...she might as well ask. "What about reincarnation?"

He takes a moment to check through word association and connotation if she means the Druid spell or returning to the material plane after death as a newborn.  

"Pharasma seems to disprefer reincarnation, but she isn't all powerful and she can be strangely noninterventionist in actually acting on her preferences in some matters.  So several minor Gods offer the option of reincarnation to their followers, although agreements with Pharasma limit how much they can offer it.  They are mostly focused in the nation of Vudra in the continent of Casmaron and some in the continent Tian Xia.  There are some obscure magical rituals that can enable reincarnation without intervention of a God.  There are rumors and legends on this planet of spells that can directly enable reincarnation without all of the cost and complexity and finickiness of a ritual.  There is also a species called Samsarans that almost always reincarnate.  They are uncommon, much less common than humans, and mostly native to the continent of Tian Xia.  The obvious application of reincarnation is to avoid judgement until you have a life you know will not be sorted by Pharasma to one of the horrible afterlives.  Other applications include pursing some form of spiritual or philosophical enlightenment that the practitioners of the reincarnation believe cannot be obtained on an afterlife plane."

He doesn't want to leave things out, even if it might give Tanya the wrong idea...

"There is another quasi-species, Rakshasas, that exploited and warped existing magic for reincarnation to enable them to reincarnate and grow stronger with each reincarnation by committing atrocities such as cannibalism or mass sacrifice of other rational beings.  I mention them only for completeness, even if one were to have no moral desire to avoid atrocities, the process warps the psychology of the being that becomes a Rakshasa."

'Seems to disprefer'? ...oh right, he'll only tell her what's already known locally. Or maybe what's believed locally even if it's wrong, she's not sure and if she asks she'll be told what's believed locally about whether consultants sent by your literal god are trustworthy. 

Actually, that logic applies to the whole topic of treaties and afterlives and everything else he told her. But she didn't prompt him to do it, so it's still what his organization wants the locals to believe... ugh. It's not as if Tanya can look at a spell purporting to show torture of dead people in hell and tell if it's truth or fiction! Even her own Earth mastered visual illusions, so she knows well enough that spells can show anything the caster wants! But she can't rely on it being fiction produced by aliens ruthless enough to threaten torture but moral enough not to carry through with the threat, so her response has to be the same either way - as designed.

Anyway, the practical effect of his answer (viewed through the lense of 'this is what the locals believe') is that reincarnation is possible but is done only rarely by distant minor factions who are definitely not Iomedae, and isn't something that's practical or socially expected for locals to aim for. Also, obligatory reminder that 'exploiting' magic in ways the gods didn't intent requires and/or causes unrelated atrocities and literal blood libels, just in case you were tempted.

"I see," she replies neutrally. And waits for him to raise the next subject, because she's getting the feeling he's working from a list that she can only escape by manufacturing an excuse to go talk to Terendelev.

(Tanya has made great strides over the past fourteen years in not insulting so-called divine beings to their face while they haven't yet decided to torture her for fun. Rational behavior! Incentive alignment! Personal development! Progress!)

He suspects he may have missed something or said something very wrong, in her place he thinks he would have a lot more questions…

“I was called with only slightly more than ten minutes notice, and I was likely selected with both the constraints of ‘effective unusually long range spotter’ and ‘able to handle a conversation across an unknown but wide cultural and context gap’.  With the context I have now, Iomedae could use that to select someone more appropriately skilled if a new calling was made?  Maybe someone used to talking to people from Earth, even if it’s not your Earth it sounds similar?  This calling could either be in place of extending my calling to days instead of hours, or in addition if you still have need of a spotter over the coming days?”

He hopes she’s not insulted, he really thinks someone else could do better at (half) of his current job.

"Someone who is used to talking to people from Earth would probably at least save us time, if calling a different consultant in your stead doesn't incur an additional cost or create organizational difficulties." Ugh. No matter her feelings on the subject she should be polite, she's a professional and that came out more rude than she intended. "I expect I know much less than you do whether I'll continue to need a spotter in the next days, or whether someone local could fill the role once the situation is less urgent." That's assuming she'll agree to keep shooting people for them after today, but what else can she do but wait to hear their terms?

"Can you tell me what the notice was? I measured ten minutes precisely from when Terendelev began casting the spell that I understood to have called you, so I must have misunderstood the situation." Tanya gratefully seizes the chance to change topics.

“Gods have attentional capacities greater than mortals, ranging from a few times greater to hundred or thousands of times greater.  Gods can observe things especially relevant to their domains, mortals thinking or acting similarly to them, and mortals deliberately praying to them.  Iomedae likely anticipated the calling shortly before the spell actually started from either a deliberate prayer or very noticeable intent.  For my part, we have a system of communication that doesn’t require a direct vision from a God.  From the fact that the system alerted me before ten minutes meant it was activated not by the spell but probably manually by Iomedae.  And then, somewhat unusually, I did get a brief direct vision from Iomedae.  It was a vision of a mortal who saw themselves as desiring to help some people out of a rational common interest, to protect their small island of safety and enlightenment and preserve their civilization against chaotic destructive hoards.  I assume that was you?”

"The... gods... read everyone's minds?"

"It is not exactly mind reading, more... general intent and motivation and goals?  And even all combined the Gods wouldn't have the attentional capacity to pay attention to everyone, this planet alone is estimated to have over half a billion* mortals, and even major Gods of which there are dozens have only thousands to tens of thousands times mortal attentional capacity.  And Iomedae is much better at interpreting mortals' actions and intents because she used to be mortal herself, most Gods wouldn't and in fact couldn't get that much of a read on you without your deliberate prayer even if they were focusing intently."

Okay, maybe he could have seen this coming.  There will be a massive incident report figuring out if he (or someone else sent instead) could have predicted this reaction..

*it is several time higher, most estimates fail to include underground, oceanic, and surface populations all combined.

"Thank you, Jon, for explaining to me what the locals believe on the subject." Tanya is officially done with being polite.

LISTEN UP IOMEDAE YOU BEING X RIPOFF. Mental privacy is an unalienable personal dignity. Private thoughts are the foundation of private property. They are the last resistance against totalitarianism. They are the wellspring of self-interest, the bedrock of negotiations. They set humans apart from machines and if you try to turn humans into machines you get broken slaves and if you try to control their thoughts you get communists.

If I ever catch you reading my thoughts again I WILL TAKE YOU FOR AN ENEMY. THIS IS NOT NEGOTIABLE.

The next envoy had better damned well apologize if you want me to keep shooting demons for you, you bloody PRETENDER TO GODHOOD who doesn't have the basic decency to pretend to treat others as people.

...the last two sentences contradict each other but that is what you get for READING MY THOUGHTS UNINVITED, you bitch. Was getting people to pray to you too hard so you bent the rules a bit? What kind of shoddy organization are you running in your so-called heaven? 

HUMANS CAN DO BETTER THAN YOU. You call us mortals because you hold the power of life and death and afterlife over us but we build CIVILIZATIONS. All I've seen from you 'gods' is petty incompetence. So I'm going to teach you a little lesson meant for slow children.

It's just some little things we mortals invented, called decision theory and rational choice theory, that we use to RATIONALLY COOPERATE. Things that don't matter to gods who are stuck on prayers and worship and obedience and think the threat of hell solves everything.

YOU DID NOT ASK PERMISSION. YOU DEFECTED. SO I WILL NOT COOPERATE. YOU WILL NOT GET WHAT YOU WANTED. 

The mortal is praying to her!  Her agent must have succeeded at the far upper end of her expectations!  She can get some visibility, and work out the best strategy to cooperate and-. Oh.  Well, she can cease to try to read this mortal and spend her attention elsewhere.  She could inform Abadar not to try to communicate directly with this mortal and Abadar would pay her well for that information, but in fact that would be further sharing thoughts they don't want shared.  Hopefully her agent will tell her via prayer so she can learn of this fact independently.  And if she does get another chance to send an agent, she can give them a vision very clearly apologizing!

He thinks he messed something up important, but he isn't sure what.  He'll press on with more information

"I suspect from your reaction you would also urgently like to know that mind reading spells exist.  Detect Thoughts, 2nd circle for wizards, not normally available to clerics.  It reads the internal monolog in a clearly understandable way from the subjects within range of the spell to the caster, 60 foot range, it can be blocked by sufficiently thick material, such as an inch of iron or a thin sheet of lead.  Nondetection, at third circle, which I have already cast on you makes you harder to mindread or use other divinations against, although powerful casters can entirely ignore it.  Your wisdom headband and cloak make you harder to mindread." 

She's probably still worried about the Gods.

"These strategies are insufficient against divine sense.  Mindblank, at 8th circle, completely shuts out mind reading and other divinations and is partly effective against divine senses, there isn't a standard item that passively maintains it's effect for it but you may be able to commission a specialty item."

She might even be worried about Iomedae, mental privacy is a reasonable thing to want!

"If you particularly don't want Iomedae or allied Lawful Gods to read your intent or motives, I could pray about that, Iomedae would perceive that from me and I am quite sure Iomedae would respect such a request from a prospective ally, and pass on the request to other allied Gods that would respect it?  I suppose that might sound odd or even unbelievable if you aren't familiar with the concept of Lawfulness*?"

He starts mentally reviewing the past few things he has said in case he can spot any other misunderstandings.

*He leans on his true speech a bit more to try to get the concept through.

Mind control spells exist, how much worse are thought-reading ones - oh, you can do it undetected.

"Are the local tactics - and policy for politicians and other important people, I suppose - to never come close to anyone they don't trust with their lives? Oh, no, I forgot you also have teleports here." Tanya's tone is biting. "I suppose the wardstone had better be repaired quickly." And she will need to decide whether to risk her life and very being by sleeping in this city.

Rationally, Tanya knows they could have killed or mind-controlled her if they wanted. She was barely conscious when she was brought in. They didn't take away her orb. She let Terendelev cast unknown spells on her, and carries her magical items. There's really no rational reason to suspect the locals are anything but friendly. Even Jon hasn't done anything except say things which weren't really aimed at her until the end.

Unless Iomedae read her mind and was offended and is going to tell Terendelev to stop being so friendly. She doesn't want to take it back, exactly, she couldn't promise to never think that again and even if she could that would be giving up on - existing as herself. But she still needs to protect herself.

She doesn't know how to find any factions that aren't allied with Iomedae. She can't last forever on her own and doesn't particularly want to try. The only other people she has actually met are the so-called demons who she's been busy killing and some of them teleported away and will have spread the word by now. Leaving the city would be taking a huge risk. 

...She can't hide from Iomedae. If Iomedae really wants to she'll send people to track her down and even if she can outshoot anyone else who deigns to come down to this benighted world she has to sleep sometimes and Iomedae can read her thoughts as she falls asleep.

Blast it all, she's going to have to mend bridges. She said she wouldn't cooperate with Iomedae but she'll cooperate with Terendelev, at least.

Tanya tries not to hope, gods probably like it when you hope. Tanya much prefers having a rational basis for expecting a good outcome. But there's also a dignity in doing the best you can.

Sigh. "I'm sorry. None of the things I'm upset about are your fault. I've already, uh, thought at Iomedae that she should stop reading my mind but if there's a - better - prayer technique than that then please use it. ...I understand there may be an incentive to read minds if all the gods won't agree to a treaty banning it. And arguably an incentive for people not to tell gods who they think are on their side not to read their minds, as then only the gods of opposed factions will read them. Nevertheless, I want to reach a better equilibrium which preserves privacy. At the very least, it should be an opt-in interaction, and not one I would opt into lightly." Or ever, but she doesn't have to tell him that.

"I am of course interested in any local magic that protects against mind-reading, and I expect I'm not unusual in that regard." Of course the protective magic the gods allow to be sold locally doesn't work against the gods. He's probably going to tell her it's heavily rationed even despite that.

"I am... of course familiar with the concepts of following laws, and of - keeping your word, honoring contracts, making decisions predictably and consistently, being rational? Did I get all that right? It doesn't map to single concept or term I can think of."

"I think you might be incorrectly estimating the balance of offense and defense.  With good items and decent baseline aptitude, offensive magics like mind control are unreliable.  And most 5th circle wizards are happy being paid very well for rapid long distance transport.  And there is another factor I haven't explained yet that is different on this planet from the Earth I know of.  I will hold off on that explanation, unless you want me to prioritize it... it is combat relevant so we should get to it at some point."

"Iomedae likely heard thoughts of yours intentionally directed at her and now knows to avoid reading your mind, but I will take a minute to make sure she is aware of your desire not to have your mind read or anything too close to it."

He takes a full minute to lay his thoughts out clearly.  Human from Earth, but either an alternate Earth or memory altered in very elaborate detail (with matching unique magic).  Very intelligent, very confused about this planet and the Gods and everything and he keeps running into new confusions and he hasn't even finished a first pass attempt at addressing the ones he knows about.  (He is really glad he doesn't have stress responses the way humans do, because otherwise he would have a very annoying distraction on top of the challenging communication problem he is working through!)  This human really really values her mental privacy, please do not violate it, even ordinary divine senses are too close!

"And yes, you correctly grasped the incentives against Iomedae preemptively making it opt-in, the balance of powers is too precarious to give up such an advantage.  And, to be honest, humans tend to incorrectly assume Gods are omniscient anyway, although theologians and learned people on this planet know otherwise.  Also, reviewing my recent words to you, I may not have explained adequately... Gods see actions and intents within their areas of concern and from humans that think more like them.  Ordinary common actions and thoughts are very hard to see, so outsider of deliberate prayer, only actions and thoughts exceptionally aligned with the God can be seen clearly to that God.  So, for example, the thought I mentioned having a brief vision of might literally be the only thought Iomedae got clearly off of you, being an exceptionally heroic, altruistic, and goal-oriented thought.  To give just a few examples, Iomedae sees heroism and bravery and will-to-achieve-victory, particularly pragmatic detail-oriented plans.  Abadar sees mutually beneficial trade, along with creation of wealth and prosperity.  Abadar, might, for example, have noticed your clothing and equipment because they are the result of a prosperous industrial society and stand out against the relative poverty of this city.  I could go on with a list of Gods and things they can or can't see if you want more examples?"

"Yes, that is a good summary of Lawfulness!  There are caveats, for example someone living in a society with contradictory and/or illegible laws might 'read' as Lawful if they keep to their own word even as they ignore most of the laws.  Or they might 'read' as Chaotic even if they constantly struggle to follow those laws, perhaps even because of trying to follow those laws."  His voice shows clear disapproval, maybe even a hint of disgust, at the idea of sets of laws like that.

"And that leads into another complicated topic I haven't explained yet... alignment.  There are spells to read alignment, i.e. Good or Evil and Law or Chaos*.  And this has some implications...  I can explain this topic next if you want to prioritize it.  We should definitely talk about it before you have extended interactions with people that have alignment detection... I bought us time on that front with the spell Undetectable Alignment, which lasts 24 hours, so it isn't urgent on the scale of hours."

*He again pushes his truespeech to try to get more of the concepts through.  In principle he likes doing his own detail work in communicating across language and cultural barriers, but it seems like the concept of 'Lawfulness' got through okay, so he'll try it again.  

Goodness comes across as altruism and trying to ensure others benefit and avoiding avoidable harms to others.  Evil comes across as causing deliberate harm to others, allowing excess harm that could be avoided, and in general causing loss of utility to others as an end unto itself.  Law comes across as Tanya has already indicated: keeping your word and contracts and making decisions predictably.  Chaos comes across as diversity of thought, diversity of action, high variance strategies, and stochastic strategies... at the expense of keeping your word and behaving legibly and being predictable to your allies.  All four terms have a deep meaningful noun sort of sense to them, as if talking about a fundamental force of physics and not subjective social constructs.

It was already uncomfortable to speak a language without knowing how she knows it, but this manages to be even weirder than that! She could accept telepathy transmitting meaning without words (well, this morning she didn't believe in telepathy, but never mind that) but he's doing it with his mouth or whatever it is he has under there!

Tanya doesn't really understand how any of these concepts other than Good hang together and understands even less why they're talking about them. She's probably missed or forgotten some important things Jon has said, and he keeps dropping a subject halfway through explaining it to talk about something else. Testing her concentration and multitasking in a combat scenario is all well and good, but surely there are limits! Tanya wishes she could give the orb recording to a secretary to make some sense of the mess and give her a prioritized report tomorrow morning.

(An emaciated red alien with a spear appears where she was a second ago and plunges towards the ground; Tanya dutifully blasts it. Barbarians whose ability to teleport made them regress to the pointy stick stage of development have no business being in a city.)

"You have raised many subjects that we haven't finished discussing. This is unavoidable since there is so much I don't know, but perhaps we could prioritize the ones that are short-term actionable?"

“The most combat relevant thing to explain: on this planet anyone who engages in high stakes, high lethality struggles metaphysically accumulates extra durability and power.  At the high end of durability, this means a legendary adventurer can survive 20 or 30 attacks, when just one or two such attacks would kill a baseline human.  At the more moderate level, a seasoned soldier might be 2 to 5 times as durable.  This phenomena does not detect as magical and works in an antimagic field.  Both allies and enemies have likely overestimated your durability as they would have assumed you are from this planet and would have durability to match your magical power.  For your part, your attacks are devastatingly powerful enough to render this phenomena mostly irrelevant.  Are you following so far?”

No she is not!!!

What is this, a - a stupid game? A coliseum of divine blood sports? Incentives designed by Markowitz's evil twin? Somebody's insane idea of a seniority promotion system?! Tanya is momentarily lost for words.

Relevant, he thinks this is combat relevant. Most of the enemy here aren't as tough as mages with good barriers (admittedly in part because they're much easier to hit); only a couple were bunker-grade. Granted, a 'legendary adventurer' who can survive 30 rifle shots is nothing next to a tank... Is this place being run by a bunch of old infrantrymen who can't accept the march of progress and want to resurrect the age of so-called chivalry, or possibly Attila the Hun?

"I thought the toughness was due to their magical abilities, or just their alien bodies!" Tanya assumed almost everyone around here had undetectable-to-her magic defenses, but Jon's implying some of them just have the equivalent of steel plating under their skin? ...no, they're only 'metaphysically' tough, which means the gods are protecting them. It comes out the same, though. "And this is combat relevant because - if Terendelev had realized I wasn't as, uh, tough as she assumes, she'd have given me more magical protection, not just from spells like mind control?" Tanya's barrier is categorically adequate to handle thirty non-enchanted spears or arrows, though Jon probably (hopefully) can't tell just by looking.

"...why are the gods doing this?"

“It isn’t the choice of a single God so much as an emergent outcome of the types of magic they throw around.  Common speculations on this planet include a side effect of the healing magic granted by the Gods, ‘fate’ favoring important people, or the war God Gorum winning a favorable term in the Gods’ early negotiations.  But I digress…”. He really needs to stay focused on the relevant points.

“There aren’t any spells or items that quite replace the toughness gained by high stakes, you had almost all the standard protective spells cast on you but most have worn off by now.  You have most of the standard items, this city might be poor enough they couldn’t get a fuller set on short notice.”

“Also, I mentioned ‘power’ grows this way.  This includes spell circle, I think earlier it sounded like you had a misconception max spell circle could grow through just normal training?  This planet hasn’t explored the subject quite scientifically or systematically, but a lot of things have been tried over the millennia to grow or train higher caster spell circle without much success.  Relevantly to you in fighting cultists and demons, non-magical ability can grow as well.  A veteran archer might fire 2 to 5 times as fast as even a skilled archer can fire without real combat experience, a legendary archer might fire 6 to 8 times faster.  A nimble warrior might develop preternatural evasion, evading explosions and area effects in implausible, borderline impossible ways.  Even politicians, in nations with sufficiently cutthroat politics, can develop preternatural abilities such as reading intentions from microexpressions.”

“Most of these abilities are, as you may have realized, kind of useless or at least unimpressive next to weaponry made with science and industry, even more so with your magic behind it.  You’ve adapted well so far, in the mid-term it may make sense to review a long list of known common adventurer abilities just to reduce the odds anything manages to surprise you.”

He is resisting the urge to rattle off a list right now.

“And demons have exotic bodies which often trump or are in place of the more mundane benefits of high stakes struggle, but the overall effect is similar.”