It's a not an especially long walk to the grey garrison, though having to escort a demon the whole route might make it seem longer. The eagle's watch is still back where Brenda and co left them, defending the Wardstone, though there are some more of them there and they seem to have commandeered the barricades that the demon cultists set up.

"Brenda! I didn't expect to see you back here just yet; did something happen? I see you found someone else to tag along."

Why is this embarrassing. This shouldn't be embarrassing. "We captured a demon and Ember is trying to talk him into mending his ways; I wanted to get them to somewhere she'd be safe if he decides he's done talking so I can go back out, and Seelah thought you had some cells available. I hope we wouldn't be imposing too badly?"

“Well. I can’t say I was expecting that, but I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised. Be careful though, okay? I know you’re strong, but if demons promise to reform they’re probably trying to trick you and when you let your guard down is the best time to strike.”

She pauses for a moment to think about the logistics.

“Our jail isn’t really designed to hold demons, especially the stronger ones with more magic, but if that’s just a vermlek it’s probably fine? I’d be worried about the other prisoners, but we’ve only got a few people locked up at the moment because Hulrun’s been dealing with most of the arrests lately.”

"Thank you. I'll try not to capture any more demons until I have a scalable way of handling prisoners myself."

Then Anevia can flag down two paladins not currently needed on the defense to escort Brenda's prisoner and anyone going with them to the eagle's watch holding cells.

"Good luck with your searching!"

Ember will go with them, yes. She's pretty sure this is going to be really scary, being held prisoner by crusaders the demon doesn't have any reason to trust, and hopefully she can help with that at least a little.

Brenda will wish Ember luck and agree to meet back up later today and internally fret over her physical well-being (slightly) and her emotional well-being (significantly) and then head back out. Her eyes are steely gray.

Sometimes when you go looking for trouble, trouble happens to find you first. 

“You there, girl, with the four arms! You wouldn’t happen to be a demon cultist, would you?”

The person ambushing her appears to be a human woman, with spiky black hair, an enormous backpack, and a scroll of paper in her hands. To her Aeon sight they seem thoroughly from the material plane.

That's what she gets for DFEWing a demon! The woman seems surprisingly unafraid of her; maybe she's a powerful combatant and fellow looker-for-trouble.

"No, I'm not; do you have a preferred method of checking? I'm happy to take a truth spell if you've got one and feel the need." She doesn't think the woman is likely to be a cultist herself; she's not carrying a glaive or doing anything violent or stupid.

"Disappointing! I was hoping this attack would mean more demon cultists out and about, but after the first day or so they've mostly gone into hiding. At this rate I might not even get enough responses to be worth publishing. What about the other two of you; are either of you cultists?"

"...I'm a paladin. Of Iomedae."

"No, I only follow Brenda."

"That's a shame. Have you seen any recently at least?"

'I only follow Brenda' is probably a play on words in which case it's amusing, and she's getting off that train of thought at this station.

"Some yesterday and some this morning--publishing? Are you a journalist or an anthropologist or something?" she asks, intrigued. "Do you usually succeed at getting cultists to give you interviews instead of just attacking?" She doesn't think this is the kind of society where you can wave a press pass and talk to both sides of a guerilla war with a guarantee of safe conduct, but it would be very cool to be wrong.

"I'm a scientist of many disciplines, not just anthropology! And no, some cultists are incredibly rude and try to attack me rather than respond, which means I need to dazzle them or trap them or turn invisible. Hopefully their knowledge of theology isn't sufficiently different from their less violent peers to represent a significant selection effect, but unfortunately research must sometimes make sacrifices to practicality."

Someone who talks like this. Someone who talks like this and lives like this and isn't a terrifying evil arch-witch. It's like going hiking in a forest and unexpectedly popping out in your own backyard.

"That's so cool! I love science but haven't had much chance to do any here, I got to this planet yesterday and I've been using all my free time learning the basics of wizardry. I want to hear all about your research." Friends in Places is telling her she needn't worry about asking, and Time Enough For Love means she can afford to get distracted from looking for trouble.

"Right now I'm doing a survey of the theological education of demon cultists in Kenabres, for inclusion in the Encyclopedia Golarionica! Thus far the evidence I've found suggests that most of them are unintelligent and not very well informed about Baphomet or Deskari, but It's too soon to come to a definite conclusion on their tendencies. But enough about that, I need to come up with questions for someone from another world. Which world are you from? What is the status of your world's scientific achievements? What species are you and what traits do you have, and how common is it where you're from? What were the first five differences you noticed about Golarion after your arrival?"

The questions come out rapid fire, without any pause for breath between them, and without missing a beat mid stream of questions the woman rolls up her current scroll and pulls out a new one to record Brenda's answers.

Brenda has the best intelligence headband and so much working memory! This is a totally normal way to hold a conversation!

"I'm from Earth; it's the third planet from a star similar to this one in a spiral galaxy I can't otherwise identify and it has humans but no other intelligent species or gods or magic! I thought we have a pretty solid understanding of our laws of physics except the way I got here is pretty unprecedented, and we've eradicated a couple diseases and put men on our moon and we have airplanes and instant communication from everywhere to everywhere! I started out as a human but I have magic that copies traits of other species and I've used it nine times now! Golarion has the magic and gods and lots of species that I mentioned and also has interaction with other nearby planes and a generally lower apparent level of nonmagical technology!

Are you human? Does Golarion have scientific journals or is it still at the 'correspondence between individual intellectuals' stage? Did life on Golarion evolve from a single origin or is it more complicated than that? Are any metamagic transformations homeomorphic? Are there any other inhabited planets in this plane?"

"Fascinating. Assuming that the species you call human does correspond directly to the one found on golarion, that's evidence for the theories that humans were created or brought to Golarion from elsewhere, since it's unlikely that two worlds would have sufficiently similar evolutionary pressure to create the same species via natural selection. I'm a human, I don't know what you mean by scientific journals but when I'm finished I intend to publish the Encyclopedia Golarionica in Absalom and I work to keep abreast of the latest findings, archeological records from before earthfall are unclear on how much is native or not but your existence is suggestive on the topic and at least Elves came here from Castrovel, the existence of metamagic as a category isn't rigorously defined enough for that to have a sensible answer but by some definitions making a spell more fleeting counts and that transformation is homeomorphic the original spell, and yes but the examples outside of this solar system are much less rigorously attested to.

"How do you travel outside of an atmosphere without making use of magic? What species have you copied so far and what kinds of supernatural abilities can it successfully copy? Can you copy another human to obtain traits that vary within a species? How does instantaneous communication work without magic, do you have a nonmagical way of folding space or route through interplanar boundaries or a way to transmit information faster than light? How do you do healing and treating disease without gods, is it all advanced herbology and surgery or something Golarion hasn't discovered yet?"

"Rockets throw mass out one end really fast and conservation of momentum shoves them the other way, and there are pressurized containers on top to hold the air in! I probably shouldn't list all my abilities for security reasons but that's where I got the four arms and the cat ears and a little bit of sorcery! I don't know; may I try copying you to find out? It's not technically instantaneous, sorry, it's lightspeed limited, but it works by sending pulses of light through very fine glass wires and pulses of electricity through metal wires and invisible frequencies of light up to satellites in orbit and back! We've posited that nonmagically folding space might be possible but can't do it. It's mostly just extremely advanced herbology and surgery but we can also use invisible frequencies of light to make visible images of people's insides and kill tumors, and we also have vaccines, which is giving someone a really weak version of a disease so they end up immune, and we know a bunch of stuff about cleaning things to prevent disease too.

How old is Golarion and how old are the oldest fossils on it? Is there regular travel to Castrovel? Why do elves look so much like humans if they're from a different planet? What are the other planets in this system and which ones are inhabited? Do you know how old this universe is? Are there diseases that spread to people who touch or go near an infected person? Does Golarion have atomic theory and if so how many elements are there? Do you have a convenient way to copy books quickly? I mean you personally right now."

"Absolutely, that sounds like a fascinating experiment to try. By invisible do you mean the light bends around things that block its path or just has frequencies not perceivable by the native eye? It's difficult to confidently date sufficiently old fossils, since even Legend Lore only gives you so much information and only works on some kinds of remains, but humans and elves have been on Golarion for at least 16,000 years and there are remnants of civilization that have been here for longer than we can measure. Kyonin might still have a portal to the planet but they thoroughly refuse to let in outsiders to check despite my best efforts, and otherwise you'd need 9th circle spells or maybe something like your rockets to travel between them so it doesn't happen much. A surprisingly large number of species look somewhat similar to each other, which some people claim is because of interbreeding with outsiders and each other but there's no evidence that the former link doesn't go the opposite way and it doesn't explain why they're able to interbreed in the first place. The planets in the system are Aballon, Castrovel, Golarion, Akiton, Verces, Eox, Triaxus, Liavara, Bretheda, Apostae, and Aucturn. All of them except Aballon, Apostae, and possibly Aucturn are inhabited, and even Abalon still has constructs. Pharasma's creation is older than Golarion but I don't know by how much, yes there are diseases like that, not by that name and I assume by the context you're not talking about the planes, and only scrivener's chant or doing it by hand.

"Are you implying your homeworld isn't in creation, or was that question aimed to learn how much we know about cosmological history here? What is the most interesting experiment you have personally conducted? Are you speaking Taldane via magic or are you just that good at learning languages with a headband? Is your level of scientific education and enthusiasm usual for your origin or are you an unrepresentative sample?"

"I'm going to answer your questions and then do the experiment and then ask my questions! I mean the frequencies thing. On earth there are substances that spontaneously transform into very similar substances at a fixed rate and you can use the ratio to figure out how old certain things are! If chemistry is the same here it should work for us too. My world might or might not be in Creation but explaining my evidence would take a long time so put a metaphorical pin in that. The most interesting experiment I've conducted is probably the artificial miniature cave I spent a few years making out of salt blocks--it had visible beginnings of stalactites and stalagmites when I left Earth--but here I have the opportunity to do much more interesting things. I have permanent Tongues up but I could probably get by in Taldane without it at this point because I also have supernatural language-learning ability stuck in underneath it. I'm a very unrepresentative sample! Here goes the copy attempt!"

"Gosh, wow, that wasn't in my hypothesis space at all! It's pretty cool though!" 

"Huh, you appear to have turned into a Kitsune! I wonder if that generalizes, do you always get abilities from a random new species if you copy a human? Or maybe it's something specifically about ancestry?

"If you have Kitsune ancestors that would do it!" Brenda says, turning humanish again just to make sure she can. "Have you tried turning into a Kitsune yourself?"