Lorelei recognizes that one, but just to be sure: "Go and hide from us."

The octopus drops into the tank and swims down, skin changing color from rusty orange to the same chalky white as the sand at the bottom. It collides hard enough to raise a small cloud of sand, and when it settles a second later the octopus is nowhere to be found.

"Touch of Law," she confirms. "A perfectly average octopus disguise, and it didn't need to try very hard to do it quickly."

Oh good. "So the focus itself is fine, and I can use it at least sometimes. What is the cheapest test to distinguish the other possibilities? Do you have another wand I could try whose spell-reversal wouldn't be disastrous?"

There are spells where misfires are non-disastrous by Lorelei's reckoning, but if Tanya considers a failed True Appraisal to meet that standard then Lorelei has nothing. She would voice this complaint, but she is well aware that clerics of Nethys have a lower standard of laboratory safety than almost anyone else. It would be unfair to insist, even though she privately considers this to be excessive.

"I do not. The next cheapest test is to look at your older spell-like and supernatural abilities to see if any of them are interfering with your newer ones. Not in an active way, I would have seen that by now, but in an incompatible habit-of-mind way stemming from how you operate as a creature. I have a domain ability for this, it costs nothing and takes no time at all." A long, pregnant pause. "If there's… something you aren't telling me about yourself, I can promise I won't be bothered."

(It was a spell that made her know the price of nothing! Just because you can cast Remove Fear doesn't mean you should do it on your researchers!)

"I - obviously have very many things that I'm not telling you about myself." She has a whole new school of magic about her and this is a magic researcher! "I don't know what might bother you, but I've been assured by Cicerone Nazir - speaking for Abadar and the pharaoh - that I'm not breaking any any laws, and I wasn't hiding anything pertinent from them. There are some things I'm obliged to keep secret, so I need to ask you what kinds of things your domain ability can discover."

That's way too ambiguous to be intentionally reassuring but it's fine, Lorelei will allow herself to be reassured anyways.

"It produces the sort of information that would be known by other people about the broad categories and subcategories of creatures that you belong to. Unlike Touch of Law there's some skill involved, and it's possible to fail outright, but I'm reasonably good at it. A very poor positive result would be information that is widely known even by laypeople, while an exceptionally good result would be information known only to people who are specialized in hunting and killing v— whatever you are. It does not read your mind, observe your past, or inform me of anything which is true of or only known to you in particular."

That's good, in that it rules out most classified things (known only to her) and her interactions with Being X. It's less good, in that an exceptionally good result would be gaining information known only to those who specialize in hunting and killing Tanyas across the multiverse. What even are those? Tanya doesn't think she has any, on account of how she's still alive?

(What she is is human. Professor Lorelei is entitled to her own opinions, but Tanya is fairly certain there aren't any secret weaknesses special to humans from Earth as opposed to Golarion, or to mages for that matter. Mages are harder to kill than ordinary humans; they don't come with any built-in weaknesses. If there's an exception to this rule, it certainly isn't a widely known one.)

That said, it doesn't sound like the kind of spell that would throw light on whatever weird trouble she's having right now. After all, mysterious malfunctions in grnated-magic foci used with wands probably aren't the tool of choice of those-who-hunt-Tanyas. 

Where is the spell getting all this information, anyway? Presumably from Abadar or another alghollthu, who can already tell anyone they want whatever would serve them best. In that case, agreeing to be subject to the spell is a display of trust and cooperation towards Abadar as well.

"Very well. In that case, please try it." She extends a hand outside her shield.

Lorelei takes Tanya's hand and uses Lore Keeper, the Knowledge domain spell-like ability to investigate monsters at a touch. Lorelei is, as mentioned previously, very good with this ability, so much so that the lack of requisite familiarity with Earth is no impediment to learning what sort of woman stands before her.

Few people outside the 203rd know its true abilities, but over time their enemies - those who have fought them and lived to tell, those rare few who can lay claim to the title of Those-Who-Hunt-Tanyas - have put together a certain picture.

It's not very appropriate for the Devil of the Rhine, but she is a unique creature not subject to Lore Keeper.

This is it, isn't it. She's finally taken one step too far and glimpsed a truth beyond her ken. Any minute now she's going to go stark raving mad and flee screaming into the benthic night, unless she retreats to the safety of ignorance and erases everything…

… but if she were the sort of person to turn away from knowledge, she would never have become a cleric of Nethys. Lorelei will gird her nonexistent loins against spiritual tribulation and swim on! What, then, can be gleaned from this excursion?

 Tanya von Degurechaff is an aerial mage. Despite the name, aerial mages are not actually spellcasters: she does not have spells or spell slots, only supernatural powers. This accords with Tanya's earlier comment about not being familiar with Osirian magic, and why she wouldn't have introduced herself as an evoker despite that being the most apt description of her combat role. And what an evoker she is! The received wisdom among magic users, that attempting to directly kill the foe with Evocation spells is dangerously inefficient, is startlingly inapplicable for aerial mages. Tanya flattens pragmatic objections to wasting energy on overcharged fireballs by virtue of raw power, along with the stamina to use it and the speed to avoid retaliation. Lorelei would not be surprised if Tanya's response to a Wall of Force would be to shoot directly through it, and would be only slightly more surprised if that didn't work.

(Tanya's top speed is frankly unbelievable. There is nothing comparable on Golarion, short of falling stars. Or Teleport, if you're inclined to measure that as motion. You simply cannot travel that fast, even by falling at terminal velocity.)

Despite their immense strength, aerial mages are surprisingly fragile. She possesses very little of the toughness that adventurers accumulate, and Lorelei suspects Tanya has virtually no defense against Enchantment, unless you count moving out of earshot faster than sound can travel. Maybe that should count, it's not like Lorelei has ever heard of anyone trying it before. If Tanya's mage shield were to go down, she could easily die after being punched sufficiently hard. In fact, she might well die in combat to a Magic Missile, or any other attack that doesn't traverse the intervening space to reach its target. Her only defense is to notice the magic user taking action and either kill them first or exceed the range limit as quickly as possible. Being an aerial mage must be stressful!

Lorelei reviews this information carefully, searching for potential interactions with the divine focus.

She leans away from Tanya, pupils blown wide, mouthing words with no sound.

"What… is methamphetamine?" she asks hesitantly, a few moments later.

Um?

That's not a secret known only to those who hunt her kind. So there's no reason not to tell her. Tanya is just - momentarily embarrassed. When Professor Lorelei said she might find something about Tanya's past objectionable, Tanya hadn't anticipated it being a history of using hard drugs!! Lorelei is being entirely reasonable and it's on Tanya to explain why an exception to social norms should be made here... this may be difficult.

"It's a powerful stimulant," she hedges. The way she takes it is much, much safer (*) than someone eating or injecting it, but she can't think of how to mention this fact without prompting certain questions if the Professor is indeed unsure what amphetamines are like.

(*) It's been years and she still isn't addicted and doesn't have withdrawal symptoms! don'taskaboutanyothersideeffectspleaseandthankyou 

"Does it interfere with your perception, like alcohol or pesh? Strong drugs don't always impede magic, but if methamphetamine makes it… easier to miss little details, easier to ignore small warnings, that could be a problem."

"I'm not using it right now!" Tanya hurries to reassure her. "It's for combat use only." Erm. "And it improves perception, or we wouldn't use it! Regardless, it's not the problem here."

Unless one of the other other side effects has finally caught up with her? After all, meth hasn't been tested for long-term safety with Golarion magic. So far she only encountered the mostly-salutary side effects - bloodlust, mild paranoia, reduced suffering from hunger - but that doesn't mean there can't be an impairment to a mental function she had never exercised before today. Still, even if it's true there's nothing to be done about it, and it can't have thrown her entirely out of distribution without Tanya noticing something.

(At least she doesn't have to deal with increased sex drive yet. Tanya dreads the day when that little 'joke' of Being X comes due.)

If that's true then whether Tanya is addicted to methamphetamine is a moot point, although Lorelei will advise her to get a Remove Disease if it looks like it's causing her grief in other ways.

(The thought that methamphetamine might treat her own condition does cross her mind. She is too well-adjusted to ignore the flicker of curiosity, but the inclination to cling to irrational hopes died long ago. Tanya can't create the drug outside of her own skull, and that's all there is to it.)

The only other biochemical substance in that list is chocolate, which clerics are definitely capable of eating. That leaves Tanya's other equipment. "Aerial mages commonly carry a rifle, a pistol, and a computation orb. Are any of those a type of casting focus or magical weapon? If so, that's the most likely source of the problem."

It seems she only got common public knowledge about aerial mages after all, nothing more specific than that. Tanya relaxes mentally a little.

"I'm not sure what qualifies as a casting focus in your classification. We call the orb a casting implement... At the most basic level, casting implements shape raw mana according to a given spell's requirements without the mage having to do it manually. They're not detectably magical by themselves," because Earth hasn't invented permanent or imbued spells and non-mage sources of mana and other basic building blocks of magical civilization yet, "and neither are the weapons."

"Your definition of 'casting implement' sounds like my definition of 'casting focus'. They're nonmagical tools for shaping magic in ways that are difficult or impossible to do manually." Lorelei's ring is additionally very magical, but that's unrelated to its function as a holy symbol. "Wizards have an analogous method that uses a different item for each spell, since they have no patron who can tune it. It's common for them to learn how to eschew materials. If your implement and weapons aren't magical, my best guess is that you're running into the same problem that novice theurges have when trying to cast spells from two different traditions at the same time. You're drawing your magical potential out across multiple channels at once, ones that have different mental and physical requirements. It usually doesn't work at all."

"...but I'm not using my own magic with the Abadaran focus," Tanya points out. "The wand and scrolls supply their own but even if the focus doesn't, I wasn't using any!"

"You weren't using your own spells," Lorelei corrects her. "Everything you do with the spells given to you, you do with your own power."

She gestures at the discarded scroll of Blindness/Deafness and the magic pretzel rises out of it. Then it begins to spin like a carousel.

"This is not my spell. I didn't even scribe the scroll it came from. But the faculty which I am now using to manipulate it, my magic, is what concerns us."

"I was told Abadar could grant magic to someone who didn't have any of their own. Did I misunderstand?"

"You could say that colloquially, but all you're getting are spells. Everyone has an innate ability to use magic, the same way everyone has an innate ability to do math. Which is to say, everyone can do it, but most people do not. Sorcerers are born with the power to marshal spells into useful forms by sheer force of will, and everyone else has to make do. Like us! We make do by receiving new spells every morning. Or wizards with their spellbooks, witches with their familiars, and so on. However, it's still our own innate magic doing the hard work of bringing those spells to completion. That's part of why Abadar can't just give you second, third, or even ninth-circle spells right away, even if it'd be sensible for the situation you're in. You have to reach that point yourself, to be developed enough to cast them."

OK, no, that's just wrong. "A spell is a certain way of using magic. I can learn a spell the way I can learn anything else: someone tells or shows me how to shape the magic and I practice. The knowledge itself isn't special. If Abadar granted me spells - that is, knowledge - I could cast them myself." Not without an implement she couldn't, but let's keep this simple for now. "But that's not what he's doing. He's giving me some instincts and mental habits, but when I touched the octopus I didn't know in advance how the magic would be shaped, and I didn't shape it myself. Even having seen it I can't duplicate it right away, using my own magic."

"This knowledge can be encoded in some casting implement - focus - so that the user doesn't have to know the part that the implement handles, or at any rate doesn't have to keep it in mind. They just need to supply mana so magic can be produced, and make any choices that the spell's design leaves open. Wands and scrolls come with a reservoir of mana, so even people who don't have their own can use them. I don't know if Abadar's granted spells are the same, attaching the mana to me somehow, or if he has a different mechanism creating the desired magical effect when it is solicited, I can't see him doing it." Tanya's face expresses that this is so frustrating! "Either way, he's giving me a way to produce the spell's effects, not the knowledge of the spell so I can do it myself."

"And yes, every mage has some limit to the complexity of the spells they can learn to cast or to cast well, the amount of spells they can keep going simultaneously and so on. Better casting imlpements handle more of the work, letting less competent mages do more, but while there's no limit in theory to what an implement can do for you there definitely is in practice. But if Abadar's doing the work, he can power a more complex spell if he wants! I understand there are - laws and treaties and so on to limit this, but it's not a physical law of the universe that Abadar literally can't grant me a higher circle spell even though I only signed up with him this morning."