"I'd default to green parents just because they'd be most interested in learning from the experience but filtering for rural and tolerant of biting might leave fewer greens."

I think a hatchling might learn to stop with the biting relatively quickly. But there will probably be some biting. There's millions of greens, yes? And there's Calado if Silver Pine and Moose Hunter get very frustrated with trying to do their clever idea in Tapa or Voa or somewhere sensible.

"There's millions of greens, I'm just assessing how picky we can reasonably be about it."

The biological parents won't be terribly picky about caretakers. I'm willing to give advice once in awhile if this happens... Greens will sound best to them. I did manage to convince them it would be unfriendly to simply bury the eggs in uninhabited desert or jungle.

"- yes, that would have been a problem sooner or later."

You don't do that in someone else's territory. You section off part of your own territory for the hatchling. They would have been punished by us if they did it secretly, and again for the offense to Amentans. 

He's slightly amused under the anxiety.

"What's the usual penalty for - cuckooing?"

We don't have a police force nor any Laws about this. Destruction of the egg, or relocation to somewhere unclaimed, is a typical response. If the identity of the parent is discovered it would not surprise me if the one - cuckooed - chased down and mauled the offender, or even killed them. Of course, the offended has to be stronger than the offender for that to work.

"Of course. Is there a lot of unclaimed territory? I heard from my counterpart in Baravi that the Draak might be planning to encourage population growth."

Yes. Not all of it is as desirable as others - the most beautiful, temperate, lush, and prey-rich spots are all mostly taken - but I would estimate that sixty percent of our planet's habitable ocean areas like coastline and shallow seas and fifty percent of the land is entirely unclaimed, and average territory size could shrink by two thirds without causing major issues. We ended up not deliberately encouraging population growth, but I think there will be an egg boom anyway.

"Why's that?"

Individuals coming up with the same reasoning that caused us to consider it. We don't want to be quite so vastly outnumbered. In times of change there's usually more eggs than usual. Such times are an opportunity, I suppose.

"I suppose that makes sense. More likely some of your children will be suited to the new conditions."

And whatever upheaval is going on is likely to have opened some slots in the niche of Draak, so it's a good time to try.

Amseli nods. "They've found a spot near here for the - conference, I suppose we can call it."

Would it be obvious from the air?

"Not very, if you were high up, but we can lead you there."

We would prefer to fly there than walk. I still have that pocket everything if you could show me using that?

"Sure." She zooms in on a map and shows him.

He turns around and roars, and presumably does telepathy at everyone, because almost thirty Draak ranging from the approximate size of a truck to a train carriage take to the air and start flying in the correct direction, with Seeker in front.

And they can all meet in a slightly less wilderness location with a train station.

The giant flying aliens require a lot of space but settle in the surroundings without collapsing any buildings or anything like that.

Seeker introduces a few diplomats to Amseli. The diplomats call themselves 'the voice of the Draak'. They want to know what Tapa expects a diplomat to actually... Do, since they understand the job as mostly 'know what Draak want and learn what Amentan countries want', and whether other countries' representatives will be arriving.

"Diplomats on Amenta keep foreign governments apprised of their own governments' plans, especially when those plans might look alarming without context or have effects the neighbors might want to account for - population and immigration and trade policy, for example, or any action near a border, but also just general updates to stay on the same page. They can make recommendations to adjust those plans based on what reception they get when explained - so, for instance, if I were posted in Alavet, and told the Alavene government we wanted to start charging yellow immigrants from Alavet because of some selection effect we wanted to compensate for, and they objected, they might tell me their reasons to believe the effect was a fluke, and then I could talk to the Tapai population board about that."

Hello - I've chosen a new name for this. 'patient speaker of Truth whose voice is like clear ice'. 'Ice' is a fine short name. We don't really have a clear idea of what our plans are yet! Not in all respects. The senate is torn between changing its mind a lot and worrying about being seen about unreliable since they're changing their mind a lot. It sounds like long communication latency can make diplomacy hard too.

Hmm... Ice Scale and Shining Truth are both owned by the senate, and three of the ten other ships being built are too. We're going to look for more habitable or terraformable planets and keep building starships. We don't want to tell you how it's done yet but the 'puller ship' idea of a tiny Draak ship carrying big Amentan vessels around is fine if we can deal with secrecy concerns. We might want to import some rare materials useful for the construction, or get you to refine fuel. We're going to ask Bloom to explain her work and then try to expand it because Amentans who spring less strongly seem less dangerous.

"It's lovely to meet you, Ice," Amseli says. "We'll speed up getting a pullable ship into flying condition and we look eagerly forward to Bloom's work being propagated further."