"Intercessions are a kind of petition where you request intervention on behalf of someone besides yourself. Revolutionists are people who work to reform society, overthrow institutions, and otherwise cause havoc within Marduk. Enlil's house is one of storms of all kinds, literal and metaphorical. Sometimes society needs more good than law, and the legislature leaves that up to the House of Enlil."

"I guess that makes sense, sort of. How do you tell what house someone's in if they don't have one of the listed professions?"

"There are laws which divide all known professions into the three houses, although occasionally the matter is settled by judges if the profession appears suddenly enough."

"What about kids or people who don't have a job for some other reason?"

"Adults who do not work are not represented in the legislature, unless they cannot work, in which case Gilgeam represents them. We don't represent children until they start working, as they're too young to contribute to legislation. They pray without submitting written petitions, of course. Were you wondering about how you could take part?"

"No, I'm going to start my own government, I'm just curious."

She looks taken aback.

"Well...if you have any more questions, feel free to ask anyone at the temple, or in Marduk if you ever visit us. Goodbye."

"Bye!" She circulates a bit more.

She can meet a few other petitioners. One, she quickly realizes, has been sitting here since they arrived, and continues filling his desk with petitions. Another is a child not much older than them, accompanied by an young adult. She can also find some people at the far end of the template from the entrance, several people chatting quietly.

Lintalai approaches the one with the long list of petitions and stands nearby to see if they'll say hi but doesn't want to interrupt.

He eventually notices her. He continues writing.

"Is there something you need?"

"It's nothing urgent, I'm just curious, you seem to have a lot to say and I was wondering about it."

"There are many things to say. Did you know that merchants pay greater tariffs on imports from the Nine Hells than on imports from the Infinite Battlefield, and there are no tariffs on imports from the Seven Heavens? Also, liberating a slave owned by a foreign visitor is a greater crime than flogging your children in public. The laws of this place need quite the overhaul. For that matter, you don't have any papers. We should not allow visitors who don't have to show their papers when traveling into important loci of power."

"...what papers am I supposed to have?" she says, since he decided to end on that note instead of any of his perfectly reasonable other points.

"Well, you might not have any papers! It's an oversight of Marduk's law that we don't require them, though. Once we established that precedent, the rest of Arcadia might be more inclined to adopt similar laws. There should be some way to verify someone's identity, and their plane of origin. You could be a devil here to sabotage our attempts at good governance, or you could be an archon trying to recruit for your little enlightenment project, quite worthless if I might add."

"I'm from Amenta. What's an enlightenment project?"

"Oh, are you from a new plane? We should establish a trading partnership, but we likely don't have a good mechanism to do that if you don't have any gods, existing embassies on the Prime, or some relationship with a faction."

He writes something about this down, judging by his change in expression, although he hasn't stopped writing the entire time they've been conversing.

"Amenta is a planet in the Prime, but we don't know where it is exactly."

"Oh, that's interesting. Have you ever received messages from the Outer Planes?"

"Nope! There's no magic there at all. Also I'm not the same species as most Amentans and we don't know where I was born."

"Hmm. You should still have Amentan papers. We need to control immigration more heavily so that saboteurs can't interfere with our work."

Write write write.

"I have Amentan identification but it's electronic. I can show you if you want."

"You were saying, about the enlightenment project?"

"Your identification doesn't matter to me, it's the principle of protecting our project. I'll happily take a look, though, it might inspire a new petition. As for enlightenment, the Seven Heavens insist that all of their petitioners self-actualize and develop into shining paragons of virtue. Arcadia, meanwhile, is working on something actually useful."

Lintalai pulls up her Anitami population record for him. "What is Arcadia working on?"