"I did and I didn't... I'm trying to understand what the OTC's goals are and failing. Do you know if there's books about that or do you personally have thoughts on it?"

"The Project, by Directors Grey and Sunaira, is the best source for that. To summarize - the OTC is trying to terraform the multiverse."

"I'll have to read that then. Do you mean culturally terraform?"

"I mean literally terraform. They spend most of their profits finding new worlds to put displaced refugees from places like Heresy and Skanthivus. What they don't spend on that they invest in magical and technological research. And obviously everyone with the company gets a proper immortality contract."

"That... is not the answer I was expecting. How many refugees are they needing to resettle? Also where can I find the book you mentioned is it in the history section again?"

"Trillions. Heresy is enormous, there's an entire inhabited galaxy there and it's all unfit for long-term life. And for every five decent places the OTC turns up there's another Skanthivus. The Project is in the biography section, actually. Right side near the front."

"Thanks," She goes to find the mentioned book. She also reviews what was in that picture book about Skanthivus.

The Project proves to be a plain, no-nonsense explanation of what the OTC has done in the past five hundred years, as narrated by two of the five reigning Directors, the immortals responsible for the OTC's current path. Director Grey, head of a cabal of forks of herself that composes about 25% of the OTC's total workforce, narrates in terms of strategic and business sense about the necessity of retaining key employees and therefore the sense of offering them good rates on immortality. Director Sunaira, a love goddess originating from Lifewell, speaks more about the humanitarian goals of the OTC, such as ending slavery and ensuring agelessness and proper medical care reach as many people as possible. Against them is pit the warlike Director Black, an ancient dragon who merely seeks to gather as much wealth as possible through any method possible, even unsavoury ones such as the sale of drugs and weapons. Neutral in this conflict are Director ELURIA, a sentient machine who wants to invest heavily in future research, and Director Saivon, the youngest of the board and the most interested in expansion into other worlds. 

The picture book describes Skanthivus as a cursed world where many predatory species stalk the native humans and additionally all magic is subject to a form of backlash called Paradox. It is considered not sustainably habitable by the OTC, but penetrating the backlash barrier with interworld transit has not been easy and the first true evacuation only began twenty years ago.

It's a bit like looking in a funhouse mirror. Aside from this Director Black the OTC's priorities seem at least compatible with Starlight's. The idea of framing it as a corporation still seems rather strange though. She scans and sends the book then tries to find some sort of book on terraforming. With the physics she knows terraforming shouldn't be an efficient way to create new habitable land but maybe OTC has a cheat of some sort.

The OTC cheats so hard. Mostly this comes down to a very strong magitechnology base, but the goddesses they have in their pocket have been known to turn airless rocks of the right size into earthlike worlds when they have spare time. 

Well that would do it wouldn't it. At this point there are two real questions:
1: Is the OTC learning of Starlight inevitable... and from a very cursory gloss that seems likely but not guaranteed to be the case.

2: Will the OTC change Starlight to a degree that it isn't recognizably the same. That's much less clear. Change isn't necessarily bad but the OTC at least on the surface gives a very strong impression of scarcity.

And now she's off to find a book on economics. What supports if any are available on OTC worlds? Is it standardized across worlds to any degree or is it all up to local governments.

It is all up to local governments! The OTC does not care very much if it crashes economies in the transition period, it's very much playing the long game.

Far away in a fairly generic conference room the emergency committee is meeting.

"This is a mess. Do we really have to allow it to go on? We have quarantine procedures for a reason."

"There's still a lot we have to learn even without making contact. I recommend allowing Ms. Clearsky to use an array to digitize the entire library she's in. As is we've only have a few books and it's easier to find things that are hidden with more sources."

"And the fact that it would expand our libraries and potentially give us information about novel phenomena has nothing to do with it."

"Learn all there is to learn."

"The precepts aren't inviolate principles. I think Alethia is perhaps being too paranoid but this is a circumstance that warrants caution. If this OTC wishes to conquer us it is likely they can unless the Heart wakes up."

"We have no proof that the Heart can wake up and no evidence that it would be good for us if it did."

"It would be exciting but perhaps not the sort we want right now."

"If we can take the books and the librarian at face value then they're spending a lot of resources on evacuating people from bad situations. That's something we would be doing too if we had encountered the same worlds."

"That's the crux of all our concerns. Can we trust the sources we have when they admit to having high-tier reality and mind altering magics."

"That's one concern but another is whether our quarantine procedures would even work. They were designed to contain civilizations and entities limited to a single realm. OTC is almost certainly not lying about being a trans-realm expansionist power."

"I've been tracing their trans-realm links using the Heart's analysis tools. They look pretty similar to ours. Quarantine isn't an option, not indefinitely. In most cases we might still be ok but they appear to have some form of faster-than-light travel and we can't realistically secure ourselves from that without faster-than-light travel of our own."

"I hope you were just using passive tools. But if quarantine is off the table then it's off the table. Fighting a delaying action would likely convince them we had something to hide and bring increased scrutiny."