It's good that that's not a problem. If she had to deal more directly with owning things she'd still just be passing everything off to her tribe, but she'd be a lot more stressed about it.

Seems strange to them but strange is okay. Not everyone can be a Dwarf.

Yup. She'll probably get over it if one of the Quendi tribes picks it up, just, not quickly.

They are very confused about the aversion to owning things thing but the Quendi said not to ask her questions about it.

She doesn't mind talking about it, but she's not sure how much sense it'll make to them. Part of it is that kobolds consider ownership to be antisocial, and her tribe tended to suspect her of it because she spent time around other species that did it, so she had to be careful not to seem to want to. The other part is - kobolds don't do ownership, and they don't think other species should either, so they don't respect that - she does, she knows better, but it's a pretty entrenched cultural thing - so kobolds have a reputation for theft. Which means that whenever she was with another species she had to be very careful not to give the impression of having any interest in their stuff at all, or they'd stop being willing to have her there and maybe get violent - the Dwarves might've noticed that she doesn't touch their things unless she absolutely has to or go anywhere she hasn't been specifically invited unless it's obviously public? That's why, it's habits she picked up from working with the other species in her world. So between the two of those, ownership's always been something she's needed to avoid so thoroughly that nobody even thinks she might be doing it, and that's not the case any more, but it's going to be a hard habit to break when it's always mattered so much.

They are profoundly sympathetic and then set to debating how to accommodate kobolds who can't understand the concept of ownership - can they be deterred from stealing from people? How? Can it be explained to them how harmful stealing is, or do they not care? Are they willing to pay for insurance to recompense people they rob?

Well, the only two kobolds in the world are her and Tirinquo, and that's going to change slowly if at all, so they don't really need a general solution - Tirinquo would probably try it if they got here by themselves somehow, but that's very unlikely, and if it happened anyway she could almost certainly get back anything they took; the whole point would be to show off that they'd managed it, they wouldn't even mind her bringing it back afterward.

They would like to have a general solution, though, in case other kobolds came through. Insurance is probably the way to manage it. They start debating specifics.

Well, hm. If that's going to work at all they'll pretty much have to do it on a whole-tribe level rather than an individual one; most kobolds don't talk and are terrified of nonkobolds, on top of not personally owning anything. If a tribe moves to this world somehow, they'll almost certainly have one or two Speakers who can negotiate for the tribe; they may or may not be willing to, especially if they present it as being about their ownership of the stolen things, but if it's going to happen at all, that'd be how.

Well, they can just keep kobolds out if kobolds are unwilling to stop hurting people and unwilling to discuss restitution, they can't think much else to do at that point beyond keep kobolds out.

Yeah, that's pretty much what ends up happening in her world, too. With varying degrees of success, but it seems like they'd manage it pretty well.

It's disappointing they can't think of a better solution. They are inclined to try. But okay.

Well, if she's around to help, there's a decent chance they can work something out - it might not exactly look like insurance, that seems like too complicated of an idea to explain to someone who doesn't have the concept of ownership in the first place, but... there's a pretty good chance that the kobolds themselves would be willing to provide things for them to steal back, actually? Like she mentioned earlier, it's not actually so much about having the things as it is about proving themselves and showing off to each other.

The idea of the insurance would just be that kobolds create enough value that Dwarves prefer having them as neighbors even after making sure that people who are hurt by the stealing are provided for. But getting the things back would definitely reduce the amount of harm.

...yeah, that mostly comes down to details about the specific tribe, and the most likely scenarios for a whole tribe ending up here aren't very optimistic on that count. Good thing it's not very likely.

Yes! ...someone feels the need to clarify 'kobolds being happy' is a form of value kobolds create that would be worth working towards, it's not like the kobolds have to have things for the Dwarves.

Oh.

In that case they can probably come up with something? She's not sure why the kobolds' Speaker arranging for the tribe to give the Dwarves things for its members to steal back doesn't work for them, but if they can find a way around that...

Oh, they thought she meant that when kobolds stole things the Speaker would arrange to get the things back, which was better than the things being gone forever but still could hurt people depending what went missing when. That solution probably works perfectly.

Ah. That too, but, cool! And in the longish run that probably ends up making the tribe be friendly to them in other ways, too; that's a game the kobolds play within their tribes as well, and they'll definitely notice if the Dwarves are participating in a friendly way rather than an unfriendly one.

Then covering the cost of problems should be easy and well worth it.

Awesome.

They still spend a while debating how the insurance could work. They seem to find it interesting as a question.

Sure. Dwarves. She heads home for dinner after a bit.

The camps are full of activity.

Also full of food, isn't magic great. She gets Tirinquo and dinner and then goes to check in with Maitimo.