"Perhaps I should put together a social on the topic of farming some time."

"Oh," the engineer pipes up to Valanda, "Talkin' about food, thanks for findin' those birds for us, gov. They're not chickens but close enough. Missed my eggs."

"Any time!" says Valanda.

"Oh, you know, that reminds me," says Nimo, "I keep hearing good things about your cooking but it's all made of animal products, is there anything besides tea that isn't?"

"Most of our favorite dishes feature animals rather heavily, or at least incidentally, but we do have solely plant-based foods. I know someone who's tried cooking for caralendri. Here, these snacks - the ones on green plates have no animal products in them."

There are some scones, waffles, jam spread, and steamed vegetables.

They don't outclass everything she's had before but they're good.

Sonir notices how much Nimo likes the waffles and jam and tries some. "Oh, very rich, makes you want to go for a run."

Valanda decides to try whatever wasn't specifically made for the caralendri.

That stuff is good, too.

"I'd like to shift the topic, if nobody minds - towards government and technology. What is technology, anyway? Computers and automatons are technology, I think most of us would say. Is a sturdy building technology? Is writing technology? Are clans? Elections?"

"We didn't always have elections but we've always had clans," says Sonir. "If clans are technology then every social animal has technology."

"Well, maybe they do," says Nimo, "lots of animals are smart."

"They don't think about what it's for, though, they just - act on instinct."

"Buildings aren't technology, though, they're magic," says Valanda. "...I guess they're technology the way you make them here."

"Technology is about makin' the world behave," comments the engineer. "Seeing someone sneaking up on you ain't tech, really, but using knowledge magic for communication? Or death magic for treating diseases? That's new ways of using the resources nature has availed you of, and you can teach it. I think it counts."

Nurse Abernathy chimes in, "We don't have magic so technology for us is tools. Things we make. From crude stone knives, to agriculture, to roman architecture, writing, medicines, microbiological theory, surgery methods, steam and rails."

"We don't traditionally think of magic as a technology here, since you can't teach it to just anyone. But most of those things have changed life here, yeah."

"Is much known about Har's early history and first societies? We have to guess based on archaeological evidence, but it seems likely that farming is what led to organized societies with codes of law and so on."

"Oh, yeah, you can pastwatch that," says Nimo.

Sonir waits to be sure she's done before he says anything. "Caralendri were one of the first species to have societies here. Humans, too. We started with mutual protection pacts and extended those to nonaggression pacts with agerah families. There's a documentary I helped make called The First Mages and of course I recommend my own work."

The engineer comments, "I know someone who had a pet theory that humans got organized in order to make more booze."

The priest shakes his head and grimaces disapprovingly.

"Hey, hey. Who's that guy, Ben Franklin? The American. He said 'beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy', so you should like the stuff."

"I'm not sure there's ever been a Papal ruling on the worth of beer."

"I think I know more about your god than any of the caralendri here and I'm confused..."

Nathaniel looks at Katherine. Katherine nods slightly and holds two fingers a short distance apart.

Nathaniel says, "God and religious authority is a bit too large a topic for right now. And the social is supposed to be about governance. But I suppose I can explain the Pope - a holy man elected out of all Bishops - Bishops are in charge of a group of priests - who serves as the head of the Catholic world. And - to oversimplify - there are many sects of Catholicism with different particular beliefs, and my own faith does not recognize the Pope as having authority over all Catholics, for the pope is a Christian, but we do generally respect Papal rulings."

Valanda still seems confused but not totally lost.

Nimo and Sonir, on the other hand, are still totally lost.

"Do you maybe have a book about that that I can read later?" Nimo asks.

"I think have a book on the history of Christianity in my office. I would be happy to let you borrow it later, and I'd like to discuss it too."

"We have a lot of history," Katherine says, "I'm sure the particulars of the Warring States period would quite confuse all of us."

"They probably would," Sonir agrees. "So if that's where civilization comes from in your world, do you all trust each other more than we do? Since you'd have spent the last thirty or forty thousand years watching out for each other while you drink."

"That's a plausible interpretation, anyway. Group defense against predators, holding watches and such, is also a popular theory."

"I think that's where most technology starts, too," says Sonir. "It's for protection first of all. That's probably why science progressed so much faster in pre-imperial times."

"Wait, it what?" says Valanda.

"Well, it's not really a perfect comparison, but if you pastwatch caralendri before and after the warring states period you can see the most dramatic genetic engineering project known in all our history and there's been nothing like it since."

Lady Katherine is fascinated. "Oh, we'd just barely discovered DNA and naive crop selection, what changed so dramatically?"

"Lifespan for people who didn't die in war increased by more than forty eight years. Height increased by three and a half inches over the period but that probably wasn't totally genetic, or was complicatedly genetic, we lost half of the increase in the first generation born in the empire. Two of our hair colors and one of our eye colors were never seen before then. It's hard to directly measure magical aptitude but the fraction of the population that can only do simple spells designed by other people is down - but that could be better education, we don't know, it dropped for other species too but not as much. And men take longer to change now if they go off alone. And we couldn't come close to replicating any of that if we had to. We're still trying to figure out which changed genes connect to which changed phenotypes."

"Resisting senescence is a very compelling field of research. I believe the Order of Mercy is working on something for humans?"

Nurse Abernathy looks a bit uncomfortable. "I don't know the details of that. I am Working on vaccines."

"Vaccines are going to change things for rural areas, I think," says Sonir. "There will be less reason to concentrate around doctors."

"Yes they're a game changer. We didn't actually have government funded doctors until very recently- without death mages or antibiotics there is little you can do to help a cholera or whooping cough or tuberculosis or polio victim."

"Are you going to do distribution yourselves when the vaccines are ready?"

"We were hoping to get some sort of grant to distribute them after our clinical trial of the distemper vaccine produces results. We need to mix the vaccine at considerable scales to make the cost per dose low enough to be worth it."