“Alright. If you like light sources I can demonstrate the spell ‘Light’ for you, or you can examine my Continual Flame necklace?”

Emiko laughs again. "We don't particularly need more light sources, I just meant we don't really understand the mists. That said a spell that makes light seems like a really good place to start coming to an understanding of your magic."

“I don’t actually have it prepared yet. The simplest spells I have prepared today are ‘Create Water’ and ‘Detect Magic’, which do what they sound like, ‘Stabilize’, which gives a creature a tiny dose of positive energy, and ‘Guidance’, which makes a creature slightly more competent at the next thing they attempt within the next minute.”

"Oh, is create water how you were propelling yourself with water in the area around our station?"

"Yes, it was. I could have used subjective gravity, but I was told travel via subjective gravity was hard to control, and I wanted to not have a high-speed collision with your station a lot more than I wanted to go quickly."

"I see, unless you have very good reflexes I imagine it would be hard to navigate well with such a powerful source of force especially if you have to deliberately think about being attracted to a specific point."

"I do not have good reflexes. Er, by the standards of adventurers. I'm probably better at dodging unpleasant surprises than most people who've never explored a hazardous location or been attacked or done reflex-oriented sports."

"Have you often been attacked? Is that common on your world?"

"Yes, definitely. And violence is unfortunately common, though there are many people who manage to live their lives in peace."

"That's sad. Nobody should be subject to violence if they don't want to be."

"Sometimes they want to build tools for massive destruction without being interrupted, or the like, and then it's in my opinion good to disrupt that. That said, it is an excellent principle. Violence is all too often necessary, however. I at least have the privilege of being able to afford tools for making it reliably nonlethal under many circumstances."

"You're right. Sometimes it is necessary. I'm glad stopping people like that isn't my responsibility."

“It’s not the most pleasant responsibility. But it is, so far as I can tell, where I have been most needed, as of late.”

"Hopefully you can find more enjoyable things to do while you're with us."

"Well, basic research, looking into the feasability of Starlight intervening in my world, and if so lobbying for same through whatever channels people usually do politics through, are in fact more enjoyable than fighting to disrupt other people's attempts to cause problems, and those things are my current long-term plan. …my current medium-term plan! I have more of a long term than I have full plans for! Thank you, again."

"Those all sound like good plans. If you're staying for a while we should probably register you as a resident if that's alright with you. Being a resident entitle you to some amount of currency on a regular basis, a residence to live in, medical care, education should you wish to pursue it and allows you to participate in our political process. On your end it means you're committing to comply the rules of our society and in case of extreme emergencies obey the dictates of the emergency committee within certain limits."

"That sounds potentially good. Tell me about your society's rules and the typical responses of the emergency committee to emergencies, then?"

"We have the basic rules I think are present in most societies. You're not allowed to injure or steal from other individuals. There are exception for extreme circumstances but we try to prevent those from happening. We also have a number of rules that govern how resources are allocated. For the average person all that those rules are relevant for is how many resources they personally get and the restrictions about speed of usage. Even if you accumulate a massive amount of resource credits there's a limit to how much you can redeem at once. You're also not allowed to bribe people to support your political causes. If you break the rules, our justice system is focused on understanding why and building a framework for ensuring it won't happen again. In rare cases, that will mean we take steps to make it impossible for you to do whatever you did again, either by requiring you be escorted by someone or something that can stop you or by banning you from wearing certain types of bodies."

"Do extreme circumstances include self-defense, at least if I am careful to avoid lastingly injurious use of force? …lower rates of violence, right, possibly if someone tries to rob me I can get in their face with a scimitar and they'll just stop immediately without us needing to attack each other. Or I can spend a Wild Shape usage on running off without having to worry that I'll urgently need that usage later."

"Self defense is a broad category. In general the expectation is that you'll attempt to disengage and only attack back if that's for some reason infeasible. That said, in most cases, the justice system will find no wrongdoing on the part of the defending party. The cases where self defense would be unacceptable would either be in a case of disproportionate force, such as dismembering someone in response to a punch or kick, or if you goaded someone into attacking you with the intent of being able to defend yourself. As for protecting yourself from theft, if an item is replaceable we generally prefer you just let the person go, you'll be compensated either by the person or the justice system. In the case of something irreplaceable the same comments about disproportionate force can apply."

"That sounds overall reasonable. Is flight rare enough that it's usually an effective means of disengagement from hostilities?"

"It should be. The generally speaking only operatives and a few committed hobbyists have personal flight. It's pretty resource intensive. Magecrafters can do it too but they're extremely rare. We don't have any here at the moment."

"I could take the form of a large bird and fly you around the station, if you liked, though at that point we wouldn't be on a telepathic communication network together so I wouldn't be able to speak. But I digress. If flight is a good means of disengaging from attackers, and violence is rare, I ought to be able to do so."

"That sounds fun. I don't really care if I can't tell you where to go. Though flying here is likely to be weird. Apparent gravity decreases as you get higher and that takes adjusting to."

"Oh, I'd be able to hear you just fine, and make various expressive bird sounds, just not to speak. But I like being able to talk. I suppose if you have cheap infrastructure for safe falling I could go Air Elemental, they have a problem with dropping objects they try to carry but they can talk."