Presumably Golarion's magical beings would too, though she doesn't actually remember what-all Aroden had it tested on. 

They should stay away from military installations, but probably a village in the middle of nowhere won't know much.

Mhalir agrees that this makes sense. They'll probably learn more from a village that's nearish some of the new installations, though. Here's one lying nearish to an impressively long canal, with several sets of locks, that stretches from a major river that passes fifty miles northeast of Predain's old border, all the way to a lake within the old borders. There's quite a bit of visible boat traffic on the canal, but the village in particular doesn't seem to be a major stopping point. 

Sure. 

She picks a male face, this time. It's safer in places that might have conquering soldiers around.

Mhalir orders the pilot to descend and get some video footage up close, so they can match their appearance to the locals. The inhabitants of this particular village have roughly Carissa's skin tone, their hair and eye colour brown or black. They're mostly wearing simple tunics and leggings, made of leather or homespun cloth. There's no sign of occupying soldiers; in fact, the village has a very empty feel. 

Once they've seen enough for a disguise, they land the shuttle outside the village; it's surrounded by dense boreal forest so it's not difficult to do so unnoticed. It seems to be early spring, the last of the snow lingering in patches in the shadows.

Mhalir lets Carissa take over their body again before they talk to anyone. 

Carissa is, this time, going to claim she's a mage from one of the more rural parts of the country. She heard there was a war, and wants to know more about it.

She finds a cluster of half a dozen women between ages eighteen and fifty, arguing over whether a collapsed barn roof is fixable. They're delighted to abandon this topic and instead invite her inside for tea; the central building on their main street is a cross between a town hall, inn, indoor market, and tavern. It seems to be run by the oldest woman, and is currently pretty much deserted save for a white-haired, frail old man with a limp, currently looking at what seems to be a book of accounts in the corner. 

The women, especially the youngest two, seem very delighted to offer Carissa-in-male-guise tea and biscuits. How did she manage not to hear about the war? There were messengers sent to every town with a population over a hundred per the last census, is she from somewhere even smaller than that? 

Her family doesn't live in a town, they - (probably they can't farm, on this soil) - travel. And she can read minds and see what they infer from that. Last time they passed through a town she heard about the war but her brother was sick, so it wasn't a good time to leave. What's the war all about?

It's all kind of baffling to them and their explanation is correspondingly vague. The King of Tantara didn't like that the King of Predain was adding territories, and attacked. Klipar Territory, which is where they are, is nowhere near the war of course, but last autumn all the territories were informed that in order to keep getting aid from Predain, and use of the canal without paying a hefty foreigners' tariff, they needed to send a quota of men for the army. Nearly every territory accepted the offer; no one wants to go back to the times when if the crops failed then half your village would starve. Especially since they're in range to get awful storms from all the magic being thrown around in the border region.

The older woman is thinking how it's a damned tragedy how much business she's lost to this stupid war. Many the village women are getting their husbands' pay from the army, but what are they supposed to do with it, none of the trade barges are stopping here lately and hardly anyone passes through town.

One of the other women is grumbling internally about how they'll damned well need the grain that Predain will send them, with just about all the able-bodied men in the village and nearby farms gone to fight in the war. 

The youngest of the women is trying to keep her expression level, while full of conflicted feelings about her husband's death in combat. They hadn't even been married two months before he was conscripted - still long enough to notice that while he was a good prospect in theory, as the blacksmith's apprentice, he was hardly a good student, lazy and sloppy and too fond of his drink. He can't have been much better at soldiering. She got his pay anyway, including the death stipend for dependents. So maybe she's come out of this better off, really. This visiting mage is certainly intriguing. Handsome, too. 

None of them seem to know much at all about the country that recently conquered them, or added them as a province or something; they don't seem to be thinking of themselves as conquered people, though. Predain is a distant abstraction in their minds. 

Well, it's a very light touch, even if you assume the territories 'accepted the offer' under duress and that the salaries will stop being paid if the war goes at all poorly, which she is absolutely assuming. Where does one go to sign up? Will she be in trouble for not having done so already?

They confer among themselves. Probably the nearest town big enough to have an officer stationed there is Niall, it's about twenty miles further down the canal, though there aren't many barges taking passengers these days so she might have to take the trail through the woods instead, which is pretty winding and generally a two-day ride or a week on foot. They don't think one ought to be in trouble just for not getting the message sooner, though it depends if the officer stationed there is reasonable or corrupt, doesn't it.

One of the women pipes up that there shouldn't be corrupt army officers, she heard they're all supposed to accept compulsions not to abuse their power in order to make officer status. 

What, with magic? They must have a lot of magic, if they can do that with every officer.

They've heard Predain has lots and lots of mages, nowadays, and they're very good at identifying Gifts and getting their mages training from a young age.

One of the women, with the air of someone sharing the juiciest gossip, leans in and says that she heard the new King was giving mage-gifted people money to have children - and men weren't even required to marry the mother, or pay for their keep, the government would do that! Scandalous. This would've been starting years and years ago, so maybe some of those children are old enough now to have Gifts awakening, even. 

Well, that confirms the bit about sorcerers. She makes a hmmmph sound. "Maybe I'll get in on that."

Does she want to stay the night? There's a bed in the loft and they'll give her accommodations and throw in supper and breakfast too if she can do some magic for them, help out around town. It's so hard to stay on top of things when all your men are gone. 

Sure. It'll give her the chance to see which things she does are particularly remarkable and noteworthy compared to what the locals can do. She'll want to get riding right at dawn, though, if she has to make it to Niall.

They're so delighted! The young widowed woman is thinking that it's too bad she only has the one night to make a good impression on the mage, and if she's honest with herself it's unlikely she can make him fall in love with her enough to come back here after the war. She's going to enjoy flirting anyway, though. 

The older woman takes charge. Can Carissa fix the collapsed barn roof? Can she do anything about someone else's roof leaking? Can she make them any new glass jars or iron pots, they've heard mages can do glasswork and metalwork, and they've got good fine sand and one of the villagers went to Niall to learn glassblowing from a teacher Predain sent, and for a little while they had lovely glass vases and jars, but then he left for the war. 

- wow, she's jealous, none of those things are very easy to do with Golarion magic. She can mend small things, but she'd have to burn a diamond and a fourth-circle spell slot to make an iron pot that wasn't going to dissolve by afternoon. Before they get unimpressed with her as a mage she can fly up to the leaking roof and see if it's amenable to mending, and she can repair metal tools if they have any of those.

Oh, they have loads of things that need repairing! Can she repair leather or broken pottery too? They didn't know that was something mages could do, it's not something any of the mages who used to travel through here sometimes would offer, but they'd be delighted. They're also AMAZED that she can fly, they never heard of a human mage doing that. 

Carissa wants to take a local mage apart and learn all their secrets. She'll probably have to settle for Mhalir getting to infest one. 

She mends leather and pottery and broken tools and tries to think of a spell that'd let her do anything about the collapsed roof, maybe if there were a 'wood shape' spell like 'stone shape' but the reason they're not is that wood can't meld the way stone can....

Mhalir stares at the engineering challenge. 

<How much weight can you carry when you cast Fly?> he asks her eventually. <It looks like this would be perfectly repairable by mundane means, that main supporting beam need to be replaced and the rest is easy, but I think their problem is that without the men here they are not able to get a beam up there.> 

As much as I can carry but I don't think I can carry the beam. Even with Bull's Strength I don't think I'd be able to. Once we prepare spells I could, uh, Fly, cast Bull's Strength, turn into a bear, and then do it, but I get the sense that'd be very conspicuous. 

<We could tell them you need privacy for some reason, but - it is probably not actually worth burning that many spells for this, maybe you can just say that the style of magic you figured out on your own is not as good for heavy lifting. They seem very happy already with all the mending.> The women are continuing to line up a row of various slightly-broken household implements for repairs. 

Carissa can keep doing the mending and making conversation and reading minds. She is tempted to hook up with the young widowed lady but she really should not.

Mhalir agrees that she really should not! On top of all the other reasons it's a terrible idea, it's unclear if these people have any form of birth control– can she father children when using Alter Self to be male? How does that even work? 

She has no idea! And it'd be very unfair to try to find out, especially when the woman would probably be hoping for a sorcerer child and Carissa doesn't have any sorcerer hair to use as a focus for Alter Self. She tones down the flirting over dinner and tries to ask more questions about the local geography instead.