Aww. "I woke up with my bed on fire. I was fine, but it was pretty scary. And then nobody could hug me till they were comfortable with mindreading."

"Is everyone? In your family."

"My twin brother is better about it than my little brother or my parents but yes."

"Huh. What do they mostly object to?"

"Varies. Mostly they feel like they have to police their thoughts, but different aspects of that bother them."

"Huh," he repeats. He wonders what kinds of thought policing have to happen. He doesn't think he thinks very interesting thoughts, or anything he'd want to hide.

"Well, for instance, my twin brother still has a little bit of a hangup about thinking about sex around me, since I'm his sister."

Oh, right, that.

He really has no interest in that and finds most people's thoughts about this baffling.

Snort.

He supposes people who have thoughts about this kind of stuff might find it awkward to have a mind reader around? He had mostly been thinking about stuff like state secrets and whatnot, other capes and PRT members must worry about that.

"I can't read the king of Welce," she mentions. "There's a ritual all five primes can do to protect kings against our powers so the structure of politics isn't casually subject to threats. If I'm not there it's going to complicate the succession."

"Can the other four not protect kings from their powers?"

"It's not something we can do alone. It might work with a subset but I don't know."

"...huh. I'm pretty sure no one has powers that work together like that, here."

"No? Well, primacy is five things but it's sort of also one thing - it's a thing that happens in Welce and nowhere else, for instance."

"People have powers all over the world, here. They affected the places differently though. But that's politics, not powers themselves."

"Makes sense, primes affect politics too."

"I would've expected if just one place had powers it'd conquer all other places," he muses.

"Welce isn't particularly warlike? And primes do vary - I could make a heck of a dent in an army but I'm not sure my great-aunt could have. And that's if I were convinced to participate in a war of aggression."

"It's not warlike now, but—how long's it had magic?"

"I'm not aware of a time at which we definitely didn't have any."

"...huh. I guess that must make things really different." Except it makes about zero sense that they didn't just conquer the entire world in the past? Maybe their powers are just not powerful enough and they conquered as much as they could have...

"Primes vary in power. The current batch are pretty strong but I think it's plausible that there's just never been a conquest-minded monarch and a strong batch of primes willing to support one at the same time."