It doesn't need fast reflexes? Too bad, her APM would be really high. Ahh, Smash Melee, she misses you... This has the vibe of a game that has a lot of interesting and amusing little descriptions on the units.

She tries to ignore how many people are fucking CATERING to her, or at least find it fun instead of IRRITATING.

They can take brief breaks to discuss SCOL. She's bright, she takes illusory notes, but she's also distracted and flighty and not especially motivated to rapidly learn, so progress is far from optimal. Mostly she keeps talking in Notal.

"You know... It's interesting how this one is cooperative, not competitive? So, hm, I think I need to get an ice guy for the bird monster but that uses up most of the blue, are you gonna need blue?" And don't you have more important things to do than play vidya with her?

"Competitive is, the players fight each other?" Tatenika clarifies. "I don't need blue yet; I can use green."

"We have competitive games, but they are ... many people find them less fun to ... one player is good at it, one player isn't good at it, yes? So your first þereminian game, I thinking, first cooperative," she explains. 

Tatenika makes several hundred marks per hour. It turns out that getting people to reach agreements that permit additional trade and more efficient utilization of infrastructure is really economically valuable, and she has the rare skillset to make it happen. So she is paid quite well.

Her time is not the most expensive on the planet; that honor goes to a really alarmingly brilliant research mathematician on Larger Continent. Her time isn't even second or third most expensive on the planet. She is unusual in how she provides value to the world, but not unusual in that she provides value to the world.

And right now, the single most valuable thing she can be doing is absolutely putting their visitor at ease and trying to ensure she'll be willing to share knowledge about magic, rifts, and other worlds later.

"Yeah. Ranked play can get toxic, but a little competition can be fun. When I have more words for it I want to figure out what things cost. Oh!" She produces one of the gold coins. "For the museum, like the other two. You can pay me by weight of gold, but if you want to pay more because it's alien, I won't say no."

"Thank you," Tatenika responds, taking the coin and setting it aside to be picked up. "I will ask what the museum will pay."

"I can say how much some things cost," she offers. "This math machine — computer — cost about 2,0000 marks. A good muffin costs about 4 marks. The amount it pays to live for a year — Universal Basic Income — in this city is about 1,1000 marks. But the cost it takes to live in the city is more than 13,0000 in a year. Outside the city, it is about 4,3000."

She casts around for other examples.

"A robe cost about 530 marks, a meal cost about 30. You can learn it fast. Careful of lightning monster!"

.......And a silver Ecu was worth one??????

"I want to buy raw silver and copper."

Tatenika blinks.

"... yes," she agrees. "How much? For just you, or selling with the rift?"

"I don't know, it's just- One silver ecu got me one mark and that's twenty copper centimes- 32-" Base six, base six... "Which is... You can eat bread and stew for three days."

"Uh."

Tatenika does some quick mental math of her own.

"This is learning me some things of Tirra," she says. "The people there ... mostly they farm? And they do not have machines for digging?"

"Machines are good for digging — they can dig good amounts of down, not many humans need to dig. Machines are good for farming, also, but ... farming is more ... there are lots of bits that are not the same, they need a human to look at them. Also, food must be eaten now, rocks can wait to go the slow boat way. Also, machines can be turning silver rocks into silver better than fires ..."

She does not have the vocabulary to explain modern ore washing.

"Lots of small things, all together is a big difference in price. Years ago, silver costs more. Years ago food costs more. But getting less costs are not the same."

"Tirra mostly does not have machines. More than half of people farm. It is getting better, slowly. There is better magic, there are better roads, there are more boats, there is more metal. A person came through a rift with a hand computer and from it showed people how to make good metal." Behold, a Bessemer converter. "Other people came through rifts sometimes but rifts are always only sometimes so far. A long time ago there was... How much are you telling everyone on the planet? There are things it's not good to tell everyone."

"We are telling everyone ... things about Tirra, and about plans, and about meeting-neighbors process, but not about ... your things that are private things," she explains. "We are telling everyone about monsters, so they can be safe. If there is a thing that is not good to know, we don't have to tell everyone."

Tatenika bites her lip and looks worried.

"There are stories about ... things where it is the knowing of the things that is bad, not the doing with the knowing. Is this a like-that thing? Or is it like knowing how to make a weapon, and if everyone knows there is more fighting?"

She thinks.

"More like the second thing. Maybe a little bit first thing."

Tatenika sets down her controller and looks serious.

"We will not telling everyone, then," she promises. "Is it safe for the Emergency Services people —"

She gestures to the tent.

"— to know? Or should you tell only me?"

"It's probably okay to tell people who are careful and serious. I have to think about how to say it probably."

Tatenika waits patiently.

"People are reading parables of the light gods? The light gods are people who are ... made of magic. 'Praying' is thinking about them in a way that tells them things and maybe also feeds them. They are good people, who want to help. They are not just stories. They are called the light gods, a category of a more general thing that is just called 'gods'."

... oh. She can see where this is going. That explains how a world could have, apparently, occasional visitors with knowledge of advanced metallurgy, and still have a problem with monsters that are vulnerable to guns.

Frankly, it sounds like it might explain what's going on with magic, even, if there's a more advanced alien species that uses it. And Weiss's magic already works here, so they're already contaminated. Fuck.

"Can you ... tell whether praying works? Does it feel different than thinking normally?"

If there's a noticeable difference, they might be able to tell whether the whole planet is affected yet, or whether it's time to make very fast very serious decisions about nukes, depending on how bad the non-light gods are.

"Priestesses, people who are favored by a god, can do god-specific magic. They can definitely tell if they are praying, because the god-specific magic, divine magic, works or doesn't work. Ordinary people can't, unless the god answers them. The next part maybe I say to just you and you choose what to say to other people."

None of Tatenika's panic shows on her face, by dint of long practice. She cuts the hardware switch on her earpiece, and sets it on the table, and then leans in to listen to what Weiss has to say.

She whips up a strong baffle.

"The light gods broke the dark gods into small pieces during a terrible war- War is everyone fighting everyone- A long time ago. The pieces aren't dead and can only be killed very slowly, but they can't do much as long as they stay apart. The pieces are curses and undead and Cryptids. There is a problem sometimes with people thinking, I will take this piece of a God and be strong and tell people what to do! Or I will take these pieces and put them together into a God and the God will reward me for making it! This would be... Really really bad. So we don't talk about it much in case people get ideas."

... okay, that's a lot less bad than Tatenika was expecting, actually. It also smells like a story and not a complete explanation.

She thinks about this for a moment — but actually it's not her job to figure out how to handle these things; it's her job to get information for those people so they can do their jobs.

"We have weapons that can kill cities for thousands of years," she tells Weiss. "Everyone knows how to make them, because they are simple. The people of all the world, the Global Minimum Standards Body, tells people not to make them, and mostly people don't. When people do, the GMSB finds out by watching for weapon-building-stuff and makes them stop."

"Is taking dark-god-pieces like making a weapon? People can see it and stop it? Or is it like praying, and people can't tell if you are thinking, and then poof there is a god?"

...Nukes: Check.

"I think the light gods would be more worried if just praying could bring the dark ones back. I think it's more like making a weapon, yes."

Tatenika nods.

"If you can tell us what it looks like, we can ask the GMSB to tell people not to do it. And they know how to look good and stop people. And, if someone does get a dark-god-piece, we won't do what they say anyway."

"Oh good. Maybe you can find the right people to tell and I'll tell them later. After this heavy talk I'm going to take a break and vanish for a bit."

Tatenika really wants to insist on learning details of the potential unfriendly magical alien empowering process now, but she's worked hard on getting Weiss less skittish, and pushing it probably isn't going to help.

"There is a GMSB Inspector here to look at the meeting you process; you can tell them," she offers. "They wear purple and gold little stripes. But if you want to take a break it is okay."