People leave the places really dangerous beasts live in alone, unless they want to hunt them, and that tends to work out fine. They knew what they were trying was dangerous.

It's these little gemstones, usually in the brain and spine. They're going to carefully dig through those bits to make sure to get them all.

How much does somebody have to eat to get magic?

It kind of depends, but a good fingerweight is usually enough. Powdered is fine, but most people eat them whole so they don't lose any material. Eating the salkstones is just the beginning, though. It takes a lot of practice and experimenting to actually use your magic. There's not much good generalizable advice about it than 'try'. One of the white-furred ones shows off how they can make a blade very very sharp for a single cut by running their fingers along it.

Oh that's really cool! What are other examples of magic they can get?

Making yourself stronger and tougher, permanently. Enhanced senses, like telescopic vision or sensing metal. Creating venoms. Sheathes of glowing force around your body as a weapon or shield. Telekinesis. Pyrokinesis. Health-sensing. A bunch of hard to explain things that help with crafting, like the super-blade thing.

Amazing.

Once the gems are extracted one of the greys washes her share off very thoroughly and swallows them like pills.

Haha, yeah, of course you want to take them right away. Basically nobody ever sells these when they could take them themselves, unless they're old. Magic doesn't carry over to a new life. It doesn't really feel like anything until you're actually doing magic and then it feels kind of like remembering something that didn't actually happen until the magic becomes instinct.

How long do they take to digest or whatever?

They've never heard of anyone getting it down in less than a week, so that's an upper limit?

Okay, cool! That grey will, uh, try.

They have similar questions about these Dwellin's political status with their neighbors and desired trade relations and possible science/tourism outposts.

They're kind of nomads and often get into trouble with the areas they wander through, with their camp and kids waiting a few days back whenever they try anything dangerous. Though they tend to have good relations with fellow nomad groups. They could sell animal pelts and scrimshaw and smoked meat and info about interesting places they've been? Can they buy guns?

They would need to talk to their government back home about selling guns but they can buy some of the other stuff!

They have to travel light, can't go buying unnecessary stuff. Amentans can have a few scrimshaw pieces as presents though. 

They appreciate that.

As the party and chat goes on they pay more attention to pocket everythings- Light making thingies like that would be pretty handy actually. And that water bottle the grey has, it's amazingly light!

The pocket everythings are mostly not for being flashlights; they can give them a flashlight that is, but explain it will run out of charge sooner or later. They can have a spare water bottle too.

Oh if it doesn't last forever that sucks, but it's still better than a torch for some places. Thank you!

Party continues. These Dwellin are happy to offer food to the Amentans and tell stories. Mostly violent ones. This biome is adored by climbers, and the more built up parts of it have lots of ropewalks and bridges between the cliffy parts. There's a great view from this one mountain. They nearly got half the party taken as slaves once but their chief pretended to take the deal and betrayed the slavers, serves 'em right! They were mercenaries in the 971st Teeth Mountain War half a decade ago. And so on.

Yeah, serves the slavers right! The Amentans might try coordinating anti-slavery Dwellin to abolish the practice worldwide once they have an established presence.

That'd be a fun war to fight for sure!

And then there would be no more slavery, it'd be great.

The next day the trade goods are incoming and they go back to their orbital ship to collect various personnel and objects they are distributing to various places. This time more shuttles disperse. The would-be magic grey stays in orbit to "try".

The village in the savannah is happy to welcome them back! That one merchant has a lot more stuff and is delighted to collect his copper. Three Bells has a plot and Dwellin diplomat prepared for them as promised. The nomads are still camped out in the same place this morning.

The stuff shipped in from Amenta is enough to let some purples and their yellow clerk/translator get started building on their plot. In the meantime they'll live in their shuttle, including the ambassador to Three Bells. The nomads can get traded with and the Amentans would like to know for future reference where their home camp is.

More shuttles deploy to elsewhere in the world to learn more languages and meet more people.

The nomads don't really have a home camp but they have a usual route and will make a map of it. You can bet they'll come see if they see a shuttle landing.

Three Bells's people are very curious and bother the Amentans with questions and hang out on nearby roofs to watch them. Their diplomat would like to spend time discussing everything Amenta's government does with his counterpart- It sounds like Amenta has more complications to deal with.

Other landings mostly go well. It looks like Three Bells is on the upper third of the bell curve when it comes to size and organization. They've outpaced actual news of the previous landings, though not rampant speculation about the trails the shuttles make in the sky. Though the more dangerous areas have... More paranoid and aggressive inhabitants.

Amenta does have more complications and the ambassador is happy to discuss them by way of practicing the new language he has to learn!

The Amentans favor withdrawing rather than fighting when they encounter would-be ambushes but if necessary will cover their retreat with return fire. They try to make friends with somebody adjacent to every hostile group for intel and a place to fall back short of orbit.

Return fire is very deterring! Sometimes the neighbors are hostile too, and some of the 'friendly' groups are clearly looking for weaknesses. A bunch of probably-slavers offer to sell Dwellin tranquilizer to the Amentans as a nonlethal measure.