"That's a good point and I shouldn't assume things are more similar to my world than some third possibility, but a thing not existing at all is still more likely if there isn't a general principle explaining why it should exist..." She pauses to consider. "You have a general principle, a law of nature, saying that - everyone gets tougher over time, more so if they do some specific things, and stronger and faster too. And as far as you know there's no ceiling to it. It follows that men of steel can exist, if rarely." Isn't that more absurd than a world where the progression does cut off at a more a reasonable point? Tanya isn't sure how to reason about this. "If the principle is commonly observed - at lower ends of the scale - then I have no logical argument or reason to deny your claim that they likely exist, even if they are not an everyday phenomenon." Universally believed books and theories have gotten so many things wrong throughout history, including claims about reality that people could readily observe. Tanya doesn't know if spider-men and steel-men are like mercantilism and the four humors, but she'll keep an open mind on the matter. As long as they're not rumored to be right around the corner, it's not terribly important.

"Can you tell me which - creatures - in this book are people, and which of those you're confident exist or might live nearby?" The entry after 'dragon' is the Spider-Man drider.

"I can do that... uh, first, I'm going to be kind of pedantic, not recreationally but because I don't know when what you say is a sloppy summary versus a genuine misunderstanding. Not everyone gets tougher over time. It doesn't happen if you just hang around farming mushrooms and nothing much ever happens in your life; those people live and age and die of something eventually without ever being tougher than they were when they were a hundred. Or the equivalent age. People getting stronger and faster, separately from tougher, is mostly about their performance in fights, specifically how hard they hit and how many times they can creditably go for it - if you had a footrace with an un-buffed archmage, you might win, but you'd probably lose against a first-circle priest of Socothbenoth in particular because most of those get a power that makes them faster on their feet and don't have to cast anything to use it."

If there are no further questions prompted by this pedantry she will go through the book while they walk, but to Tanya's presumable dismay, both the spider-man and the mushroom-woman are in the category "I've seen those myself a couple times".

Aaaaaah why do they have spider-men and mushroom-women! How do they even work!!! Where are all the mushroom men and how are they related to the mushrooms Tanya has been eating Honestly the only thing weird about the men of steel by comparison is that ordinary humans can apparently grow into it!

Alright, but they are fellow sapients to be welcomed and traded with or at least passed around in cordial cold silence, not casually killed like the giant bugs, right? ...who is she kidding, most drow probably hunt them for sport or something.

Tanya will do her best to commit to memory which creatures are people, especially any exceptions to the apparent rule of 'anyone who looks vaguely human-like is a person, even if it's only from the waist up or if they have an animal head or something'.

"So what do people do - or need to do - to get tougher over time? You've mentioned it includes adventuring and fighting and taking risks but I don't understand what category is implied by those examples."

Things that look at least vaguely humanlike have a pretty high peopleness rate. "Stakes. Things where if you don't succeed at them, you - or, optionally, someone else, who you'd rather be okay - may die."

"...would it be at all a sensible question if I asked how this works?"

"The question is not insensible but I don't know nor believe it to be known. I don't think gods are doing it manually, it does not particularly astound me to hear that it's not the case on all planets and if Golarion's the odd one out it might have something to do with Rovagug, attempts to cheat the system by magically making people terrified while they do safe combat exercises don't work."

But what if they -

Tanya obviously isn't going to invent a way to take advantage of a law of nature that the residents of a planet never managed and she just heard about!

"It sounds like it might incentivize risk-taking, which might be bad on net? Who or what is Rovagug, is that one of the local gods?" 

"I'm not sure if it's bad on net. It might be - adventurers who are doing it on purpose rather than because they live in interesting times are signing up for the death rate, but powerful people fighting each other does have knock-on effects on people who didn't opt in; then again it's nice that you can save up to, like, cure your completely ordinarily-acquired blindness or whatever, and that requires a third circle cleric. Rovagug is a god, yeah, of destruction, imprisoned by the other gods within the planet. Uh, a lot deeper than we are at present and possibly not in a spatial sense at all, not sure."

God-war creation myths, another human(oid) universal! Was Golarion created from Rovagug's cut-off big toe or less mentionable parts? (Tanya isn't going to ask it, obviously.)

"When this mysterious process enables the acquisition of higher-circle spells, what exactly is it about the body or mind that changes?"

"...if you cut me open you're not going to find a Sorcery Organ in there. Arguably casters who prepare spells are growing the scaffold itself but that explanation doesn't generalize to sorcery, so I guess the answer is 'we don't have a word for the thing that is growing there which generalizes well'."

"We don't know where magic comes from either, or how to measure or predict someone's mana capacity, so I didn't expect any particular answer, it was just - interesting. In what it might imply about the world, but I don't know what that is yet." People taking risks to grow stronger feels like it might be an important piece of the puzzle of how this world works, but Tanya definitely doesn't have anything close to a full picture yet.

Tanya is very eager to see what some surfacers from a different culture think about the world.

They can make pretty steady progress even when they get out past the area with the farms. There are, not more than twenty minutes after they saw their last farm, some minor non-person monsters Belmarniss could have handled herself - she has a chance to prove that when she's the one awake on watch, which she agrees is a necessary precaution even though it cuts down their hours of travel time per day down a lot. (She was not able to source a scroll of keep watch and is not optimistic about getting it qua sorcerer before the end of their trip through the caves.)

The first serious obstacle they run into is the remnants of a camp - "and it's not a drow camp, look how close together everything is. Kobolds probably, could be runaway halflings."

Tanya is very glad Belmarniss can handle herself! But she should keep waking Tanya if anything happens, just in case. Tanya's a professional soldier, she doesn't need her sleep to be completely uninterrupted.

...

She is completely unable to tell anything by the signs of an abandoned camp made by an alien culture with alien tools in alien terrain! She can barely do it on Earth, she's not infantry and doesn't have any specialized training. Who was here? How many, how long ago? Did they leave traces of any particular weapons or other technology? Was it a long-term camp, was it positioned to do something beyond provide shelter for one night, is there anything odd or unexplained about it? 

"What does this means for us, besides that we should be on alert?"

Belmarniss isn't an expert on any of that either. "Well, that we should be on alert for kobolds in particular. Might or might not be able to talk past them. In the event they fancy themselves toll-takers we should have in mind how much we're willing to bribe them before we turn it into a fight."

"I don't have any money, so you'll be the judge of that. Could they have any legitimate claim to tolls, like maintaining or securing the road, or that it leads through their settlement and travellers pose some risk from them? I expect you'll laugh again but I want to make sure."

"If we can't reach an understanding - and they don't attack us, only demand a toll we're not willing to pay - I would rather not attack people with lethal force just to get through. It would be justified, you can't let bandits just block roads, but a last resort if they're only extorting other travelers and not robbing them." Tanya can't exactly arrest people here, there's no-one to bring them to anyway, and while fighting brigands is a public service she has a low opinion of what passes for the local public, who might thank her and then take up the freed-up robbing spot, apparently?

"So we should consider our options in advance. A route around them would be best, but presumably they'll set up at a chokepoint where that's not an option. A show of force to scare them to stand aside without actually killing them, maybe by wounding one or two or by temporarily blinding them - I'm not sure what would make the best psychological impression? If we're very sure they have no magic that would pass my shield, and there's room, I could just fly through and knock them aside - and put you in the bag for a minute - but I don't see how we'd be certain of that in advance. If you're going to negotiate with them we'd be in arrow range anyway, even if the cavern allows otherwise. I can stand in front of you so my shield blocks any arrows but that's not a perfect defense if they have a wide enough firing line, or if they succeed in surrounding or ambushing us."

"It's not especially funny but no, it'd really surprise me if they were doing useful maintenance, and if it leads through their settlement it's because they parked there on purpose. We cannot be very sure that they do not have a low-circle sorcerer or cleric with an enchantment or something that could faze you. I'm bad at enchantments even the non-sketchy gentle ones that make for a good nonlethal show like Sleep and Hold Person, though I do have those written down, they'll just take up stupid amounts of scaffold space. I can take an arrow if I've gotta, they're probably not going to have any really nice equipment. I find it pretty unlikely that they will actually just stand there without attacking us and continuously demanding money for, like, ten minutes? So we can burn ten minutes on talking to them till they shoot first, that works for me if that's what you're getting at."

"I don't want to do something that predictably leads to them attacking us if there's a better option! If for some reason we're absolutely sure they'll attack us we should attack first, it's not about having a - an excuse to present in court that they shot first." There being no courts the natural law obtains, which is that people may not impinge on others' freedom of movement, but that doesn't make it alright to preemptively kill over it.

"If you can determine quickly they won't let us through for a price we're willing to pay, or that we don't trust them to let us through after taking our money, then if we have no better option we should - back off if the terrain permits, if they'll let us do that without shooting, and then announce we're pushing through and fire warning shots and try to scare them, escalating if that doesn't work. Or fly over them quickly if there's enough vertical room, which is unlikely. I've made my peace with assaulting and potentially killing any people who illegitimately try to stop us on our way, but that doesn't mean I won't try to avoid it if there's a reasonably safe way to do so. ...and if they do start shooting but pose no danger to us, we could still try to scare them into giving way and not just escalate directly to killing all of them."

"We should also consider how to make sure the road is clear of further ambushes and traps, if they represent that we may go ahead. If they allow parley and don't just attack out of ambush that's a good sign, but it could also mean they are stalling for time to move more troops into the right position because we were advancing on their trap too quickly, or something like that."

"...I don't think they are very likely to understand the concept of a warning shot separately from an attempt on their lives that missed. Remember that their baseline expectation for casters is the limited number of spells per day thing, you don't usually burn those if you're not going to commit unless it's a cantrip and if it's a cantrip it's not very intimidating. Kobolds are not likely to have parties larger than ten, maybe as many as twenty."

"The warning shots can hit them, the only problem is calibrating them not to maim or kill, I haven't practiced that. I could start low and ramp up to a mild burn but only if we have time to do it safely, which again requires range. Or I could blind them, either targeted or wide-angle, assuming sunlight intensity will force them to close their eyes but won't permanently blind them, that's what it would normally do to humans but I don't know if dark-adjusted people are the same. And then slowly increase the heat output until they surrender or retreat, I guess."

"...I could also try to hit their weapons, or any other objects they have that would serve, maybe start a fire in their camp if they have something burnable although smoke underground would be dangerous to us too. But if one of them twitches at the wrong moment it would be potentially lethal."

"As for understanding what we mean and want and that those are warning shots, couldn't you just tell them? Including ahead of time if applicable?"

"I don't think sunshine would permanently blind me, so probably not a kobold either. If they have any casters at all they've probably got Chimney, the cantrip for getting smoke to fuck off. They won't necessarily believe things just because I tell them but - shining light at them brighter and hotter till they surrender seems like a good baseline approach and I can supplement that with verbal explanations. I assume you do not want to take their stuff once they surrender."

"...if they attack us first, or if they very clearly looted it from someone else, then taking things seems fine. We could also take or break some or all of their weapons if this is likelier to stop them from attacking other people than to make their neighbors kill them in the night, I don't know what their society is like" but she has formed some very low expectations. But hopefully other underground people are not as bad as Noctimar's drow, and maybe Belmarniss would know this and trust that information?

"They probably looted anything they have that'd be worth us carrying it. I have only the vaguest guesses about what kind of relationship they'll have with their neighbors."

...Tanya can rely on the civilian to express opinions on what violence is locally understood as appropriate or acceptable, but that doesn't mean she should let her dictate the terms of engagement. After all, the whole point of this journey is going somewhere with a more functional society. Tanya needs to reason this out for herself.

Germanian rules of engagement...  aren't relevant here, she's not acting as a military officer. She's a private individual about her private business, not the state's emissary, and she can recall the Germanian law for civilians with a bit of effort. A (legally) armed civilian who is unlawfully accosted or has an illegal toll extorted by threat of force on public land is allowed to shoot first in self-defense, even self-defense of property. The response ought to be proportionate, but if the robber is armed and employing his weapon as a threat it is legitimate to shoot first. That does not mean it is best to use lethal force right away; preserving the robber's life is commendable if it does not come at your own expense. As for taking their property in recompense, that is definitely illegal; the courts will determine the appropriate compensation, and furthermore if you killed them then that property may go to their next of kin.

In the absence of any courts in the land, this doctrine needs to be adjusted. Since there is no legal recourse taking the robber's own property is appropriate, both as a punishment suited to the crime and as a deterrent threat. However, if they only threatened you and you wounded them in self-defense then it could be argued there is less damage to recompense, Tanya doesn't know the legal precedents here. Taking or destroying their weapons in particular might serve the public good, although there is no local concept of firearms licensing or forbidding convicted criminals from carrying arms again.

What balance of actions would serve the public good? Travelers should challenge and drive off bandits. Killing them might even be a public service, but more will take their place, so it might be better to leave weak and wounded bandits around... In general, though, if private persons are compelled to defend themselves they should do it with more force than the police might employ, because they need to appear a bigger threat to achieve the same effect on would-be robbers.

"Then I think - in summary - we should negotiate passage, and if that fails threaten them, fire warning shots and escalate as the situation permits. If they attack us we should use lethal force, and if they explicitly threaten us and it's too dangerous to leave them the opportunity to attack us we should shoot first. After a fight we should take or destroy their weapons, both as punishment and hopefully as a service to other travelers. We should not take their other property if we don't actually know it was looted, unless they succeed in harming us in which case we may take them as recompense."

"I can work with that. When you say 'negotiate passage' do you meant that to cover giving them stuff or not."

"Yes, if you think it's a fee worth paying to avoid bloodshed. I leave that up to you, it's your money and I don't know how much it's really worth and nobody has the right to demand it of you."