Ninpa Nenwa is looking at Isidonia's hair and her jewelry and her teeth when she's not making eye contact. Alien-ness, apparently, excites her, not that this sets her apart. "Right now I'm technically still in university in the international relations track, but if you go with another candidate, I'm lined up to be a junior intern to the undersecretary of international relations. Their office mostly facilitates Tapa hosting various conventions in science, medicine, the arts, standardization protocols, and other widely important topics, so that we can always have a finger on the pulse of progress. In addition to Tapap I can speak Oahkar, Taroleen and Litholeen, and tolerable Baravic. My jobname is a reference to an old poem about the fingers of the hand cooperating on a single task while all moving differently but it literally translates to 'hand'."

"Of those topics for conventions, which do you think is most important, and which least important?"

"I'm personally partial to medical conferences and was planning to specialize in them somewhat but importance-wise I'd say the sciences, or at least, that's what I'd say if we had never been visited by magic aliens, and now it's anyone's guess what'll turn out to be important. Maybe the right way to plan is still for physics to hold the key but maybe now we should be extra excited about medicine in case we can all turn into magicians too with gene therapy or something! - arguably at that level of cutting edge medicine is more of a science than its own thing."

"In my home planet, medicine was mostly the province of clerics. A few knew how to craft herbal medicines, and many knew how to bind wounds and treat burns. But as I understand it, the performance of medicine is the province of oranges, here. Who attends the convention, and how does it work?"

What happens to Ninpa's eyes when Isidonia tells that story? The phrase 'home planet' is not particularly natural, for her, but seems like the sort of thing the Amentans might like.

Ninpa does look like she appreciates the unironic use of the phrase "home planet"! Also she may not have been briefed on what a cleric is but she doesn't ask at this time.

"There are a lot of different events for different specialties! The pediatric oncologists aren't going to the hemopathology conferences and neither of them go to the obstetrics conventions, and so on. And it's not always oranges! Some countries have green doctors and we have to accommodate that if we want to be able to include everyone with something to contribute. Usually there's an event space rented out by a foundation or association of some kind - for example the Unaligned Orange League does a convention on emergency medicine every year, they're a disaster response group and show up on battlefields. They'll identify some people who've made advances in the field recently or who have notable accomplishments within it, and invite them to give a talk or sit on a panel. They've got to hire lots of people to keep everything running, the UOL has catering for their events though not everyone does and you need an online schedule for people to consult and security and ticketing payment management to defray the costs if not necessarily turn a profit."

She'll nod, at that. Ninpa seems focused on categories and concepts, to her; groups and institutions. When it came to caste, she described the exceptions, not the standard approach. Time to turn towards the personal.

She'll gesture for Mihent to supply them with pastries and tea, and then raise another topic.

"Tell me about a time your loyalties were tested, and how you thought through your decision."

Mihent does not natively understand the gesture but she guesses correctly anyway.

The question seems to surprise Ninpa but she gives it a minute of thought. "...this isn't a work example," she says eventually, "since I don't have much in the way of work experience, but when I was four, a school friend of mine had a mental health problem and desperately did not want her parents, or the school, to find out about it. I went along with that at first, but then I realized - not that the situation was worse than I thought, but that I wasn't getting all the crucial evidence about how bad it was, so if it was taking a turn for the worse I wouldn't necessarily find out. I went to a great-uncle I'm close with about it and got his advice, without identifying my friend, and then I told her that she had her choice of going to her parents or the school administration or the relevant government department but if she didn't pick I was going to, and she went with me to the school. I think I did the right thing but I knew at the time I might lose the friend and I have."

She is thrown by a child having a mental health problem, but then remembers the difference in years. Unfortunately, while Amenta can send its alien-lovers, Golarion did not choose the same. She briefly imagines the gnome who would have sold their soul to swap places with her, who would've eagerly reconfigured their mind to fit.

"How did you learn about the problem in the first place?" It doesn't much impact the question of whether she did the right thing, but it is useful to know how perceptive Ninpa is, how much others open up around her.

"She told me - she didn't expressly swear me to secrecy first but it was understood that she wouldn't have said anything if she'd thought I'd thoughtlessly blab."

She'll nod at that, and then move down to the next question in her mental list.

"Who in your family do you look up to, and why?"

"There's my great-uncle I mentioned; he never had a career per se but I think he's incredibly judicious and thoughtful and he's got a way of being unhurried that I think puts people at ease, struggle though I might to imitate it. My mother's got a really stellar career going with the department of public health and I admire her work ethic and time management."

"Wisdom is queen of the virtues, yet diligence amplifies them all."

She will pause briefly, considering.

"What does being blue mean to you?"

That question, also, seems surprising (the family one did not). "- it means that I have the privilege and opportunity to lead people and shape the world in which they live to support their best qualities," she says eventually.

Felip would like this one, she thinks.

"Do you have any questions for me?"

"Can you tell me more about what someone coming into this position in your own country would tend to have by way of skills and background?"

"I am still learning the differences between our planet and yours, but I think a major difference is that our politics is much more personal, and geographically defined. For us, 'court' is the place where governing happens, and everyone involved can fit inside one enclosed space. My husband and I were responsible for the entire government of the duchy of Fraga; before we left we were in the national capital, where the restoration government was determining how it would function with around six hundred individuals, conducting our morning business in a single room.

Many women desire different things in their ladies-in-waiting, but a familiarity with courtly life, and the subtle movements of politics and people, would be a requirement everywhere. She would have the skills that set her out as graceful--not expected to master all of them, but enough that she could contribute to making a gathering lively and desirable. She would herself be from a noble family, though she would likely be a peripheral member, unless attending on someone of high importance. One of the daughters of our vassal counts was a lady-in-waiting, as was one of my Taldan cousins.

I expect the value of being good company to directly translate, and there to be a shift in which political skills are most desirable."

"So it sounds like entertaining is a lot of the province of - not blues - aristocrats?"

"Indeed. The aristocrats must work together to govern the realm, and the mutual warmth necessary for that monumental task is built in ballrooms and dining halls. Complicated issues can be settled in delicate and private negotiations."

She doesn't bring up marriages; it is too painful to consider her great project of this season, now happening without her or perhaps not happening at all.

"Ballrooms, gosh. I took a half-season of line dancing lessons one winter but that was purely recreational and it's not customary here as an instrument of politics - parties and dinners are, though."

"If we were to host a reception for the governors of the local province, how would you design it?"

"The province in particular? That's - depending what exactly you mean by governors just ten or so people but if they're bringing top staff that's another thirty or forty, it'd fit comfortably on the roof garden of the Swiensa building and if I couldn't book that or the weather were inclement I'd either rent a yacht on the lake or borrow my aunt's hills house for it, both of those would come with some staff but the gardens don't and either way I'd want catering in local cuisine, maybe Pepmametsa Bistro but I'd want to check that they still have the seal of approval, if they don't I'd get a recommendation from my friend who knows the food scene better than I do. The state security detail would do, but if you were there I'd tell them to triple it. All those people already know each other so I wouldn't want to schedule icebreakers..."

She nods along. The pace, the options--she could be entrusted with organizational matters. What about aesthetic ones?

She gestures around the room they're in, the decor. "What does this room say to you? How would you make it more welcoming? What would you do to make it more formal?"

"Huh. I think they use this house for diplomatic guests in general, so that knowledge means I'm not getting a completely fresh impression of the place. That said. The room is... nice, but maintainable by purples who have security clearances instead of purples who know exactly how a specific family likes things - I think hard copy books would be welcoming if they were well chosen, one caseful of them would do it, you could put it over there if you angled the chairs a little differently. I want to say something about the curtains but I'm not sure what, exactly, I'd change; interior design is purple. More formal I'd take out the comestible trays and maybe the tables that hold them too, people don't snack when they're doing really serious business. Swap out the art prints for maps and portraits."

She nods. She won't have a good sense of how sensible those answers are until she's comparing the candidates against each other.

"Did you have any more questions for me?"

"What kind of schedule do you envision this position calling for - both in terms of hours per week and in terms of, I was told it mattered that I am not married, does anything change if I get married and if so is there a specific number of seasons you'd expect me to postpone it?"