She nods.

"Amentan summoners born on the colony planet would become daeva when they die, instead of the standard afterlife. Most people consider this a strict improvement." 

"Most?" asks Soyok's wife.

"In Revelation it can be a problem if you die young and want to go and take up your old life again, because there are daeva escort laws. Once there's a shuttle Limbo will straightforwardly have transit to the rest of the multiverse; that can't be done with daeva, because they're dangerous. There are complaints about the daeva justice system. Don't get me wrong, it's overwhelmingly preferred now that how it works is widely known, just not universally."

"I'll want more details once we have a summoning rollout," says Soyok.

Nod. "I have a whole team of people who will be delighted to get you whatever details you need or want once you're in a place where that makes sense for you."

"Do most places net positive in personnel?" Soyok wonders.

"Eventually, yes, but it can be a long 'eventually'. Large pre-industrial illiterate populations mostly aren't yet, though some are trending in that direction. Modern societies with people who'll want jobs even once they don't need them to keep their families from starving and with expectations for professional conduct that roughly match ours are sometimes an asset from the start. In my nation it's common to fork when we're short personnel but most places don't allow that and I think we're the only ones to outright encourage it."

"It seems like it'd complicate a personal life," says granddaughter-in-law.

Nod. "Elves don't have children in times of strife, but it can still put a strain on marriages. There are ten of my father and only one of my mother, I don't think either of them are very happy about it."

"Then why did he do it?"

"They were estranged and he needed to invent something important quickly."

"You can't, uh, merge?"

"There are people working on it but not at present. We don't have nearly as much control over the chips that do our brain backups as we'd like, though research is careful because there's some potential for coercive use if we got good at the wrong things."

"Good at the wrong things?" asks Soyok's daughter.

"Inserting memories, altering them... our chips have a natural capacity that allows us to make binding commitments about our future behavior and if you could insert those you could trivially bind people to any course of action you wanted..."

"Oh."

"That's another one we don't explain because it's hard to verify and accordingly damaging to trust. At home it's really useful, and for distribution of powerful dangerous magic, but not so much anywhere else."

"It does sound convenient, you could cut out a lot of enforcement details," says Soyok's wife.

"Elves don't tolerate imprisonment well, and until we met other peoples our law enforcement consisted of 'oath not to do that again'. Cheap and perfectly effective! - which it would cease to be if we got good with editing the chips, another reason to have research on that topic very carefully contained. It can be very badly exploited, though, I wouldn't impose it on species that don't have it."

Blues nod.

"If any of you would like to drop by Ambaróna sometime - we don't have a regular public shuttle because the daeva aren't supposed to go wandering but the teleport building in Vanda Nossëo does private runs for anyone I tell them to expect - it's a very dense daeva-constructed city of the kind you might now be in the process of planning and I would be delighted to arrange someone to show you around and introduce you to people."

"That sounds nice," says Soyok's wife.

"Lovely. I will have someone get in touch to pick a time. It has been a real pleasure meeting you all."

"Thank you for coming," Soyok says.