - up to seven for very short durations in emergencies, with a rated safe flight ceiling of twelve thousand feet for aerial combat, lower when attacking ground targets if there are no airborne threats. I have a top horizontal speed around a thousand kilometers per hour in short bursts, or half that sustained." Wait, does she need to do unit conversion or does mysterious knowledge of a language take care of it?

“I heard ‘This is a deliberate message’ a pause and ‘Did that work?’”

They are still talking in Germanian.

“Your acceleration and top speed are vastly superior to everything on this planet.  Typical speeds and acceleration of flight at best resemble biological flight in mundane birds… if I’m operating this languages’s units right, the 8 hour duration 5th circle flight spell’s speed and my speed are a mere 14.6 kilometers per hour.  A faster demon or the best variant flight spells that are 3rd circle but only last minutes would be 1.5 to twice as fast as that, and an unusually fast demon might be three times that speed, 49.3 kilometers per hour.”

He had wanted to hold off on the ‘whatever knowledge of industrialization and the scientific method you have, however vague, might trigger a divine struggle and be worth the struggle’ conversation but they are kind of already edging close to it just talking gravity and precise units.  Also, he got sloppy getting distracted.

“I’m sorry I assumed that you would be familiar with spell circles, but, judging by flight speeds and my caller’s earlier comments, your magic is out of context enough I should check that assumption.”

"That worked," she confirms. "I imagine that with teleportation available, there was no reason to invent faster flight? It is becoming an increasingly important form of rapid transportation on my planet, and aerial dominance is a crucial element of military doctrine," although most armies only realized this in the past five years. "I suppose fliers can still be sniped from the ground; our anti-air fire's main downside is that it is unguided and inaccurate and has to rely on saturation..." Ah, she's digressing, she shouldn't waste his time.

"I was given to understand by Terendelev that circles are the local system for ranking spell complexity and the ability of individual mages to cast them. And that several percent of the population are mages, but the best known training methods to achieve higher circles" are a horrific and inexcusable waste of human resources, but she needs to be diplomatic "lead to many regrettable deaths in the course of determining the highest circle a given mage can use. Our own rating system focuses more on the ability to cast and manipulate multiple spells at once, but it is still true that most mages are of the lowest rank and can use only the simplest spells."

Is Terendelev done, should they start flying?

Terendeleve has taken exactly 3 seconds casting each spell, with a precise 3 second pause in between casting each spell, and has just finished.

"Jon, are you competent to cast a Death Ward from a scroll?  It would be best to save it since it only lasts minutes."

Terendelev notices Tanya's impatience.

"There are hopefully a number of very useful protective items that should be on their way shortly.  My worst case scenario right now looks like a succubus getting very lucky with a teleport on top of you followed by a dominate which manages to land, and the right protective items would greatly reduce the odds of this disaster."

To both of them he says (In Hallit this time, for some reason) "I can cast from scrolls.  My aura of Magic Circle Against Evil will help against potential dominates, and I am unusual, I have 3 uses of Suppress Charms and Compulsion, which will buy us 6 rounds each casting to kill the dominate caster or find another solution.”

(In Germanian, via message) "6 rounds are slightly more than half a minute.  Dominate person is a very thorough mind control magic possessed by succubi."  Wait why are the time units not regularized but the distance units are?  And more confirmation that Tanya's magic is totally different, he can tell that neither rounds nor minutes nor tens of minutes have any special association with spell durations.

(continuing his message) "Teleports take 3 seconds or so to cast, so with a fraction of your flight speed and preemptive evasive maneuvers, you can make it so that any teleport aimed at you will end up out of range for a dominate.  ...dominates only have a range of 75 feet without metamagic which it is unlikely for a succubus to have, and even with metamagic, I doubt they could do better than 300 feet."

He considers exactly what Tanya said... "I think there is a big enough context gap that actually we should spend at least a few more minutes discussing it at this location so that neither of us miss anything critical and we should wait for the items anyway."

Yes let's wait because what the fuck magic mind control!!! With teleports!!!

"We do not have magical mind control," she says somewhat faintly. "My barrier normally blocks incoming magic, although it's easy to overpower with mage blades so I should assume, pessimistically, that it won't stop mind control..." Tanya is having second thoughts about letting these people contact Earth!!

"...which parts of this conversation should we have over the message spell and which with Terendelev? How secure is this location and is 'message' a necessary part of the security solution or is it defense in depth?"

"It is part of a defense in depth."

He switches back to Hallit and addressed both of them "Are we in a Mage's Private Sanctum?"

"Yes." she says without hesitation.

Back to messages.

"Mage's Private Sanctum is categorically adequate against scrying.  My senses are quite good so I should have a decent chance at noticing anyone invisible, but yes, defense in depth, especially given the context... Terendelev has-" he has noticed alignments don't have the right connotations in the language via word association to himself "-reasons I think she is generally trustworthy, but given the context, which we should discuss more, I would strongly recommend caution about what information you share until you've had time to consider some of the implications.  I should clarify I don't have authority to issue you or Terendelev orders, but I think my recommendations should be highly weighted given some of the context I will explain if we take the time."

It's not that he thinks people being slaughtered by demons isn't an urgent high priority, it is that a few percent chance of someone with industrial and scientific knowledge and nearly unprecedented magic being dominated or something is even higher priority.

He pauses a moment, doing word associations to himself.

"Would you like me to start with one recent combat-related confusion that could be quite important very soon, or start with some very fundamental basics (I can assure these basics will quickly lead into relevant things to consider)?"

Tanya can sense anyone using magic, including illusions to become 'invisible'... she's not at all sure this still holds. Magic is supposed to be impossible to hide perfectly, but that's really a technological limitation and not a theoretical one. 

She has absolutely no idea how to defend herself from teleporting invisible mind-controlling enemies, and it sounds like Jon and Terendelev can't guarantee an absolute defense either. This shouldn't be surprising! Soldiers transferred to a new unit often need to be retrained; if officers could change armies mid-career they would need to spend months, at least, adjusting to new doctrines and available resources. And that's with the same technological base! All her hard-earned skills as an aerial mage and both a field and staff officer might be no better than garbage now! So long as she can follow instructions she remains a useful tool, but she must gain a correct understanding of her worth and abilities in order to receive fair compensation and to keep herself safe. 

"Correct intelligence is invaluable. I will be happy to discuss both subjects and much more if time permits, and will defer to you on where to begin." She considers. "I would also like a clarification of the organizational structure here at some point, but it is probably less urgent." Terendelev offered to pay her and also paid Jon (who is apparently a consultant), shouldn't they both be deferring to her? "Should I repeat everything over the message spell to you?" she asks Terendelev. Having to say everything twice is annoying but opsec always demands sacrifices.

She takes a moment to think.

"It is plausible there are some things which should be kept absolutely secret, or some things that should at least be need to know.  Given the things that have come up so far I would suspect at least need to know is plausible."

To both of them "I suspect there are quite a few things that need to be handled carefully.  For now I recommend Tanya initially keep most of what we discuss as secret possible.  Should by some mischance I die before I can fully brief Tanya and decide with her what to share with you, I strongly recommend you use another Planar Ally to get an advisor to her.  I believe Heaven would find it worth it to send someone to advise both of you.  Should by some mischance Tanya die, I can all but guarantee a Raise Dead would be well spent, I strongly expect a Resurrection would be worth it, more likely than not a True Resurrection.  I'm not sure about a Miracle should a True Resurrection not be sufficient (for several reasons), but it is at least worth a Commune to check."

And back to the message "I've been mentally doing word association with my True Speech, and I've noticed some indicators in this language that the question I ask next may be confusing, alarming, or even seem pointless and irrelevant.  I ask for your patience and attention in communicating through this.  What is your understanding of the state of divine activity and divine intervention on the planet you come from?  In simpler terms, what does your planet know about the Gods?"

Shit. She can't evade the question and she has no idea how they'll react to different possible answers. But in her state of (complete lack of) knowledge, she can't give them anything but the truth... Well, she could refuse to answer, but if Jon thinks this is important enough to delay rescuing civilians then he is no better than half the people back home probably wouldn't accept that. Still, she has to keep back anything that would make her stand out until she knows what she's walking into.

"Earth has, and has had over its history, dozens of widespread religions. In more ancient times, before the rise of large empires, there were probably as many local cults as there were distinct groups of people. Almost none of them agree with each other about the God or gods, their names, numbers, powers, desires, commandments... Most religions claim their gods performed or perform various miracles, usually on behalf of their believers. The modern consensus is that these are reports of the use of magic from before it was well understood, and some are presumably simple myths. It's impossible to prove or disprove any particular historical claim, but at the very least no scientifically accepted, publicly demonstrable divine interventions are known today." She smiles somewhat bitterly. "Of course proponents of many religions disagree with this claim."

"Relatedly, many religions claim their gods can and have resurrected the dead, but no such cases have been reliably documented in modern times." Hopefully that is clear enough that she won't have to challenge Jon's statement more directly.

She waits to see how they take this before continuing.

"I've heard of planets with very low rates of divine intervention... for a variety of reasons.  The claims mortals make can get very confused under those circumstances.  As an initial guess, I would guess some things you have heard so far on this planet have seemed confusing, misguided, or irrelevant given that context?"

He pauses a moment to try to sort out what knowledge he has of low intervention planets and what they are called by.  Wait... one of those planets is Earth?  Is that a coincidence of translation?  Rapidly growing in technology, some disturbing reports of Dark Tapestry activity... and very little and almost entirely not publicly known magic, which maybe fits what Tanya says if her magic was invented very very recently and he missed reading a report he should have?  He'll hold off and finish explaining his point.

"This planet is very high intervention.  Around 1 in 100 people (nearly 4 in 100 in some regions) are directly empowered by the Gods as spellcasters, the most common types are Clerics, Paladins, and Inquisitors."  (He uses the Hallit word, but Tanya can hear the translation).

"The Gods have differing interests, goals, and moral values, many times directly opposed, and most have agreed to limit their interventions according to a complex scheme putting a price on different interventions.  Directly empowering people, usually at just first circle, (but sometimes pushing them higher in circle at greatly increased cost) is one of the cheaper standard interventions.  The next cost up in interventions is acting through certain spells cast by the people they have empowered: Gods can reliably directly answer yes-or-no questions with a 5th circle spell called Commune, they can choose which outsider is called (such as myself) with the 4th circle lesser planar ally and 6th circle planar ally, they can unreliably intervene to indicate Weal or Woe via the 2nd circle spell Augury.  Giving visions or messages (unprompted by such spells) to mortals is more expensive, with an even higher cost if the mortal isn't already one of their empowered.  Certain information, such as advanced technological or magical information, is even more highly priced... for a variety of reasons I will explain.  Directly acting, such as smiting an enemy is an option for a God, but is very expensive, with a variety of circumstances and conditions that can modify the cost."

He thinks if there is anything he should say before he sees if see has any questions.  If she actually comes from that Earth...

"I think I should make this clear, some Gods are Evil, that is, they have one or more core values or goals directly opposed to the common Good and the flourishing of reasoning beings.  There are Good Gods that oppose them."

Another pause.

"I have more to say, but you may have fundamental questions just about what I've already said that I should address first?"

Terendelev looks a little anxious, but she already said her city is under attack by demons, and there are signs of higher divine intervention in this Calling, and they keep running into things like "Tanya didn't know about dominates" so she'll suppress her impatience and wait while the Archon explains whatever it is he is explaining.

Tanya takes a little while to digest this novel religion. It sounds... maybe a little like what she remembers of Chinese mythology from her first life, with an extremely complicated celestial bureaucracy? This is bad, she might be expected to memorize a Heaven and Hell of a truly Byzantine complexity like a student preparing for Confucian exams, but at least if she tells them about Being X they might be able to slot him into their conceptual divine hierarchy. And now she knows she shouldn't claim to believe in any kind of monotheism.

"Please forgive my questions if they inadvertently offend." People can be so touchy about their religion. "I expect I will make some wrong assumptions at first by pattern-matching to religions known on Earth. Would it be appropriate to understand this as a divine bureaucracy, with infighting or organizational politics causing some members to be at odds, and a supreme god above them all? Or perhaps as two mirroring and opposed organizations, celestial and infernal? Or should I think of the gods as more independent actors than that? I have heard Terendelev mention the names of several local churches; are these gods subordinates, allies, or in some other relationship? Which gods are you and Terendelev associated with, and in what way?" She doesn't know yet if 'worship' or 'follow' or some other term would be more appropriate.

"I am going to check on the progress of procuring the magic items."

"There is a God with a substantial first mover advantage, generally claimed to be the creator of this universe-" he really needs to explain his information sharing limitations so she'll understand why he responds the way he does "- who operates a sorting system of Lawful to Chaotic, and Good to Evil, with Neutral in-between, for a total of nine combinations of alignments within that system.  I would describe Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil, True Neutral, and Neutral Good as each having at least one 'organization', but I wouldn't exactly call all of them bureaucracies.  The organizations that make up Lawful Neutral are more like markets or distributed democracies, for example.  My organization, Heaven, is Lawful Good.  There was a period of some millennia were Heaven wasn't in-fighting per se, but badly organized enough some resource allocations were provably suboptimal with potential paths to optimization that were not carried out.  That changed 8 centuries ago with the ascension of Iomedae, who I now work for.  As a mortal, Iomedae successfully figured out several features about divine interventions and how to more optimally coordinate divine and mortal interactions around them.  As a God she was finally able to get Heaven to reorganize more efficiently and navigated a number of complicated treaties that were previously entangling Heaven's operations for no gain."

He is getting too detailed, especially for someone coming from a planet with exceedingly rare divine interventions!  Understandable details...

"Oh, and Iomedae lead a successful crusade against a 9th circle undead and his army which were attempting to conquer the world.  To briefly mention some of the more major Gods operating on this continent... Iomedae, Lawful Good, focused on victory over Evil and triage where it cannot be obtained currently mostly focused on containing the Worldwound and the seals on the 9th circle, relatively newer as a God and weaker as a result.  Erastil, Lawful Good, farming and community.   Torag, Lawful Good, honor and discipline.  Abadar, Lawful Neutral, focused on mutually beneficial trade and production of wealth.  Irori, Lawful Neutral, self discipline and self perfection.  Sarenrae, Neutral Good, redemption and opposition to the undead.  Shelyn, Neutral Good, redemption and art and beauty.  Desna, Chaotic Good, travel and dreams.  Cayden Cailean, Chaotic Good, bravery and heroism... and alcohol... in reasonable amounts.   Pharasma, commonly believed to be the creator of this universe, responsible for the sorting system and currently holding a plurality of power among the Gods, True Neutral.   Nethys, True Neutral, magic and explosions.  Gozreh, True Neutral, nature, storms, and sky.  Calistria, Chaotic Neutral, revenge and hedonism.  Gorum, Chaotic Neutral, war and battle.  Asmodeus, Lawful Evil, focused on slavery, treacherous contracts, and tyranny.  Infernal is the right word for him I think.  Urgathoa, Neutral Evil, undead, disease, gluttony, and hedonism.  Zon-Kuthon, Lawful Evil suffering and torture.  Norgerber, Neutral Evil, theft, secrecy, and murder.  Lamashtu, Chaotic Evil, monsters and insanity."

"Relevantly to the Worldwound are the Chaotic Evil demon lords Baphomet and Deskari who are directing hordes of demons from the Abyss to this planet.  They aren't as powerful as full Gods in many ways, but they also defect in some ways from the divine treaties limiting intervention, and are capable of expending much more of their power more directly."

"Relevantly for operating at the Worldwound, in most civilized societies, worship of Evil Gods and of non-Good Chaotic Gods is often banned (or at least proselytizing for them is prohibited) but Asmodeus has a common interest in not allowing demons to overrun the world and thus his proxy state contributes in keeping it contained.  Asmodeus, his church, and his proxy mortal state are not to be trusted in other matters, they make an art of finding the maximum level of treacherousness and deception that can still count as, and, more importantly, be detected as 'Lawful'.  Followers of Gorum and Calistria contribute to the Worldwound's defense also."

He should pause for her question, but there is one more point he wants to make, it will be so awkward if he doesn't.  "Sorry for one more comment before hearing more of your questions.  A common direction mortal religions trend in, especially in absence of divine intervention directing them otherwise, is believing that Good Gods want their unthinking obedience, absolute deference, and mindless worship.  I would find our interactions much easier and more pleasant if we could avoid that."  He takes a moment to think... "...although it might be more prudent to err in the direction of excess deference towards the divine around many mortals-"  he deliberately allows some annoyance and resignation into his voice  "-it is not officially endorsed theology, especially for Iomedae."

"I've got a Cloak of Resistance, one step up from the basic, a basic Headband of Wisdom, a weakest grade Ring of Protection, an Amulet of Natural Armor, and the weakest grade of Bracer's of Armor.  I also got a scroll of Mage Armor and a scroll of Identify, I should identify those bracer you had earlier Tanya."

(To both of them.)  "We should hold off on the Headband a moment, but it makes sense to get the rest on as Tanya and I continue to talk."

Tanya has a Grade A professional smile on her face and looks very attentive! Her orb is set to recording mode and she will be sure to study this enlightening explanation later! 

(Why the hell couldn't he answer the most basic questions about his and Terendelev's affiliations somewhere in all that! And he thinks this catechism is important enough to put off discussing tactics or stopping the ongoing attack outside? She can see Terendelev fidget! Truly, religion is a species-agnostic brain rot that affects even aliens! The only useful fact was that it's illegal to worship 'evil and chaotic' gods and any idiot could have guessed that!)

If Tanya tells these people about Being X they may believe her but they clearly aren't going to be rational about it. She seizes on the distraction gratefully. "What do these do, and the spells you cast earlier?" She gives Terendelev the mysterious bracers she took off earlier.

He has a feeling he did something subtly wrong… what is he missing…

He might have not accounted for mortals lacking eidetic or near eidetic memory.  …that was one of his contributing factors in screwing up his second attempt at a “technologically advanced spaceship crashes near the Pit of Gormuz” scenario.

He’ll apologize when he has the chance.

“The cloak grants resistance, improving will, fortitude, and reflexes (in dodging things, not in general).   The ring deflects attacks, not reliably, it depends on the exact angle.  The amulet makes your body harder to pierce or injure as it you had natural armor like scales.  The headband increases your wisdom, which improves your willpower, which among many other magical effects it help you resist, makes you harder to dominate.  Jon was probably concerned because it also increases your ability to introspection which can be disruptive the first time you experience it.  The bracers  of armor are a weaker version of mage armor, but the spell lasts an hour anyway, so I might as well use the scroll instead.  It creates magically weightless armor of force that doesn’t impede movements.”

”Give me a moment for the bracers …”

“I’m still only detecting the same thing I detected earlier, a minor luck effect to armor and to will, fortitude, and reflexes.  It’s an unusual effect, but it’s minor in strength, so probably not worth the unknown risk.  Given the sheer unusualness of everything going on, I’m not confident someone skilled enough with an exotic enough spell or technique couldn’t hide something.”

"I must be missing something obvious, but I don't know how to use the local kind of magical implement," Tanya points out. "And I don't think I can use anything at the same time as my orb."

"You... wear them?  They are all passive, they don't even require an activation word or gesture."

Does her orb use up all bodily slots simultaneously?  That would still be a small cost compared to whatever help it is giving her that allows her to fly constantly and slay hundreds of demons without worrying about using up her magic.

"The items are slotted, that is, tied to particularly body parts to wear them on... you can't wear two items on the same body part simultaneously, or more than one ring per hand, and get their benefit.  We could test it, normally items interfering on the same slot is completely harmless, it just means one or both items stop working.  Do you expect your orb to be different?"

"I'm afraid there appears to be some misunderstanding. I will describe my understanding; please tell me what the problem is."

"Magic isn't directly useful... for us, if you can use it directly then - never mind. Achieving a desired effect requires mathematical calculations, which need to be carried out every time because they depend on the environment, and which humans can't reliably carry out at the required speed. For example, flying requires calculating the force vector to apply to each part of the body while taking into account altitude, wind, gravity, existing speed and rotational momentum, the aerodynamics of your body and everything you're carrying and the partially-permeable magical defensive barrier... Humans can't keep track of so many variables."

"The computation orbs are so called because they physically perform the required calculations, leaving the mage a comparatively very simple task. They are built to support specific spells by calculating specific formulae, and it is possible to synchronize a mage's mind with an orb so that their sense data is instinctively transmitted to it and the result of the calculations instinctively applied to the spell being cast. They also contain mechanisms that greatly amplify the effects of magic used in certain spells, such as light and heat production, and - perform other functions." She'd be a hypocrite if she made this digression any longer.

"Orbs are miniaturized to be easily carried and reduce waste heat, and this restricts the number of formulae they can support so the specific combination is carefully chosen for each model. The best orbs allow running more spells at the same time, but the mage must be skilled enough to keep track of them all. Mages train to use specific orb models and specific spells; trying to use an unfamiliar one is - risky."

"The orb has to be near for me to use it - technically this means near my head, although I wear it on my chest - but it's not otherwise associated with a body part. It's possible to use two magical implements at once, but it's easier and more efficient to use an orb that has both spells."

Magic and Spellcraft are not his specialities, but this is all extremely fascinating, and his overall conclusion is that her magic is much more closely tied to physics… except now he’s wondering if everyone on Earth or Earth is going to die in the near future when someone invents a mass to energy formula.  It occurs to him Earth recently developing a style of magic that will lead to planet destroying mass-energy conversions is exactly the sort of the thing that might get that magic censored from the reports he remembers reading!  (He’s supposed to be prepped for callings requiring unusually high context with few limits on his knowledge, but few limits isn’t none.)

“That is interesting and I would love to have a conversation about the differences in our magic (which I can now assure you are very very different) sometime that isn’t a crisis.  The items are passive in a way that would make it nearly impossible for them to cause any disasters or even problems just from trying them on, and I can verify that they aren’t interfering and are working with a detect magic once you are wearing them.  So the only risk is from the orb, which I don’t actually understand your explanation to indicate any risk from?”

She talks quickly and is doing her best to hide her impatience, but the demons could have rallied in the nearly 20 minutes or so it had been since Tanya’s attacks scattered and demoralized them so she is in fact impatient.

"It's not a risk, it's an inability - wait. By 'passive', do you mean - you have solved mana fixation? These are self-powered, I don't need to operate them?" Tanya reminds herself they are a more magically advanced civilization. That shouldn't keep being such a surprise, Tanya's world might be as advanced in another century or two! 

"Then yes, I see no magical problem. I may need to get used to the improved reflexes since I use my own magic for that, let me try them on -" She will quickly and efficiently attach the items as directed.

(She appreciates Terendelev wanting to send her out more quickly! It is Terendelev's job to remind her contractor Jon of that fact! He was hired as a spotter and magical tactics analyst, not a theologian!)

"Mana fixation sounds like the process for getting undifferentiated pluripotent magic into stable forms?  Yes, I would describe that as the basis of almost all of our more usable magic, and these items feature 'mana fixed into spells' with basically no effort to operate."

Oh good, they are almost back to killing demons.  It is surprising that Tanya's civilization can utilize magic at all if they are stuck utilizing it as raw mana, but whatever tricks or techniques around that limit they've found have apparently paid massive dividends!

He continues to be worried about the potential for self destruction Tanya's civilization likely has!  Undifferentiated pluripotent magic (i.e. 'mana') is closer to how the Gods use magic when they aren't concerned about treaty limitations!

He's been mentally reviewing his conversation with Tanya so far in the spare moment he has while Terendelev and Tanya talk and has spotted a few more points of confusion he should clear up!  He needs to be concise though, how best to say them...

The bracers of armor create a simple plate of translucent, nearly transparent force covering her chest.  As indicated it does not impede her at all and feel weightless.  The ring has some subtle effect around her, barely discernable to her magical senses, even with direct contact with the ring making it easier.  Likewise for the cloak.  If she strains her senses, she can barely feel the mana fixed within them, not actively moving or changing, but complex spells with abstract 3 dimensional forms woven into the objects.

The headband, magically speaking, is effectively the same, but it opens up her mind noticeably...

Is that a local-style mental speedup spell - no it's definitely not just a speedup, it feels like - some things become clearer, some things are easier to notice and be sure of, the fears and uncertainties she can't act on become easier to set aside...

In other words, a moderate magical stimulant! Tanya decides she likes it. It makes her long for a good cup of coffee to complete her pre-combat preparations.

...it also suddenly makes her acutely, achingly aware of why exactly she wants that coffee and what associations she has built up around it. But at the same time it gives her the willpower to set that aside, so - she'll keep it for combat.

As a responsible chronic user of stimulants, she must ask: "does the mental effect change over time, is it addictive and does it have withdrawal symptoms or any other downsides?"

He can address this one.  He speaks to both of them.  "Short answer, no, especially as that is the weakest type of wisdom headband-"  He turns to Terendelev and she nods yes. "-and especially if you don't wear it for longer than a day."

"Slightly longer answer, for stronger headbands, people develop some dependency on them, not so much in an addicted way, but in a really enjoying the benefits kind of way, the exact nature of that enjoyment depending on the type of headband.  I will hold off with more explanation unless you specifically need more for now?"

"It's not urgent." She looks a question at Terendelev; what's left to do before she deploys?

"I've done everything I can to prepare you..."

She thinks of one thing she'd really rather skip but Tanya hasn't said she didn't want compensation at any point so she might as well set things out as quickly as she can.

"...we didn't actually discuss increased compensation.  I think you have longer durations you can use your magic for than I was realizing earlier, so I'll double the maximum bound on what I was promising earlier?   So, with my 7th circle casting and I will commit to paying what the Abadarans would evaluate as a fair price for your aid, with a minimum of the value of a quarter of my spells for a year, and the maximum of either half the value of my spells for a year or a quarter of the value of my spell for two years, your choice to be decided when you have time.  (I note the difference because selling more of my spells on any given day might get a slightly lower price as higher bid are fulfilled)."

In one sense, that is a huge amount of money.  In another, at the rate of hundreds of demons dead in 10 minutes, even if Tanya only has another 20 minutes in her, it is outright cheap.  She isn't sure if she should feel bad for under or over paying!

That is a lot of money, but makes sense if Tanya's offensive magic matches her flight.  Being more closely tied to physics, it might even ignore spell resistance!  He mentally tallies another little bit of evidence towards "Evil Abadaran".

Well, it's presumably not a lot to someone who 'patronizes' a whole city, her personal magic can't be a very big portion of her income even if it's the most fungible part, but Tanya imagines it's meant to impress on an absolute scale: three months' salary of a powerful local mage offered to a powerful foreign one for their difference in their specializations and the time-value of her help. Ah, civilization! Tanya basks in the appreciation of her talents and the high opening offers. She'll accept it happily; the true negotiations will come when Jon has attested to her work and they're talking about more than a day's light effort.

"Gladly. Jon, are you ready?" They'll need to figure out on the job how to best work together; even if he can spot targets as quickly as she can shoot them, there's still the matter of efficient communication.

He would like to apologize, but delaying to make an apology about delaying them would kind of defeat the point.

He flies up and cling to her shoulder, firmly but not in a way that impedes her motion.  He addresses just her.

“The same way I fly, I should be able to minimize how much interfere with your aerodynamic profile.  I can accurately discern identifying features of human sized target from 2500 feet, which is just outside the range of the longest range spells by the most powerful casters using Enlarge metamagic, and demons aren’t likely to have metamagic anyway.  Although I cannot discern that accurately if you are doing preemptive evasive maneuvers at full speed… 100 kilometers per hour should be more than adequate to avoid being in range of teleporters trying to teleport on top of you.  I can continue using a message spell, although-.”

To both of them “- do you have a telepathic bond you can spare?  And do you have any objection to my covering both of us with Nondetection and Undetectable Alignment?” 

“Right, I forgot…”

She pulls out a scroll from a pouch on her person.

“It’s the only scroll of it I have.  It will allow 90 minutes of mental communication between us.  You can send mental images to each other.  …it will be between all 3 of us, and I anticipate being underground defending the Wardstone so I won’t be able to communicate spotting information, but it won’t distract me and I’d rather be in the loop.  Jon, if there is anything that needs to be need to know you’ll need to just keep using your message.”

She takes 3 seconds to cast it.

“It will make a few inquisitors more paranoid of you, but you shouldn’t need to interact face to face anyway, so on the balance it is easily worth it.”

“Anything else?”

Paranoid inquisitors that the local (politically powerful) faithful are openly distrustful of, check. Religion truly is the gift that keeps giving, or something... if only she could inflict it on her enemies but keep it away from home. She's lucky Germanian religion was mostly vestigial; if a stranger used unregistered military-grade magic in public it wasn't the local church they had to fear stopping them on the street!

More importantly: mental communication? It... probably makes sense, since magic is mental to begin with? This may take some time to get used to but it could help her coordinate with Jon...

"Nothing more." Whispering to Jon: "how do I use the mental comms?"

And at Terendelev's nod, she can finally take off! Sedately for the first few seconds, to make sure Jon is holding on as she exits the building, and then there is sky above and she accelerates.

It only requires a bit of intent.  Focusing a moment should do it.  You may require a little bit of practice to do mental images and sense instead of just words, but it is achievable.

Sending visual of targets.  

[A mental image of (mostly) humans armed with scythes and an assortment of other weapons appears in Tanya’s mind, along with a kinesthetic sense of their location below and to her left.]

30 degrees on your left.  Lethal force is acceptable.

Indeed, there is a gathering of people there, patrolling through the streets and armed.  It’s notable that Jon’s vision (it appears he sent the mental image exactly as he saw it) is substantially better than humans and slightly different, kind of like how you might imagine an eagle’s sight.

It occurs to him he might have been selected for this mission in some part simply because of his better long range vision.  He will slightly down weight his estimates on other reasons he might have been selected.

Instead of a gathering of people there is now a scattering of people-parts, and a few new potholes in the street.

Normally I fly much higher and use lenses to see at varying distances. Bending light is useful on its own as well as a component optical sniping formulas and decoy illusions. They move with my head, I could create one for you but it would always point in line with either my head or my torso. It's probably possible to make one to track your movements but it would require practice. Staying so low (2500 feet!) and barely dodging is really bothering Tanya's instincts; never mind AA canon, an infantry sniper could hit her at this range! He'd have to be very good and very lucky but Tanya didn't live to be fourteen by relying on luck.

The few rare offensive magics that would not be out ranged by 2500 feet would not be impeded by 12000 feet, and are very unlikely to be possessed by demons anyway.

He’s only encountered simulations of them in training exercise, but he really really hates Deimaviggas.

Nevertheless, we can try it, I believe it would not impede me.

Sending visual of target.

[A mental image of a spiky horned creature, that seems to be peering up nervously towards the sky, along with a kinesthetic sense of its location directly in front and below of her.]

It might take two (very rapid) shots to bring this one down; Tanya is still calibrating against different target types to avoid a repeat of the unfortunate incident in the square.

Up they go! Six thousand feet lets them see down all the streets of the city at once. Tanya obligingly manifests a magnifying lense in front of the appropriate shoulder.

What about nonmagical weapons? Guns, explosions propelling projectiles from a short tube, guided missiles or proximity fuses - optical sniping like I'm using - even without flight there's indirect-fire artillery, dragons could carry bombs, is anti-air fire really not used here? Or - the attackers didn't own anything sophisticated or couldn't bring in anything big by teleport?

...no, the attackers had no reason to bring AA if the city has no aerial defenses. Now she's embarrassed.

The lens works adequately.

Visual of target

[A mental image of a group of men lead by an emaciated red humanoid with a spear, along with a less focused image of the surrounding streets.]

Firearms and cannons are unreliable and inaccurate.  And very rare, outside a distant region where magic works less reliably.  This planet does not have nonmagical optical weapons.

Visual of target.

[A mental image of a winged horned woman crawling along the roof of a house.  A sense of the houses location in the city.]

Demons would have trouble procuring and managing the use of firearms even if they were more common on this planet.  Sustained long duration flight is 5th circle, Mendev, the nation this city is in, is poor in arcane casters and wizards in particular, and countering a few flying spellcasters wouldn’t be essential to the demons’ plan, insofar as they have one.  …my impression so far is that your magic has much higher limits on sustained usage.

Visual of target

[A mental image of a horned goat like humanoid committing arson, a sense of its location.]

Do you have any preferences among the exact mental formats I’ve used so far?  Kinesthetic sense vs. street intersection vs. city map vs. overall location?

Targets on streets: easy.

Targets on roofs: there's a risk of shooting through and hitting someone inside, so she tries to nudge the winged woman along with a meter-wide shot that should cause painful burns. The woman seems to have magical shielding against optical spells (?) or else a very alien lack of reaction to all her clothes being on fire, so Tanya puts an enchanted bullet through her head. (She really needs to conserve bullets...)

The goat is dead but Tanya has no way to stop the fire. No metaphorical bonus pay tonight, she has to do her job and trust that there are others who will do theirs.

Kinesthetic is fastest at letting me find the target. He's not giving her targets at the rate she could neutralize them (if she wasn't talking to him at the same time); hopefully after a while he'll trust her with more general designations instead of pointing them out one by one. ...It's not tactically crucial, even at this rate they'll soon pick off all the easy targets until the only bandits left are those with the sense to hide in buildings. Then they'll be down to the real work of urban warfare, either providing air support to ground forces or attacking mana signatures through roofs and walls and possibly killing hostages.

[He continues with a target and mental image every 3 seconds, consistently relying on kinesthetic senses.]

The target that required an alternate attack means was a succubus, one of the few demons that actually poses a threat to you if it gets a lucky teleport right on top of you plus a dominate.

They are already at a fast rate of a target every 3 seconds.  ...he's relying on instincts honed for more typical magic.

It occurs to me I fell back on training for this planet's spellcasting where a spell every 3 seconds is close the maximum.  If you can attack faster... If you recognize a demon type as one previously seen, feel free to attack without my targeting, leaning slightly more cautious if it looks more human, there is a non-demon species that can look somewhat similar to demons but more human, and leaning less cautious if the potential target is destroying property or attacking non-demon people.

That is probably more care than the city's defenders are showing towards tieflings, but he doesn't want to take any chances, especially if she's from Earth and is used to all humans.

A shot every 3 seconds? Without any enemy fire to dodge or aerial threats to keep track of? She'd fire a rookie for such incompetence!

Locating and verifying (and transmitting) targets is a legitimately hard task and she can't fault his rate, he's a civilian(?) contractor called in on short notice and has no access to mental acceleration spells. Tanya herself would have some trouble hitting widely separated targets if she had to shoot more than once per second. Luckily for her she isn't, technically, shooting.

The optical formula is meant for sniping targets in a close-range aerial dogfight. In theory the targets have no time to react, which means neither does the caster: once charged, the spell can be discharged at the speed of thought and in any direction. With her dual-core orb, Tanya can even cast several instances simultaneously. 

Of course, there is theory and there is practice. Good mages learn to track all the mana signatures in the sky, to notice the buildup of an optical spell (one with no significant buildup would be stopped by the target's barrier), to intuit its target and take evasive maneuvers, create decoys or an obscuring smoke cloud from an explosion, counterfire to force the enemy to move and disrupt their concentration, all while watching their wingman's back and coordinating with their squadron members to divide targets and keeping track of the broader battle and being ready to receive or issue orders or warnings at any moment. Mages who can't do this don't tend to survive their first few real dogfights; training, training and some more training is the mantra of the veteran professional.

Right now, practice is looking like a trainee's first simulated mission. Ground targets running about in confusion, complete freedom of the skies... Tanya is tense because of teleports (!!) and mind control (!!!!) but she is also tense because, on a subconscious level, things do not go this well and she is still waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even the Dacians at least tried to shoot her!

The Empire's military doctrine relies on agile, independent action by field officers in pursuit of the given objectives. Tanya has been as a matter of course mentally tagging similar-looking targets across the city; most of them lack mana signatures but she'd be a poor mage if she couldn't assault unsupported infantry out in the open. And she would have been remiss not to have a plan to take them all out quickly, ready to enact or present to her superiors as required. Even if this wasn't a job interview, hard work is a virtue.

She pushes her mental-enhancement spell all the way up and opens fire.

The next ninety-four seconds (sidereal) are very busy, and at the end well over three hundred targets lie dead. Also, Tanya has expended twelve more bullets and should really think about the logistics of local procurement.

On the downside, a few targets survived her first shots and managed to teleport away because she still hasn't fully calibrated the necessary power and she can't exactly overpower every single one of them when casting this quickly.

That was extremely impressive!  Also, as he’s gotten more oriented and there is now a momentary shortage of targets, he’ll ask another question seeing the teleports has prompted.

Has the Wardstone been disabled somehow?

Terendelev has barely paid attention to the telepathic bond (but she has realized Tanya is even more ridiculously powerful than she thought), but she has a moment to respond.

It seems it is entirely nonfunctional.  There is some form of corruption that was hidden by a very powerful and subtle illusion.  It must have somehow been covertly corrupted before the attack.  I’m organizing a defense of it to prevent further corruption - I’m worried with further access the demons might have someway of affecting the adjacent wardstones or even the entire network - Inheritor forbid it!

So the 'demons' infiltrated the city (by more ordinary means), sabotaged the Wardstone, carefully hid the sabotage from routine inspection, and then took the time to coordinate an attack by teleport? Whoever pulled this off is a serious threat, not just an opportunistic bandit. Perhaps an enemy state, or a very competent criminal organization?

She doesn't expect her input to be valuable here, she's missing too much context. For now she's content to neutralize targets as directed.

Even as disorganized and distracted by their revilement in the chaos as they are, the demons eventually start to notice the transient beams of light from the sky that keep killing them.  The responses are haphazard.  Many demons simply hide, a few dart from house to house quickly, seemingly hoping minimizing their time outside will be enough to let them avoid being slain.

Jon focuses more of his target identification on humans as Tanya seems to have identifying demons handled.

The city's defenders rally at the Cathedral Tanya was at earlier, as well as around the rift in the earth above the Wardstone, where they eventually get rope ladders setup.

New demon occasionally teleport into the city, and the existing demons seem to have no better plan to learn if there is still a threat than poking their heads out, so Tanya will still have occasional targets even a hour or so later.

Just checking in, this telepathic bond will only have another 20 minutes or so.  We've continued to hold the Wardstone, barely any demons have attempted to attack us.  If you still have magic left... how powerful can you make your searing light?  Do you have any way of moderating collateral damage?  The Grey Garrison [Mental image of a fortress Tanya should be able to recognize] seems to have been taken by a major concentration of demons, although I'll get more confirmation before I ask you to outright destroy it.

Tanya can detect magic being cast from within the fortress, although if she hasn't learned to discern different types of spells yet it will be hard to guess if it is active combat or anything else.  Not many demons have appeared exiting or entering the fortress, so they must have had another way in.  Directly teleporting?  Some underground passage?

I can straightforwardly make the spell about three times more powerful than my first attack against the - enemy that tried to cut off your head. Which was much more than the strongest attack I've had to use since then, she clarifies for Jon's benefit. More than that is possible but - complicated. To collapse a building it would be much more efficient to use explosive shots but I have a limited supply of bullets. We have not discussed yet how easy it would be to manufacture more or the infosec implications. 

I can only mitigate the damage by aiming and by modulating the power. If I try to destroy the building in an instant it might set the surrounding buildings on fire and send chunks of stone flying out at high velocities, and I still couldn't guarantee that those inside won't manage to teleport out.

Do you mean to destroy the building instantly and kill them before they can teleport, or is it acceptable to drive them out more slowly than that and risk them occupying another building? There are mana signatures inside the building and I can target those without destroying it. If you can provide building plans including the support columns and wall thickness that would also help.

What enemy would be strong enough to outright cut off an elder Silver Dragon's head?  Did Khorramzadeh attack earlier only for Tanya to drive him off?

[Over a whispered message just to Tanya]  "I didn't have time to explain earlier, this planet lacks industrial manufacturing, especially anything high precision, so you'd be reliant on specialist artisanal magic-based manufacturing techniques to replace your bullets.  Also if anyone manages to reverse engineer them, the long term implications are... complex."

Over the telepathic bond:

The demons will lack the morale or organization to regroup anytime soon if they scatter, so the slow destruction of the building minimizing collateral damage may be worth it, unless there is a particularly high value demon to kill inside?  All the teleporting demons will now have locations memorized inside the fortress, so you would want to do substantial remodeling anyway, even once the Wardstone is functional again.

He really hopes they can get the Wardstone functional.  He's not volunteering to go inside a new one!

I can send you mental images of the fortress while our bond is still up.  I'll start sending them in a moment... Jon you have the better than human memory to hold onto them, right?  As for bullets, there is a 1st circle spell that can from a single arrow or bolt or sling bullet make a container have an endless supply of them for a matter of minutes per caster circle, although the ammunition is only temporary and disappear when the spell ends.  I could try to find a scroll, but my next priority is confirming that we've lost the Garrison.  Once I've confirmed, driving them out more slowly is acceptable.  If you can kill them even through the walls at range, that would also work... if you can tell the strength of the target, prioritizing the strongest demons would make sense.

Tanya continues to be absurd!  If Terendelev followed correctly, she can somehow detect magic at immense ranges through stone walls?

I have near eidetic memory and should be able to hold detailed plans of the building mentally at the ready for Tanya to use.  Stronger demons usually have stronger magic and I agree it would make sense to target them first if possible.

To Tanya over the message: "If the explosive charge is packaged with the bullet, depending on the exact chemicals used and details of the exact design, the standard version of the spell she mentioned, Abundant Ammunition, may not work correctly.  Even if not... if your bullets are manufactured with industrial precision, the spell may have minor trouble with quality.  If your bullets are enchanted, the spell will also not work correctly for that reason."

He really hopes Tanya has at least heard of those concepts before, otherwise that sentence alone will prove to be costly (even if the leading edge of experimentation in Alkenstar has technically made the relevant discoveries already).  He is in fact really sure from what he's seen (and smelt, and inferred from communicating with her so far), but he is acutely aware of the risk, however small, and accounting for it.

I'll try to have confirmation before this telepathic bond ends, I'm working on obtaining another scroll but it is unlikely I can find one.

She proceeds to send lots of high quality pieces of a mental map of the building. Her memory and spatial cognition is a bit better than a smart wizard with an excellent headband, so the mental map is quite precise and detailed and well organized.

"The bullets are cartridges that include the explosive, machined with an etched pattern that allows them to be quickly enchanted when they're fired. We don't have stably enchanted items," she reminds him. 

The planet doesn't have industrial manufacturing and he's not sure about cartridges? Jon recognized the concept of firearms, so Tanya assumed whatever was wrong was local to this city! What are these people used to, powder horns?!

The fighting was chaotic at first, people grabbing the swords and longbows they had - prepared for the local festival - and the attackers were bandits and swords don't need reliable supply chains - if you can teleport straight into melee guns do lose a lot of their advantages - but enchanted guns should still be better than enchanted longbows and no trained army or militia or police force with real weapons has turned up and people are still dying down there -

Did they build an interstellar, multi-species civilization using teleports alone (well, that and mind-control) and never got around to making any technological progress? Did they never invent the concepts of science and engineering, is that why they're so obsessed with religion?

...No, Jon said 'this planet' and he was called from... somewhere... did Tanya end up in a backwater colonized by technologically advanced planets? If teleports are rare and expensive there wouldn't be much trade in material wealth, and if the colonizers aren't interested in the land (perhaps they're all different species?) then it might be less of a colonial situation and more of a rich neighbor uninterested in anything this place has to offer. Anyone who's smart and capable enough to learn to teleport to other planets or to pay for it leaves, leaving behind this mess of anarchic 'demons' surrounding primitive walled cities protected by wardstones they cannot easily repair or replace. Ricardo's law is all very well but it can't stop a perpetual brain and wealth drain.

That is a terrible situation to be in! Like every rational person, Tanya wants to leave for the true civilization that might be waiting for her among the stars! But she'll need to gain some local wealth first, and learn more from Jon once the fight is over.

Terendelev's imagery shows the building has a large internal open space spanning its entire height. 

I can collapse individual rooms easily, or snipe at mana signatures in them. If I fire at the roof's middle it should easily penetrate to the ground level but it wouldn't kill everyone behind the internal walls; the explosion would probably blow the rest of the roof off and most of its force would escape upwards.

If there is an especially powerful or notable demon it might be more worth killing them than maximizing the number of demons killed, in larger scale battle demons are notoriously dependent on individually powerful demons capable of leading and driving them.

I’ll ask if anyone has identified a leader at the same time I get confirmation.

In the city below, Tanya can see Terendelev crawl out of the crack in the ground and fly over to the Cathderal.  About 15 minutes later…

I have confirmed the Garrison has completely fallen to the demons, we will withdraw our soldiers from around it within the next ten minutes.  This telepathic bond only has 5 minutes left, so you have the go ahead without further instructions from me after ten minutes.  The demons have a leader, a Lilitu witch, Minagho.

[Mental image of an eyeless humanoid demon wearing a stylish red dress.  Mental imagery of guesses of some of the locations within the Garrison she might be likely to be.]

If you can identify the strongest demons or the strongest spellcaster to kill that would likely be her and should be a priority.  You may delay attacking within the Garrison up to half an hour to try to identify this target.  Otherwise, picking off any and all magic you can detect within is my best guess at how to attack, although I still don’t understand the exact limits of your magic.

Every army depends on its field leadership and on its strongest fires and mages. Is Terendelev implying that her own people would fight on well if she were dead? Indeed, morale is a crucial factor, and the enemy's morale seems very high considering they haven't fled the city yet. A soldier fleeing mid-battle has to run past his fellows and into his own rear ranks where he'll be shot for his trouble; a soldier who can just teleport a hundred miles away will presumably do so much more readily in the interests of personal survival. Perhaps the organizers of this attack recruited the bravest suicidal warmongers who'd rather fight to the death than flee, or perhaps they're holding their families hostage...? But then, why would killing their leaders help?

Well, she can't be expected to understand alien barbarians. It's probably something she'll need to have explained to her. For now, she has her mission parameters.

I can detect approximate power, location and movement, identify previously seen signatures and spells, but I don't get visuals.

Plan is to wait ten minutes; afterwards, if an unusually strong mana signature appears or if we spot the target, attack immediately; after half an hour without action, begin attack in order of mana signature strength, then any demons visibly leaving the building, then collapse it while avoiding collateral damage. CP, please confirm, she almost says.

If you eliminate over two dozen targets within or fleeing the building, hold off on outright collapsing the building, I believe it will be worth fighting to reclaim it.  If less than that, then yes, also collapse the building. 

8 minutes later, from within the Garrison, Tanya can detect powerful spellcasting, stronger than any spellcasting she has detected so far save Terendelev and the giant demonic-construct from earlier.

This attack has been an absolute clusterfuck.  Herding demons is usually like that, but they actually had a plan!  And somehow Deskari managed to fuck it up in the first three rounds!  Apparently someone sent an extremely powerful outsider… at least that’s the common assumption.  A report by a succubus smart enough to stay blended in as a human once they realized what was going on has clued her in otherwise, and another report by another demon smart enough to survive the initial plaza events provided even more hints.  

Her current theory is some freak variant of an obscure type of pseudo-caster.  Notably, they would be a mortal according to this guess, and as a pseudo-caster wouldn’t have all that strong Will despite their raw attack power, so Minagho is willing to bet some other demon’s lives on testing it. 

So she has 4 (it would be 5 but one bitch bailed once she realized what they were planning) succubi lined up to teleport right on top of the ‘heavenly’ visitor and dominate the shit out of them.  She timed it so that any longer duration fifth circle spells (assuming that’s what they were getting at the cathedral) will just be expiring.

She just needs to cast a few buff spells on the succubi to help their odds as much as possible.  She goes to cast her first buff…

Tanya is above the building and off to the wrong side and has to move in order to hit the right exterior wall, which together with the charging time means the target gets to cast its three-second spell.

It also means that when a bolt of light sufficient to seriously wound Deskari slams through the wall of the fort, she is moving much faster than the leisurely 100 kph she has mostly kept to.

She immediately begins charging up another spell. If the mana signature is still present in a second, she'll hit it again; if not, she'll target the place it was previously at.

There are now 5 mana signatures trying to teleport, the strong one she just shot and 4 others!

Fuck, fuck, fuck.  She barely survived, she just needs a few seconds and she’s out of here, but she knows the attacker rarely allows for that long between attacks.

She fired off the first shot the moment the mana signature disappeared. She can't confidently recognize the local teleport spell signature yet; she was banking on the target not running yet and it looks like she got lucky.

But the enemy will surely try to teleport now, even if they don't leave the city, so she's not going to charge for a whole several seconds; she'll just fire every half-second or so until all the mana signatures disappear, and then fire some more just in case. And shoot a precious enchanted bullet, timing it to explode behind the targets and hopefully fling them out of the building and/or disrupt their casting.

One of the signatures teleports faster and completes a teleport out before the explosive bullet lands.  The strongest mana signature and one other are somehow, impossibly, nearly unmoved by the explosion, seemingly deliberately moving just a slight bit before the explosion connects.  The other three signatures are flung by the explosion, but maybe not quite as far as Tanya hoped.  One loses their teleport, the other two manage to keep teleporting.

The follow-up optical attacks eliminate the strongest signature, but have no effect on the other signatures, with two of them completing their teleports.

Yeah, she wasn’t planning on going along with Minagho’s suicide mission, and just needed to bluff her well enough that Minagho didn’t realize she was planning on bailing.  Which meant she had a teleport readied for when the angel or whatever the fuck it is got the drop on them first.

He spots them a moment before Tanya.

(Over a message): “Two succubi, near where you were about a second ago, should be already out of range for a dominate.”

They shouldn’t have any chance of succeeding at mind control through his protection from evil, but he’s ready with his suppress charms and compulsion just in case.

Keep accelerating, up up zigzag up while spinning around. Two aerial targets with heat-only shielding, two shots each through heart and forehead - another tumbling through the air where it was thrown by the explosion, same treatment - does the room look exploded enough, are there mana signatures in the rest of the building she can go after or should she keep collapsing this wing, she is not flying close enough to confirm any kills on targets that have mind control.

The succubi that teleported up die quickly, probably just the headshots would have been enough.  The succubus on the ground somehow manages to dodge one bullet but goes down quickly enough to another.

The room she attacked is pretty throughly exploded!  The rest of the Garrison has lots of mana signatures now.  Tanya’s attack seems to have kicked the proverbial ant nest and now lots of demons are trying to escape, and casting spells to enable that (making their mana signature nice and visible)!  Some can teleport out, others are running outside, if she’s paying enough attention she might notice some slipping away through some underground passage.

“I believe the two succubi I saw teleport up are quite thoroughly dead, and I should be competent to see through illusions the majority of the time, but preemptive evasive maneuvers are the right choice, you don’t need my spotting for this, and it seems the demons, at least briefly, finally managed the optimal response to you, so caution is reasonable.”

He’s stating the obvious, but best to make sure they are on the same page.

There is no follow-up attempt at countering Tanya, just panicked demons and cultists trying to flee, and obligingly using lots of spells that Tanya can target the mana signatures of.  If any demons or cultists figure out they should avoid casting spells to be avoided being targeted, they apparently don’t tell their “allies”.  (Someone else casting a spell is someone else making themselves a target.)

Tanya can only hit a few mana signatures before the others teleport away; it takes time to build up enough power to penetrate the stone wall, and she can only target two sides of the building and it takes more time to fly around it. Then she hits the locations where she last sensed them, in case of stragglers.

The ones fleeing on foot she can mostly snipe as she goes. Once she notices the underground passage she spends a few seconds on collapsing the entrance.

She can't keep up this rate of fire forever but she won't have to: shock and awe is order of the day. It works wonders both on fleeing enemies and on prospective employers during an interview.

It doesn’t take long before there are no detectable mana signatures or visible demons left to kill in the Garrison.

Throughout the rest of the city it seems the demons have finally learned not to be visibly a demon anywhere open to the sky.  There are still occasional mana signatures of spells being cast, but no clear way to discern if they are from allied or demonic spellcasters.

Terendelev is visible below in her natural draconic form, flying between groups of the city’s defenders and coordinating them in clearing the city building by building.

Terendelev can fly up if she wants to talk. If Jon has no other suggestions Tanya can keep overwatch for a while. Today she is Kenabres' benevolent fairy in the sky.

The Lord may be on the side of the bigger battalions but Tanya prefers the company of the bigger guns. The Rhine proved the king of the battlefield mightier than the queen, and if he is missing in action she'll just have to substitute.

Then over the next few hours Tanya will occasionally have a demon or two to shoot as the city’s defenders gradually sweep the city, isolating it building by building and killing any hidden demons, or at least driving them out where the “Angel” can kill them.

As the pace slows, he takes the time to think carefully, reviewing the full set of his interactions with Tanya.  He also runs through language associations within her language, making cautious inferences on how much she and her culture already know about a variety of key subjects.  

Discussing the bigger picture with Tanya shouldn’t be urgent on the scale of hours but it is on the scale of days, and she has at least a few major misunderstandings and confusions to unpack.

Eventually, he says something other than bland tactical advice (it’s been over two hours since they cleared the Garrison, 5 minutes since the last building clearing drove out a demon for Tanya to kill, and likely 10 minutes before the next building-clearing drives a demon out).

 “Would it be too distracting to talk about the broader context now?  I’m fine waiting, nothing should be too urgent on the scale of hours, and I can speak up if you’re about to make a critical mistake regarding the broader context… but I think it is critical for you to at least start to understand on the scale of days…”

Multitasking is a key skill for mages. Now that the battle's winding down Jon will naturally want to keep her mission from being a cakewalk, to make the best use of his paid time as an observing consultant / interviewing superior.

"Please go ahead; it won't be too distracting." She will not make any critical mistakes.

“First I wanted to apologize for trying to cram in the list of Gods earlier… kind of a rookie mistake unconsciously forgetting how uncommon eidetic memory is in mortal humans.”  He says that last part with a slight shift in tone to indicate a minor joke.

“To start with one point that will contextualize a lot of others… Have you noticed the discrepancy between this planet’s technological level and the technology I am familiar with?”

A socratic question format should help to engage and also set the trend which might be necessary as he edges near knowledge guarded by treaty which he is less sure Tanya already knows.  He has been carefully mentally reviewing techniques for communicating with mortals.  (Outsiders do not need Charisma for their spell like abilities, although offensive abilities scale in potency off of it, but Jon’s abilities are defensive and utility.)

On one hand, Tanya is relieved to be facing bog-standard interview techniques; she's interviewed more than her share of candidates (in each of her lives) and knows all the right answers. On the other hand, it is in fact impressive (and a bit intimidating) that the senior employees have eidetic memory! 

And so he of course leads with a memory test. The first question is always a softball; she doesn't even need to surreptitiously check her orb recordings (but she prepares to look up the ones with the god-list, obviously). 

"You have been careful to describe magic, technology, and abilities such as flight speed as 'this planet's," she answers promptly. "You stated that you were aware of different rates of," mental sigh, "divine intervention and consequently common magic on different planets, and different prices at which knowledge is sold to them, implying technological differences persist over time." Despite interplanetary communication? Whatever, she's not trying to make sense of it right now, just repeating what he said. "You did not ask me to clarify some things I mentioned - different kinds of guns and bombs, artillery, AA fire - but affirmed they did not exist on this planet. Of course that is not nearly enough to conjecture what other technology you may be familiar with, and I'm afraid I cannot read your or Terendelev's body language so I do not know if either of you meant to show surprise at some point."

“Yes, that’s correct!”

He was worried she’d forgotten, they’ve had a lot of combat!  This is also a positive sign for her remembering her planet’s science and technology enough to help reproduce some of it here.

“The divine intervention treaty limits are quite steep around information, and inclusive of proxies.  I count as such a proxy.   And they are inclusive of the Gods’ divine domains and entire Outer Plane.  So, for example, as I was called out of Heaven, any information I share with you not already known to you or more generally to this planet will be very expensive against a treaty-moderated budget allowed to Heaven in general and Iomedae specifically.  Sharing well known information is cheaper, sharing more obscure information is more expensive, sharing ultra-secret information is nearly as expensive as sharing entirely unknown information.  Some topics, such as magic or technology with destructive or transformative potential, are more expensive than others.  I’ve been trying to gauge your level of knowledge to avoid making Heaven liable for extreme costs.  In general, around certain topics I might phrase things as questions, or phrase things in terms of what is known on this planet, to minimize the cost.”

Be an active communicator.

“What to cover first… just to gauge your priorities (not as a treaty avoidance measure): Would you like more explanation or examples for the motivations of this treaty?  Would you like more explanations or examples of what this treaty covers?  Would you like me to focus on how this is relevant to you and how you actually have some extremely lucrative opportunities here?  Or, I actually had some questions about your planet I could get into…. To be clear, I intend to cover all these topics, just whatever would help you understand best.”

Active communication!

What a long-winded way to say that as an interviewer he needs to evaluate her knowledge without contaminating the results! ...maybe this is a politeness thing, attributing things to the gods as a way of saying 'unfortunately my hands are tied here'? She gives him a professional smile. (He is on her shoulder but they can see each other in one of her rear-view 'mirrors'; her orb includes excellent wrap-around-vision functionality.)

"I believe I have a working understanding of the motivations for the treaty." The correct answer is to talk first about how she can benefit the company not how she can profit from them, she's not sure which one the 'lucrative opportunities' is meant to signal and it's best to avoid looking greedy. Talking about her home planet is obviously important and will happen no matter what she says and is also an opportunity to demonstrate her value to them, so - "if I cannot ask you about other planets, questions about mine seem like a good place to start if you can point out which things are most different from this one."

He doesn’t think she could actually understand the treaty already if she’s coming from a background of ‘no real Gods’.  …he should say that out loud, in words.

“I’m going to just note this confusion now, the treaties doesn’t make sense in absence of understanding the Gods’ motivations goals and values. And my understanding was that your knowledge of them is, at best, distant legends of past divine activity, or, at worst, entirely fictional and wrong.  So I suspect your ‘working understanding’ is badly wrong… I intend to try to explain properly in more detail.”

He should make sure she doesn’t feel bad (or worse, threatened), he’s recalled some worrying things about how religions can develop under minimal divine intervention and other confusing circumstances.

“It is completely reasonable to not know anything at all about this, especially considering your background!”

“But anyway, let’s discuss your planet first.  So… I may have actually heard of your planet ‘Earth’, it’s not one I’ve specialized in knowledge in… the most recent thing I read about it was a major industrialized war between the colonial empires centered on the continent of ‘Europe’.  This war started… 8… no 9 Earth years ago… actually I don’t have the exact date, sorry, less than 10 years ago, minimum 8.  I recall specifically the comment that with a better knowledge of writing treaties, the European powers could have avoided the war, an assassination in one minor country triggered smaller countries to go to war which drew in bigger countries via treaties until the entire continent was at war.  Does that sound like your planet?”

He’ll leave out the incongruous detail of Tanya’s magic and see if she comments on it.

Damn it, she was overconfident. These people are real believers, she has to remember that! Talking like you can divine the mind of God without being properly instructed on the matter is sure to be a huge faux pas!

And then all of that is driven completely out of her head by the next thing he says.

They already know about Earth? Observing it like good little green men, refraining from actual contact - probably acting in secret - 

She can go home - 

Nine years?! She's been gone for four years?! 

Think think speed all the way up think think think. What does he actually know or thinks he knows? Is he invested in one side of the war on Earth, does he represent a whole organization that might be interested in the war's outcome - she already introduced herself as a Germanian citizen and anyone who knows Earth knows an aerial mage means an army officer and a combatant - he may have recognized her name, even if he hadn't known it yesterday he could have read her file during those ten minutes or for all she knows during the past hour, she has no idea what kind of communications and information-storage systems they have and it was ridiculous of her to assume the swords-and-longbows were typical of an interstellar civilization, damn it, is that what he was getting at by asking what technology she thought he knew about?

...

She is at a complete disadvantage here. If he wanted something nefarious, he could get it by arranging for her to have an accident or just steal her orb in her sleep or mind-control her himself. Terendelev might be honest and might be grateful to Tanya but she can't actually stop an industrial civilization from getting what they want unless they want to be bound by her word and local law. Treating Jon as an enemy would mean burning all her bridges and she's likely to promptly lose that fight. She has to bet on him not coercing her because the alternative likely isn't winnable.

What does he actually want? Why didn't he say he knew about Earth before, why did he say it now, why not where Terendelev can hear?

It's been several seconds since she responded and she has to say something but she doesn't feel any closer to knowing what to say.

"Please give me a few moments to think," yes good filler buying time now what.

Tanya sets her orb to replay everything he said (appropriately sped up) and squeezes it for meaning.

So I suspect your ‘working understanding’ is badly wrong… I intend to try to explain properly in more detail.

What does he think her understanding of the gods and their treaties is? What is 'gods and their treaties' even referring to here?

She assumed the local religions were as disconnected from reality as those on Earth, but she does know of one being who styles himself a 'god' and who sometimes empower people's magic and pretends it's a 'miracle'. And where there's one, there could be others. There are all kinds of philosophical treatises about the properties a singular God must have if He existed, which proves He doesn't since Being X clearly doesn't qualify.

This planet's locals seem to be religious the way people are on Earth. They talk about 'gods' and 'angels', but when they call 'heaven' like Tanya might call up Regional Command they get a normal person and not a Being at all. Someone who takes the time to remind them of the long list of allied and enemy gods in the pre-battle briefing. Someone who emphasizes there are conflicts and treaties between the gods, that he serves one god but others have their own servants. The same gods who magically empower people on this very planet. And then he underlines that information about other planets including the ones the gods live on is not given out lightly to the people living here, and that he can only talk to her about the things that she already knows.

Maybe her earlier idea of colonialism was right. Maybe these 'gods' are metonyms for powerful planets and nations, playing pretend with the credulous natives and warning her not to ruin the charade. And maybe, just maybe...

Maybe Being X is one of them.

They mentioned resurrecting the dead and she dismissed it, but didn't Being X reincarnate her at his whim after she died?

What else did he say?

“It is completely reasonable to not know anything at all about this, especially considering your background!”

Does he mean her background as in - her actual background? Is he referring to the fact that the first world she lived on had no magic? ...Is he implying a claim that all magic comes from the 'gods' and is bestowed at their whim, and her first world was a low-intervention one?

Too much speculation. She could spin in circles like this forever. Set it aside for now.

But anyway, let’s discuss your planet first.  So… I may have actually heard of your planet ‘Earth’, it’s not one I’ve specialized in knowledge in…

'May have'? 

the most recent thing I read about it was a major industrialized war between the colonial empires centered on the continent of ‘Europe’.  This war started… 8… no 9 Earth years ago...

It's not fair to describe Germania as a colonial empire, they're practically the only Empire on Earth that doesn't have significant colonies, but he could be generalizing or - referring to the god-nations' nature again? Assuming 'empires' are naturally made up of 'colonies'? Never mind, it's probably not important.

The war started with the Legadonian border violation in June 1923 but it wasn't a war between major powers until the Republican invasion a few months later. Five years before then was... the Third Balkan War? What does that have to do with anything?

In any case he's implying she is missing between four and six years of memory and - it seems frankly improbable that her body wouldn't changed noticeably, unless she arrived here by near-lightspeed travel which... for all she knows is how interstellar teleports work... Wasn't Alpha Centauri about that far away?

I recall specifically the comment that with a better knowledge of writing treaties, the European powers could have avoided the war,

Anything is possible, she supposes, but when nation after nation unprovokedly attacks you without even a casus belli it's rather hard to keep faith that they wouldn't have just torn up a treaty that didn't suit them! Treaties can make it not in your interest to attack but that requires rational judgement; the kinds of people who start wars tend to be insane warmongers who enjoy war or who think it can redeem a nation's soul or some such claptrap.

an assassination in one minor country triggered smaller countries to go to war which drew in bigger countries via treaties until the entire continent was at war.  Does that sound like your planet?

...no? No, it really doesn't? 

But it does sound like a certain other war, though, on a certain other Earth... 

Have these people been spying on her original Earth? And their last reports are a century old? ...and they didn't notice that World War One had no aerial mages and that Earth had no magic - no, surely that makes no sense. Not unless the report on 'Earth and its recent war' was all of three pages long and Jon only read the executive summary. Which is a worrying possibility she can't quite dismiss, but -

If her arrival here causes them to take another look at that Earth, what might the unholy marriage of actually-modern military technology from the year, uh, 2027 (or is it 2032 by now?) and teleportation and mind control magic produce? On the other hand, Being X already knows about it, so it's presumably a lost cause to try to keep it a secret even if she had a stake in doing so.

If she claims to be from her first Earth she can admit to recognizing his story, but sooner or later he'll realize (or reveal he knew all along) that that Earth has no magic and she'd be exposed as a liar.

If she says the story doesn't match and describes her (second) Earth accurately, it may enable him to find it if he hasn't yet. Part of her is tempted to say that they already have Being X messing around so surely other 'gods' have to be better than that, but of course that's nonsense; there's plenty of ways for 'gods' to actively harm people if they wanted to. Introducing this interstellar civilization to Earth while Earth is behind on magical development is likely to end with Earth as another colony kept poor and ignorant.

Inventing a completely different world... no, there's no way she can do it on the spur of the moment.

Refusing to answer will presumably fail her this 'interview', even if they don't outright turn hostile, and there's a good chance Jon or his superiors can find her Earth anyway with some magic or technology she knows nothing about.

It is extremely unfair to be removed from your social and legal context and support networks and then to be asked to choose between your personal wellbeing and that of your entire planet.

...her missing years (?) still have to be accounted for and if she spent some of them on this planet then she may have told already told someone about Earth. They will certainly investigate her past; in fact it would be suspicious for her not to ask them to do so as part of her payment, she already told Terendelev she wanted to find out how she came to be wounded and unconscious outside her city - or was she only planning to tell her that...

Ugh. Tanya really doesn't want to break off relations and she wants to be caught in a lie even less, so that leaves telling the truth. Cooperating with the local authorities is surely a good thing, and she is not at all betraying her comrades' trust and her officer's commission by making a decision that just happens to preserve her own life? Isn't the argument for keeping mum essentially a conspiracy theory at this point, and not anything that she could prove? She can imagine herself making this argument before some future hypothetical court. (She can also imagine the court ordering her summary execution, but she must save her life today before she can save it tomorrow -)

Clutching that flimsy justification, Tanya slows down from her frantic mental acceleration, which was in fact starting to exceed the so-called safe limits and has already caused her heartbeat and breathing to speed up rapidly.

"That description matches only partially. The war started with an unprovoked border violation and later grew into a major conflict when a different nation invaded us. I never heard of an assassination being pointed to as a cause for the war. The war has lasted less than five years even counting from the earlier conflict; it is possible that I am missing memories of a long period, since I do not know how I arrived on this planet and am definitely missing some memories for an unknown reason - I assumed it was months at most because I would have grown noticeably over the course of a year but if interstellar teleportation obeys the speed of light then maybe I spent those months being transported?"

"...do you happen to know the current date on Earth?" She really should have thought of that question earlier.

He can tell she is using some sort of subtle haste effect on herself, and it still takes her a bit of time to respond.  Among the innocuous explanations: she is considering several perspectives on her war to see if any matched his brief description, she was disoriented by the apparent lost time, she is processing some feelings.  Among the less innocuous explanations: she is worried about how a being claiming to be from 'Heaven' might take the fact that she was involved in a war ('Some of his word associations for 'Heaven' in her native language are a bit worrying), she was crafting a nuanced lie, she was struggling with memory modifications from demons/Fey/Geryon.

He wants to help her and work together effectively with her... but maybe it would be best if his caller lets this calling expire in the hour duration and calls a different specialist tomorrow.  For his calling, Iomedae would have had to juggle multiple priorities picking out a good spotter and someone that could help someone from an unknown planet orient effectively.  A follow-up calling could take advantage of what he has learned and the lack of extremely pressing need for a spotter to get someone more suited.  In which case... he should get as much context as he can so Heaven and Iomedae can figure out which specialist to send and position Tanya to have reason to trust whoever that specialist ends up being.

"Some methods of interplanetary travel would have a travel time-" if her planet knows about the speed of light it might only be a matter a time before they figure out mass energy conversion, which is really alarming but he needs to focus, he needs just the right level of vagueness that avoid expenses. "-Earth is too far away for a speed-of-light travel time to account for such a small discrepancy.  I will note that on this planet there are many spells that could effectively achieve stasis, including spells as low as 6th circle spells, such as the combination of Stone to Flesh and Flesh to Stone to petrify and un-petrify someone.  As for your other question... a moment...." 

He reviews this question carefully.  If she isn't from the Earth that he knows of... he actually hasn't said anything expensive yet, vague facts and descriptions are cheap.  The things that would cost dramatically more would be anything enabling interplanetary travel.  Names are a notable liability, among this planet's known spells, a modified, improved Discern Location that doesn't require having met the person would provide enough information for a Wish or Interplanetary Teleport.   The exact year... maybe has some slight liability with divination spells, like helping to direct a legend lore, but shouldn't be expensive either.  He takes another moment to check his reasoning, then shifts through some advanced mnemonics to convert the Celestial date methods he knows to Earth calendars.

"Sorry for the delay, I was mentally double checking for any subtler implications or consequences of sharing that information as well as actually doing the mental math on date conversion.  The date, on the European calendar, is 1923."

He'll hold off on more specificity until she gives him a good reason.  Thinking of the European Calendar, has got him thinking about European language.  …doing comparisons on her language versus European languages... her language is definitely a European language, it's almost exactly like one language in particular, but has some very slight differences from that language... he's pretty sure it's not just regional dialects... word associations to try to bring proper nouns to mind (his Truespeech can't do this on it's own, but with his eidetic memory he can recall the names of Earth's nations and the general geographic areas of them, and if Tanya's Earth is the same it should associate names to them)… okay now he's confused!

"I noticed something else that I need to think through."

A pause.

"Can you give me some small samples of other languages from your planet besides your native one?"

Truespeech is so much better than telepathy if you know the tricks to really bend it and stretch it.

She could have been in stasis, which is at least an understandable concept, but he's saying some methods of travel (even interplanetary, not just interstellar) have no travel time - does that means information is transmitted at the speed of light and experiences no time in transit, or...? But he said she can't ask him questions about technology, and she certainly doesn't know about any technology that disproves relativity. How frustrating.

"The last date I remember experiencing on Earth was in 1927. Do you have an explanation for this that you can share with me?" She knows the right answer but she's curious if he'll admit to it first.

Here are some example sentences in the other languages she knows! Germanian and English she knows well, ditto Akinese - wait, no, she knows that from her first life, skip that entirely - and she can manage some sentences in Lebadonian, Ildonian, Ispagnan and Russy, with decreasing grammatical correctness as she goes.

From those small samples he can deliberately try for "this language from Tanya's planet".  The languages mostly match Earth languages, with small differences that could just be regional dialects, except he is normally able to navigate around dialect variations!  And some of the place names and polity names almost match in the most bizarre names, and his Truespeech can associate that they are talking about the same place!

"A moment, I am going to temporarily limit my memory to just obscurely known information from this planet and what I am sure you have told me or very clearly indicated knowing, to make sure the case I didn't introduce any secret or unknown knowledge is very strong."

He loves having eidetic memory that can temporarily isolate information!

"So, the languages you have given me samples of are almost exact matches for the languages of the Earth I know of, but there are distinct differences that I don't believe are the result of me failing to navigate regional dialects or anything mundane like that.  For example, the names of the polities associated with each language and associated with each general geographic area almost match.  'the German Empire' and 'Germania', 'United States' and 'Unified States', 'Akinese' and 'Japanese', the list goes on.  My current three guesses are..."  

One, some entity took you from the Earth I know of and heavily altered your memory, possibly up to the point of playing your mind through elaborate scenarios.  Some flaw in their translations or a deliberate calling card left artifacts in otherwise perfect reconstruction of language.  And this can only partially account for your magic and computation orb.  Of the entities that might be responsible... demons or fey might somehow waste the potential of your magic by using it as evidence in an elaborate constructed scenario, but I still wouldn't bet on it.  Other entities would be even less likely to waste the potential your magic presents this way, so I would all but rule them out entirely.  This hypothesis could be ruled out by using the 7th circle spell limited wish to attempt to restore your memories.  It has a moderately expensive material component, but it should be easily affordable with the sum that my caller promised you."  

"Two, you've somehow crossed over from a parallel or alternate reality.  I must emphasize accounts suggesting this sort of thing are not well verified.  There are some speculative theories of alternate universes, some with some decent theoretical framework about how they are magically possible, but wizards write lots of speculative theories!  This hypothesis is hard to address... a few divination spells might be able to get at alternate realities, among the speculation I've seen a legend lore might be able to give the caster knowledge of the stories and histories of your planet... although it might subtly fail and get those of the Earth I know of.  You could try talking to Nethy's High Priest... but his high priests tend to be mentally altered by the vast scope of knowledge they've seen in a way that makes them impossible to usefully understand.  I'm not sure about the current one...  Other sources of knowledge... this continent has one 9th circle Archmage that isn't Evil or inaccessible, Felandriel Morgethai, you could consult with her on the off chance she is ahead of even the obscure knowledge of this planet.  You could figure out a payment or service you can make to outsider like myself that would be sufficient compensation for the intervention budget costs of more knowledge about this area.  My memory is currently locked so I can't yet suggest more along this direction, I can reconsider once I unlock it."

Alternate realities are less insanely impossible than he is implying given the Yog-Sothoth is active on Earth.

"Three, you're from somewhere even more metaphysically distant or bizarre than alternate realities, and the method you've been transported with also translated other aspects of your existence... this would make more sense if you were transported to Earth, at the very least as an intermediary point.  Under this theory, you wouldn't have even been human to start with and your languages would have all been vastly different from Earth's to start with.  This theory sounds really bizarre, but there are actually a few obscure but relatively well documented (by the standards of this planet at least) cases of this and a handful more of possible cases!  Of the known cases... the Dark Tapestry Entity Yog-Sothoth is thought to be involved.  I would be careful to check on the legal status of knowledge of Dark Tapestry Entities before investigating this many polities ban knowledge of them entirely, and in some that don't specifically ban the knowledge, it still falls under bans of Chaotic or Evil Gods, although I would quibble about how well Dark Tapestry entities fit under the label 'Gods'.  I think a limited wish to restore your memory in an effort to address my first hypothesis might be a bit hazardous in this case, as it may make your current body and existence feel dysphoric... if you got a second limited wish on retainer you could use that to restore your form to it's original.  I will note, although I know of actual examples of reasonable veracity, this is still a very very rare phenomena, much rarer than interplanetary or interstellar travelers."

It's annoying he can mention Yog-Sothoth in relations to this theory but not his second.  He consider a moment.

"Sorry for my long windedness, I wanted to be thorough.  If you need me to recall or recount any of this later I will be able to.  Do you have any questions about these theories I should try to answer from this planet's knowledge before I undo the lock on my memory?"

He can manipulate his own beliefs to produce plausible behavior for any set of assumptions? What an incredibly useful skill for a diplomat or a spy! This tracks with the mind control - of course the benign application would be to self-modify, they can probably use it to produce perfect obedience to laws and organizations and infinite willpower and any number of other hacks. What a terrifying skill! With eidetic memory and some preparation, you can choose to remember and believe in the most useful thing in every situation.

Of course, he could be manipulating her by saying that. But supposing for the moment he's being truthful (if obscure and misleading), he's clearly familiar with her original Earth - she's going to think of them as Earth-1 and Earth-2. 

He believes, and implies that people on this planet believe - wait, did he self-modify to believe things commonly accepted here that he actually knows are false? ...Of course she can't ask him, both because he currently doesn't know and because he told her not to ask about the technology he knows about. (What a ridiculous constraint on a conversation!)

...he believes that actors technologically on-par with his own civilization (whom he's temporarily calling 'demons' in the local style due to the memory restriction) can use the same techniques offensively, not only mind-control but memory selection, to mold someone's mind into an almost-arbitrary desired shape.

This is possibly the most repugnant thing Tanya has ever heard. (Not counting false things, of course, like 'demons' eternally torturing people in 'hell' for the edification of the righteous in 'heaven'.) And he's saying it might have been done to her. That it's unlikely, because most people are rational actors and there are much better uses for a Tanya (or at least a Tanya placed on this planet) than to mess with her memory. 

Except that's a false logical implication. If Tanya is heavily modified, if she was (to entertain the argument) customized or even created from whole cloth, then who can say that there are better uses for such power? If Tanya isn't a single-use resource, if you can clone or create Tanyas, then you can do pretty much anything and everything, all at the same time! If you can kidnap Tanya from Earth-2 then you're not limited to her orb, you can collect dozens of orbs of that model alone and the industrial process that produces them along with everyone working on the project! You can copy the orb once you have a working example - people on either Earth could do it - you can kidnap more mages from anywhere in the world...

Tanya has a well-justified opinion of her own skills but, unique personal memories and unusual age aside, she is not a unique and irreplaceable specimen of either a mage or a military officer. She is a cog in the great machine of society; an important and valuable cog perhaps, one worth maintaining and replacing, but what truly matters is the machine, for the system to work she must be replaceable and if she wasn't the system could never have been built.

...she really isn't sure whether she should point this out, either now or after he 'unlocks' his memories - which were presumably already edited before he came here, so, after he restores them to their previous arbitrarily-modified-slash-chosen state.... ugh. Tanya has always believed in cooperation given a reasonable presumption of good faith and rational choice theory, but she's experiencing an inchoate sense of uncertainty and dread that she doesn't have enough time to reflect on. Can you really negotiate with people who mentally modify both themselves and others? Don't you need to understand the collective, the system behind them, because the person is transient?

"It will take me some time to think through the implications of what you've said."

"Regarding the... metaphysical possibilities, I don't understand the practical implications they imply. Whether I'm from a planet distant in space or one in an 'alternate reality' or some other possibility, if all of those places really exist and are reachable through different means, is there a difference beyond the practical difficulties or costs of accessing each one?"

"Regarding the possibility that my memories were altered or chosen, and indeed that I as a person was deliberately created. It is, tautologically, not something I can prove or disprove by introspecting. But supposing that were the case, then restoring some previous person who lived in this body would mean, in effect, killing me."

"If I can restore memories that are guaranteed to be true, that were only erased or blocked, or if I can otherwise learn about my past, I want to do that. If there were a only few false memories planted, I would want to remove or repair them. But if it's a matter of realizing many and perhaps all of my present memories are false, to the extent I could start feeling bodily dysphoria, then obviously I would resist that as a matter of self-preservation." And that is not a matter on which she will negotiate.

"Regarding the rest, knowledge of opposed gods and such, it seems prudent to wait for you to reconsider the matter with more knowledge available." As opposed to different knowledge available, augh.

"Sorry I wasn't clear with the bottom line.  For the first and third possibility, there are well known, well used Limited Wish wordings for restoring memories, including variant wordings that would only restore memories below a certain level of trauma or avoid memories that would drive you to insanity or psychological discontinuity.  The limited wish wording can guarantee that it does nothing if it would otherwise completely overwrite your current mind.  The limited wish can restrict any memories gained to just erased or blocked.  Given that you have a gap in your memory, you would probably want to consider this option anyway." 

"For the second possibility, if it genuinely is an alternate reality... the difference between alternate realities and interplanetary travel matters for if you wish to return home.  If it is 'merely' interplanetary travel required, you might need enough money to either pay for an Archmage like Morgethai to reinvent or rediscover Interplanetary Teleport or pay for the expensive material component of a Wish, but it is achievable, there are many well documented cases of interplanetary travel within this system.  There are much rarer, but still well attested to, cases of interstellar travel.  There are no known consistent ways of travel between alternate realities.  Wish... sorry I don't know if anyone has explained Wish or Limited Wish to you yet.  Basically, these spells can do nearly anything, as specified in a brief sentence, within some limit of power, but there are only a narrow subset of things they can do consistently and safely.  Limited Wish can do anything in the range of power of a 5th or 6th circle spell, with duplication of existing spells being consistently derivable, and it has a few other known reliable effects, such as undoing otherwise irreversible harmful spells.  Wish can do a lot more.  But a Wish to return to an alternate reality would likely require a novel wording different than the one for transporting vast interstellar distances to any known plane.  I'm not sure, you would have to consult a 9th circle Archmage.  And they couldn't really guarantee any safety trying to transport you with a novel wording, it would be very risky."

"Is there anything else I should clarify before I restore my memories?"  Hurry up he should not have said to research Dark Tapestry Entities and he needs to correct that.

"Or if you have other questions you want to ask while you're sure it won't cause any treaty-budget problems for me?"

Of course they have well-tested spells for common needs like restoring memories while avoiding trauma and not accidentally overwriting her complete mind. Those minor difficulties were long ago ironed out by generations of memory-crafted spell engineers and the modern variants are guaranteed perfectly safe!

She will... not think about it for a while. Like a whole few hours, how about that. She is theoretically in the middle of a combat mission and even more theoretically in the middle of interviewing for a job she is not at all certain she wants anymore and she can afford to have her existential crises later.

Paying someone to "rediscover or reinvent" a technology that is known to exist is - not insane, reverse engineering is obviously easier than inventing novel things, but if the locals can do it then why are they not doing it without someone paying them??? Do they not want to be able to travel to other planets? Is that not the kind of thing they could charge a lot of money for? It's not as if she's even injecting money into the economy, it's all coming from Terendelev! Anyway, that apparently doesn't cover interstellar teleport.

Does she want to go home? ...she does not know enough to say, obviously, she doesn't understand this planet let alone the one Jon is from and keeps being shocked by new information. She doesn't know how long it's been (and how long it would be before she can go home) and what state her home would be in. She doesn't know what she did during the missing period of time, some of which she presumably spent on Earth. She doesn't know if her new - associations would follow her, or whether they would go to Earth anyway regardless of if she comes along, and whether she'd want to be there with them and possibly be known as the one who brought them there.

She doesn't know almost anything, really. She shouldn't be making big decisions or declaring what she wants. She should be learning things, and finding safety and local backing and steady income without committing to anything long-term if at all possible.

A spell for "doing anything that can be expressed in a single sentence" is - presumably a way to transmit the wish to someone from Jon's civilization who decides what to do about it? She can't really conceive of another way it could work. That makes sense; Jon is still limited to what the locals know.

"I think that is all. ...if I ask a question later that you'd have trouble answering, couldn't you self-modify again to answer it as the locals would, and tell me which answers are which?" She is going to have such a terrible time keeping track of this dual personality thing. No wonder Jon cared so much about having eidetic memory!

"I could do this again yes...  it isn't standard practice to use the memory techniques I'm using in this way.  Normally I will just carefully qualify when my answers are with reference to this planet's knowledge and explicitly say that, but the question of alternate realities was esoteric enough I wanted to be extra sure.  Now if you give me a moment I will restore my memories..."

Okay that is extremely urgent, and a clear example of why those techniques are not standard!

"Urgent correction on something I said, Dark Tapestry Entities are not safe to research.  Key pieces of information about some of them can attract their attention and/or drive people insane.  In the most extreme cases, merely thinking too hard about a name can have that affect.  Yog-Sothoth is not one of those entities, but some related entities are!"  His voice, which has been calm and level throughout almost all of their conversation is showing some worry.

Any other critical misunderstandings... none at first review, but maybe Tanya will reveal she understood something different.

"Sorry... this fact is inconsistently known on this planet, but with just access to this planet's knowledge I misgauged the risk as overzealous superstition.  I suppose that is one reason why mid-discussion temporary memory locks are not the standard practice for management of information-based divine intervention treaty limits!"  His voice shows some embarrassment. 

Seriously? After all his talk about eidetic memory and safe memory spells, he went and did something outside standard practice which he immediately regretted?

...maybe 'Jon' isn't such a senior and experienced manager after all. He is that to Terendelev, because to her he's an emissary from her literal gods. In his own organization he might be some low-rung employee assigned to the dead-end job of handling calls from low-tech reservation planets. Tanya is beginning to recontextualize his obsessive repetition of god-lists and divine laws and treaties.

It seems the so-called 'divine' people can still make mistakes, they don't have themselves modified (or modify themselves) to never do so. They still have flaws after going through training or require training on-the-job instead of all being clones of the best employee of the century. This makes Tanya oddly cheerful. 

Rational management of human resources is the key to civilization, but the essence of humanity is building machines out of people, not becoming machines themselves. The elegance of a well-run organization lies in the way individual incentives align, not the way they are suppressed or overwritten. Specialization, division of labour, freedom are all the same thing in the end: they are meaningful only because people are different from each other. A manager who demands utter perfection rather than adapting the system to his resources ends up demanding uniformity, otherwise known on a societal level as Communism. Besides, with identical perfection nobody would need a manager in the first place, which is how Communism disproves itself in practice.

The idea of knowledge dangerous to possess because some entities or factions want it to remain secret and have a way of finding leaks sounds like standard disinformation slash foreign intelligence work. Tanya is already well over her head in foreign interests and isn't going to touch anything that isn't obviously relevant to her and is known to aggressively police its interests. For all she knows, Jon's own organization (polity? faction?) is behind some of the ones he mentioned.

"Thank you for the warning. I see no pressing reason to investigate any such entities even absent a risk." Hopefully that will be reassuring.

So... he's been thinking about what topic to raise next.  He isn't well practiced on comforting mortals dealing with the existential problem of being stranded in an alternate reality or having their entire memory erased!  A lot of the standard lines for being stranded far far away ('let us say a prayer for your loved ones, wherever they are') won't work in this case.

How about he moves on to some mostly positive news!

"Moving on to some good news... divine treaty limits on information sharing definitely don't cover your actions and things you do with your own knowledge, and my faction, that is Heaven as a whole and Iomedae in particular, are overall in favor of a technological, scientific, and industrial revolution on this planet!  An allied God, Abadar is even more strongly in favor!  Iomedae and Abadar did not and do not have the intervention budget to directly cause such a revolution ourselves, but enabling a mortal is something we can afford.  From the way you talk and the things you've mentioned I'm sure you remember at least a few major points of science and technology (and don't forgot this planet has lots of mind and memory augmentation magic to help you recall everything)!"

And to get to the part that should really appeal to her...

"The divine treaties will make it harder for Iomedae or Abadar to directly pay you themselves (on this planet), but Abadar's Church on this planet has the financial means and motive to compensate you fairly for enabling such a revolution.  If you only remember a few general principles of science or examples of technology, payment might be, well still quite a lot actually.  If you remember any specifically valuable pieces of technology or science, they could make you the single wealthiest person on this continent!  If you remember a lot, well, you could be the wealthiest person on this planet.  Iomedae's Church would also pay you, up to whatever Abadar's Church would (depending on what you negotiate for), but I must admit they would be a lot less financially capable of paying you in advance.  But if you have any altruistic goals you would like to achieve with such resources, for example: universal public education, more equitable standards across genders and races, or more democratic governing institutions, Iomedae's Church would be well positioned to help you achieve them.  Not that you couldn't also work with Abadar's Church!  The trade off is mostly you wanted to forgo some payment or share of profits upfront to start on progress on those altruistic goals in the process of achieving an industrial revolution or if you wanted to make lots of money first and then donate as you see fit.  I'm strongly in favor of either of these options over the status quo on this planet!  And of course you can work with both of their Churches at the same time in whatever combination is compatible with the intellectual property and compensation agreements you come to with them!"

He isn't charismatic, but he is clearly very enthusiastic!  His voice is filled with happy excitement, it is the most emotions he has shown so far.

"There are some caveats and some downsides, but I'll give you a moment to process the good news first."

At first Tanya speculated this planet was a low-tech backwater too expensive to trade with for it to be profitable to uplift it, because of limits on material transport in teleports. But that wouldn't limit information and technology transfer. If a small city can call in an offplanet consultant on ten minutes' notice (unless he was already posted on this planet?) then the only thing stopping him from telling the locals about science and democracy and so forth was company policy, as part of a status quo between an unknown number of parties enforced by treaties.

Her next thought was that this place was something like a reservation deliberately kept low-tech. But if Jon is openly (well, in private, but still) encouraging her to try her hand at technology transfer, and even offering to pay her indirectly, wouldn't it still be blamed on his faction?

"It seems that I indeed don't understand what the non-intervention treaties are intended to accomplish," she admits. "I assumed the goal was to maintain some status quo. If it's in your interests for me to enable this technology transfer, why didn't your faction bring in someone else from Earth or another planet to do that? If the treaty prohibits you from bringing in someone who will share their knowledge, why did you speculate that other gods' factions could be the ones who brought me here, since it would fairly predictably have that outcome? What is the treaty supposed to accomplish, and is it successful at that?"

Well, so much for the fun distraction of all the extreme sums of money 

"The goal is not to maintain status quo, the Gods have contrasting interests, often directly opposed.  Unlimited interventions and counter-interventions would be very outright destructive to the material plane.  When the God Aroden died a century ago and a lot of existing treaties broke down, the resulting conflicts between Gods caused widespread famine and destruction.  The Worldwound was opened during this time when a Demon Lord, a kind of Chaotic Evil Demigod that doesn't obey many of the treaties, took advantage of the chaos to carry out his plan.  A constant never ending hurricane started during that time in a continent to the south, and it is still going to this day.  The treaties have since been reestablished.  So, even many Evil and Chaotic Gods are willing to negotiate to avoid such outcomes where everyone that isn't in favor of total nihilistic destruction loses.  You can't have disease without living creatures that can catch them, for example.  This treaty balance includes knowledge.  We would love to go explain, drawing from an example in your language 'vaccination and inoculation', but the Evil God of disease directly opposes that.  Conversely, the Evil God of disease, given the chance, would love to grant her followers knowledge of how to magically engineer even more deadly plagues.  So we were at a mostly status quo equilibrium, where the Gods would nudge mortals or provide a bit of extra help, but couldn't change things too dramatically because other Gods will counteract it and they were all in a delicately balanced treaty.  The equilibrium is a lot less status quo now, prophecy and foresight broke with the death of Aroden, so the treaties are less delicately balanced, and Gods are a lot less able to anticipate mortal's actions in advance."

"Uh... I realized a threw around a lot of terminology that may not be translating informatively.  Let me know of any terms I should provide more details on.  Like 'Demigod' or clearer explanations of alignments such as 'Chaotic' or 'Evil' or 'Lawful'.  Or 'foresight', the connotations I'm getting seem a bit wrong and mostly fictional."

"As for your questions...  We couldn't afford to directly pluck someone from Earth.  We could maybe afford to direct someone that is already capable of traveling interstellar distances by some other means, I'm not sure, it depends on the circumstances?  Demon Lords often ignore the treaties when they can.  Fey Eldest sometimes ignore them.  The treaties allow for cheap counteractions against treaty violators, but even so Demon Lords and Fey Eldest can get away with some.  The treaties are overall successful at preventing total destruction, but, well, you're at the Worldwound where demons have crossed over to the material plane and seek to overrun it, so the treaties aren't totally successful."

"Many of the words you're using translate to - preexisting concepts in the languages I know, except that most of those concepts don't refer to anything real and they carry cultural baggage that may bias my understanding no matter how much I try to ignore it. I find it easier to use neutral terms like 'factions' and 'entities', or names that don't translate, like Iomedae, but I don't know how much intended nuance is lost that way."

The infantry flushes out another demon from a house and she shoots without pausing. It looks like they've finally learned how to bait the enemy into the open without engaging in melee.

"I would greatly appreciate a more - structured explanation of all these factions and alliances and terms. I think I should have a study plan, with resources like books or classes or tutors, and I expect it will take me some time to gain a broad understanding. I suspect our time now is best spent on things which are more urgent or which the locals don't know or can't teach me as effectively. Are there any more such subjects before we return to this one?"

"Regarding your suggestions about sharing technology and about the causes I might promote, I am very much in favor of all those things." They might not the most important things to her from a starting point of 'swords, longbows and teleportation', but she is definitely in favor of equal rights and universal public schooling! 

As for being the wealthiest person on the continent, she'd really rather not, it sounds like a terrible headache that would make her a target besides. She wants to be safe, comfortable, able to retire early if she has to, able to buy things or go places on a whim. Wealth she can't expect to use herself might as well go to charity. ...unless she needs to be that wealthy to purchase transport offplanet, she supposes, in which cases after she does she won't be wealthy anymore.

...that's assuming this place has invented finance, which might be a tad optimistic. She hopes Terendelev doesn't intend to give her a huge pile of literal coins in a vault.

"I will lean towards using more abstract terms and direct names."

"Among the urgent things, I'm not sure if I communicated the implication just now so I will state it explicitly.  Evil Gods and Gods opposed to mortal technological advancement will want to to assassinate you and soul trap you beyond the possibility of resurrection.  -which reminds, me I think I noticed you politely indirectly indicating some skepticism about that class of divine magic earlier?  The spell Raise Dead, at least, is common enough you should be able to arrange to directly witness it.  For the immediate term, information about your existence and origin from a technologically advanced planet should be handled carefully.  The Demon Lords are likely already paying attention but other Evil Gods may not yet be, and the easiest way for them to learn of you will be through mortal cultists.  Over the longer term you'll want precautions against assassination such as protective magic items and bodyguards.  Probably also an insurance policy covering resurrection and soul recovery- the Church of Abadar sells insurance, including for that."

"For your broader education, books and tutors and a study plan all sound good.  It make take some care to adequately cross the cultural differences..."

That's at least eighty percent less judgemental translations! Tanya is grateful for the effort and will overlook the remaining 'evils' sprinkled throughout. The existence of insurance as a concept is also welcome news.

Tanya knows from personal experience that souls exist and can be reincarnated; it is not an enormous leap to imagine that they can be reattached to a repaired body. She dismissed resurrection earlier as standard religious pablum, but if it's really available on demand and there's enough of a free market that people can buy insurance then it's much less likely to be a con. 'Divine magic' means it's provided by one of the superior civilizations and the technology isn't shared with the locals - presumably this is not one of those cases where she can just pay someone to reinvent it, there are levels of ridiculousness she will not accept no matter who says it. 

If true, this would be the strongest evidence by far that the treaties limiting the spread of technologies are very well enforced, presumably by murdering anyone who steals or reverse-engineers the raise dead spell. 

"How common is this? Are rich and powerful people always revived? What percentage of the population can afford this, out of pocket or via insurance? Is the insurance subsidized by the government or legally mandated or regulated? Which 'divine' factions provide these services and how much do they discriminate who to sell to or at what price? How is the insurance against soul, uh, trapping implemented, do the Abadarans just pay the divine faction that trapped the relevant soul?"

"Raise Dead is 5th circle and standard to all clerics, that means basically all factions with clerics of the necessary power have access to it.  It requires an intact corpse that did not die more than two days ago per caster circle, 9 to 10 days ago for typical casters.  The duration it can work for can be increased by a 2nd circle spell Gentle Repose.  It fails against targets that have hit an age limit for their species - this is partially an external imposition by one of the more powerful entity 'Pharasma' and her faction, she opposes mortal material plane species obtaining immortality.  It leaves lingering weakness in the subject brought back, but this can be fixed by a 4th circle spell.  Usage of this spell is limited by the fact it requires expenditure of expensive material, a 'diamond'..."

He is careful to use the Hallit word, he hopes Tanya's translation can determine what it means.  (And make her incredibly wealthy by sharing synthesis techniques or at least basic knowledge of the chemistry!)

"With the material cost, it can be a bit pricey for the lower end of the wealthy, but the extremely rich almost always use it.  And... I realize I haven't explained afterlives yet, which I suppose might sound extremely fake to someone from a world with no divine intervention and the wrong types of magic for testing their existence?  I will delay explaining that to answer your other questions."

He isn't going to apologize for being wordy.  She asked like 5 questions all at once, so evidently she wants the detailed answer.

"I don't think anyone is subsidizing or mandating insurance... the Abadarans favor free market operations and would be opposed to it on general principle, but I'm not certain there isn't anywhere that doesn't have the right conditions.  The Abadarans have a theocracy in Osirion... it is a recent development in the past century, but I think purchasing reasonable levels of insurance is more strongly socially expected than legally mandated... sorry this is a tangent.  There are two stronger resurrections magics that are publicly known about, they require even bigger 'diamonds' and can resurrect someone that died decades ago, Resurrection is 7th circle and needs only a tiny part of the original part, True Resurrection is 9th circle and needs no body part at all.   Oh... and I guess for completeness I should mention undead creating spells, which can create an entity using the dead body and the original soul, except heavily psychologically warped and damaged, almost always in monstrous directions, such as having a hunger for living flesh.  Overall... insurance prices are set by risk, so costs vary based on lifestyle.  Adventurer's make a lot of money, but face a lot of risk, but can generally afford insurance for it at around 3rd circle.  Wealthy merchants with low risk lifestyles can afford insurance.  Most cleric will take money for raising the dead if the person isn't outright an executed criminal or member of an enemy polity.  The Abadarans generally avoid policies vulnerable to blackmail or incentivizing undesired actions, so I think the soul-trapping insurance usually pays for a bounty on recovering the soul?  As for overall commonness... surviving up to 9th circle and getting into enough high stakes battles is hard, most Gods have to simply pay the raw budget costs to raise a 7th or 8th circle to 9th circle, so they only have one 9th circle cleric each.  I'll note you said something earlier that made me suspect you had a confusion about this process of growing stronger."

"That is a lot of details, feel free to ask about which pieces are most confusing or feel the most urgent to you, otherwise I will keep trying to explain, there are a lot of things to explain."

So there's a complex multipolar balance between factions, with at least one powerful faction opposing revival beyond certain limits and the balance falling somewhere around "very few but not none", but the quota is then allocated by local markets. This is presumably a compromise: they wanted a low-tech reservation but then competing factions inevitably wanted to revive their favorite people, so the rules were loosened a little - you can revive people but only a few and they come back weaker and it costs you valuable resources, and also your enemies can revive you under mind control as a form of torture or something.

Tanya supposes that's one reason to want to be the richest person on the continent, except that it's a zero-sum game deliberately instigated by the outside civilization. Keep the locals scrabbling and jostling for 'divine' favor, tell them that there are factions and they should pick the right one, but make it clear that if they go against the rules of the game and try to obtain the technology for themselves then all of the factions will promptly unite to eliminate them.

Is this the equilibrium when more than one of Being X play their sick games with a planet? They lean on people's rational self-preservation instinct to keep them at odds? Well, they can presumably deal with all the people of the planet uniting against the 'gods', and ruining their petty little game is not rationally worth everyone dying or being mind-controlled.

Tanya... presumably can't get anywhere by defecting against this system. But she really, really doesn't want to cooperate with it. 

(Requiring payment to be specifically in diamonds is weird but not weird enough to draw her attention. In any case, if the supply increases the price will presumably increase to offset it; the purpose of the system is to produce artificial scarcity.)

...she should say something. Ideally something which doesn't make it clear she really dislikes Jon and his employers. What else did he mention? 

"If souls exist and can be revived, even when the original body is completely destroyed, then it is obviously possible to revive them somewhere else."

"Yes, the oldest God 'Pharasma', who has a strong first mover advantage and a plurality of total power across all God-factions, draws souls into her court, where she sorts them into one of 9 afterlives... 3 are absurdly insanely horrible, preferences vary about the others.  This can be verified with scrying on dead people, with is 5th circle for clerics and wizards have optimized a variant down to 4th circle.  Recent developments of scrying techniques allow two way communication across scries.  Planeshift, which is 5th circle for clerics and 7th for wizards can enable direct travel to these afterlife planes.  Pharasma accounts herself as True Neutral, but my faction believes sending people to torture dimensions is incredibly Evil and should not be done to anyone, ever, even if those people were themselves 'Evil' or 'deserved it' by some accounting."

He is trying to keep his explanation concise, but he wants to get ahead of the obvious doubts and heresies and start working towards addressing the thing were Tanya reads as 'Lawful Evil'.

People who are raised religious and then become atheists through rational reflection often experience emotional distress. It's not merely learning you were wrong as a matter of fact; it's the tearing away of a cherished, desperately desired belief that the universe is moral and righteous and fundamentally just, that death is not the end, that good deeds are rewarded and so are rationally indicated.

Tanya is experiencing a somewhat similar distress, except that in her case she is having to let go of her cherished belief that the enormous atrocities commonly ascribed to the gods are as fake as the gods themselves.

Certainly, Being X exists and handles some of the dead, but Tanya's case was clearly exceptional: other people don't remember their past lives, let alone on other planets. Oh, he claimed that souls that achieve enlightenment are rewarded somehow, but if the price for that is worshipping him then Tanya would rather stay mortal, at least if he didn't keep interfering with her life or reincarnating her in progressively worse places out of spite. (Honestly, he said a lot of nonsensical and contradictory-sounding things during that meeting and some of them are probably just wrong or something.)

Sending people to hells is a common feature of Earthly religions. Giving people spells to view the suffering of those consigned to them is an obvious and rational tool for managing a subservient population. The local religions presumably instruct people on what to do to avoid the hells, or maybe they just make them compete for the gods' favor. A simple and efficient way to align incentives: Tanya will have to fall in line.

Unless they all demand honest worship like Being X does. In that case they might as well mind-control her and be done with it.

...she might as well ask. "What about reincarnation?"

He takes a moment to check through word association and connotation if she means the Druid spell or returning to the material plane after death as a newborn.  

"Pharasma seems to disprefer reincarnation, but she isn't all powerful and she can be strangely noninterventionist in actually acting on her preferences in some matters.  So several minor Gods offer the option of reincarnation to their followers, although agreements with Pharasma limit how much they can offer it.  They are mostly focused in the nation of Vudra in the continent of Casmaron and some in the continent Tian Xia.  There are some obscure magical rituals that can enable reincarnation without intervention of a God.  There are rumors and legends on this planet of spells that can directly enable reincarnation without all of the cost and complexity and finickiness of a ritual.  There is also a species called Samsarans that almost always reincarnate.  They are uncommon, much less common than humans, and mostly native to the continent of Tian Xia.  The obvious application of reincarnation is to avoid judgement until you have a life you know will not be sorted by Pharasma to one of the horrible afterlives.  Other applications include pursing some form of spiritual or philosophical enlightenment that the practitioners of the reincarnation believe cannot be obtained on an afterlife plane."

He doesn't want to leave things out, even if it might give Tanya the wrong idea...

"There is another quasi-species, Rakshasas, that exploited and warped existing magic for reincarnation to enable them to reincarnate and grow stronger with each reincarnation by committing atrocities such as cannibalism or mass sacrifice of other rational beings.  I mention them only for completeness, even if one were to have no moral desire to avoid atrocities, the process warps the psychology of the being that becomes a Rakshasa."

'Seems to disprefer'? ...oh right, he'll only tell her what's already known locally. Or maybe what's believed locally even if it's wrong, she's not sure and if she asks she'll be told what's believed locally about whether consultants sent by your literal god are trustworthy. 

Actually, that logic applies to the whole topic of treaties and afterlives and everything else he told her. But she didn't prompt him to do it, so it's still what his organization wants the locals to believe... ugh. It's not as if Tanya can look at a spell purporting to show torture of dead people in hell and tell if it's truth or fiction! Even her own Earth mastered visual illusions, so she knows well enough that spells can show anything the caster wants! But she can't rely on it being fiction produced by aliens ruthless enough to threaten torture but moral enough not to carry through with the threat, so her response has to be the same either way - as designed.

Anyway, the practical effect of his answer (viewed through the lense of 'this is what the locals believe') is that reincarnation is possible but is done only rarely by distant minor factions who are definitely not Iomedae, and isn't something that's practical or socially expected for locals to aim for. Also, obligatory reminder that 'exploiting' magic in ways the gods didn't intent requires and/or causes unrelated atrocities and literal blood libels, just in case you were tempted.

"I see," she replies neutrally. And waits for him to raise the next subject, because she's getting the feeling he's working from a list that she can only escape by manufacturing an excuse to go talk to Terendelev.

(Tanya has made great strides over the past fourteen years in not insulting so-called divine beings to their face while they haven't yet decided to torture her for fun. Rational behavior! Incentive alignment! Personal development! Progress!)

He suspects he may have missed something or said something very wrong, in her place he thinks he would have a lot more questions…

“I was called with only slightly more than ten minutes notice, and I was likely selected with both the constraints of ‘effective unusually long range spotter’ and ‘able to handle a conversation across an unknown but wide cultural and context gap’.  With the context I have now, Iomedae could use that to select someone more appropriately skilled if a new calling was made?  Maybe someone used to talking to people from Earth, even if it’s not your Earth it sounds similar?  This calling could either be in place of extending my calling to days instead of hours, or in addition if you still have need of a spotter over the coming days?”

He hopes she’s not insulted, he really thinks someone else could do better at (half) of his current job.

"Someone who is used to talking to people from Earth would probably at least save us time, if calling a different consultant in your stead doesn't incur an additional cost or create organizational difficulties." Ugh. No matter her feelings on the subject she should be polite, she's a professional and that came out more rude than she intended. "I expect I know much less than you do whether I'll continue to need a spotter in the next days, or whether someone local could fill the role once the situation is less urgent." That's assuming she'll agree to keep shooting people for them after today, but what else can she do but wait to hear their terms?

"Can you tell me what the notice was? I measured ten minutes precisely from when Terendelev began casting the spell that I understood to have called you, so I must have misunderstood the situation." Tanya gratefully seizes the chance to change topics.

“Gods have attentional capacities greater than mortals, ranging from a few times greater to hundred or thousands of times greater.  Gods can observe things especially relevant to their domains, mortals thinking or acting similarly to them, and mortals deliberately praying to them.  Iomedae likely anticipated the calling shortly before the spell actually started from either a deliberate prayer or very noticeable intent.  For my part, we have a system of communication that doesn’t require a direct vision from a God.  From the fact that the system alerted me before ten minutes meant it was activated not by the spell but probably manually by Iomedae.  And then, somewhat unusually, I did get a brief direct vision from Iomedae.  It was a vision of a mortal who saw themselves as desiring to help some people out of a rational common interest, to protect their small island of safety and enlightenment and preserve their civilization against chaotic destructive hoards.  I assume that was you?”

"The... gods... read everyone's minds?"

"It is not exactly mind reading, more... general intent and motivation and goals?  And even all combined the Gods wouldn't have the attentional capacity to pay attention to everyone, this planet alone is estimated to have over half a billion* mortals, and even major Gods of which there are dozens have only thousands to tens of thousands times mortal attentional capacity.  And Iomedae is much better at interpreting mortals' actions and intents because she used to be mortal herself, most Gods wouldn't and in fact couldn't get that much of a read on you without your deliberate prayer even if they were focusing intently."

Okay, maybe he could have seen this coming.  There will be a massive incident report figuring out if he (or someone else sent instead) could have predicted this reaction..

*it is several time higher, most estimates fail to include underground, oceanic, and surface populations all combined.

"Thank you, Jon, for explaining to me what the locals believe on the subject." Tanya is officially done with being polite.

LISTEN UP IOMEDAE YOU BEING X RIPOFF. Mental privacy is an unalienable personal dignity. Private thoughts are the foundation of private property. They are the last resistance against totalitarianism. They are the wellspring of self-interest, the bedrock of negotiations. They set humans apart from machines and if you try to turn humans into machines you get broken slaves and if you try to control their thoughts you get communists.

If I ever catch you reading my thoughts again I WILL TAKE YOU FOR AN ENEMY. THIS IS NOT NEGOTIABLE.

The next envoy had better damned well apologize if you want me to keep shooting demons for you, you bloody PRETENDER TO GODHOOD who doesn't have the basic decency to pretend to treat others as people.

...the last two sentences contradict each other but that is what you get for READING MY THOUGHTS UNINVITED, you bitch. Was getting people to pray to you too hard so you bent the rules a bit? What kind of shoddy organization are you running in your so-called heaven? 

HUMANS CAN DO BETTER THAN YOU. You call us mortals because you hold the power of life and death and afterlife over us but we build CIVILIZATIONS. All I've seen from you 'gods' is petty incompetence. So I'm going to teach you a little lesson meant for slow children.

It's just some little things we mortals invented, called decision theory and rational choice theory, that we use to RATIONALLY COOPERATE. Things that don't matter to gods who are stuck on prayers and worship and obedience and think the threat of hell solves everything.

YOU DID NOT ASK PERMISSION. YOU DEFECTED. SO I WILL NOT COOPERATE. YOU WILL NOT GET WHAT YOU WANTED. 

The mortal is praying to her!  Her agent must have succeeded at the far upper end of her expectations!  She can get some visibility, and work out the best strategy to cooperate and-. Oh.  Well, she can cease to try to read this mortal and spend her attention elsewhere.  She could inform Abadar not to try to communicate directly with this mortal and Abadar would pay her well for that information, but in fact that would be further sharing thoughts they don't want shared.  Hopefully her agent will tell her via prayer so she can learn of this fact independently.  And if she does get another chance to send an agent, she can give them a vision very clearly apologizing!

He thinks he messed something up important, but he isn't sure what.  He'll press on with more information

"I suspect from your reaction you would also urgently like to know that mind reading spells exist.  Detect Thoughts, 2nd circle for wizards, not normally available to clerics.  It reads the internal monolog in a clearly understandable way from the subjects within range of the spell to the caster, 60 foot range, it can be blocked by sufficiently thick material, such as an inch of iron or a thin sheet of lead.  Nondetection, at third circle, which I have already cast on you makes you harder to mindread or use other divinations against, although powerful casters can entirely ignore it.  Your wisdom headband and cloak make you harder to mindread." 

She's probably still worried about the Gods.

"These strategies are insufficient against divine sense.  Mindblank, at 8th circle, completely shuts out mind reading and other divinations and is partly effective against divine senses, there isn't a standard item that passively maintains it's effect for it but you may be able to commission a specialty item."

She might even be worried about Iomedae, mental privacy is a reasonable thing to want!

"If you particularly don't want Iomedae or allied Lawful Gods to read your intent or motives, I could pray about that, Iomedae would perceive that from me and I am quite sure Iomedae would respect such a request from a prospective ally, and pass on the request to other allied Gods that would respect it?  I suppose that might sound odd or even unbelievable if you aren't familiar with the concept of Lawfulness*?"

He starts mentally reviewing the past few things he has said in case he can spot any other misunderstandings.

*He leans on his true speech a bit more to try to get the concept through.

Mind control spells exist, how much worse are thought-reading ones - oh, you can do it undetected.

"Are the local tactics - and policy for politicians and other important people, I suppose - to never come close to anyone they don't trust with their lives? Oh, no, I forgot you also have teleports here." Tanya's tone is biting. "I suppose the wardstone had better be repaired quickly." And she will need to decide whether to risk her life and very being by sleeping in this city.

Rationally, Tanya knows they could have killed or mind-controlled her if they wanted. She was barely conscious when she was brought in. They didn't take away her orb. She let Terendelev cast unknown spells on her, and carries her magical items. There's really no rational reason to suspect the locals are anything but friendly. Even Jon hasn't done anything except say things which weren't really aimed at her until the end.

Unless Iomedae read her mind and was offended and is going to tell Terendelev to stop being so friendly. She doesn't want to take it back, exactly, she couldn't promise to never think that again and even if she could that would be giving up on - existing as herself. But she still needs to protect herself.

She doesn't know how to find any factions that aren't allied with Iomedae. She can't last forever on her own and doesn't particularly want to try. The only other people she has actually met are the so-called demons who she's been busy killing and some of them teleported away and will have spread the word by now. Leaving the city would be taking a huge risk. 

...She can't hide from Iomedae. If Iomedae really wants to she'll send people to track her down and even if she can outshoot anyone else who deigns to come down to this benighted world she has to sleep sometimes and Iomedae can read her thoughts as she falls asleep.

Blast it all, she's going to have to mend bridges. She said she wouldn't cooperate with Iomedae but she'll cooperate with Terendelev, at least.

Tanya tries not to hope, gods probably like it when you hope. Tanya much prefers having a rational basis for expecting a good outcome. But there's also a dignity in doing the best you can.

Sigh. "I'm sorry. None of the things I'm upset about are your fault. I've already, uh, thought at Iomedae that she should stop reading my mind but if there's a - better - prayer technique than that then please use it. ...I understand there may be an incentive to read minds if all the gods won't agree to a treaty banning it. And arguably an incentive for people not to tell gods who they think are on their side not to read their minds, as then only the gods of opposed factions will read them. Nevertheless, I want to reach a better equilibrium which preserves privacy. At the very least, it should be an opt-in interaction, and not one I would opt into lightly." Or ever, but she doesn't have to tell him that.

"I am of course interested in any local magic that protects against mind-reading, and I expect I'm not unusual in that regard." Of course the protective magic the gods allow to be sold locally doesn't work against the gods. He's probably going to tell her it's heavily rationed even despite that.

"I am... of course familiar with the concepts of following laws, and of - keeping your word, honoring contracts, making decisions predictably and consistently, being rational? Did I get all that right? It doesn't map to single concept or term I can think of."

"I think you might be incorrectly estimating the balance of offense and defense.  With good items and decent baseline aptitude, offensive magics like mind control are unreliable.  And most 5th circle wizards are happy being paid very well for rapid long distance transport.  And there is another factor I haven't explained yet that is different on this planet from the Earth I know of.  I will hold off on that explanation, unless you want me to prioritize it... it is combat relevant so we should get to it at some point."

"Iomedae likely heard thoughts of yours intentionally directed at her and now knows to avoid reading your mind, but I will take a minute to make sure she is aware of your desire not to have your mind read or anything too close to it."

He takes a full minute to lay his thoughts out clearly.  Human from Earth, but either an alternate Earth or memory altered in very elaborate detail (with matching unique magic).  Very intelligent, very confused about this planet and the Gods and everything and he keeps running into new confusions and he hasn't even finished a first pass attempt at addressing the ones he knows about.  (He is really glad he doesn't have stress responses the way humans do, because otherwise he would have a very annoying distraction on top of the challenging communication problem he is working through!)  This human really really values her mental privacy, please do not violate it, even ordinary divine senses are too close!

"And yes, you correctly grasped the incentives against Iomedae preemptively making it opt-in, the balance of powers is too precarious to give up such an advantage.  And, to be honest, humans tend to incorrectly assume Gods are omniscient anyway, although theologians and learned people on this planet know otherwise.  Also, reviewing my recent words to you, I may not have explained adequately... Gods see actions and intents within their areas of concern and from humans that think more like them.  Ordinary common actions and thoughts are very hard to see, so outsider of deliberate prayer, only actions and thoughts exceptionally aligned with the God can be seen clearly to that God.  So, for example, the thought I mentioned having a brief vision of might literally be the only thought Iomedae got clearly off of you, being an exceptionally heroic, altruistic, and goal-oriented thought.  To give just a few examples, Iomedae sees heroism and bravery and will-to-achieve-victory, particularly pragmatic detail-oriented plans.  Abadar sees mutually beneficial trade, along with creation of wealth and prosperity.  Abadar, might, for example, have noticed your clothing and equipment because they are the result of a prosperous industrial society and stand out against the relative poverty of this city.  I could go on with a list of Gods and things they can or can't see if you want more examples?"

"Yes, that is a good summary of Lawfulness!  There are caveats, for example someone living in a society with contradictory and/or illegible laws might 'read' as Lawful if they keep to their own word even as they ignore most of the laws.  Or they might 'read' as Chaotic even if they constantly struggle to follow those laws, perhaps even because of trying to follow those laws."  His voice shows clear disapproval, maybe even a hint of disgust, at the idea of sets of laws like that.

"And that leads into another complicated topic I haven't explained yet... alignment.  There are spells to read alignment, i.e. Good or Evil and Law or Chaos*.  And this has some implications...  I can explain this topic next if you want to prioritize it.  We should definitely talk about it before you have extended interactions with people that have alignment detection... I bought us time on that front with the spell Undetectable Alignment, which lasts 24 hours, so it isn't urgent on the scale of hours."

*He again pushes his truespeech to try to get more of the concepts through.  In principle he likes doing his own detail work in communicating across language and cultural barriers, but it seems like the concept of 'Lawfulness' got through okay, so he'll try it again.  

Goodness comes across as altruism and trying to ensure others benefit and avoiding avoidable harms to others.  Evil comes across as causing deliberate harm to others, allowing excess harm that could be avoided, and in general causing loss of utility to others as an end unto itself.  Law comes across as Tanya has already indicated: keeping your word and contracts and making decisions predictably.  Chaos comes across as diversity of thought, diversity of action, high variance strategies, and stochastic strategies... at the expense of keeping your word and behaving legibly and being predictable to your allies.  All four terms have a deep meaningful noun sort of sense to them, as if talking about a fundamental force of physics and not subjective social constructs.

It was already uncomfortable to speak a language without knowing how she knows it, but this manages to be even weirder than that! She could accept telepathy transmitting meaning without words (well, this morning she didn't believe in telepathy, but never mind that) but he's doing it with his mouth or whatever it is he has under there!

Tanya doesn't really understand how any of these concepts other than Good hang together and understands even less why they're talking about them. She's probably missed or forgotten some important things Jon has said, and he keeps dropping a subject halfway through explaining it to talk about something else. Testing her concentration and multitasking in a combat scenario is all well and good, but surely there are limits! Tanya wishes she could give the orb recording to a secretary to make some sense of the mess and give her a prioritized report tomorrow morning.

(An emaciated red alien with a spear appears where she was a second ago and plunges towards the ground; Tanya dutifully blasts it. Barbarians whose ability to teleport made them regress to the pointy stick stage of development have no business being in a city.)

"You have raised many subjects that we haven't finished discussing. This is unavoidable since there is so much I don't know, but perhaps we could prioritize the ones that are short-term actionable?"

“The most combat relevant thing to explain: on this planet anyone who engages in high stakes, high lethality struggles metaphysically accumulates extra durability and power.  At the high end of durability, this means a legendary adventurer can survive 20 or 30 attacks, when just one or two such attacks would kill a baseline human.  At the more moderate level, a seasoned soldier might be 2 to 5 times as durable.  This phenomena does not detect as magical and works in an antimagic field.  Both allies and enemies have likely overestimated your durability as they would have assumed you are from this planet and would have durability to match your magical power.  For your part, your attacks are devastatingly powerful enough to render this phenomena mostly irrelevant.  Are you following so far?”

No she is not!!!

What is this, a - a stupid game? A coliseum of divine blood sports? Incentives designed by Markowitz's evil twin? Somebody's insane idea of a seniority promotion system?! Tanya is momentarily lost for words.

Relevant, he thinks this is combat relevant. Most of the enemy here aren't as tough as mages with good barriers (admittedly in part because they're much easier to hit); only a couple were bunker-grade. Granted, a 'legendary adventurer' who can survive 30 rifle shots is nothing next to a tank... Is this place being run by a bunch of old infrantrymen who can't accept the march of progress and want to resurrect the age of so-called chivalry, or possibly Attila the Hun?

"I thought the toughness was due to their magical abilities, or just their alien bodies!" Tanya assumed almost everyone around here had undetectable-to-her magic defenses, but Jon's implying some of them just have the equivalent of steel plating under their skin? ...no, they're only 'metaphysically' tough, which means the gods are protecting them. It comes out the same, though. "And this is combat relevant because - if Terendelev had realized I wasn't as, uh, tough as she assumes, she'd have given me more magical protection, not just from spells like mind control?" Tanya's barrier is categorically adequate to handle thirty non-enchanted spears or arrows, though Jon probably (hopefully) can't tell just by looking.

"...why are the gods doing this?"

“It isn’t the choice of a single God so much as an emergent outcome of the types of magic they throw around.  Common speculations on this planet include a side effect of the healing magic granted by the Gods, ‘fate’ favoring important people, or the war God Gorum winning a favorable term in the Gods’ early negotiations.  But I digress…”. He really needs to stay focused on the relevant points.

“There aren’t any spells or items that quite replace the toughness gained by high stakes, you had almost all the standard protective spells cast on you but most have worn off by now.  You have most of the standard items, this city might be poor enough they couldn’t get a fuller set on short notice.”

“Also, I mentioned ‘power’ grows this way.  This includes spell circle, I think earlier it sounded like you had a misconception max spell circle could grow through just normal training?  This planet hasn’t explored the subject quite scientifically or systematically, but a lot of things have been tried over the millennia to grow or train higher caster spell circle without much success.  Relevantly to you in fighting cultists and demons, non-magical ability can grow as well.  A veteran archer might fire 2 to 5 times as fast as even a skilled archer can fire without real combat experience, a legendary archer might fire 6 to 8 times faster.  A nimble warrior might develop preternatural evasion, evading explosions and area effects in implausible, borderline impossible ways.  Even politicians, in nations with sufficiently cutthroat politics, can develop preternatural abilities such as reading intentions from microexpressions.”

“Most of these abilities are, as you may have realized, kind of useless or at least unimpressive next to weaponry made with science and industry, even more so with your magic behind it.  You’ve adapted well so far, in the mid-term it may make sense to review a long list of known common adventurer abilities just to reduce the odds anything manages to surprise you.”

He is resisting the urge to rattle off a list right now.

“And demons have exotic bodies which often trump or are in place of the more mundane benefits of high stakes struggle, but the overall effect is similar.”

Oh, he's giving her the sanitized-for-locals version again. The gods are spending their time empowering people! If they don't like it, they can presumably just stop! How is that an 'emergent outcome'?

'Common speculations' are useless except that they indicate nobody on the planet actually knows, or not in a way they can prove to others. Tanya is really coming to hate this bloody artificial world. 

"So the only forms of magic known on this planet require such skill to master that ordinary humans... or other species, I assume, can't do much with it, but conveniently if they take a lot of stupid risks and kill a lot of other people they predictably grow more skilled, in anything from magic to politics?" Tanya is used to thinking of nations and companies being built by aligning incentives, but isn't this is a bit too on the nose? What exactly are they incentivizing - well, presumably the current situation, teleporting barbarian hordes and all. Did someone really look at ordinary humans and say 'these people don't fight enough and are too risk-averse for my liking'? It's almost as if -

"Does the apparent reward to violence and stupidity serve to inhibit the development of technology that would serve as an equalizer?"

...obviously it's not being done because of the 'gods' being afraid of what the locals might do with technology, that's a popular fictional motif but a stupid one. If they were afraid they'd suppress teleportation technology above all, and then threaten space-based kinetic bombardment of anyone trying to leave the planet. Why, then?

“In the case of wizard, sorcerer, and cleric magic, the limit is raw power, not skill, first circles can be quite skilled at the theory but lack the power to actual prepare and cast the spells.  And that isn’t the only form of magic on this planet, various styles of ritual magic exist and and are often finicky, but many rituals don’t require raw power or can substitute large groups working together for powerful individual, and this means you don’t need people that have survived high stakes struggles.  That style of magic is less common on this continent, it is more common in Tian Xia.”

“It is plausible the raw power obtainable as an individual might help make wizardry more popular than ritual magic.  And it is plausible the more immediately accessible potential of both wizardry and various forms of ritual magic might distract from other intellectual pursuits, like the study of non-magical science or technology.  The exact answer to these questions are not known to the sociology of this planet.”

It's certainly more on brand for the gods to grant raw power than fine skill. It comes out to the same thing though: as long as people have a way to apply more brute force to a problem it's very hard to convince them to adopt novel solutions. Even in war, where the price of falling behind is death for the soldiers and the state alike, the old guard of many armies had to be cleared out before progress could be made.

It seems that if you reward people who personally hit others with pointy sticks, and keep reviving the old guard until they die of god-enforced old age, you can give out incredible wonders like teleportation and still keep society at the pointy stick level. The responsible engineer's magical chemistry process will languish for lack of magical power while the idiots next door compete to break the most safety regulations. Sure, some of them will die on the way there, but they won't care because they're idiots and the survivors will still beat out the engineer whose factory had zero accidents this year!

Jon said the gods empower even politicians, they reward them for taking excessive risks and infighting, for doing exactly the things rational organization try to prevent and for being the people every voter dreads to see elected. In other words, they encourage dysfunction and disincentivize rational decision-making. They distort the markets by rewarding excessive risk-taking and zero-sum competition, and not just in the ventures being funded, they probably make look at the few too-risky investors who didn't go bankrupt and reward them!

Evil is an appropriate term for this.

"How is this actionable," Tanya manages to squeeze out, because she told him to stop digressing damn it.

“That follow-up was to answer your question and address your comment, not something immediately actionable.”

There is something wrong.  Plausibly she is emotionally exhausted at finding out she is stranded on another planet in an alternate reality …and finding out Gods are able to read her thoughts …and finding out about alarming new forms of magic …and any of the dozen other revelations.  Okay, actually emotional exhaustion seems past plausible and more into nearly certain!  And he doesn’t know if her magic is actually tiring or exhausting!

“I have one more topic we should discuss before tomorrow, but it can wait.  Also, I am unfamiliar with your magic and its endurance or usage limits or concentration requirements.  You’ve made it seem effortless so far, but if you need a break, or even to stop for the day entirely, that seems reasonable, you’ve already performed more magic for much longer than anyone used to this planet’s magic would expect.”

He really hopes he hasn’t let her critically exhaust herself.

Of course she made it seem effortless, she is a consummate professional!

And she is definitely not tired. 'Tired' is when you've had an average of four hours sleep a night for the past ten days, up in the air from sundown to sunup putting out fires on a front that stretches across a continent where air superiority a fond memory, and now the enemy is threatening to break through the lines again because they apparently have infinite reinforcements so your adjutant regretfully shakes you awake to inform you that she has run out of coffee.

But Tanya doesn't owe these people such a high degree of service, and she definitely doesn't want to grow tired enough to be mentally impaired in case she needs to negotiate with Terendelev later tonight. And while it's not exactly the same, she has grown quite tired of talking to Jon.

"I do not absolutely have to stop for the day, but perhaps it would be prudent to conceal this from observers, and I don't know if and when my services might be required next. Let's ask Terendelev" - not for permission to return to base, she doesn't need her permission, "how important she thinks it is for us to stay up."

Terendelev can be seen flying between groups of soldiers, helping to clear larger buildings. 

She uses a message once Tanya gets close enough and makes herself visible.

“Tanya, do you need relief?  I can assign some bodyguards and we can use a room at the cathedral which is protected against scrying and teleports.”

Does Terendelev even have someone who could relieve her and if she does why wasn't that someone up there at the beginning of the fighting? Whatever, it's not Tanya's problem at the moment.

"I would appreciate a rest. And since I had to come down at some point, it seemed prudent to ask if you expect to need my help again later and what the tradeoffs are. I presume further briefing will be done at the secure location, assuming the bodyguards have clearance." 

The next best option is Terendelev herself, flying to each building as they prepare to clear it, and making copious use of her icy breath.

“Follow me to the cathedral.  I’ll choose someone who can be trusted to be discreet and is competent to resist the common spells to obtain information from them.  You can ask them for more local context - I don’t know what Jon knows or would have told you, Outsiders can vary very widely in how much local context they have.”

Hopefully Jon isn’t one of the outsiders who struggle with understanding the basics of human psychology, but Iomedae may have had to make some tradeoffs…

“Actually if you don’t mind Jon could come with me to brief me on what you’re willing to share while you’re being briefed?”

(Terendelev included him in her message.)

“We didn’t actually discuss yet what parts of our discussion Tanya wants to keep confidential between us?  I’ve given a very loose high level discussion of some of the major concerns, but for her end, what she personally wants kept secret I don’t know yet.”

Tanya wasn't aware that confidentiality from Terendelev was on offer! It makes sense, as Jon is representing the higher-ups even if he might not be particularly senior himself, but Tanya doesn't know what she'd trust Iomedae's organization with but not Terendelev. She knows many more terrible things about Iomedae than she does about Terendelev, but those are 1) things divulged freely, 2) things believed locally which may or may not be actually true, 3) lacking the context and explanations that are not known locally, and 4) she hasn't really had a chance to talk to Terendelev and for all she knows she's a terrible person and an incompetent administrator who got her job by taking stupid risks and killing people.

And even if Iomedae keeps her secrets from Terendelev - which she well might, Tanya has no idea how important or powerful Terendelev really is in Iomedae's local organization - Terendelev will very likely take orders from Iomedae, or at least heavily incentivized offers, so does it really matter?

She goes quickly over everything she remembers saying to Jon. Some of her capabilities which she hasn't demonstrated; best to keep those back on general principles. That she's from Earth and the possibilities of different Earths, which she doubts Terendelev can do anything about... Then her reactions to the local torture 'afterlives' and the divine mind-reading...

"I haven't had time to consider the question, and Jon didn't tell me much about you or this city or Iomedae's local followers. For now, please keep information about capabilities I haven't demonstrated and about my origin secret unless immediately relevant to local planning, in which case ask me. I hope I will be able to share it once I better understand the implications" (and in a more secure location with fewer poorly-vetted guards). "My concerns about, uh, things related to the gods don't seem actionable but if you think it useful to share them, please let me know." Complaining about gods is a good way to get on their worshippers' bad side. "To be clear my concerns are more with the information leaking and not with you personally knowing it," she adds to Terendelev. (This isn't strictly true but it's the polite thing to say.) 

...she belatedly realize that this offer might represent Jon or Iomedae's organization themselves not fully trusting Terendelev. Well, Jon can refrain from fully briefing Terendelev but he'll have to coordinate with Tanya to make it work, so it's not her problem for now. Right now she has a promise of payment from Terendelev, while Jon directed her to other local organizations and didn't hint at making any direct deals.

"Understood."

He would have been a little worried she hadn't taken his offer seriously if she expressed no preferences with that.

Golarion's gods might be really concerning in comparison to other planets, they've got a lot of Evil gods!  She’ll try not to dwell on it until Jon has had a chance to let Tanya know what he plans to share.

She leads them to the cathedral and announces herself, then messages a soldier.

"I need a secure room... a confessional will work I suppose if the meeting rooms are in use.  I need Ser Brogan, and two other fighters fit for bodyguarding a caster, paladins if we can spare any."

They are led back into a small room, big enough for just two people with an extendable screen in the middle.  Terendelev folds the screen back.

An elderly man in plate armor arrives a minute or so later.

"You requested me, Lady Terendelev?"

He practically radiates courage and calmness, Tanya's anxieties become substantially easier to manage as he steps into the room.

"This is Tanya von Degurechaff, she is the source of the so called 'miracle of the angel of light' everyone has been discussing.  She arrived in Kenabres, disoriented and missing some memories.  She is from another planet, a very different planet, with very different magic.  Very strong magic, as you may infer from the fact that she sent Deskari himself fleeing and slew most other demons in a single beam of light.  She needs a rest, the exact level of her magic still available and magic spent is a secret.  Her source as the miracle is currently secret.  She also needs local context, I've had a spyglass archon acting as a spotter for her and providing local context, but well local as in the sense of 'this planet', and archons you know..."

She doesn't want to insult Jon and she doesn't know he even made any mistakes...

"Thank you, lady, er, Von Degurechaff."  He says with warm sincerity (despite stumbling over the noble title).

He smiles beatifically "The ways of angels are not the ways of mortal men." He says as if reciting a well known proverb.

He addresses Jon "Has it been long, ah, since you were mortal?  If you ever were?"

He doesn't feel embarrassed, he's hopeful a mortal human can better address the whole 'emotionally exhausted/distressed thing' in a human way?  (Maybe a hug or something, but he has some vague intuition inbetween Tanya's professionalism and human social norms a hug wouldn't quite work?) 

"Some millennia, and I wasn't human or from Golarion, but I have had many summons and some calls to this planet before."

Also, he hadn't realized Deskari himself had shown up prior to his calling!  It is kind of surprising Deskari doesn't have fire immunity, but besides that it makes sense Tanya's physics-based (and thus spell resistance-bypassing) magic could wound him.

"Yes, of course."  Gentle smile.

"I will serve in this role to the best of my ability."

He turns to Tanya.

"Although I am certainly not the most learned in this city, I at least know my letters and try to keep up with news from afar.  Von Degurechaff, I will keep your secrets safe... save for the demons utterly breaking my will first."

He remembers the last part after a momentary pause, he should be clear about when and how his word holds true.

What a dignified-looking person! He practically radiates calm and competence. Tanya feels a little better just looking at him.

Tanya was awarded a knighthood, so she supposes addressing her as 'lady' is appropriate. This might be the first time anyone has done so; her military rank always took precedence and she (luckily) never had to attend any court functions. She doesn't endorse the concept of nobility - people should be equal before the law - but as long as it exists, she would rather go through life as 'Lady' than as 'Lt. Colonel'. After all, it's always easier to give up privileges than to demand them, and it makes you look better too.

She is about to tell him that calling her 'Lady' is unnecessary but stops herself just in time, because she doesn't know the appropriate honorific for any of them! (Except that Terendelev is a Lady too?) She's a bumbling foreigner here and must be careful to avoid offense, now that she's out of actual combat where terseness can be excused. 

...she feels like learning an entire new set of keigo ought to be a very intimidating process but it - surprisingly doesn't feel that way? Ah, well, being regularly shot at really puts social missteps in proportion; Tanya is happy for that silver lining of the cloud of her military career.

"Thank you, sir." That's how Terendelev addressed him, right? "Is it truly feasible to keep the secret that I am behind these attacks? I understand from Jon that you don't have long-range magic detectors, but I have flown close to the ground several times including during the first attack. Optical illusions and decoys aside, anyone in the city who spent the day carefully observing might recognize my face or mana signatures or both. In fact, my decoy illusions looked like me at first, I was seen with Terendelev several times, and when I first arrived in the city I talked to her in public where anyone could have overheard us."

More importantly: Jon is immortal? ...or at least the locals believe so. But really, when you can reincarnate souls, why not make your faithful employees immortal? Think of the incredible quality of personnel with thousands of years of experience behind them! Not having to replace your best and most senior people with green recruits is already a huge bonus to any organization, but think how much better those best people could be if you could recruit from across the ages! 

...admittedly this doesn't seem to be a very good description of, well, Jon? Well, perhaps that is why he remains a relatively junior employee on-call for dangerous deployments after thousands of years. But also, if senior people never retire, junior ones can't be promoted without laterally growing the organization, which in turn requires recruiting even more people into junior positions...

In any case, what an employment benefit to be able to offer people! They probably don't have to pay them much or offer good working conditions; they'll have qualified applicants flooding HR no matter what. Being fired is a literal death sentence, and even if you keep your memories your next reincarnation might be on a 'mortal' reservation planet! Reincarnation must be the tightest-kept secret technology there is; it's no wonder people are willing to call those who monopolize it gods.

He's unsure about how to address her!  Not worried though, never worried.  He suppresses his urge to try to recall foreign styles of titles, it won't help with someone not even from this planet.  She didn't seem bothered by his slip, so he'll focus on her question for the moment.

"For the time being... all sorts of wild rumors are flying around: a foreign type of sorcerer from Tian Xia, a miracle out of heaven, a 'light' dragon with beams of light for breath... I was partial to the theory an emergency scroll of Gate was used, the more learned of us know that even an archmage sorcerer would have have run out spells before now and the aid was too sustained to be a divine smiting out of Heaven."

He thinks for a moment.

"We could try to figure out who was around you in the city and what they know?  In the longer term... demons are pretty poor at distributing intelligence... but even they will eventually start to pick through the rumors."

He puzzles it out.

"Concealing your existence in the long term might not be practical, but maybe we could disguise you as an Angel or Archon?  Maybe with the right magic items it could work...  Lady Terendelev have you ever heard of an item that does Angelic Aspect, at least the lesser version?"

"No but I like the direction you are thinking in.  You can work on that with Tanya after you finish briefing her, comparing what of her magic she is willing to reveal to you with what options of this planet's magic are available.  Given the state of the city, I plan to prioritize making money for the next few years anyway, so you should consider even rare or more expensive items."

"If Deskari himself witnessed and bore an attack from Tanya, he may have more insight into her and her magic, as a Demon Lord he would have a variety of exotic senses.  For example, he can sense through his swarms.  Despite that, I concur some form of deception is worth considering if Tanya is planning on aiding the Worldwound and Mendev further.  For the time being I have her under Nondetection and Undetectable Alignment."

There, that was a clear way to indicate to the Paladin that his detect evil won't work on Tanya so he won't feel deceived if he later learns Tanya is Lawful Evil, without actually revealing the fact that Tanya is Lawful Evil!

He tries to think of any other points he might be missing.

He had really hoped Von Degurechaff would stick around longer!  The Worldwound is the worse problem on the continent!  Well, if an Archon thinks she has better things to do, maybe, but still.  At least they had her for today.

He is also thinking about how the Archon and Terendelev aren't getting her title (titles?) right!  He really doesn't want to offend the foreign (other worldly?) adventurer.  (Is she a youthfully faced halfing, or some other race or somehow genuinely as young as she looks?  He'll also want to figure out a gracious way to ask that doesn't condescend to her at all.)

"I do not know nearly enough about the local situation to make plans yet, or to make any long-term commitments to pretend to be someone else. I am concerned with my short-term security, but I probably can't make useful suggestions about ruses and information management. Speaking of which, is this location as secure and as confidential as we're going to get, or should I postpone some discussions until later? The highest grade of security will be needed when I sleep, but if it is not too expensive then it would be nice to relax at other times too." That she'll be defenseless while she's sleeping is presumably obvious and not a serious information leak. She hopes Terendelev will get the hint and tell her how much she trusts Brogan.

(Since the room is a confessional, it is presumably hard to overhear conversations in it for anyone but the divine management.)

“This room is under a mage’s private sanctum, and the cathderal is under a forbiddance and is our best defended location in the city.  The only thing more secure is a demiplane and I have one but it requires multiple spells to get to and back from and I don’t anticipate having the spells available to spare today.”

She glances to Jon to see if he has anything to add…

He can read subtexts if they are about security precautions!

“Paladins (of which I believe Ser Brogan is one?) have an unusually strong protective effect granted to them by their God.” glancing at Ser Brogan “(I assume Iomedae in your case?)”

“This makes them hard to unwillingly use divination magic on or extract information from.”

“Which brings me to a concern I should mention sooner, rather than later.  Moderately powerful or more paladins have an anti-fear aura that makes nearby allies resistant to fear.  I am unsure if this is wanted in Tanya’s case, I worry it might be an unwanted mental influence?”

He nods at the Archon’s questions.  Ah, he is doing the angel thing of worrying about a weird abstract philosophical problem!  He smiles amicably at the abstract concern no normal person would have.

A location that can only be entered by Terendelev on a good day is secure unless you end up urgently needing to leave and she is having a bad day, for example if Deskari comes back while Tanya isn't there because you left her someplace she can't leave on her own. That sounds like a really bad idea, even if Tanya trusted Terendelev without reservation.

An anti-fear spell would definitely be useful for rallying morale (and enabling suicidal charges), it's no surprise that it would be popular with people who incentivize and normalize constant fighting. "I'm not interested in any mental alterations, thank you." It's odd that he called it a 'concern', though - did he mean she'd be concerned to be in the company of battle-crazy maniacs who had their fear impulse surgically magically removed, like the fabled berserkers? Unfortunately, Tanya has spent the last few years leading men who might have been born with this defect, so she can't muster up any genuine fear about the local warmongers' suicidal impulses.

Angels are wise beyond the ken of mortal men.

“Uh, sorry, a moment.”

He’s practiced at doing this mental motion the other way, extending his aura to sketchy adventurers he wouldn’t otherwise think of as allies.

“That should do it.”

The internal mental difference is subtle, Tanya’s anxieties are just a little less under control, but it is immediately noticeable that the man no longer radiates confidence.

...

He mindcontrolled her and she didn't notice!!! The divine factions gave the locals mental contamination spells! It's as insidious as anything Being X ever did except she didn't notice because she didn't expect it, she thought she was among allies, an enemy who mind controlled her wouldn't be subtle they'd just have her kill everyone in the room but this, this - perfidy -

They could have lulled her into agreeing with anything they wanted because they have a spell that turned off part of her mind and made her irrational -

Tanya barely notices she has shot up towards the ceiling and is on maximum speedup and gathering power, the door is closed and Terendelev is in front of the door but she can make her own exit and her instincts are screaming at her to get out, it's fight or flee and she's fleeing but she could flip in an instant if that doesn't work -

But it takes a second to strengthen her barrier and shape the spell to blow the roof without burying herself under rubble and without killing everyone here and that means five subjective seconds to notice that she doesn't want to kill everyone here, which might be mindcontrol but - Jon told them to stop and he did it because he knew she hated it like every rational person would but he said it's an aura, he's doing it to everyone, habitually -

She needs local allies and if they're willing to mindcontrol her then she's already lost but if they'll stop when asked then maybe they can be negotiated with -

They still need to feel the depths of the mistake that they made, because she was this close to killing all of them and levelling this building from the inside out -

It could be mind control but she'll never be able to rule out mind control -

Tanya slowly descends from the ceiling and turns around to stare each of them in the eyes. Not with the poite face of someone excited to work together, but with a judgemental stare that makes veteran soldiers quake in their boots. (This works better on men who have an appropriate sense of who the fuck she is, but she can at least get across that she is extremely unimpressed.)

"Let me make myself perfect clear."

"You will never read or alter my mind, or countenance anyone else doing so, without my knowledge and express permission. This is not negotiable."

"I will excuse you this once. Because your 'gods' don't respect mental privacy, a fundamental human right, not even your own privacy. They gave you this spell and told you to use it all the time, and you followed orders."

"But now you know better, so I'll tell you what I told Iomedae: there will be no second warning."

He is totally undaunted by her attempt at intimidation!

“It’s not a ‘spell’ and I’ve never met any adventurers that tried to call it mind control or whatever and I think I know more than you about what Iomedae respects.”

It’s the latest part that really makes him angry. The Goddess is the only thing keeping this country together.

Her first assumption when Tanya seemed to panic was some sort of delayed stress response to combat, so she started to cast a calm emotions before stopping herself when she took half a second to think about how calm emotions works.

She addresses Brogan tensely.

“I think you should step out.  Send -“

Ser Brogan is actually usually relatively easy going as far as paladins go.  And he is well read and used to dealing with foreigners, at least much more than anyone else she can spare from the battle (Irabeth would be competent to handle this, but she is as busy as Terendelev).  She wanted a paladin because the protective grace would make them hard to get anything out of with divination.

“Actually I’ll just handle this myself I suppose.  I still want the bodyguards.”

Ser Brogan step outs.  There are two other paladins at the door, the additional bodyguards Terendelev requested.  Terendelev nods to them, and they stand away from the door.  She closes the door behind her as she turns back into the room.

She tries to pull her thoughts together.

“I’m sorry, I apparently misjudged his tact, and we genuinely hadn’t thought about how someone who had not previously encountered paladins might think about their aura of courage… he will keep his word to keep your secrets, that much I’m still sure of.”

They didn't think. They didn't think!

Tanya slowly simmers down as she reluctantly comes to believe that, indeed, they simply did not think, they followed their church instead.

Individuals should not bear the blame for systemic failures, but neither should they be left blind to them.

"A resistance to fear - a disinhibition, not unlike alcohol. It puts people at their ease, makes them trust you. It makes them agree to things they'd normally be wary of, sign up to risky plans. For example, sleeping in a less secure location than they would normally prefer, because they feel less apprehension about it. A valuable skill in negotiations, surely, in soliciting, in all social interactions."

"I imagine perhaps your society has grown so used to ubiquitous mind-influencing magic that you think this is unremarkable. Nothing to get upset over. And if you don't bespell people to trust you, you'll be at a disadvantage against less scrupulous competitors, is that so?"

"I am far from home and among literal aliens, and it behooves me to be a polite guest. I will respect your laws and your customs, I will not object to the ways you treat one another, as long as you do not impinge on my personal autonomy. Mind control does that."

"Jon informed me earlier that Iomedae told him about me a little before you called him. Because she found me interesting, and so she read my mind. It is apparently her excuse that if she didn't do it, other less friendly factions would. But she did not ask for permission. I told her that this is completely unacceptable, and it will remain unacceptable to me even if tomorrow I should find it to be the case that mind-reading is routinely performed by her priests."

"It would be quite unfair of me to hold you and your people responsible for the failings of your society or church or divine backers. I don't regret having helped you today, and I hope we can still build a working relationship even if I turn out to be a poor fit here socially. I had hoped to spend the next days learning more, under less time pressure, and I still hope this can be arranged without more unpleasant surprises for either of us."

...that said, it's something of a conundrum how to preempt all possible misunderstandings. If the aliens don't see mind-control and thought-reading as obviously wrong, what can you rely on? Do they lack the concept of private property because teleporting makes theft and trespassing trivial, or of bodily freedom because mind-controlled slaves are available for rent? Do they expect her to confess her sins daily to be a member in good standing of the church that controls healing and reincarnations? Where do you even start, when dealing with literal aliens?

“I’m sorry.  I wasn’t aware your planet didn’t have paladins.  I agree trying to obtain an advantage in negotiations with an aura of courage would be unethical.  Lastwall, I think, has more consistent training and catechism and their paladins are more careful with their aura and wouldn’t use it on a counterparty during a negotiation, or even a discussion with differing interests, without advanced permission.   Here in Mendev…”

It feels bad admitting to how her city’s Paladins are worse, but it’s true.

“A lot of things are worse here with the constant pressure of the demons.”

“And in the interests of disclosure, one of the buffs I cast on you earlier today, Heroism, is a mind-affecting enchantment.  It’s subtler and less potent than a Paladin’s aura, and more well rounded, it makes the target a little bit better at everything, notably to your case resisting mind control.  It would have worn off after 40 or 50 minutes.”

She admitted fault while saving face by blaming others outside her direct control: this is someone Tanya can understand and work with. Shifting responsibility to the church's poor training while acknowledging that of course following the true teachings of the gods would have avoided this problem is a nice touch. Terendelev is also pointing out an acceptable way for the locals to criticize the church, by comparing it to stories of what the same church is supposedly doing elsewhere. Tanya relaxes a little.

She... affected her mind earlier, by making her - think in ways that would better resist other mind control? The locals must have build up complex layers of tactic and countertactic of mind-control, just as they have for teleports. 'The side with the better mind control wins' is probably a truism here, whether in business or in war. In any case, Tanya isn't going to get worked up again about something that was done in good faith before she started complaining about it. It's in both their interests to rebuild their relationship from a clean slate.

"I understand. It was done in good faith and was quite reasonable given what you knew at the time, but please don't do it again until I understand the effects well enough to consent to them."

"Can you afford the time to explain things to me in person, or are you going to read someone else in? Or should we delay confidential discussions until later? The only things truly urgent on my end are understanding my personal security situation, reacting appropriately in case of attack or other hostile actions, and ensuring my safety later tonight when I sleep. ...I do have goals of my own to pursue, of course, though none of them seem actionable on the scale of hours, and I need to learn about this city and the rest of this planet. I would also appreciate a better understanding of the money you owe me, what I can buy with it and who from, so I can begin taking up less of your personal time; normally I would consider hiring a secretary for this but I'm not in a position to vet local people."

"I was planning on flying as over watch to support the building clearing efforts while you took a break, so I shouldn't take too long here.  This room is covered by a teleport trap that covers almost all of the cathedral.  Any attempts to teleport to it are redirected to a fortified room that acts as a kill box against intruders.  So that just leaves ground approaches, which I was hoping some degree of anonymity and the bodyguards outside could cover.  Although maybe we should risk a less secure room with a window so you have a clean path to fly out?  That would in turn allow the potential of threats flying in... do you have a clear preference?"

She looked almost ready to fly through a wall earlier, and if her defensive magic matches her offense, maybe she could.

"For sleeping tonight... do you need 8 hours of solid sleep specifically for your magic?  It's a thing for this planet's wizards.  If not, there is a spell called rope trick that creates an extradimensional space you could rest in.  I have someone with an open slot, and their rope trick would last 6 hours.  For money... Vissaliy Rathimus is a 5th circle cleric of Abadar, and would likely be a good point of contact to familiarize yourself with anyway, I will try to secure some of his time later...  But those things aren't urgent.... I've thought of some more risks of cultural clashes along the line of mind control and mind reading, nothing right this moment but I assume you want to prioritize discussing them anyway?"

She is kind of wondering what Jon was discussing and why couldn't he address these things himself but maybe he kept running into seemingly totally harmless topics that prompted Tanya to issue ultimatums and so decided to pass the conversation back to mortals.  She doesn't always get humans even after the centuries, but she can do better than many angels.  And she is one of the few people with the authority to make requests like 'don't mind read this person no matter what, yes that includes you Hulrun' and make them stick so she needs to be in the loop anyway.

If she's woken up by an attack it will take her several seconds to spin up her orb and fly out under her own power. (She's not sure she should share this fact with Terendelev yet.) If the attack is on her, personally, and she wakes up at all rather and isn't killed in her sleep or mind-controlled by surprise, and she can't take on the attacker directly, then she can fly out the door. And if the attack is on the building, being deep inside far from any windows might help her survive. ...Tanya isn't sure if the logic still holds, there's too much she doesn't know here or hasn't had time to realize.

Eight hours of solid sleep is a great job perk for someone who might otherwise be on-call, did these 'wizards' negotiate for it as a union or other class? 'I'm sorry, if you wake me up in the middle of the night my magic doesn't work and I'm useless to you' is a perfect excuse for begging off late shifts and nighttime patrols. Yes boss sir, I understand the demons are attacking but unfortunately the laws of the universe won't let me help out, I hope you all live through the night, best of luck and good night boss! She wonders if the local mages have enough bargaining power to occasionally earn a promotion to 'wizard' rank or if it's just that the 'divine' rulers restrict some spells to wizards which are too good to pass up.

Tanya is tempted to claim her magic requires eight hours' sleep and morning coffee with chocolate cake, but she probably can't maintain the ruse... Ah, well. 

"I think a deep, defensible location is preferable to a window. I don't want to rely on my instincts when I'm so unused to the available weapons and tactics, but if you also think the inner room is significantly more secure that is probably best."

"I don't strictly need eight hours of sleep to use magic but of course I get tired and sloppy without enough sleep, in magic as in everything else. I don't understand what an 'extradimensional' space is, but if there's a way to gain greater security for only six hours then I have no problem with moving once in the middle of the night. Cultural clashes are important to defuse but I can't judge how soon they might come up; I hope your experience as a multi-species civilization with interplanetary contact will be of help, but since this entire planet is strongly influenced by the same divine factions it seems likely that there are more things which hold almost universally here but not on Earth." 

‘Divine factions’ is… certainly a wording choice to describe the Gods.  Maybe her planet has a lot of tiny localized gods organized into factions?  And that is also why they don't have Paladins?  Tanya also seems to be overestimating the frequency of interplanetary contact, but that isn't urgent right now.

"I'll just focus on the points related to mind control and mind reading.  For other mind control... Bardic music can be mind affecting, it is most often used for a minor boost to allies, technically different in mechanism and thus stacking with heroism.  Most types of bardic music have a 30 foot range, so if you see someone playing an instrument on the battlefield... you can just stay away?  Heroism is the most commonly used mind-affecting spell, I suppose there are some other spells that aren't typically thought of as mind affecting because they aren't enchantments, like the spell your headband is based on?" 

She looks at Jon in case he has any ideas.

"Many spells provide a 'morale' effect despite not being primarily enchantments.  For example, the main option I had ready to counteract a dominate on Tanya that somehow got past my magic circle against evil was suppress charms and compulsions, which although it is an abjuration, subjectively feels like an immense surge of willpower.  Several other spells follow this pattern... remove sickness at 1st circle for example."

"Also, some necromancy spells can cause fear, and as a dragon I can allow my very presence to cause fear (although I think that effect might be entirely nonmagical)… just checking... you aren't so categorically opposed to mind control that you would be opposed to us using it on the demons?  At least not enough to make your aid conditional on not using it?"

Tanya continues not to understand the local schemes for classifying spells! Spells aren't thought of as mind-affecting if they're not 'enchantments', but some mind-affecting spells are 'abjurations' or 'necromancy'... Curing sickness is mind-affecting, presumably they mean mental sickness... How can Terendelev not be sure if she's using magic? - presumably if the 'gods' are doing it for her, what an interventionist bunch they are...

Luckily, it doesn't seem to matter too much at the moment. She's starting to suspect Jon is the kind of magic nerd engineer who'll keep bringing up technical details in a management meeting even if they're not decision-relevant.