"I guess I feel differently than you about imposing ethics, probably because ours we got ourselves instead of gods telling it to us."

"They poked through everyone's heads every few Years to make sure you weren't defiant or troublemaking or homosexual or distrusting."

"Ours didn't do that."

"That's lovely for you."

" - so you parse moral claims as threats of mindrape? That explains a lot, actually."

"I am not sure how else to parse them. Well, you don't have the means to change peoples' heads around, but I'm not sure what they are if not threats."

" - if I were ever to threaten you it would sound like 'I would like your kingdom to have this law or a substantially equivalent one. I would like you to accommodate a hundred people whose job it is to go around and monitor promulgation of information about this law and the scope and competence of enforcement. If they are not satisfied that the law is known and consistently enforced, I will request your attendance at a conference to discuss how that can be adjusted. If you do not participate in good faith in efforts to correct this, then we'll have to discuss how best to avoid a war."

- nod.

"We're giving you information. So it doesn't take you as long as it took Amenta to reach the same conclusions. 'the King's consort is a prisoner' is just going to cause a mess, everyone is going to be offended, anyone who wants something is going to feel freer to be more demanding about it because people won't be sympathetic. And it makes you look bad, because, like, usually Kings do not have a hard time finding a consort who'll stay in line without any swords. This is a stupid place to plant the flag of 'the gods can't touch me', you should find something else they prohibit to go all in on."

"I'm not just casting around for things that the gods object to."

"Which is why Aitim started by asking you in what respects this was intractable!"

"It's not. I just think your society is - trigger-happy with its taboos."

"I think we're - patchy. There are awful things we can't build the relevant kind of consensus against because there are stakeholders who'd do something worse if you took that away from them or because too many important people benefit from them. But when we've built it it's good. Pollution was much more of a problem before everyone agreed on what qualified. We need to be clean, that's what's driving all the problems you see there, not our decision to specify what counts so people could stop constantly wondering."

"We're not going to start making people shower after funerals."

"That sounds like a great symbolic reassurance that your nation is independent of meddling foreign powers and unlike the prisoner-consort thing isn't horrible or a big deal unless you want to sell us stuff that can't be washed."

"Have something that people will take as 'the Valar won't do anything to us'?"

"Hmm, officiate gay weddings? Have state-funded elaborate kink clubs? What all do they object to?"

"Blasphemy, impropriety, homosexuality, taking multiple partners, disobedience..."

"So legalize triangle and V marriage?"

" - send the concept?"

"I haven't got the thing where you send just some thoughts down yet. V is I'm married to Aitim who is married to his favorite secretary Savani, triangle is I am married to Aitim and also to Savani and Aitim and Savani are married."

"That would upset the Valar."

"Great."

"It also might not be possible, I don't know if anyone has tried it."

" - no one has ever had sex with someone other than their spouse?"