Iozhe looks tempted to pay for Lintalai's room, but decides against it; she's a kid, but she's also the boss. Waste of money.

And shortly after Lintalai has paid for her room, she hears Intrepid's 'voice':

Lintalai. Welcome back to Abellio. I have heard that you were quite busy. Daernir told me- very little about your adventures, but enough to pique my interest.

It was very productive! What do you want to know?

I am curious about what you intend to do in Arcadia. Daernir told me you spoke to many priests, without much mention of spellcasters. I admit to being surprised. Did you decide to seek out deities for assistance with returning home?

I did also recruit some spellcasters but they aren't here yet. And I met some angels!

Angels, really. Did the meeting go smoothly? Angels can be difficult to communicate with, for mortals. Celestial was their attempt to compromise between their natural communication style and language, and it- shows some of the limitations of such an endeavor.

The angels seemed nice and helpful to me!

I'm glad to hear that. In that case, do you have much further need of my services? It seems you may have made powerful allies that can assist you more readily. All I can offer is translation.

I want to learn to actually speak the language, even though my pocket everything is doing a pretty good job.

Ah, how enterprising. I suppose I should no longer be surprised. I will happily teach you whichever languages you please- Celestial to begin with, if you like, although it is not the only trade tongue used on Arcadia. Most people also speak Ta'admarian.

Celestial to start is good.

Then Intrepid will teach her Celestial.

Meanwhile, the four wizards she was promised arrive. Daernir gets to work on planning a wizarding school (!!!) for Lintalai's colony. He delivers reports every night to Tyshvian, who adds this to her notes.

Tyshvian takes notes on Lintalai's meetings, supplements her language lessons (offering a mortal perspective Intrepid is sorely lacking), and explains what cultural differences she can expect to run into (many, enough that it might be worth outsourcing her thinking on some of it), including the naming conventions they previously discussed.

They end up spending some additional time in the not-hotel with the wizards, as only one of them can teleport, and cannot do so again on the same day. The storm that takes shape outside will last multiple days, making mundane travel more difficult.

It also makes Lintalai hungrier since there's less light, but that's not a big deal. She studies and writes up reports for the folks back home, who may by now have gotten in touch with people who can confirm that she never appeared on the other side of the school entrance, and ratifies plans and works on all the fiddly details that need fiddling.

Eventually, they get moving.

Interpid fills her in on some basic details about the city. Mercantus, as the above-ground portion of the city is called, attracts merchants from across the planes. Although it does not sell many magical items, and there are better markets for illegal goods (for obvious reasons!), it is an ideal shopping experience for most legitimate business. Haggling is limited; if a customer's need is greater, the merchants will offer a lower price. While need might be difficult to guess, most people on Arcadia speak honestly, and so the transaction is usually to both parties' satisfaction.

Below Mercantus lies Mandible proper, a vast underground network of tunnels, most of which no non-formian has explored. Mercantus is also sometimes called the Foreigners' Ward of Mandible, as it is the portion of the city which is actively welcoming to visitors. Visitors underground are subject to more restrictive laws, but they are allowed supervised visits. Lintalai may find that an underground visit is required to really engage in diplomacy with the city, but not a very extended one. Most of her interactions with the formians can take place in Mercantus.

Do any formians seem particularly like they want to meet her or are the people she's got to talk to for her plans?

There are some formians who are happy to chat with her! It's not clear, after talking to them, how important they are to formian diplomacy. They do talk to her about her mission, and say that they will forward her arrival down the chain until someone from below comes to speak to her. They think it's reasonably exciting that she's from some kind of planet with castes, and want to know more about those. They have something similar.

Cool, what are the formian castes?

Workers, warriors, taskmasters, myrmarches, and the queen. The queen is, of course, the highest caste and spend all of her time producing babies and ruling. The myrmarches are advisors, guards, missionaries, and emissaries to the outside world. This taskmaster doesn't know all that much about that, but points out a space on her brownish-red carapace where she has recorded a compliment that a myrmarch gave her, once, using gems and ink. Taskmasters are merchants, traders, and diplomats. Warriors are fighters and teachers of fighting. Workers do everything else!

"Those don't map neatly onto Amentan castes but it sounds like they work for you! We have blues for ruling and land management and judiciary, greens for art and intellectual work, yellows for clerical work, greys for particularly physical work, oranges for caretaking work, and purples for everything else."

The taskmaster is surprised to hear that they don't have anyone to guard the blues- do greens advise blues, and do greys serve as both warriors and guards?

"Greys do security, yes, and greens sometimes have advisory positions though more often they work at universities or think tanks or labs or something."

Does having so many blues...work for them? The taskmaster is also curious about whether the kind of work purples and workers do is at all similar, but can be distracted from this question to talk more about what the formians would like from potential neighbors.