Daernir has come prepared with questions about the formians' caste system; he leaves asking about trade and neighborly matters to Lintalai.

She wants to find out if the casters she needs can be sourced among formians, and how they handle pollution-type stuff, and what they think about subways and cellars and such.

The formian who has evidently been assigned to her (based on the fact that they have the same name as one of those she met yesterday) fields most of her questions.

It seems that spellcasters are very uncommon among formians. Those that do develop magical skills tend to stick to war-gymnastics rather than soul-based magic.

They seem reluctant to openly discuss pollution-type stuff, but they assure her that they handle it in the way appropriate for formians and if this is not satisfying, she is free to purify herself in rivers as much as she likes.

As for subways, they are unfamiliar but intrigued by the concept. Cellars have been dealt with by negotiating how much of the underground space the people above have a right to develop into, but subways might be more complicated if they require wide-scale infrastructure instead of individual contracts.

She is not worried about herself but about trade; Amenta has international standards for what level of cleanliness must be required of producers of exports, on top of domestic and potentially less stringent rules. If they want to be able to sell things to Amentans they will need to be on the same page.

Subways do require lots of infrastructure and passthrough! She can show them diagrams.

"Are Amentan standards of cleanliness a private matter? If not, you should tell us what the requirements are and we can work to meet them. Discussing our own standards would be...I would rather not discuss such things openly."

"That works." She finds a file of the protocol and translates it.

The possibility that one of their castes is hereditarily unclean had never occurred to them. How did Amentans discover that reds were polluted in that way, rather than just until cleaning themselves? They can adapt to most of the requirements, although they might need clarification on what constitutes the correct soaps.

She can find the history of the caste but a lot of the theological language translates poorly and Lintalai does not herself know enough theology to compensate. Formians have the queen situation, though, so it's very unlikely any of their castes is hereditarily unclean! Soaps she can look up in Summary Bank to see what the formal criteria are.

Does it matter much if soaps interact with their exoskeletons differently than they do with Amentan skin?

Additionally, they want to know how blues correspond to queens- how is their governance of Amentans organized? How do blues command the other castes? Which of their castes cannot operate independently?

She can look up the rules for cleaning pets and livestock in case any of that applies, but they don't keep domestic giant insects and she will email a theologian with all their questions and expect a reply in... several months.

Blues are an aristocracy but have no special reproductive responsibilities. They collect rent, and have certain high-trust jobs like being judges and doing politics, though some blues just live off investments and don't actually do much work. Most Amentan countries in the modern day are democracies, which means blues can run for various offices details varying by country and people get to vote on them, weighted by approximate assumed political knowhow. No Amentan caste requires a hivemind to function day to day but all of them require some things that other castes do in order to get along - for instance, everyone eats what purples grow and ship and prepare.

Do blues make decisions about whose genes can be passed on? If not, there may need to be some conversations between Amenta's ruling blues and Mandible's queen about how best to manage their population growth. Formians prefer to discuss things like this with their neighbors, and they imagine Amentans will be more cooperative about it than most locals.

Blues run eugenics boards (with green advisory). The eugenics boards will probably want to relax some once there is an infinite plane to colonize but any given area will want to be paying attention to whether it can handle its projected growth.

Lovely! They can have the queens communicate with the eugenics boards.

Is there anything else she thinks needs to be discussed besides trade?

What are their eugenics concerns?

"Our own attempts to manipulate our genetic makeup has depended on the queens' decisions about which specific traits to encourage or discourage, but we have never achieved independence for our workers and warriors. So few species here practice eugenics on a societal level, so this is the first new research angle in years. We might similarly be able to share some knowledge, even if our genes are completely dissimilar.

We also have some concerns about having neighbors who have a caste like oranges or greys which are so specialized in purpose but not in thought- it's not something we've encountered and we might want Amentans to limit their population numbers."

"Hm, why are oranges or greys specifically worrying?"

"Blues are specialized in purpose but also in thought. I would think blues would behave like other blues. Purples are not specialized in either- again, if I understand correctly. But oranges and greys are specialized in purpose- they have limited breadth of tasks- but not in thought- they do not have a hive mind, and Amenta does not even have the churches or temples or kings that most non-formians have."

"And why is - castes that are specialized in purpose but not in thought - worrying? They might be unpredictable?"

"Our concern is that they may need more support than the others to prevent crimes against us, in our cities. If they stay above the surface, that will be fine, but we do not wish to restrict movement if your citizens want to explore below."

"You could require they have escorts, or want an extradition treaty that would compensate you suitably for any crimes Amentans committed in your territory."

The taskmaster wants extradition explained to her; apparently, it's not uncommon on Arcadia but formians have never much understood it and no one has explained it to them, so they have very few such treaties. After a brief explanation, she agrees that this makes some sense, and wants to know what the timetable is on building the new Amentan settlement.

"It will depend a lot on how hard it is to find spellcasters who can access Amenta. I think there will be a lot of Amentans here over the course of a few months when there's a portal - faster, if the portal somehow equalizes the passage of time, the months would mostly be getting the news out and people traveling to the portal site."

The formians mostly don't have use for spellcasters who can connect to other planes, so they can't help too much with that. She'll mention this to the queen, though, if sourcing such spellcasters is likely to speed up the trading process!

The taskmaster will show Lintalai where an entrance to the city below is; Amentans should only go underground escorted, so if they can filter for people who will abide by such rules during initial settlement, they would appreciate that. Later on they can work out better long-term arrangements. As for subways and such, discussions are happening above this particular taskmaster's head but Lintalai can be assured that they're working on that.

Sourcing spellcasters would speed up the trading process enormously! And yes, initial colonists will be screened for sure.

The taskmaster makes chittering sounds that her translator does not translate.

"Soon our queen will wish to speak to your queens- blues, I'm sorry. We will find spellcasters to speed up the process so that our peoples can meet properly. Thank you for speaking with us again."