"Catching up to us in numbers of individuals or in carrying capacity burden?"

It wasn't clear. I can ask for clarification. I could see some potential resentment in the latter depending on how 'carrying capacity burden' is decided on, if it's decided that one Draak counts for ten thousand Amentans or something of similar scale.

"You're bigger and live less densely but not by that large a factor."

We estimated two seasons ago that our planet has a carrying capacity of approximately two to five million Draak under current living conditions where territory sizes are very large, and that we could manage fifteen million without too much hardship, and thirty to fifty million before crowding becomes a major issue. With the advent of meat-bearing plants we expect all those numbers to double, at least.

To go back to my original topic, can I get your impressions on how to approach this assuming we will find more planets within another season or two, and another set assuming we won't?

"If there will be more, you can use almost any allocation method and iterate from there. My inclination would be to auction it, because that gently encourages coalition - at a guess we'd put together a winning bid with some other countries we get along well with, and expect other countries to come up with winning bids for later planets. Uh, this isn't the approach to go with if you won't tolerate any collusion on the price, but it'd still be an enormous sum even if you do. If there won't be more, that's still a solid option, but it becomes more important to make sure that the overwhelming majority of Amentans are served in one fell swoop. A new country could be founded, or several, and take immigrants from anywhere. You could take bids from every country and allocate a number and desirability of parcels by how much they pay. We would probably settle on a coordinative strategy of our own if all you did was set a price."

I see. I'll plainly state that the Senate wants money so they can softly interfere in Amentan affairs - perhaps by paying factory farm owners to close and not re-open, or subsidizing non-factory meat until it's almost free, perhaps by buying jungle or arctic land and then maintaining it in its current state, perhaps other things. Or maybe they'll just want to buy huge amounts of refined metal and fuel. I've tried to learn what money will and will not do and educate them on it.

There is also a notion that we could simply relinquish all claim to the planet - pay off the discoverers who will want some reward with the Senate's Treasure, and let Amentans figure out what to do with the planet. A gift to Amenta - even if not being able to get there yourselves is a point of tension. I think the Senate would like the notion of a new country that takes immigrants from wherever or however it chooses to do so, if it decides to go that route. Though, foregoing payment probably makes things politically harder for pro-Amentan factions in the future.

"I do think the fact that the money would mostly be plowed back into the Amentan economy, in whatever form, is an argument in favor of denominating the planet's price in money. There would be political will to collect a lot of it, it would circulate back in, founding a colony would be an incredible stimulus, almost no one winds up poorer in a way that matters. A gift we can't reach would be... not a strict improvement."

The money might be held for a while and not spent immediately.

Would some kind of treaty promising passage at however-much a frequency for the next however-many years with penalties like forfeiting all our money if the Draak fail to meet it help at all? I suppose it would be difficult to impose meaningful penalties on us.

...Giving you starships is the single most contentious political issue we have. It may take another Grand Moot to resolve it, and it occurs to me that two of the four Elders have not even seen an Amentan in person.

"If seeing us in person is likely to help I'm sure there's someone who's willing to make the trip even given what happened last time. The trouble with relying on you, even with such a penalty, is that then if you ever decide to incur that penalty our colony is cut off until we manage the invention ourselves. The greens are throwing themselves at it with everything they've got but it could be a while yet and it's hard to put in purely monetary terms what it would mean to be unable to even communicate with the colony."

I cannot arrange that now, though I would like to if I could. Neither Darktooth the Ancient nor the Guardian of the Green have been seen in over a season. They announced they were doing a joint project of deep magic before vanishing.

I don't think we're suited to doing politics, even with ourselves. Some of what has been happening is attributable to inexperience, but...

I suppose the best way to put it is that many of us are worried what the galaxy will look like in one thousand years. Your resemblance to Humans makes everyone fearful. Your standards of pollution coming to a head undid whatever softening had occurred in that mindset. It's most prevalent in the oldest, especially those who saw Earth - some three hundred fifty of which are still alive, and they're all ancient and powerful by our standards.

"It's difficult to think on thousand-year timescales. A thousand years ago we had recently invented - not the wheel, I think the wheel was longstanding by then, but that might be when we first came up with writing. Our cultures remake themselves very fast. But some things do last. We've kept count of the years for nearly three and a half thousand now, and we've gotten better at remembering since the tally mark was first put to use. I think our understanding of how we get to finally touch the sky, who we owe for that, will stick."

And if we looked upon you and said 'no, you are a threat, stay on your planet'... You'd remember that, too.

Sigh.

Afraid people are not reasonable people.

"All too often."

I shall discuss the matter of history in the making with the Seeker.

The Seeker has a private meeting with another dragon. He skips a half a day of class, it goes on for a while.

He's been teaching nuclear physics to Voan greens and a few purples. The kind of nuclear physics needed to make, most importantly, the weird and expensive devices that prevent nuclear explosions from happening. But also big reactors for ship power, and fuel- And directly working with a startup to get them started in exchange for a small share, still occasionally tossing something their way on the logic that if they do better his share does better too.

How much of this is also being spread to other countries? Is there much progress on the anti-nuclear-explosion devices?

Voa is adhering scrupulously to their agreements with Seeker about making sure things get where they ought to be. They have sufficiently little nuclear technology background that they aren't very insightful in their own right about anti-nuclear-explosion devices but they see the merit in the project for sure and are working hard.

He finds the blue who manages the impromptu school.

I've decided in favor of attempting to teach the FTL. If the arc of history proves me a fool in three hundred years so be it.

Probably this will require laboratories to observe me using it and other such things since you don't have magic and I use magic. I want other nations involved too, possibly with those I like or get favors from overrepresented, but fundamentally this is for everyone.

"- thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you - what kind of conditions do you need for the laboratories, which countries do you particularly want to have access -"

Laboratory conditions seem like something to discuss with greens aside from 'big enough for him'. Might be easier to take equipment to him than vice versa in some cases. In descending order: Voa, Tapa, Tuviri, other Voan permissions model countries. All the other countries should probably have roughly size-apportioned presence and access, he doesn't want to exclude Cene or formerly-Oahk states, for example. Oh, and a small gesture to Doet and Baravi.

They can build a lab around him, more or less, and invite people from all over the world.

Better get started, then.

He brings, to the already-existing auditorium an hour later (having told everygreen who can borrow or steal nice detection equipment on short notice to do so), his spare FTL engine. It's about the size of a microwave, and requires fairly fiendish power input. Operating it requires what the Draak would call a Song of Air - a feat of magic that is complex and multifaceted, but still a single clearly defined procedure will often be declared a Song, like that. What it does, essentially, is take the small disturbances in reality and focus and magnify them until you can actually go somewhere. Like something between a power regulator, a lens, and an amplification chamber.

You have to sort of clearly visualize where you are and where you're going, while really feeling the utter vastness of interstellar space - the rest of the pattern is described by this minified algorithm paired with musical notes but involves a bunch of different small magic mental motions that have to be automatic and algorithmic based on what the magic feedback is like, sort of like flying. Or learning to ride a bicycle, perhaps, not that he's ridden a bicycle.

Okay. So, since they can't do magic, this is going to want - a computer program, presumably? They should get some yellows?

They're going to want to invent devices that do the same tiny-distortions magic does, and then lots of fancy work with computers, it looks like.

Okay. They can try to work on that in parallel, insofar as that's possible.

It takes a while. Seeker is as singlemindedly focused on it as any of the rest of the lessons, though his prickly attitude towards unconstructive interruptions gets worse. It's also very complicated, very expensive work.

The other dragons visiting Amenta in various places hear about the project and make a huge fuss, it's clearly controversial- Seeker takes a weekend off to go beat many them to near-death and then heal them up and lecture them about presuming to dictate who he shares HIS INVENTION with. Three of them refuse to yield and die outright. He incinerates the bodies. Bloom, at least, continues her slow progress on de-springing with nothing more than a comment about fools rushing to their doom.