The main body of the ship is dominated by a huge hollow cylinder of open space ocasionally broken up by a sturdy pole for moving around with or a rack of mysterious equipment, the entrances to other areas all silvery metal and swirling sigils. It looks like Draak are more at home in zero-gee than Amentans.

FTL travel feels like... Something. Like a tingling at the base of the neck, a faint indescribable else-ness. They travel for a few hours at a time, then stop for an hour in interstellar space to dump waste heat from giant radiators deployed at the back of the ship, then get going again.

Some of the Amentans don't like the sensation, but they put up with them. A few of them love it.

It seems to irritate some of the Draak, too.

And two days later they're above a green-blue marble with three entirely unfamiliar mediumish continents, lots of large islands and island chains that aren't individually enough to count as more continents, and two moons - a big one and a really little one. The night side of the planet is entirely dark. It looks like the planet is a bit bigger than Amenta itself, with a larger slightly radius and something like two fifths of it being landmass.

The landing zone is over there, near a few huge structures carved into the foothills and slopes one side of a mountain range, almost the only sign of habitation visible from space.

Amentans take videos as they land and are SO. EXCITED.

Alien fauna scatters from the descending shuttles, then stops and watches curiously from a significant distance. Draak lurk nearby or circle in the sky. (A Draak swoops down on one of the deer-things as they unload.)

After the initial unloading, the diplomat Ice approaches whoever is leading the two countries' contingents.

We don't have a detailed itinerary, but some options are meeting the Senate, meeting other interested parties, seeing various sights, a Great Song - that's a bit like a concert, bioscience, and I'm told some of our engineers are coming here wanting to talk about building low-impact living spaces or farms for Amentans.

"Who are the other interested parties?"

"All that sounds lovely - also I've got a zoologist who wants to take some animals from here home to put in zoos if that's all right with you."

Various individuals that aren't on the Senate, with varying claims to fame. Noted ecologists, wealthy miners, renowned spiritualists, philosophers, duelists, animal breeders, explorers, geologists, magic experts. An Elder. Darktooth the Wise and the Guardian of the Great Green are... Busy. It's not entirely clear with what. But the Architect of Vaults may be willing to meet Amentans. You will get plenty of warning if you approach land claimed by a specific individual as opposed to the Mootlands, where we are now, which are said to belong to everyone and noone.

The Law is for no individual to deplete the Mootlands of prey - I think there might be a Gamewarden to judge what counts as depletion of prey by now but I am not sure, I will have to look into it. Less than a dozen of any small species noted to be reasonably abundant would certainly be fine. I'm sure someone would find live capture an interesting challenge if you need help with that.

"She'll be delighted."

"Magic experts and the Elder sound especially interesting."

Magic experts are indeed interesting! The deepest magics are often pushing the boundary of what is possible. I'll invite those here particularly and see if the Architect can be pulled away from her project... The Senate is not actually here at the moment. We ran into unprecedented logistical challenges trying to keep fifty Draak fed without immediately killing everything in the immediate area and are still trying to solve those to our satisfaction, so they frequently return to their own territories.

"That does sound like it'd be hard. Maybe a good use case for a subway line, have people load it up with meat along its route and unload it here."

Interesting idea. We certainly have enough tunnelers. I think many are placing their hopes on meat plants to solve this. Rumors say it's definitely possible and progress is steady but the goal is distant at the moment. We are, perhaps, a bit too patient at times.

"It's not urgent on our end, though we'll be happy to adopt the plants once they exist."

The ones working on it consider it an urgent moral crisis and only the announcement of their progress has kept calls for... Intervention... Down. If there is to be trouble, this is not a good subject of it when it can be avoided to both our benefit. But we have been over this. Her tail waves uncertainly. I will see about the visitors.

"Thank you!"

Ice flies off.

Engineers and curious onlookers show up of their own accord, no effort required on her part! Disproportionately many of the engineers are Ruby or Onyx. They're all carrying various devices, mostly for the purpose of showing off. This lot gawks at the shuttles and asks a lot of questions about computers! That trio is assembling a breath-powered electrical generator apparently to prove they can! Those ones want to show off or ramble about their sonic mining tools and railguns and a glass sphere that can project 3-D images and samples of weird alloys and musical instruments and a set of magnetic cubes that are totally not just toys because he'll find a use for them eventually and a prototype telepathy recording device and an astrogation tool and crystal growing setups and this thing that makes you have specific kinds of dreams, and so on!

The remainder have Lots Of Excited Questions about architecture and subways. They seem to be the building project contingent.

The Amentans are delighted to film all the showoffs and promise them a billion people will see it once they take the footage home. Does the dream thing work on Amentans or is it only for people with magic dreams? They brought a surveyor and an architect to figure out how to build here if they're eventually invited to, and this blue used to do city planning before switching over and knows about subways!

The Dream Rod's inventor tried it on a bunch of animals and they woke up really confused, but those were fairly dumb herbivores, so she's not sure. It probably won't do any long term harm, the porcupine-things took the longest to recover and they were fine by noon.

We're interested in building something small for now, cooperatively, something to accommodate a few hundred Amentans at a time, maybe as many as a thousand.

Two greens want to try the dream thing!

"Where do you want it?" asks the surveyor.

They can try it! Which of the Four would they like it set to? ...They need to be asleep to do that of course.

The leader gestures widely. Somewhere in the Mootlands. A few places we would veto but otherwise... Not right next to our own structures, but a mile off is sufficient distance.

This one wants to try Air and that one wants to try Earth!

The surveyor and architect tromp out and find a spot they like. Is this spot okay?

They'll have to agree on one or take turns. Can Amentans fall asleep at will?

Well this patch of shrubs is in the way, but they're not actually very important and there's plenty of similar ones over there, it's not near a game trail or a stream that would need to be diverted, hmm yes this place works. What's their first idea for what the place would look like?

They're willing to both try Earth. And not really, no.

The architect has a concept sketch ready! Little mixed use tower over here, water circulator here, generator here.

...Well, they need to be asleep and within about ten feet of it for it to work.

The Draak want everything to be pretty and evoke natural shapes and not disrupt the landscape much, and have lots of ideas. Most of it being underground with a few small buildings popping up into a park here and there? Greenery all over the tower walls and a big wire-and-strut canopy with more plants, stretching out of the roof, like a tree? A big curvy tiered structure shaped so it almost looks like a hill instead of a building? Adding rock and soil and vegetation over three sides and the roofs of lower, longer buildings so it looks like they carved out places from geologically inexplicable scarps and canyons?

They can go to sleep near it, it'll just have to be about when they were already going to go to sleep and not right now.

Putting stuff underground is possible but complicates ventilation a lot. Smothering the structures in plants works much better, though it might be high maintenance, and the curvy tiers could work too!

The Draak have all sorts of plant-maintenance-lowering ideas. They discuss it a bit and decide that they particularly like this new idea: A few smaller mixed-use buildings, each with a couple levels of sub-basements and the above-ground portions smothered in rock, soil, and native vegetation to make them look like natural landforms wherever there aren't doors or windows. This has the added benefit of natural thermal insulation! They sketch some outlines in the dirt. They could probably run a power line from the nuclear fusion generator that's inside the mountain and just use a transformer and have emergency generators just in case instead of a full power station.