"Moondance, stop being a mother-hen." Vanyel is smiling, though. 

Starwind isn't smiling. He stares into the distance with an unreadable look; occasionally his eyes dart to Cam. 

Cam will give desserts to Vanyel. And anyone else who wants one. Can he tempt Moondance and Starwind?

They can both be tempted! 

"This is very good!" Starwind seems genuinely impressed. 

"Thank you, I copied it off a restaurant menu myself."

"Do you need to know a recipe for the food, to be able to make it? Or only the name?" 

"Either will do, though if I know only a generic name I will not necessarily get the best example, which is why menus specify a particular iteration of a creation, like, so-and-so's lemon basil ice cream mark 47 or something."

“Impressive.” Starwind smiles thinly, leans forward a little. “And what are you intending to do next, with this otherworldly power of yours?”

"I mean I was going to go full bore on ending material scarcity but apparently this may cause some sort of problem in some way so now I'm trying to figure out what that is."

“Ending material scarcity? What would that look like?”

"Everyone has plenty to eat, comfortable shelter, limitless access to entertainment and education, easy travel around the globe, and whatever other doodads appeal to them, without needing to work a job if they don't feel like it."

"Incredible," Moondance breathes. 

"This easy travel - how does it work? I might imagine it causing...difficulties." 

"It'd be a lot easier to go to war if you could move your armies easily," Vanyel acknowledges. "And I'm...not actually sure that having unlimited food and nice houses and clothes would make it so no one wanted to conquer other countries anymore." 

"Yes, pacifism is separate and I would definitely share around asymmetrically defensive options."

"Hmm. Can any of the things you'd be making for non-violent purposes be - turned into weapons somehow? This is a stupid example but if you made - more of that shuttle, or something, it's made out of metal, right? I guess it wouldn't make it that much easier to make swords, but...something like that, some kind of unintended consequence...?" Shrug. "I don't know."  

"I mean, sure, I guess you could cannibalize the shuttle for metal. Is mining currently a major bottleneck on how many swords you guys have?"

"It's not the only hard part, but it's definitely a lot easier to forge a sword from other metal tools than getting the metal itself out of the ore." 

"And there might be other kinds of consequences, that are harder to think of beforehand." 

"The last time I ended material scarcity war was already on a downtrend."

“The last time? How did that come about?”

"I'm from a different planet with humans on it. They're it for intelligent life there, actually. And they were gradually settling down on the war and conquest front over time."

Moondance absently finger-combs out a chunk of his long white hair, then starts braiding it. "I think I wish to hear more about the world where you did this, and what it was like before? If there are ways it was different from this world, then - maybe that will help us see what the danger is here." 

"Didn't have magic, nonhuman intelligences divine or otherwise apart from folks like me, much higher tech level."