"...cultural thing?"

"Not really. You don't have the - psychological architecture you'd need, to understand my motivations or my reservations, it just adds up in a way you like."

"I don't think you're cool because you decided to sign up for membership, I think you're cool because you don't do the no-exit-clause contracts and try to get everybody a kid and are scared for your citizens that we might arrest them and stuff. Those are good things. It doesn't matter if your reason is - thinking God will reward you or wanting to impress someone or wanting to spite someone or whatever else. Your people have the kids and now a planet no matter what the ...psychological architecture that made you do that."

"All right."

"And I think you'll trust us eventually once everything goes smoothly and you have more to model us off of."

"I hope so."

"I'll ask about getting someone important here to be reassuring faster than that."

"It's probably not very important in the grand scheme of things."

"That's...hmmm... why it'd be a credible signal?"

Nod.

She tells him the next day that a Prince Nelyafinwë could make a dinner at the end of the week.

He will schedule a dinner for the end of the week, then.

And she will glare at the rest of Yvalta. Is he taking immigrants who make it to his territory successfully?

Yep. He has emergency transfer contracts drawn up with token obligations attached for anyone who gets to a place he can have them signed.

He really is pretty cool.

He arrives on time for dinner. 

Soyok is there, and his wife, and their daughter, and her husband, and their sons, and the one son's wife. (Soyok's other child married out.)

"Thank you so much for organizing this," he says once all of these people have been introduced. "I am the director of immigration and foreign affairs for my nation of Ambaróna, and my alt is the director of Vanda Nossëo; I know them to be delighted you are moving forward with membership."

Soyok's daughter grinds her teeth.

"Thank you," murmurs Soyok.

"We almost voted against, back when it came up for us. People felt like too many things were changing too quickly."

"Aren't you the flagship member?" asks one of the grandsons.

"There's an as-yet-unexplained phenomenon whereby different universes sometimes contain the same worlds - at different stages in their history, or sometimes with minor variants. We haven't found any other Amentas yet, but it would not be surprising if they existed, and if they did they might well have all of you living there. A world much like mine, with my family ruling it, was the flagship member, but my native world made contact with them later."

"If they were just like you..."

"Well, you know, founding Vanda Nossëo is more appealing than joining it. - and more importantly we'd just come out of a particularly awful war, some people wanted a few centuries of peace and quiet before we took on lots of new obligations."

"If you find other Amentas what are you going to do with them?" wonders Soyok's daughter, cutting her lamb into tiny bites.