"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.

Cornelia sends in the rodents.

Speak with Animals targets Griffie, not any individual animal, so it's going to be relevant to the rodents just doing contact and proximity testing anyway. Griffie casts it.

The spell informs Griffie that there are no animals nearby, and without a soul it cannot translate.

The spell also informs Griffie that there are things that look a lot like animals, probably illusions, and it will as a less reliable fallback try just reading their body language under the assumption that they are made to imitate actual animals.

Most likely, their body language indicates that they are nervous about some impending event, but confidently expect it to be worthwhile shortly after some unpleasantness.

"My Speak with Animals spell says that there are no animals nearby, and translation is soul-dependent. However, it's a very advanced Speak with Animals variant, so it is making its best guesses about your rodents based on body language. They … plausibly think this is a medical appointment after which they will get treats, if that's an animal-handling method you do with them? They expect the near future to be unpleasant but expect it to be overall worthwhile … hopefully it will be worthwhile for them and not just the rest of us. Also my spell speculates that the rodents are likely illusions. I don't think the designer ever considered utterly soulless living rodents not made of any of the four elements or quintessence."

"Yes, they get treats after medical appointments, and those little restraints are ones used for some of the more unpleasant appointments. The treats are at least supposed to make it worthwhile in ways they can understand, though I'm not an animal expert."

"Sounds reasonable to me. If the rodents are alive afterwards we can give them treats this time too, right? Shall I get to poking the ones doing contact-only tests?"

"I would expect so, assuming we have treats that work for them after any changes that occur? And yes, please begin."

Griffie gently pokes each of the rodents doing contact tests.

The rodents squirm a bit at this strange poking but do not seem alarmed.

The rodents who are done with active testing can be released into the main areas of their enclosures now. They will not get immediate treats. Sorry, rodents.

The rodents suspect this is like when they are put into the big tubes, where it doesn't hurt, but they are kept from moving. Except with more poking. This is novel, but not very interesting.

And now for Diagnose Disease! This doesn't require touch.

The rodents, like the chamomile, also have more extremely minor diseases than Griffie is used to seeing, but are, again like the chamomile, overall healthier than any other animals who don't receive magical care that Griffie's previously seen.

Griffie reports this to Cornelia.

Cornelia nods and writes this down.

Griffie administers various precise doses of undirected positive energy via Stabilize and Cure spells, and directed positive energy via Remove Disease, as instructed. They then release the rodents into the main areas of their enclosures.

Very little happens to the rodents given low doses of undirected positive energy, and the positive energy involved mostly expends itself ineffectually, a little bit partially healing up some minor scratches from play.

What happens to the rodents who received higher undirected doses is more complicated. The positive energy applied again seems to learn, first doing simple repairs very slowly, then accelerating and doing more complex repairs. Griffith is watching this time, and the acceleration occurs around when a complex positive energy construct forms throughout the body of the rodents, most concentrated near the prefrontal cortex. The complexity of the construct varies based on the positive energy dose.

Remove Disease once again targets the rodent genome in addition to dealing with pathogens, but isn't very surprising compared to the plant example.

Griffie reports this, noting that the positive energy constructs look plausibly like souls, if rather unusual compared to other souls Griffie's seen. Griffie also mentions that it's unusual for souls to anchor to the brain in regions with significant function besides anchoring the soul, so if the area the rodents' souls anchored to also performs other functions, it would be interesting to know what.