"Oh dear. Trying to get people to hurt each other isn't a crime here. Er, it is if you lie, but if you say you want to hurt a person and I hear you and then I hurt them, that is my crime not your crime. I'm worried now. In the past, I think that we can go to Nivis and, we don't hurt people, don't break machines, that means we don't do crime. But now I don't know. Maybe you have more crimes.

I guess we have many crimes which you can do them just by talking: scams, violating Freedom to be Happy, say secrets, lie and say that you are police, in the past there was male-human disiniuria... Trying to get people to hurt each other, this makes sense, this is a crime.

I'm embarrassed. I think about aliens lots, very strange differences, but I forget that you are aliens, I make mistake, I make danger of causing crime. We must talk more."

"The country Kemnl has male-human disiniuria. It has elph disiniuria too!"

"Lei has elph disiniuria, but we learn and find bad elves before they do disiniuria. Last elph disiniuria happen many decades ago."

And of course the FD has elph disiniuria, but if he said that he would be getting political. He glares at Merta.

"We don't have rules about disinuria... Using some kinds of weapons is treated more harshly than using your fists. I think perhaps I don't understand something. What are some examples of disinuria?"

"Examples of disiniuria: A catfolk burns a werewolf. A werewolf makes a hole in the ground with a thin door on top, opens the door to make a catfolk fall down the hole. In Kemnl, a male human lies, says he is a diplomat, does diplomat things to hurt someone... or is diplomat, true, and then lies and hurts someone. A werewolf hits a frogold with hand. An elph in Kemnl lies about shrine memories to hurt someone. An elph in Lei - I don't know. A catfolk makes a female human pregnant with catfolk, makes her not kill the child. A vampire and a boark go into a mine, the vampire knows that the mine is dangerous, the vampire says, I'm tired, I go home, the mine is safe, you stay... and the mine falls down and hurts the boark.

Examples of not disiniuria: A werewolf does the hole and hurts a werewolf. A werewolf hits a werewolf. A werewolf hits a child werewolf. In Sota, an elph lies about a shine memory to hurt someone. A catfolk tries to burn a werewolf but the werewolf is better at fighting. Examples are crimes, just not disiniuria."

"It seems like a lot of things are disinuria."

"Hmm. Disiniuria is if you use a difference between species to hurt someone. There are many differences between species, so many kinds of disiniuria, but only one rule."

"Why is disinuria a crime? Is it scary? Is it unfair?"

"Disiniuria means that if a catfolk is angry and hits with hand and if a catfolk is angry and burns, this is two different things. The burn is more scary. If one crime, hit or burn, I must be careful so catfolk are never angry. If disiniuria is a crime, hit and burn are two crimes, I know that catfolk know that hit and burn are two crimes. I know that if catfolk are angry, they maybe hit but they never burn.

Catfolk are scary... Werewolves are scary. Many species are scary and many species aren't scary... but if I am a mouseling, all species are big, all species are scary. Some people want to think about, if I am a species and you are a species, are you scary, for every two species. They want to think about every two species.

Some people say, if some species can do disiniuria easy and some can't, this is unfair. In Kemnl, a male human is maybe very angry, can't do disiniuria. But a catfolk, a little bit angry, can do disiniuria. Different size angry, this is unfair, they say. But... If a person does disiniuria, they must die with disiniuria. Some people say, every species must can do disiniuria, for killing like that. Some people say no, a friend of a different species maybe kills like that. People think many things."

"...I will try to understand. I think now might be a good time for a quick break."

Riley Cameron has been charged with negotiating the construction of stone structures and infrastructure for a non-glacierized town. She'll talk with whatever representatives are present to arrange this. On offer is metal, machinery (especially hydroponics, but a polyester mill or other things are possible), possibly PDAs or training and education. 

All those things sound good, although they're more interested in metal for nutrition than as a material. They're not sure how to come to a fair deal, since it's going to be so beneficial for both parties.

Where do they want the town to be located? Near Orocide? Close to the chartreuse or close to the glaciers? Near the border between Allheart and the Freedom Democracy, or the border of FD and Lei, or close to only one of the three factions?

The duke of engineering of Nitatlel wants to know if they already have a detailed plan, and if so, if it requires precise measurements, and if it requires particular types of rock... werewolves can 'stir' rock to make it stronger even if it starts out bad, like shale say.

Also, how much protection will they need from earthquakes? They're used to protecting shrines, which are made of stone and can't have any damage you can see or feel - but are the machines even more sensitive than that? The usual shock absorbers require periodic re-inflation but they have machines to pump air, right?

The Frozen City is near the border between FD and Lei, just saying...

Here's an idea for a fair deal: how about Exodus and Ansaf both get a new town, or equivalent population growth? So, Exodus could trade something with metal or hydroponics or just some electric lights?

Huh. What metals are most dietarily useful? They haven't identified a lot of drydark mining sites yet; Cobalt, copper, and iron. Most of the other metals they have in lower quantities and lack an assured ongoing source and so are less eager to part with.

They do have a detailed plan. A computer program and a team of engineers helped put it together based on the desire to build out more industry and also a small university. There's aboveground and belowground portions, roads, warehouses, residences, water pumping and sewage plants, a small airport, and all sorts of additional buildings. It adds up to kind of a lot.

There's lots of small holes and tunnels plotted out for the walls, and there are particular building codes for earthquake safety and fire safety and so on, and yeah, it requires precision down to about 0.3cm, especially they also plan to fit out everything that gets built with machinery- Plumbing, electrical wiring, WiFi, etc. It's plausible that LIDAR units and other surveying tools will be helpful on that front, and they'd like to be involved in the excavation process as observers at least, and are happy to let the builders also observe the electrical and plumbing outfitting in turn, if they like.

They also have information about earthquake precautions. Shrine levels of earthquake precaution seem perfectly adequate. Particularly sensitive machines (like ones for making computers) or ones that cause a lot of vibration themselves (power production and bulk processing) will be built into special housings for that purpose.

Exodus would be happy to trade some of any of those things! Exact amounts can be demurred on for now, they're not really sure what a fair level is yet either. Maybe the equivalent of about half of what it would cost in machinery and effort to do it themselves? Oh, and they can comfortably feed up to about 600 workers for the duration of the project, from hydroponics and SCOP. Maybe less if werewolves eat more than an average human.

The duke of engineering doesn't think that musical descriptions of metals will be useful, but did bring samples. If Riley has an x-ray spectrometer handy, the most critical samples are manganese, selenium, and cobalt. Zinc and molybdenum are also important but there's enough of those. And there are probably other necessary substances that people need and can't make within their bodies, because people still suffer from forms of illthrift that lieflings can't diagnose.

Wow those plans are really complicated. Werewolves can make parts accurate to 0.3cm if they have a way to measure it, or even much more precisely for very small features, but making a whole house that precisely will require measuring tools. They have an intuitive sense of where their enervated rock is, but it's similar to their sense of touch - more accurate for smaller objects.

Normally a dark building is raised from the ground by a single werewolf in a single session, but maybe they should consider making smaller parts first and then assembling them. That's similar to how Exodus makes things without magic, right?

Doing it in a single pass is obviously much faster if it's possible, but the worry here is that each werewolf will spend a whole shift enervating a house just to make a few small adjustments, and then the next wolf will have to start over. But how fast can they measure a building and communicate the needed changes with their 'LIDAR'?

Werewolves who are lying still using their magic don't eat that much, but if they're doing heavy labor they'll eat more than humans. Werewolves like meat but don't require it to be healthy, so they'll be excited about the SCOP.

How are they looking for mining sites? Would a vampire help?

(Dr. Montero has an x-ray spectrometer handy! And might have some ideas on identifying illthrift causes later!)

They have some of this one, cobalt. And yes- Most things they build are built in parts and assembled later- Foundations tend to be dug and framed out, then steel rods prepared, then a cement and rocks mixture is poured for everything that would normally be werewolf work... She brings out the LIDAR system from one of their crates (they brought a lot of gear to show off, she says wryly) and takes about a minute to set it up in a corner. It shines red light in odd patterns in all directions. Then she reports exactly how long and wide the room is and the exact dimensions of the door and skylight- They could call out adjustments about that quickly. The LIDAR unit even has a mode that will compare to what the plans say and call out discrepancies. And she agrees that SCOP is great- There's a few different strains, her favorite is ""turkey"", you can get it almost chewy enough to feel real, she ate real turkey once.

That gets her sympathetic looks from Mirana and the catfolk assistant.

Earth has so much soil just lying around!

How about they use a hybrid approach: take stone out of the ground in pieces and roughly shape the pieces in one shift, then an Exodus team puts in the metal, then the werewolves enervate a chunk of building (each werewolf with their own self-supporting vertical slice) and finish it with guidance from the LIDAR. That means long shifts for the werewolves, but the second shift won't have any physical labor, and both shifts will be mentally taxing only for the last few hours.

If this doesn't work, they can do it in smaller steps and only assemble the pieces at the end, but the duke of engineering wants to make sure Exodus sees the benefit of using werewolves!

They won't just be using werewolves, though... They'll probably want a few catfolk, at least at the beginning? And definitely a vampire and a mouseling and some harpies and gnomunks and boarks.

By the way, how fast do Earth humans reproduce? How much population growth was Exodus originally aiming for, and will all these new towns change their plans?

It's possible the steel reinforcements aren't necessary if werewolf-reinforced stone is sufficiently strong, which would speed things up- They should get a sample back to Nivis to test it on a hydraulic press, maybe, something they DIDN'T actually bring along. She'll write to the engineers back home and see what they think.

...Actually, can werewolves enervate in narrow shapes? Could they, for example, separate a large slab from its surroundings without having to enervate the whole thing? In that case, one of the Transport Vehicles' cranes could speed up that part of the work a lot if they make eyelets to run cables through at the top of the slabs for hauling around.

The topic of population growth is maybe slightly sensitive and she doesn't want to speculate too much; On Earth the number of children one has depend on a lot of factors but they hover fairly close to replacement level in most places. Exodus people were selected in part for a desire to have more children than average, but the crash, uh, kind of interferes with that. Anyway, the new towns are both to give people currently living in Nivis more space, to build out industry and machines, and in case some Ansaf natives might want to become citizens of Exodus.