Meatball sub is gone now she's halfway through a bag of popcorn. Well, "achieve goal by demonstration of fanatical filial loyalty" calls on slightly different skills than "achieve goal by placating whoever seems most powerful at the moment".

Yes, but even as a display of fanatical filial loyalty - he's not calling for public resistance, he's not storming you to demand anything, he's just sitting at home complaining very loudly - I suppose if he thinks we're definitely temporary, or if he's just not a very strategic thinker -

Nothing about him looks strategic at all.

Agreed. Sigh. Some of the options for that post are siblings of his, don't have a strong sense yet of whether they're any better -

Is there anything obviously riding on having the post filled quickly?

Not for several weeks at least -

So leave it vacant for now.

Done. There are only a couple more appointments that we do need soonish -

Let's see if we can squeeze it into another two or three lookaheads, I do not have room for much more lunch.

You got it. If I talk to these three people who do I like best -

That one -

Goody, I'll go offer her a job. Last set - appointments for that planetary governor -

And presently they have a new planetary governor picked out and Isabella's out of popcorn and drinking apple juice and then kissing her lovely real quick before they have to run off and do things in real life instead of just precognitions.

Appointments are made! Announcements are made! She goes to meet with all of the people who'd been listed as persuadable but not persuaded. And they announce across three worlds that the Empress has resigned and a new Empress appointed and that the new Empress considers all of her subjects equal under the law.

And the new Empress would like everybody to stop eating birdperson eggs right now because what the fuck, and other delightful decrees.

She's such a good empress. And, yeah, there'll be a couple hundred thousand Elf volunteers to enforce that if Isabella happens to want a couple hundred thousand Elves who are very invested in the non-eating of birdperson eggs.

Hundred thousand is probably overkill but she would love some Elves, yes please, they'll make a useful deterrent presence for misbehavior in general even if they're mostly interested in the eggs thing.

Have to make it obvious we have interworld teleportation, are we ready to do that?

Long as nobody hands it out, think so. We obviously didn't get here by spaceship, and Elves can only barely pass for the local humanoids at first glance and humans really can't.

So she goes home and announces that they've found (via a portal, but they've now developed a better method of transit) this other dimension which contains the following species, and they have staged a coup and banned the eating of birdpeople eggs and the indenture of birdpeople for debt and the bans on birdpeople in positions of authority and the random massacres of birdpeople after things go wrong that could possibly be the fault of rebel birdpeople, anyone want to help enforce these?

Lots of people want to help enforce these.

Yay! Isabella finds them assignments and gets to know them and settles in.

A month passes. Isabella continues having to eat a lot to identify and put out fires. It is convenient how she's now indestructible and doesn't need to sleep. Maitimë needs to sleep, occasionally. She doesn't have nightmares and also doesn't, of course, have lucid dreams. They add their worlds to the appropriate place in the middle of Vanda Nossëo's long priorities list. They get a notification in response that some Space xenobiologists have been set to figuring out better local medicine and crops, that they're in the next batch for distribution of anti-aging necklaces but it'll only be around a million of them, sorry, Vanda Nossëo just can't produce them that fast.

That's reasonable. Isabella's got a pilot program underway to identify and provide extra education for gifted non-ethically-challenged youngsters and is considering taking them on a field trip when there's next an eclipse on that one planet, but it's a ways off, outside stopgaps would be good.

They can literally just give this empire whatever taxation program they want, can't they, they don't have to get it past any interfering parties, they can just come up with the best thing and do that, conquering planets is amazing.

Computers are deciphered and made compatible with the crystal ball network! And she'll write a little flurry of papers for these people about their own technology because they have less to catch up on than Arda and it's obvious where the biggest gaps are.