"We… didn't have that. And even among different ethnicities there were… problems. The key thing though is that there have been two separate groups, humans and animals. There have been different rules for the two groups. A lot of experiments are done on animals rather than humans if possible."

"So one issue is… suppose you want to know if a medication is safe for humans. You might test it on animals, but animals have various differences. For example, rabbit kidneys are different in some ways than human kidneys, so a medicine might work differently between them. Eventually, as technology developed, we gained the ability to do things like make rabbits that had more human-like kidneys, which made that sort of research more effective. This… well, actually it was controversial at the time, due to some insanity, but in the end, at least for us, we are pretty sure kidneys don't change things in a meaningful way. I don't know if the organ the word is translating to is more morally significant."

"But… so, our brains are like your souls. Sometimes we have sicknesses that relates to our brains. So, some people… thought they were being clever when they thought about making animals with more humanlike brains, then use the fact that the rules for animals were different. So one big association with enhancing other animals' minds is to get more intelligent creatures that you can get away with treating as though they are less intelligent."

"I… hope that doesn't make us look too bad, but does that part at least make sense?"

"First, let me reassure you: I know that humanity includes unethical researchers. I'm not going to condemn your species by them. I've definitely seen worse humans than you and I still have human friends. I don't think that poor behavior or ethics on the part of human researchers, or even research organizations, is going to be an overwhelming impediment to us working together. In the case of the Curdime weapons research program … the issue got resolved by imprisoning a few people in lead roles and imposing economic sanctions? To be clear, that's me trying to name an example of research that's definitely more unethical than talking about mistreating intelligent animals and then not doing it, I don't expect anyone will want to impose any sanctions about that, it sounds like it resolved itself."

"Moving on: I think my world has better options for testing medicines than your world does. Probably someone is likely to be offended by the details of whatever you're doing, but … right, you don't have spells at all. You can't Speak with Animals. This suggests I'm likely to be offended by the details of whatever you're doing, but, uh, you're in a really difficult position when it comes to doing right by animals if you can't talk to them ever, not even an annual check-in when someone comes by on circuit. Well, this makes animal testing of my spells a lot more urgent. Don't worry, if any druid can speak to your world's animals, it's me."

"We have both brain illnesses and soul illnesses. I have never heard of someone proposing to awaken an animal's soul for the purpose of inducing a soul disease and testing treatments, but mostly I delegate reading terrible people's books about their evil research projects to someone else, so if it were happening I might not know about it. The common association for enhancing animals' minds is to have them as competent companions and assistants. The typical process for that is for someone to find an individual animal interested in working with them, and bond with the animal, after which they have the option to lastingly enhance their bonded animal's mental capabilities."

Cornelia nods. "There are people who specialize in acting as sort of… representatives, of the animals' interests. That is only… one of the issues, however. Another argument is that it would be confusing if you couldn't tell just by looking if there was a human level intelligence or an animal level intelligence."

"That's quite an argument. A lot of things in life are confusing? We could probably convince some animals to wear flashy jewelry or dye their hair or something, would that help? In my world, most intelligent animals are either paired with more human-shaped people, or visibly not like regular animals, or verbal."

"Those… would be options, yes. Then there are some of the… other arguments."

Cornelia takes a deep breath.

"I'm not sure if this is going to translate right, as you mentioned a 'shard of the power of nature'. However, one argument is that human-level intelligences and animal-level intelligences are two separate groups, and to violate the boundary between them is… unnatural."

"It sounds to me like it's translating, I just think if it were unnatural I would have heard about it! The fact that I contain what I am calling a 'shard of the power of nature' means that if I do enough things which are objectionable-to-nature, I could lose my spells and some of my other abilities. And, I mean, people connect to different aspects, my aspect discourages mistreatment of animals but technically gratuitous mistreatment of animals is in fact an aspect of nature, but… if something were abhorrent to nature I wouldn't be doing it, and if it was such a feasible-looking and tempting idea as enhancing the intelligence of one's animal companion, I would have been actively warned against it."

"Also, I think my world has more natural examples of human-level intelligence and animal-level intelligence being two points on a spectrum, not two isolated categories, than yours does. In my world, elementals vary a lot in intelligence depending on their overall strength. This is actually a pattern with dragons and some other species as well, but the elemental case seems most informative." Griffie sketches elementals. "See, the ones which are too small and weak to even show up in documents of entities you might need to fight have animalistic intelligence, but some of the most potent types of elementals are as intelligent as the typical human. Well, you humans might be on average smarter, nutrition and prenatal care and such help and you seem to have fewer issues with that than my world does."

"The degree to which they are two isolated categories… is actually exaggerated in our world, I think. Different creatures have different levels of intelligence, and while none reach the technological status of humans or mercurials other than us, things are substantially more complicated than some people wish to believe. There are also… so, there is one somewhat… unfortunate bit of our history. It lead to a lot of problems for a while, though at this point it is resigned to a few insane people, but I should warn you in case you encounter one of them, as they seem… potentially quite relevant to you."

"There was a major controversy about preventing or ending pregnancies. Explaining all of the context behind it goes well beyond what I studied, but this then got tangled up with certain scientific research that was at least somewhat  related, because someone figured out how to end pregnancies in a way that got reusable resources that could be used for medicine and research. For political power, at one point a political leader of a major country at the time created a council, and helped support it… it didn't exactly take over those who studied… 

"There is a translation issue here. There is a category of ethical studies we have, that especially includes, though isn't limited to, things like advocating on the behalf of animals. I think it might not be translating because you didn't have to try to figure out how to treat animals nicely the way we did due to your ability to speak with them? Though… I think a lot of it was more pushing people to listen to the animals’ interests at all. Sometimes people are very resistant to listening to the interests of anything where they have a long history of benefiting from not listening and the thing can't fight back effectively."

"Anyway, this field of ethics, the political leader pushed for his council to be sort of the 'face' of it. The person appointed to lead this council was… selected more because he would create strong arguments for the position that would help the political leader please his supporters, than other concerns like… he was very obsessed with things being… 'natural' in a certain… eccentric… way."

"Unfortunately, with the political leader's support, he managed to infect a lot of thought with his ideals, and for a while after there was a lot of controversy about even simple things like basic enhancements to the genetic templates of plants, if they used more advanced ways of doing it rather than old fashioned selective breeding. Also there was backlash against the other members of the field he got labeled with and… it was a horrible mess. The article linked it to a lot of other issues, most of which I didn't read, including a lot I didn't even realize existed… sometimes I feel a lot of sympathy for the mercurials' reactions to our past."

"Anyway, long story short, while at this point such positions are pretty limited, occasionally we still have someone banging on our door. Given that apparently your common spells do things that they oppose, it seemed to me like you should be warned."

"Well, thanks for the heads-up. I've dealt with angry people upset about perfectly good modifications to living creatures banging on my door before, but I had help at the time. How powerful and well-armed are these people, usually? What's the opinion of more major authority on the issues?"

"They… aren't likely to attack you, if that is what you are asking?"

Griffie looks skeptical. They haven't told the crew what they are yet, and the crew probably hasn't figured what 'plant-construct' meant. "Suppose that I had an animal with augmented intelligence around. Would they attack the animal, or attempt to forcibly strip it of its augmentations?"

"…no one on this ship, I strongly expect, and even… there are some factions that… I wasn't talking about people attacking you or such an animal. The door statement… is typically metaphorical, and even the literal case would be someone banging on your door to yell at you! I can't say we are completely free from violence, there are… issues, but… even on most of the colony worlds people don't just go get a mob together and attack people like that?"

"So, if we're working together, it would be productive to discuss something sensitive. I've probably given you enough information to eventually guess it, but you seem to have not figured it out yet. Can I get a promise of … even if you don't like what I tell you, you won't hurt the entities I tell you about, or report them to international authorities, or whatnot? Or at least give me until your estimate of when you would have pieced it together. I think this is excessive paranoia, but I've caused myself problems by discussing the subject before, so I have to ask."

"Is someone in danger due to this?"

"…not directly? There's been conflicts about the subject, though."

"All right. Give me a moment."

She taps her tablet a few times.

"Go ahead."

"So. When I was trying to teach your sphere-constructs Celestial, because I had shown them Celestial at first due to thinking they might speak it, I drew a sphere, labeled 'sphere', a sphere-construct, labeled 'sphere-construct', some plants, labeled 'plant', and myself, labeled 'plant-construct'. Because I am a person which another person built out of plants using special tools. I wasn't born the way humans or animals are born."

"The way I was produced was by building a plant body, which was more human-shaped than most plants are, but did not have an intelligence, and then adding intelligence to it after it was fully complete. The details of this in my case get even more controversial in my world, but maybe this is the most controversial part in your world?"

"The general type of plant construct that is created by building a human-shaped plant body and then adding an intelligence formed from a combination of nature spirits to it after it is complete is a 'leshy'. I am an 'Erloria leshy', meaning that I was created by Erloria, using a variant on the process. When Erloria created her leshies, she included a bit of her soul along with the nature spirits. This is probably why the Erloria leshies are unusually intelligent for leshies."

"The most controversial part in my world is that Erloria taught her leshies how to reincarnate each other. When one of us dies, we build a new body for that person, and while it's growing we patch up the damage to their soul using more nature spirit material, and then we put them in the new body. Nature spirit material is pretty flexible and willing to be included in projects like that. But it turns out that this procedure is extremely controversial in my world. This procedure is the quality of my species that makes us in violation of the treaty with Charon. The psychopomps found out about it because I mentioned it while trying to argue that they should leave Zita Imbrex alone."

"…and they tried to kill you over this. So… some people in our world commit war crimes. Some people have said various reasons for why dying of old age is important. These are things in our world. But there isn't a… general advocate for war crimes. There isn't a treaty calling for everyone to die, and I don't think anyone would be willing to agree to one! When people call for someone to be killed, or try to kill them, it is almost always because they imagine some benefit or vengeance or higher purpose. Propaganda about how the group is responsible for everything bad in the world, for example. Not just because… they think the world needs more war crimes as a general rule? Sometimes people are willing to say very dubious things, but I don't think the people calling for, say, the removal of all technology would be thrilled to watch people die of the diseases we can cure."

"So. First, to clarify a specific point: The treaty enforcing aging is between anti-aging parties and Charon. The treaty requires some aging in exchange for Charon agreeing to not arbitrarily age empires full of people to death in minutes, that sort of thing. Furthermore, Charon plausibly has the capacity to restart the world-destroying war if he wants, so people have to work with him."

"The psychopomps and Charon are different. The psychopomps are not a major faction, and Charon makes no claims that death is good. Many psychopomps hate Charon. I'm not sure what psychopomps would think of claims that aging itself is Charon's work, I've never heard from them since evidence in favor of the theory came to light. Psychopomps are offended by the view that if daemons wish to de-age someone, it's an internal Abaddon matter. That came up in the speech the terrorists gave after the ruling on Zita Imbrex."

"And regarding the broader point: Yes. You have human-sized problems, and you don't have quintessence-powered factions. It's very rare for humans to mimic the non-selfish evil behaviors of fiends, unless they're doing so for religious reasons, and if you don't have Lower Planes deities you don't have religions around them. …though I'd like to know if there were any mysterious changes in the stillbirth rate that you can't attribute to any obvious cause in the past year, the thing I want to check for shouldn't be there but it's good to check a hypothesis. It is too bad that you don't have the Upper Planes, they're quite useful, but … if the people on this ship are merely unusually good but not shockingly so, for your society, you're probably doing pretty well anyway?"

"I see. If we were to make contact, would this mean that our own work in aging reduction would mean that your world would back him up if he decided to have us age all to death in minutes, and would he be capable of that?"

"So. The last time Charon is known to have aged civilizations to death in minutes, it was via a mechanism of aging he was intimately familiar with, and using a specific, powerful device he built, which he no longer owns. I would hope that should he wish to design a method of doing the same to the people of this world, it would require either significant design effort or accumulating power in a detectable way such that other deities would be obligated to make a preemptive strike. I don't know the full extent of his capabilities, however."

"I don't know whether your work in aging reduction would be treated as legal or not. You are likely outside of the area Axis successfully attempts to exert jurisdiction over. All the Lawful planes appreciate being voluntarily contacted and Heaven is Good. Both Axis and Heaven would attempt to cause you to not regret contacting them. Different things are legal in different worlds."

"I don't know what Axis would consider the baseline for your two species in terms of aging rates. I don't know whether you are even considered alive for the purposes of the treaty."

"…one more concerning thing to add to the list then. Now, where… ah yes, electricity or animal testing."

"Animal testing sounds more important, but electricity testing seems like something we can do quite quickly while your organization is still figuring out what we should do if we get an intelligent animal in a world that isn't used to them."

Cornelia sends a copy of the animal testing plans to Griffith's tablet!

Given that Griffith's spells have so far ranged from 'harmless' to 'augmenting more than expected', and friendliness seems important, they are proposing that animal testing be done on the ship's shared companion rodents. The crew are prepared to offer the rodents increased access to public areas of the ship and more complex activities should this become necessary.

Procedures call for Griffith to make contact with several rodents, for exposure testing, and only cast spells on fewer of them. They encourage Griffith to be in close proximity to the rodents for an extended period. 

Cornelia and the others who worked on this plan recognize that Griffith's spells may be hazardous to animals in a way that they weren't hazardous to plants. They consider the importance of test results to be worth it compared to the risk to the animals.

For spellcasting tests, they call for Griffith to begin with the disease diagnostic. Cornelia expects that Griffith would prefer to attempt to speak with an animal before casting with a chance of modifying the animal, and the testing procedures account for this. Subsequently, the rodents are to be exposed to varying amounts of undirected positive energy, as well as disease removal. 

Cornelia also sends Griffith information about the rodent species. They're from the mercurial homeworld. Griffith doesn't recognize them, but they look somewhat like neotenic rats. The mercurials have had a long time to selectively breed animals for roles including companionship, and these rodents have also been genetically modified. The most visible such alteration is that they have oddly colorful patterns, some of which glow under ultraviolet light.

The rodents' capabilities and tendencies have been fairly exhaustively measured, and will be measured again after spell testing. Loss of original personality is considered a priority to check for, and more testable with rodents than with chamomile.

The rodents will be brought in restrained such that Griffith can touch them, but set up to be rapidly released into larger enclosures after spellcasting. Procedures for this are designed such that it would be quite difficult for a rodent to bite Griffith, as while they have checked their reactions to fake 'animated plant creatures' made to resemble Griffith, they are not sure how well their response of 'peaceful confusion' will generalize to the actual Griffith or the experience of having a spell cast on them.

Griffith considers the plans to be reasonable and thoughtful. They are ready for contact testing and Speak with Animals testing now, and will be ready for positive energy testing after fifteen minutes of meditation.

Also, wow, the crew got a nonmagical and spiritless succulent plant that looks quite similar to Griffie's base species, somehow sculpted it rapidly to look like Griffie without scarring, induced color changes, and animated it a bit with some kind of electrical mechanism? That's pretty weird, but cool. Griffie kind of wants to poke it.