Mhalir observes her progress from a distance.

For some reason, he finds himself feeling very indecisive. His head is full of different plans: kidnap more wizards and run - try to secretly recruit voluntary wizard hosts with the mercenary company story - try to publicly recruit help for the war in exchange for sharing their technology ask the cleric to pray to Sarenrae for her help...

He keeps bouncing from one to another, none feeling conclusive. Operating openly here is incredibly risky, arguably a risk he has no right to take on behalf of his people, there are gods with dozens of different goals and he has no idea what they'll do. Kidnapping wizards and fleeing is safe but it feels like it leaves so much value on the table. Secretive recruiting is probably the happy medium but...well, Alloran has a point, right, that he could be trying to help this world and instead he's not trying. 

Because he's scared. Because, back in known space, his people are on the cusp of losing a war with aliens who hate them... 

Lots of people are scared, the cleric of Sarenrae said, it's not an excuse to do evil.

Carissa, thinking that Mhalir's model of the Andalite politics is immature, reminding her of history books telling stories that you're not supposed to believe, or where believing them is really about demonstrating loyalty, and how sick that made him feel... 

This world is full of so much and he wants to drink in all of it, and at the same time he flinches away from it, because everything keeps making him feel so confused. 

...

He orders the shuttle to keep up surveillance over Absalom, and look for adventuring parties headed out, laying the groundwork to abduct a warrior without magic who they could interrogate about recruiting practices, though he hasn't yet decided for sure if he wants to do that. 

Carissa goes home, and copies her new spells over, and wears her headband, and casts Owl's Wisdom for good measure, and thinks. 

Eventually she says to the ceiling that she'd like to talk to Mhalir if it's convenient.

Mhalir is there within a few minutes. <Yes?>

"I wanted to ask you to explain what I'm supposed to believe." That was slightly blunter than she'd meant to say it but it's true. "About the Yeerks and the war and so on."

...What a weird way to phrase that question. 

<You want more background context on us and on the war? Or proof of what I already told you? I can show you recordings of past events, we have some on the computers. And - I suppose you can cast Detect Thoughts and read my other personnel, some of them were personally there for some of the battles we have records for.> 

"Not really that, no. I want - a good soldier, in your organization, what do they believe about Andalites and about Yeerks and about the plan to win the war and about what happens after the war and about what - things are virtues people ought to have, and what things make people untrustworthy, stuff like that."

<...Well, you can talk to some of my personnel about that, then, if you want the viewpoint of a soldier within the organization rather than my viewpoint as a leader. Why do you want to know this? I think I do not fully understand what you are looking for here.>

"I think - if I don't escape soon no one's going to care that I thought about it, right, and I don't know if I'd pass the screenings to get back in the army, so - if there's nothing else for me then I should stop thinking about it like a prisoner. I don't know for sure if I'll do that but knowing what I'd be supposed to believe is a necessary step, so I can try it on and see if it's snug enough."

<- That makes sense, that you are deciding whether to actually be our allies.> Though the way she's framing it hurts, and not in a way he can easily push away, because he is, in fact, the one who took away all of her other options. <I thought you suspected I was wrong, though? About what the Andalites actually believe or are trying to do.> 

"I mean, probably? But your soldiers don't need to have a complicated view of it, even if your generals probably should. There're - ways to take a basically simple belief like 'Andalites are all terrible and want to massacre us', which I'm going to have a hard time fitting, and add some layers, right, like 'Andalites in power all want to massacre us because not wanting to is such a wildly unpopular position that it'd poison you for the popularity contests forever, while massacring you is wildly popular and Andalites who do it get elected immediately', and then I can believe it."

Alloran is thinking furiously that that's not true at all, not that Carissa seems capable of caring about that - 'let Yeerks enslave the galaxy' isn't a winning political issue but obviously neither is 'burn their homeworld', as Mhalir must know perfectly well since the Andalites haven't done it, both of those opinions are outside the range of things you could reasonably express...

He feels so metaphorically dizzy, again. 

<I...want you to believe true things?> The words sound weak and implausible even to himself. <Because if you believe false things about your allies and your enemies, then your plans will not work? And you are the one who understands magic, so if I want to have you as an ally rather than a slave, I need you to come up with plans that will work?> All of his claims are coming out sounding like questions, he wonders if Carissa notices. 

Some part of him is pointing out that the Andalites are in the wrong, here, and so Carissa should hear both sides and come to her own conclusion and it's going to be that the Yeerks are right - and another part is screaming that no other species is ever going to understand - and yet a third small, quiet, voice in the back of his mind whispers that both of those are wrong, incomplete, and the true underlying reality is something else and what if he doesn't understand it either, what if none of his plans are going to work because they're built on a lie... 

<Alloran do you want to say something to her> and he lets Alloran have thoughtspeech again, not quite knowing why he's doing it, just, outside viewpoint??? 

<Andalites have blockaded the Yeerk home planet, we could kill them all and we haven't killed any of them there because we have a way to keep those ones out of the war> Alloran says urgently.

"- I think I'm used to hearing everyone's propaganda at a later stage of polishing," she says weakly. "Okay. Alloran, do you understand the question I'm asking, could you answer it for the Andalites -"

Alloran is trying to think if there's any advice he could give her that'd lead to her using magic on Visser Three and him losing his grip for half a second - <In Andalite school we teach children that we are a peaceful people who trade with and sometimes advise other cultures but do not conquer them, and that once a very foolish man named Seerow met Yeerks and pitied them, how they had no chance at the galaxy under their own strength, and he thought he could teach them and introduce them to the universe, but as soon as they had starships they betrayed him and murdered him and headed off to enslave people everywhere, and are doing it on a dozen different worlds now, and the Andalites are the only power in the galaxy who might be able to stop them but we don't have the strength yet so the children will have to grow up very clever so they can figure out how to do it.>

"Uh huh. The Yeerk version of that, what's the Yeerk version of that."

<Oh. We do have histories of the war for teaching the young Yeerks - I can pull one up for you...> 

He goes to the computer and does that, and then runs the translation software on it so that Carissa can actually read it. 

On our home world, long ago, there were us, the Yeerks, and our hosts, the Gedds.  Yeerks are smart and disciplined, but small and helpless.  Gedds are big and strong, with hands and feet and eyes, but confused and dimwitted.  Gedds came to the pools and put their heads down and told us their names, so their Yeerks would recognize them, and their Yeerks came and helped the Gedds, and helped themselves.  With Gedds we built fences around our pools, so predators wouldn't eat us.  With Gedds we dug new pools, and invented writing we could see with their eyes.  We built them shelters from the rain and fires against the cold.  With Gedds we could travel; with us they could create.

Then we met Andalites.

The Andalite Seerow said he wanted to help us: instead of fire, we could have electricity. Instead of fences, we could have metal walls.  We could travel across the whole planet, we could write to computers instead of clay.  Seerow and his group showed us how to do those things long before we would have gotten there step by step.

We believed them.  We thanked them, and learned what they taught us, and built cities and trains and devices.  And we filled our cities with Gedds, and met our cousins across the ocean and learned each other's languages, and didn't wonder: if the Andalites are our friends, why don't they want us to know them better?  Why don't they bring us home with them to let us see their world, the way they're seeing ours?  Why don't any Andalites want to see if we could help them, the way they're helping us - just like us and the Gedds?

We didn't wonder, so we didn't know.  But we did think: even if the Andalites don't want Yeerk help, maybe someone does.  Maybe some people on another planet is like the Gedds, but without Yeerks.  Maybe even better.  Not long ago we warmed our hosts by fires, and now we have so much more.  Is there even more than that?

And then we made a terrible mistake.  

We told the Andalites we wanted to go look. And Seerow said: no.  You must stay here.  You can have the Gedds, who need you because without you they can barely talk, barely find their way home.  But no one else will ever want you.  No one else could possibly need you.  In the whole galaxy, everyone you meet on every planet will think: disgusting.  Pathetic.  Get it away from me.  It's wrong to even imagine it, and now that I've heard that you have this evil wish, I know I was wrong to even tell you there was life in the stars.  Before you can recruit anyone else into your plans I must destroy you.  And then Seerow started to kill us.

We fought back, to save ourselves and each other and our Gedds and our cities, and we didn't win, but Seerow didn't either, and some of us escaped.  Some of us made it to the stars, to explore, to see for ourselves: was Seerow right?

We found the Taxxons, and Seerow was wrong.  Taxxons wanted Yeerks.  Taxxons were ruled by their hunger, and could never be free: they would rather belong to Yeerks than to their own emptiness, they would rather work with us than watch their bodies overrule their minds to tear apart their own friends and families for want of prey.  We multiplied until every Taxxon could have their own Yeerk, and set ourselves to work on their hunger, which we had adopted as our own the way Seerow never really adopted our problems as his, and today the Taxxons are happier and fuller and hopeful: you can see for yourself if you ever have one as a host.

The Andalites said: you cannot be trusted.  Andalite lives are valuable, and Yeerk lives aren't: that means you are at fault for every one of us killed in your escape, and we are blameless, and will punish you.  The Taxxons are just as disgusting as you are, and it doesn't matter what they say they want; we'll never believe a word, not when you're in there.  You have to be stopped.  We will be at war until you stop wanting anything we didn't give you.  We will be at war until you die.

We found the Hork-Bajir.  And the Hork-Bajir were happy already, but they were strong and sharp and the Andalites would never stop trying to kill us, and we needed them to survive.  The Andalites saw that we were growing more powerful, and told themselves they were saving Hork-Bajir, while they ruined their planet and killed them millions in one fell swoop.  But we escaped, and some of our Hork-Bajir did too.  If the Andalites had their way, there would be no Hork-Bajir left anywhere.  One day, when we are not at war, we will not need the Hork-Bajir.  We'll be able to explore far enough to find people who want us.  Today we keep ourselves and them both safe by sticking together.

We found Earth.  And Earth is the most amazing planet yet, full of humans, who are clever and versatile and see so many colors, and we could have said: hello, Earth!  We are Yeerks!  We can help you!  There are so many of you, and you're all so different; do some of you want our help?  But if we had done that the Andalites would have said: the humans are just as bad the Yeerks.  If they like Yeerks, and prove us wrong, we'll kill them just like we killed the Hork-Bajir, and all the Yeerks with them.  So we move on Earth very quietly, very carefully.  The humans are strong enough that with them and us together we may be able to finally win the war, and then the whole galaxy will be ours for Yeerks and our hosts to explore together.

Yeerk history by Alicorn

She used to be better at - believing things? It's kind of frightening; it's not the sort of thing you can afford to be bad at. "Okay," she says quietly. "Thank you. I guess I'll - think about this, and maybe try to write up a version that makes sense to me?"

<I would be curious to see it, if you do that.> And Mhalir leaves her to her work. 

...He feels kind of like he's making a terrible mistake and he's not even sure which direction it's in, too adversarial versus not paranoid enough, but he orders his staff to take the shuttle down, cloaked, and track a low-level adventuring party departing Absalom, in hopes that they'll at some point stay in poorly-secured accommodations. 

Adventuring parties have an inconvenient tendency to sleep in pocket dimensions their wizards made while on the road.

Carissa thinks. 

Long ago there were a people called Andalites, and they had banished most of the threats to their world and most of the ways for people to threaten each other, and they gained nothing from the other peoples of their galaxy and ignored them as we ignore shoals of fish when we're not hungry. And in many centuries of this they forgot how war worked, and they played high-stakes games they mistook for trivial ones, and in the course of one of those games one Andalite set himself to teaching a slug-people called Yeerks the science he knew, which included the science of how to travel among the stars. And when they had learned this, the Yeerks, who did have much to gain from other peoples, because they could trade with them or enslave them or ally with them as they saw fit, set out into the universe, to the horror of the Andalites, who had thought all their games were contained. And the Andalites went to war with the Yeerks, wishing to put things back to the way they'd been before, and this changed the Yeerk's incentives towards enslaving people rather than trading or allying with them, which left the Andalites feeling further vindicated in wanting the Yeerks put back and afraid they would meet the same fate, and so the Andalites decided to start stamping peoples out of the universe rather than have them be another arm of the Yeerk war, and now that's how things are going and to stop more people being stamped out of the universe the Yeerks need to win very quickly, probably by a powerful enchanter infiltrating the Andalite home planet and making the Andalites stop, and then the Yeerks will do a reasonable balance of conquering and enslaving and allying and trading, probably, once they're not at war. 

She writes this down and asks Mhalir if it's acceptable.

<It is interesting. Do you think it is - true, or at least mostly true?> 

What does Alloran think of it. 

Alloran thinks that Carissa is incapable of comprehending goodness, about as literally as that can be a thing, and maybe their wizard advisor should be someone who thinks that slavery is wrong!!!

"It feels true enough, I think? If I'd been captured by Andalites I'd have a different one, but." Shrug. "I think probably you won't be able to enslave Golarion unless actually it's right for humans to be Yeerk slaves, and I don't want people to keep getting murdered, so I don't see a reason not to prefer you win."