Esulri stands up and waves. He still has the translation machine.

"Hi. Other mages are looking for other worlds now, but this one does have the advantage of definitely and obviously not instantly killing people who land here, which, since nobody else came back right away, might be an unusual distinction, so I'm here to see if we can come here for what we need. One or maybe even both things, since you said there's lots of planets."

"Most Overlords wouldn't want you destroying a planet they've claimed, but some might trade for one, or might have enough planets they're fine treating one as a cross-magic experiment. Overlords would probably be more eager about 'immigrants not owned by anyone else,' but your people might dislike the - system."

"It seems... bad. Arguably not as bad as dying while your planet ceases to exist underfoot but they probably have a couple months to look for a better place to go. We might wind up scattering, if there's no unambiguously better place."

"Maybe it's doable in a way that's less bad."

"Oh?"

Vague gesture. "I think you can establish ownership enough with - just taxing people - and get rid of it with enough gifts, and - people just obeying laws works for maintenance. That's slow and tedious and easy to contest so most people don't use - property exchange - when they're shifting an ownership bond around, they use torture or magic, like mind control. And you couldn't really enforce laws against Overlords hurting people, but Overlords don't usually age, so 'find one who's not a dick' is probably actually a - strategy. Well. Who isn't a dick and who doesn't lose wars. Overlords fight a lot."

This is something he's thought about a lot. Mostly with himself in the role of 'overthrow Overlord Imara, become the next local Overlord, don't be a dick even if being a dick is fast and easy.' Telling other people that strategy seems likely to get him neighbors who aren't assholes, too.

"There's mind control magic?"

"Yes. Don't know if it's common, or how resistible it is - you can oppose actions involving you, and that'll make ownership transfer less readily than if you didn't oppose it if it's an owning sort of action, and opposing magic sometimes makes the magic fail but not always. Opposing is sort of... Really not wanting a thing, and mental resistance, and verbal resistance, and taking actions to stop something?"

"Can you walk me through some worked examples of this whole business?"

" - Opposing actions?"

"Magic ownership and its inputs and outputs construed broadly."

He pauses to get his thoughts together.

"Alright, so..."

"Mothers shape their children before they're even born. You're born owned by your mother, so she has all your magic. If she raises you, she shapes your thoughts, and she gives you commands, and if you are an obedient child then she owns you more, and if you are an unruly child who obeys anyways, she owns you more but not as much as if you were obedient, and if you disobey she doesn't own you more and might own you less. If you disobey, she can just hit you, and that establishes a claim even if you resist, which more than cancels out the loss of ownership from you disobeying. If you hit her, that establishes a claim on her, which works to cancel out some of her claim on you since she owns you anyways. If you run away, you're still owned by her, but if you first steal a bunch of her things, and then run away, you'll be owned by her less."

"If you run away, and steal her things, and she doesn't oppose this or try to get you back, then the ownership becomes very tenuous. If you kill her, the ownership sort of - switches directions, so you don't get backlash from whoever owns you dying, but you're then owned by whoever owned her originally, since they owned you indirectly earlier. If she wasn't owned by anyone, you now own yourself, and need to exercise self control. If someone else kills her, then you might get backlash from her dying."

"If you don't kill her - most people don't kill their parents, even if they dislike being owned - then you can go to whoever owns her, or whoever owns whoever owns her, or so on, and appeal to be moved more directly into their ownership. They'll probably demand you give them everything you own, or obey a long list of petty commands, or else submit to torture - or, well, general 'having sensations inflicted on you,' they don't have to be pain, but negative ones are stronger - and they'll then evaluate if this transferred ownership, and keep escalating if it didn't, until your mother loses her ownership claim."

"If you don't like anyone in your mother's ownership chain, you can try to flee even farther and find someone - probably a foreign Overlord - who'll accept you. Breaking you entirely out of your current ownership chain is harder than moving you around within one, and would probably involve a lot of general submission for a while. But your new Overlord also gets a small ownership claim on your mother and everyone up the ownership chain from her, including her Overlord, since they stole you. If they make a habit of stealing people from your original Overlord, your original Overlord will probably declare war on them - they could just let it happen, but then they'll become a vassal."

"If you want to own yourself, you have to get rid of all ownership claims on you. The - typical - way to do that is lots of murder. Then you'll have no one funneling your magic, and you'll promptly explode if you have poor self control or no other magic being funneled into you. People who become self-owning usually do so by killing their Overlord, which if they do it right gives them ownership of everything the Overlord owned."

"This magic system is possibly worse than mine and mine is eating my entire planet.

Uh, I don't have very much stuff to conspicuously not object to people stealing."

"You could obey orders or something, especially since there's a lot of things that didn't get done with everyone sick, and your claim's pretty weak right now."

"Uh, tentatively fine assuming everyone's aware that I'm under some time constraints what with the aforementioned planet-eating situation. Does it ruin things if I vet the orders first so we don't run into scheduling or cultural problems or anything like that?"

"That'd make it slower, but I can vet things. Only problem you might run into - other than magic stuff - is ownership conflicts with Overlord Imara, and he hasn't teleported here yet or given any other reaction."

"He's - more curious than anything. Bet he'd be willing to write off the entire village for a really foreign book. Probably a science book. ...Maybe multiple books so the magic balances."

"I can bring some books next time I make a trip, though I'd like to keep trips to a minimum till we have another site to dump byproduct into since every spell does some."

"Yeah. You might be able to get one from Imara if you promise him something shiny. Might be a better bet to try with someone who's less - like him - but he controls this planet. Not any other inhabitable ones, but he does have some uninhabited ones for mining or research."

"Uninhabited but with enough atmosphere somebody can stand on it for a few minutes and be fine afterwards would be ideal."

"...I don't really know how common that is."

"Because people live on everything with an atmosphere or for some other reason?"

"Because I haven't studied astronomy," he clarifies.

"Right. Uh, if I wanted to talk to your... overlord... how would I do that, and how would I talk to a different one if I wanted to do that instead?"

"There should be a - way to say you're a visiting mage and want to meet, probably by physically going to the palace? And visiting different ones would involve leaving the planet. There's ports where that's easier, though, and they'd have rumors about other overlords more than here does. You can probably find a ship willing to take you to a relevant border and announce it's on a diplomatic mission?"