"Our magic on this planet is different, for example does not obviously reduce to 'mana', can achieve non-physical results, et cetera. Please drop another layer of expectations about how Golarion magic works."

Why is she being so difficult? Tanya feels quite sure that a charitable reading of her words would in fact have gotten her intent across.

"Perhaps we should stop assuming that the translation spell accurately conveys technical terms. Let me try to rephrase. Some things are magical, some are not. As far as I can tell, we have not disagreed so far on what counts as magical. When magical and physical things interact, either or both can be affected. For example, if a physical body impacts my magical shield, the body is repelled and the shield is drained of some magical energy. Some magic, like magic detection spells, does not affect any physical bodies, but most magic does because that's what we find most useful to do with it. ...for that matter, magic detection is attenuated by intervening dense matter, so it interacts with physical objects too, except that as far as I know the objects are not affected but maybe they're actually heated a tiny degree or something like that. Is there anything you disagree with so far?"

"No, that's all correct and I appreciate you breaking it down into small clear steps to make sure."

"Alright. The rest applies only to my own magic. It's fueled by energy I call mana. I don't know if or how this concept applies to your own use of magic, I am not a domain expert, I only know that I can detect your magic both with my native ability as a mage and with the spell built to track the magic I'm familiar with. The applicability of mana to your style of magic isn't important, since we're not trying to learn how to use each other's magic."

"The important thing about my magic is that I can only use it at a limited range from myself, varying by spell. The only spell with no inherent range is magic detection; I think this has a technical explanation that says the source of the magic emits some tiny amount of - the magic equivalent of waste heat, and I can detect it when it reaches me. In any case, for all other spells known on Earth, there's a sharp range limitation. So the way they're normally used in combat is to create some physical effect next to myself which then moves to affect the actual target far away. Such as creating a ray of light or propelling a bullet; the light and the bullet and the explosive inside the bullet are not themselves magical. I note that all of your spells that you've told me about so far also have a short range limitation."

"My spells which don't need to affect distant targets still have physical effects, because the goal of each such spell is to affect a physical object. For example, my shield is magical, but its actual effect is to reduce the speed of an incoming physical object, and that is a physical effect. My spells for speeding myself up or helping me think in various ways do it by creating appropriate chemicals in my body, or by physically helping my body move."

"I don't know how your Fox's Cunning works, but since it ends up affecting my physical brain, I think the effect needs to be physical in some sense. Although the brain is the one natural thing that natively interfaces with magic, so if there was a spell affecting specifically mana generation or spellcasting then I suppose it might not have any physical effects. I caution that I don't understand this nearly enough to theorize; I am only describing the terms I'm used to thinking in, but we should still be able to agree on what we expect each other's spells to accomplish if not how, and on how they interact, by experimenting if needed."

Speaking of which, the Fox's Cunning just ran out; this would be very noticeable, even if she couldn't see the magic. Tanya feels an immediate desire to compensate with her own spell and ignores it with the ease of long habit. (Mental and physical amplification spells are powerfully addictive, if only in the behavioral sense and not through any unique chemical pathway.)

"There exist spells that have no such range limit, like Scrying and Sending, but those two are both at least fourth circle depending on if you go to a wizard or a cleric for them. I would not claim to be confident that Fox's Cunning affects the brain, and even if it normally cashes out that way, I don't think it relies on doing that. For example, I'm not aware of a reason I couldn't cast it on a ghost, besides all the reasons I would not want to cast it on a ghost. Or someone who was at that moment in gaseous form, which would be a less dicey proposition."

They have 'ghosts'? Or, well, Belmarniss believes in ghosts which is not necessarily the same thing, but. "How can someone be in a gaseous form only 'at that moment'?"

"It lasts like, ten minutes? I don't have that one - it is a transmutation and it's only third circle so I could do it but there are so many cool spells and they cost money."

"....but what does it do?" Asking 'how' presumably wouldn't lead to a useful answer, which is not Belmarniss's fault any more than it is Tanya's but is quite frustrating. Tanya is used to competent scientists and engineers telling her how the world works and what to believe about it!

"Turns you into a gas so you can float around and go through keyholes or whatever?"

Aaaaargh but how. How can something like that be possible? Is it actually moving you to a different, uh, 'plane' from which you're controlling the gas? How can gas see anything, what does it think with? Tanya is aware she just saw a magical construct representing a creature made from gas that supposedly exists here, and that moves and sees things (and has an ?illusion? of eyes on it for some reason???) and presumably has some replacement for a brain, and she didn't quite disbelieve that air elementals really exist, but. That is not the same as changing a human into one and back!!!

Well. When in Rome. "I have no idea how that could work and would not believe claims of such a thing being possible in my own world. I'm not doubting your account, just noting that there are likely to be other things about that spell or - state of being - and similar spells, I suppose - that I cannot anticipate. ...and I'm wary of having that spell used on me, but perhaps I shall get used to it if I see it in regular use." And it follows that - "perhaps you could give me an overview of all the common spells that exist, and not just the ones you know personally?"

"Yeah, I expect there to be things about magic that you cannot anticipate and am trying to convince you that this is the case, glad that did the trick. Uh, no spell above like second circle is really common. I can get you well-known spells - do you want cleric ones too -"

Oh right, the local church apparently has some exclusive spells. "Clerics too; I hope to notice anything whose existence implies something important about the world, like being able to do some things cheaply or at all. And anything that could be used against us." If Belmarniss is offended by treating a cleric as a potential enemy, Tanya will say that clause was referring to wizard spells. "Of course some spells that exist here are novel to me, I've been surprised already and expect to be surprised many times to come. Being surprised about specific spells is much less surprising than being surprised about the nature of what's possible at all, like this gaseous form."

Belmarniss does not appear at all offended about clerics being potential enemies. She can go over widely-used spells from both sets. Sounds like clerics have something of a monopoly on healing.

Wow that's a long list of common spells, even if that's 'commonly known about' and not 'commonly known'. (Tanya has noticed Belmarniss is something of a magic nerd enthusiast, and of course a teacher's assistant as well.) In retrospect this is unsurprising; this world's magical tradition has been producing actually-useful spells for much longer than Earth.

(These are the common first and second circle spells, and a few thirds. Tanya does not know what is possible beyond third circle, which is perhaps as well for her own sanity.)

Abjuration, conjuration, divination and evocation spells are mostly unsurprising and entirely unimpressive. Some have unclear details (how does the runes' trigger know if someone is looking at them?) and the concept of 'conjuring' matter which disappears after a set time without being detectably magic in the meanwhile is frankly bizarre. The biggest question about most of them is why someone would bother inventing that, and why other people would keep it around! 

Illusion spells are also unsurprising. Or rather, the ones targeting brains directly have effects that it's not surprising you can achieve by doing that, it's just that if you can land a spell inside someone's brain you can also just... kill them? Presumably there are non-combat reasons these were developed in addition to the regular (visual) illusions. In any case, visual illusions seem strictly superior in that they don't become transparent even if everyone is aware they're an illusion.

(Tanya already knows not to let anyone she doesn't extremely trust to use unfamiliar magic directly on her body or brain!)

Necromancy is weird. Tanya doesn't pretend to understand the principles behind it but there is clearly some principle being gestured at, since many spells can detect and affect 'undead', even though only clerics can create them. It doesn't seem to be important.

Transmutation is the category of "entirely normal spells like applying force to things, plus a few things physics should not permit". There might be a way to change... one thing into a completely unrelated different thing, somehow... but the new thing has to be something that can exist! How can 'a living human being, as a gas' exist??? This world doesn't have weird magic, it has weird physics or something. Or maybe the spells are doing something else after all and Belmarniss doesn't know any better. At least if a random bit of air is a person they're detectably magical!

(Tanya has no clue how spells are sorted into these 'schools' and is not going to ask, she has enough to deal with.)

That leaves a few, um, Problems.

It's not surprising that a spell designed to affect a person's brain can cause them to treat someone as a friend and ally, or make them forget a language, or have all kinds of other exciting effects.

It is very surprising that, with Charm Person widely known, everyone's instinctive response to someone trying to cast an unfamiliar spell at you isn't to kill them on the spot. ...well, most people can't kill someone quickly enough for it to matter, and apparently it fails sometimes, but the principle applies! Why did these people even let a strange mage into their city?! Tanya thought they were xenophobic, but apparently they're almost suicidaly trusting of strangers instead?

...no. No, she's overreacting. Normal life is not a battlefield. Normal people don't attack strangers. Society doesn't exist because people can't harm each other, it exists because they don't. Yes, a psychopath could 'charm' someone into doing their bidding. No, most people do not keep a charmed sex slave in their basement. (But they have ordinary un-enchanted slaves - ugh -) And there are detection spells that can be used on important people, or - people with friends and family who will check on them, but if someone is alone and relying on the law to protect them -

...the most important thing is to make absolutely, perfectly sure that no-one ever has a remote chance of affecting her with this spell. It supposedly works only at very short distances, and takes several seconds to cast. Tanya has no intention of letting anyone she doesn't trust with her life affect her directly with magic, because it's trivial to kill someone with magic directly affecting their body, and some of the other local spells will in fact do that even if they don't affect her brain. Since she cannot yet tell local spells apart, she will not let anyone untrusted target her with any spell. And since she needs to react very quickly to reliably foil any such attempts, and might not be able to get out of range in time (if she is in a small cave), she has to develop an instinct to instantly kill anyone unfamiliar who is using magic which is (spatially, as Tanya's detection understands things) affecting Tanya's body.

What does Belmarniss think about this proposal?

"Seems like a rough deal for anyone who tries to, like, heal you if you're beat up. Also rough for me if you're out of it, do not successfully decide that I'm allowed, and I'm trying to disenchant you. Charm Person doesn't work every time, they don't have to do it from where you can see them just from within range and line of effect, and the defense against it is to not do stupid shit for your friends. And to have a good Will save."

"...if I can recognize someone as an ally - including you - of course I wouldn't attack them. If someone has already enchanted me into doing their bidding then you are already dead, if that's what they want, and presumably if they have any suspicion you can or will disenchant me, since then I would kill them. You sound as if - do people here ever enchant others without it being seen, and treated, the same as a murder attempt?"

"If someone merely charms you and then they tell you to kill me, you will only do that if that is currently something you'd do for a friend who asked you to. Do you commit murder on the say-so of your friends, generally speaking? Charm spells should be treated more seriously than they are, if you ask me, but they are not in fact murder attempts and only enable murder attempts among people who are already kind of murdery. Some people'll use them to, like, get discounts on their shopping, if they're ballsy. Dominate spells do more what you have in mind and that's fifth circle."

"...I may have overestimated the power of the spell, based on your description. 'Friend' reads to me as - a highly trusted confederate? I mean no offense by saying I don't count you as a friend, only a friendly acquaintance - the translation spell may not be accurate enough here. It might be possible for someone I trusted implicitly to convince me to kill you, by convincing me that you had lied to me and were trying to get me killed and also that I couldn't handle this any other way than killing you for some reason - I'm not explaining this well."

"Suppose someone by whose side I'm used to fighting, someone whose directions I'm used to following blindly and immediately in the thick of battle when there is no time to check for myself, suddenly appeared here and told me to kill you and that there was no time to explain. I wouldn't do that, because the situation as described is very suspicious - how did they come to be here and to know that you're a threat to me and why don't have they time to explain when as far as I know you cannot actually pose a threat to me as long as I'm not too close to you? But if it was a local, whose presence here needs no explanation and who knows things about you that I don't, and who could even claim that you lied to me about local magic, and if I trusted that person implicitly with my life and was used to following unexpected split-second directives because I trusted them to only issue those when it was justified... then yes, I would likely follow through and kill you. That is the kind of scenario I imagined when you said 'magically compel me to treat a stranger as a trusted friend and ally'."

What is a friend, really? There are superiors whose orders you follow; there are comrades whose instructions you follow in the moment because you trust their competence and good will. A 'trusted friend', if it is to mean anything, ought to mean more than merely a 'comrade'. Or perhaps that's how it seems when the only people you've personally known for the past five years have been fellow soldiers.

Tanya is not a 'murdery' kind of person; the very notion is offensive. But she is a professional soldier, and that has made her a 'killingy' sort of person, she supposes. Killing someone is just a mentally available action to her now, both in the sense that it's a spell that Golarionites would call a 'still silent immediate action' and in the sense that her mind doesn't instinctively flinch from it like a normal, sane, rational person's ought to. It's not a great image to give to civilians like Belmarniss, because it is in fact not a great reality, but it would be unfair to hide this fact about herself: Tanya is dangerous to be near if someone can influence her mentally like that. She hopes for this to change, to be a productive member of society and live in safety without ugly personal violence to back it up, but she is not allowed cannot yet put down her orb and rifle. At least until they reach the surface, Tanya's self-preservation requires it.

"Okay, does it help if you keep in mind that your friends could, themselves, be enchanted?"

"...is an active enchantment an ongoing magical effect? If it is then I'll know if someone is, if not necessarily enchanted, affected by an ongoing local spell, and whether I myself am, just as I can see the Share Language on me."

Belmarniss isn't wrong that, if at all possible, Tanya should plan to mitigate the scenario where she has been enchanted. It's just that - it really feels like no amount of mitigation is going to make Tanya happy to agree not to resort to lethal means trying to prevent it. But she is a professional and she can set her feelings aside for the moment and give the question serious thought. 

"How much does the charm spell manipulate factual beliefs? If it only affected emotions, people would presumably notice they're abruptly feeling very friendly towards someone for no good reason, both the sudden change and the lack of reason. And an induced emotion might be overcome by contrary knowledge of fact, or so I imagine. But if the spell makes me actually believe someone is my friend, that I can trust them as a matter of fact, then - it would be setting my own previously held beliefs against the new magically induced ones. Maybe that's a viable mitigation tactic that sometimes works, although you said people can only 'throw off' the spell when it's cast, not later when they've realized something is wrong. And of course I'll try to prepare to do whatever would be best in case I am enchanted."

"Can you describe the state of mind the spell induces? Does it make you believe something, and do you keep your previous beliefs at the same time? Can you notice the contradiction and what happens if you do? What does an affected person say if questioned about why they think they're the caster's friend and how that came about? Do they realize it's due to the spell, because that's the only reasonable explanation, and just not care because they are now the caster's friend no matter what they thought or wanted previously?"

"I'm not going to be much help letting you see if enchantments count as ongoing for your detection; they are for mine, but you're different, and I'm weak on enchantment and in particular don't have Charm Person. Share Language is a divination so it might be different. Charm Person doesn't manipulate factual beliefs but you can't think your way out of it if it lands, you can just decide not to act on your feelings either because you've got a general policy about how far to trust your friends or because you're using something other than trusting your friends to pick actions altogether. I've got a good Will save - casters here in general do - and when I do notice I've been Charmed I fuck off to be by myself till it goes away. I think it probably lands on different people differently and you and I are different people but -

"- it's sort of like being emotionally tired, but in a specific, narrow way, where you want to relax and keep low friction with your new friend. It doesn't make it impossible to guess you've been enchanted, or hard to remember that you hate enchanters in general and people who are enchanting you in particular, or your plans for if this happened; it just makes those things feel a bit less important, and it's - embarrassing? That's not the right word... it's aversive, to be confrontational about it, to turn it into a conflict, and easy, not to. It's not a ridiculous thing for someone to try if you're attacking them and they would rather not have a fight, because most people do not react like you or I do to the entire category of enchantment. I know people who use it for, like, not fighting with their family members, when everybody knows that's exactly what they're doing and why. If you are completely blindsided by it you might confabulate something about how you just really click with this new person but only to the degree you might make something up to explain any sudden-onset feeling, it doesn't by itself change the facts you have to work with."

"If it only affects emotions, it should be possible for me to get used to not acting on sudden or inappropriate emotions." Acting on emotions is unprofessional! "But it might take a lot of testing and practice" which Tanya isn't going to allow, "and it remains true that an unfamiliar spell that affects me directly can easily kill me if so desired. Defense in depth in case it does land is prudent, but if I detect an unexpected spell being cast on me I still need to treat it as an attack -" um.

...

...they do what with their charm spells?

Tanya really wants to smack herself in the forehead.

They use Charm Person for awkward social interactions! On loved family members! They are not, repeat after me Tanya, NOT soldiers considering the best battlefield tactics for a novel spell that can confuse or control enemies you are trying to kill! Belmarniss is a civilian, a girl Tanya undertook to escort because she needs protection against wild beasts! A girl who is (justifiably!) concerned and (correctly!!) annoyed about Tanya's insistence on her right to resort to lethal violence in ordinary social interactions!!!  It's ridiculous for Tanya to even consider a question like 'has Belmarniss killed before', of course she hasn't and she in fact incredibly tolerant of your barbaric suggestions for a civilian who lives in a society at peace!!! She may have warned Tanya that some people in her city could try to rob her, but that's no worse than being on leave in Tunis! Did Major Weiss murder his attackers, no he did not, he responsibly arrested them! Oh, certainly, his would-be muggers weren't using magic, but now that Tanya has been informed that the locals do it is her responsibility to come up with nonviolent solutions! Maybe she should go around with a big illusion sign saying 'dangerous person, do not enchant, will murder' if that's what it takes to shame her into behaving appropriately!!

Well, yes... indubitably... but isn't Tanya's safety of paramount importance? Even if it's unclear what a charm spell can get her to do, someone who affects her body with magic can very definitely kill her on the spot. Imagine if someone invented a mage blade operating at thirty meters out (but with a three-second casting delay), and handed out the casting implement to half the population; would you want to go for a walk in those crowds?

...yes. Yes you should! Because they are peaceful civilians! Someone already invented and handed out pistols to anyone who wants one, and they can kill perfectly well at thirty meters without any delay at all. This does not stop Tanya from walking the streets of Berun with her shield and barrier down and her computation orb deactivated. This is how one must behave in peacetime, lest they be (deservedly!!!) labeled a murdery rabid dog and told firmly to stay out of civil society.

Tanya is not someone who cannot discard ingrained habits once they are no longer rational. She is not a traumatized old soldier who cannot reintegrate into normal life. She refuses to let that be the case. That would be losing utter failure and Tanya will instead work diligently toward success. Starting with mending her relationship with Belmarniss.