"I mean, are they intelligent enough to pass for humans? They're - people?"

(The bestiary does have an 'intelligence' rating but the introduction explained it's used to measure the power of some kinds of spells. It also has a 'wisdom' rating which is higher for a fish than the orc working on the farms, and a 'splendor' three times higher for the mushroom woman than the orc. Tanya assumed these were non-literal use of the words; the spell does not seem to be perfect in translating.)

Now that she looks more closely, it also says they speak languages. Including a 'draconic' one of their own! ...Tanya feels she may have just committed a major faux pas.

"Lots of things are people, dragons among them, yeah."

...

"When I first realized I was on another world, I wondered why another planet would have humans. And other species I'm familiar with, like pigs. I expected real aliens to be - more different than that, somehow. I know now that you call the group 'humanoids'," (the Drow term does not refer to humans), "but to me you're all basically humans - I mean no offense - the differences just don't seem large or important, compared to intelligent flying lizards."

"On Earth humans are the only intelligent species, the only ones who have language and use tools and build things. When I saw that the bestiary listed many kinds of people - humanoid people - as 'monsters', I accordingly thought the less of it, and didn't consider that some of the other 'monsters' listed might also be people. To list every kind of animal and person mixed together - well, alphabetically - in terms of what it takes to kill them is, well. I find it an alien perspective. I don't know if it's a drow perspective, or a Noctimar one, or the book writer's or what. I just"  -Tanya can't find the right words for this. Maybe it's no different or better than the Europeans who in living memory displayed Africans and apes in cages next to each other. Maybe this is a hunting guide for people going on safari, to shoot lions and tigers and bears and pygmies in the bush. Here she was talking blithely about trade relationships and patrolling roads and joint-stock companies, when the locals (at least some of them) think neighbors are for hunting down!

Tanya won't lend her hand to that kind of world order. Not if she has any choice. Maybe the flying lizards have a better civilization.

"Well, there are some important differences between many species of people, and what you need to know if you find yourself fighting them is one that a lot of people find important to commit to memory. Drow're probably in human bestiaries, people'll want to know that we have spell resistance and can see in the dark and you can't hit us with sleep spells and such. In case it comes up, which it may, because of the low background amiability. People fight their own kind too, they just, like, already know the basic facts of how they work."

Something feels wrong with this picture. The strengths and abilities of difference races or species is useful information, but the juxtaposition of beasts you might encounter on the road with hostile people (bandits?) feels off. Who is this book meant for?

When you plan to fight another army you take notes on their military technology, their strategy and tactics and weapons, their unit strength and disposition, their posture and goals and command structure. If the enemy's soldiers are bigger and stronger and tougher than yours this informs the analysis, but not as much as your superiority in artillery and their overextended supply lines.

This works at all scales. If you're planning an operation to attack a town militia or a fortress, it's useful to know the guards are resistant to sleep spells but it's much more useful to know what guns they have and where they're stationed. If you fear being ambushed by orcs or drow, it still matters much more whether they have rifles or pikes or horses than whether they're resistant to sleep spells... doesn't it? Is Tanya understimating the magnitude of different intelligent races or species, because she's used to there being only humans? 

...no, there's one scale where this logic breaks down, and that is when you're expecting to fight invididuals or small groups who don't operate in units, who aren't armed or don't know how to use their weapons effectively, who don't have tactics or supply trains or war goals because they're not there to fight you. In other words, when attacking random civilians. That is when their physical strength or ability to see in the dark matters more than their weapons or night-vision goggles, because they don't have any.

"Was this book written for the use of Noctimar's raiders?"

"I don't know what the original author had in mind but I think she compiled from a lot of sources including some surface ones."

"If you expect to fight some people you want to know their about weapons, numbers, tactics, goals. Knowing about their biology only makes a big difference if they don't have any of those. If I'm reading this uncharitably and it's not a manual for attacking unarmed and disorganized people, please tell me what it's meant for."

"...it's meant for not being totally blindsided if you meet something you weren't specifically expecting while traveling. It can also matter if someone you are expecting to fight has the tactic 'summon monsters' or 'recruit interesting allies' and doesn't have the courtesy to tell you in advance whether they breathe fire. Also only some of the things in the book are people. Giant bugs are dumb as rocks."

"If someone you're planning on fighting has recruited allies your next question should be 'how are they armed and equipped', not 'are they physically strong and tough'. Breathing fire is useful but a human can use a flamethrower just as well. If you meet someone while traveling, same idea, their weapons - their tools - matter far more than their biology. I grant you the point about summons since I assume those don't come equipped with weapons, but - even if underground tactics favor ambushes and close quarters combat and can't afford range, you still care about weapons and armor and tactics! What's in this book can be useful but if that's all you know walking into a situation then you might as well know nothing! Anyone can have a lethal weapon in their pocket - well, maybe you don't have the equivalent of pistols, but in their bag at least - there is some fundamental confusion here and I'm not at all sure it's on my side. The only way these things really matter - apart from the magic some of the creatures have - is if they're not competent or completely unexpecting a fight and you got the drop on them, or they are unarmed noncombatants."

"...and yes, I should hope at least some of the things listed here are people! In fact I would like you to tell me which ones are. And whether the spider-men and other such... combined creatures are real, I don't know why or how they could exist and on Earth these entries would be obviously mythical." 

"I have not personally confirmed the book to be accurate in every particular and it could have something in there that doesn't really exist or has been extinct for a hundred years or something, but have not caught it in a lie or even a serious controversy so far. Meaningfully useful weapons are all magic, they're very expensive, and it is in fact useful to know if you are fighting something tough enough to have afforded or stolen, and then continued to possess, a seriously threatening weapon or some nice armor, but - that's priced into -

"- the thing you might be missing is just still again despite it having come up that people get stronger. People get fundamentally stronger. There are people on this planet who could beat me up if I approached them with lethal intent while they were asleep and disoriented and unarmed and stark naked, because they could survive whatever I did before they woke up no matter how well I chose from among my options, and they would not be all that impaired by not having their swag, and I'm not all that strong, I'm about as far as you get without doing heavy-duty adventuring and I got there the slow way by having lots of time to do it in, human third-circles probably have more combat experience than me."

"Magical weapons can be tremendously powerful, but man-portable non-magical weapons are still powerful enough to kill anything dead if you catch them asleep and unarmored. I'm not even talking about bombs or artillery, just ordinary weapons carried by any soldier! I have a submachine gun because I am a mage - sorry, that won't mean anything to you. But a rifle carried by ordinary infantry on my world can punch through a half-inch of hardened steel plate. Are you seriously saying some people in this world - not huge dragons with scaly skin, ordinary human or drow - have skin or bones or whatever as tough as that, not through magic or technology or - invisible armor or something in that vein, but because they, what, fought a lot and got promoted? I understand that you couldn't kill them in their sleep, because you are unarmed and only have your magic and maybe a dagger or something, but - no offense, but how can you be sure what you're saying is true and not propaganda or tall tales?"

"The word 'promoted' makes it sound like it's something that someone decided? It's just something that happens. I have not specifically run tests with half-inch steel and your specific gun. You have not specifically run any tests with any stupidly powerful adventurers! We are both going off conventional wisdom and life experience on our respective planets and you are on my planet now. Maybe your specific gun is as good as mythic, somehow, and could kill a god, that would be nice for you till someone steals it in your sleep or a god chooses a method that doesn't involve showing up to squash you. But if what it does is put a hole in somebody, stronger people are harder to put holes in, and those same people are pretty good at living through having a hole in them and making you regret putting it there."

"That's a nice general principle but I would appreciate some hard numbers about how much harder it is to put a hole through someone. ...not that I want to be putting holes in people for no good reason. I understand there's no reason you specifically would know that, and - I have some doubts you're right about your own planet because, no offence, you live in an isolationist underground city that you've never left before today, and even if people do get tougher you probably don't personally know anyone who's personally seen one of those tougher-than-steel people. But that's not a productive discussion, unless you do have better sources of information. In any case you and I and hopefully anyone we actually meet isn't that tough - not counting my shield - and so for us what weapons people have does matter."

"Could you describe some real-world encounters, first-person accounts you trust, of people fighting? Why and how it happened, how they were armed, how it went down. And why and whether weapons and armor and tactics, and magic, did or didn't matter much more than their biology. Maybe some motivating examples would help here."

"...I have left the city before. I have not left drow territory's environs before, but I have left the city. I also don't think isolationist is the right word. I do not really enjoy listening to people talk about how they totally wrecked a caravan upstairs to get all the good shit inside and all these slaves who are on sale if you buy right now as-is so I do not have a lot of detailed firsthand accounts I have chosen to commit to memory, your standards of evidence are pretty stringent there and that's in a sense admirable I guess but it doesn't make you right, it only means that, if you happen to be right already, you'll stay that way."

"On Earth - my planet - we now have near instant communication connecting most countries, and cheap safe long-distance travel has been introduced over the past two centuries. And one of the things we found out, once people could compare notes and also go out there and check, is that about every regional tradition and every famous ancient writer about far-away wonders was wrong some of the time. People don't have good standards of evidence, and fantastical tales spread and are believed too easily."

"It makes perfect sense and does you credit not to like or trust in the tall tales told by raiding slavers, but that's exactly why I'm asking what other sources you have for these men as hard as steel plate that you're so confident they're real! If you tell me you know people who've seen them and you trust those people, I'll take your word for it" (provisionally) "but if your only source is books stolen by raiders then I don't see how you can distinguish fact from fiction. The same goes for what matters in a fight, what weapons people typically use, which of the creatures in this book are real, and so on." Please not the mushroom-women.

"You've probably noticed I cast Root a lot. That's because if I don't, I trip a lot.

"I broke bones like that, as a kid, sometimes. Wound up bleeding or visibly bruised.

"I've been able to cast Root since first circle. So I've tripped less since then. Not never, because sometimes my hands are full or something, but less."

"But I haven't gotten visibly hurt from tripping since second circle."

If Belmarniss seriously thinks 'I, personally, became better at taking falls with experience as I became an adult' is any kind of evidence, Tanya will have to further downgrade her opinion of Belmarniss's beliefs!

"And your theory is that this gain in toughness just goes on forever?"

"Not forever, I think once you're basically a god there's other stuff going on probably."

"I don't know how tough you consider your gods to be." 

"Well, I've never met one in person and tried to stab it so perhaps they're made of paper. It makes it pretty unrewarding to talk to you when you're like 'oh, I see, you've been reading books for a hundred years, but do you actually know anything' whenever I make a claim."

"...you've been reading books for a hundred years? How long are the local years?" Tanya is momentarily distracted from her point.

"Three hundred sixty-five."

Together with the Earth-like day lengths (Tanya can't be sure, not having been to the surface), and its approximate size according to the atlas, this planet is suspiciously like Earth. (Maybe all planets are Earths in some sense, even if the continents are different?)

Belmarniss is - or claims to be, but Tanya has no real reason to disbelieve her - over a hundred years old. (Probably not much over a hundred, but maybe she picked up reading as a hobby in mid-life?) Well, there's no reason other species (or even 'races') can't have lifespans much longer than those of humans, but - but what? Tanya's instinctive reaction is 'she really doesn't come across like that' but she is from an alien culture and is in any case not in the social position of an honored elder. Put that way, it makes a kind of twisted sense? (Who doesn't leave their city for a hundred years? Maybe someone who expects to live another thousand...)

Is this important? Well, Tanya ought to respect her and her knowledge more, but if that knowledge is fundamentally based on foreign books then it remains true that she might be no better informed than a European who'd spent a hundred or even a thousand years reading about China and still ended up believing Herodotus and Marco Polo and everyone in between. (Did she even have access to enough books to spend a century reading them?)

(Also, it puts in context Belmarniss' earlier claim that she stopped bruising when she tripped and fell. With more than a century of experience, she probably has excellent technique for handling pratfalls!)

"...I believe you that you know very well everything other people in your city know - and drow territory more generally - and everything in the books available to you. I do think the books themselves may be wrong sometimes. If the books on this world are almost entirely correct without effective long-range communications or mass travel I'd be surprised, very pleasantly so. That doesn't mean I know what particulars they might be wrong about, and I very much do not think you don't know anything, but I do distrust a few specific claims. They're not impossible, because frankly after arriving in this world I have no idea what's impossible anymore when you have magic developed to the point of automatic universal translation, but people nonmagically developing skin tougher than steel seems very implausible. If it does happen, my best guess would be that someone somehow causes it to happen, and powerful rich old people" (she's guessing here) "who are likely to need personal defenses are likely to have access to magical or other means of enabling them, and also likely interested in spreading stories that the defenses have no external cause that could be tampered with."

Tanya especially distrusts books whose described scale of toughness goes up to 'literal gods', but arguing religion with people is never productive.

"The books are absolutely wrong sometimes. I do not think they are systematically wrong in the same coordinated direction except where they're all using the same sources, which isn't actually invisible behavior, and I definitely do not think they are specifically wrong in the direction of reality being more similar to what you're used to."