What about animals?

Animals don't wear out and die either. Maybe insects do, I wouldn't necessarily have noticed. In the Outer Lands animals die but that's because the Outer Lands are generally horrible. We don't wear out and die of age even there.

...how do you not have way too many animals, then?

We hunt some, and they don't have children if there wouldn't be enough food.

What nice restrained animals you have. Can't walk six blocks in my town without tripping over a stray cat that hasn't eaten in a week. I mean metaphorically, this isn't just because I am really bad at walking.

This is the Blessed Realm. If there were something that caused suffering or bothered people the Valar'd fix it. I - I so to very badly want to go to your world and also am worried that I'd realize I failed here to develop some necessary coping skills. Sitting on the ground feeding cats for a few centuries would be a very bad failure mode.

And our cats are not restrained, so eventually there would just be more cats. No, you should start a musical career and fund some suitably scalable project with the proceeds. Pay people to catch the cats and servantmakers to tell the cats to stop having kittens.

Do cats have to listen to servantmakers? Tyelcormo can talk to them but they don't actually have to obey him. And funding investigation into why you people die seems more important.

Yeah, I prefer humans to cats too. And I can't just order around random cats or I probably would, I'd have to hold one and pet it and probably get nastily scratched up in the process for twenty minutes, half an hour maybe, and then it would do what I said. Tyelcormo is your - brother?

He is! The same parents that made me, made him, and just like I assume in your world animals breed true on various traits, family members tend to be rather similar to each other.

I haven't paid a lot of attention to animal breeding. One of my co-prentices is mad about pets and I picked up what I know about animals from her mostly. And yes, one can breed animals for various characteristics, but it's deeply weird to think about that being foundational to how people interact with each other.

Oh, I think people'd interact the same with adopted children. In addition to shared blood you have shared upbringing, there's a cultural expectation that you'll be supportive of and there for each other. If I did something really wrong I might lose my friends but I wouldn't lose my family, generally. It works pretty well when it works.

...the advantage of there being a cap on social penalty for "doing something really wrong" is not obvious to me.

...do you think people should just - wander in exile hated by all and with no avenue to become productive members of society again? That doesn't seem very useful.

I mean, it depends on what they did, I'm not going to go harangue somebody visiting their spouse in jail for still loving them or whatever, but Designated People Who Are Going To Forgive You Because They Knew You As A Child seems - weird.

Not - forgive you, necessarily, just keep loving you. I can understand the principle that all social relationships should be strictly voluntary or something but I am very very glad to have a family.

Sounds like it suits you.

Tyelcormo meets them near the gates of Tirion. "Hullo," he says to Kib, and then, right, sorry, you won't have our language.

Indeed I have not. It sounds like the thing you do is not exactly like the thing servantmakers do, anyway.

I have never heard of servantmaking. The thing I can do is talk to animals.

Given a little while to imprint an animal on me I can make it so it'll do what I tell it to. It seems like people here can't do one of the easiest-to-try kinds of servantmaking but your thing sounded a little similar.

I could talk an animal into doing most anything but I'm not making it, just befriending it and persuading it. Though maybe it's the same thing and different approaches?

It doesn't sound like it, but I guess if you have an animal around you don't mind me making into a pet that won't savage me while I'm holding it you could see? I can also check if any animals you have around already count as pets.

Nothing should savage you while you hold it, unless you want to go dinosaur-taming - do you want to go dinosaur taming? If you could give dinosaurs orders that'd be amazing - and he holds out his arm and a bird lands on it.