"I am completely certain that at least a dozen craftsmen are attempting to make their own right now, but very well. My schedule is fluid hour to hour, any time for these remote meetings should work."

"My assistant will get you on Professor Asuta's schedule!"

His assistant, yellow, does this. Professor Asuta is installed elsewhere on the planet, so the lag isn't too bad and they can videochat in a conference room when she becomes available, in two hours.

Karakan ducks out for other errands again, but shows up back at the Amentans' building on time.

The yellow sets her up on a video chat with Professor Asuta!

"Hello hello," says Asuta, "I understand you were curious about Amentan theology!"

"Yes, as one of the closer things to a Dwellin theologist myself. Apparently we begin from very different principles- Legends of the gods, for us."

"We don't have any comparable legends as far as I know. Your planet does admittedly seem more like it might have had design input from someone, though, so perhaps there's a reason for that!"

"It's certainly commonly believed that the planet was designed. Slightly less commonly believed is that we were also designed. Where does Amentan theology find its roots?"

"Modern schools of thought tend to be about weighing our evolutionary drives and adaptations against the considerations we can as thinking beings bring into consideration that evolution could not, and finding ways to harmonize those so that the organisms we are can live the lives we imagine as elegantly as possible."

"I suppose in a way we also balance our drives and adaptations against reasoned preferences. Though not so formally. It's framed simply as 'what is best' to most, and tolerance for strictures varies a lot."

"Well, of course almost anything you can spend effort on requires trading off other things. It is important to be clean, but it is possible to pursue it pathologically to the exclusion of all else; important to have a loving family, but self-defeating to refuse productive work because you can't bear being away from your children enough to make sure they're provided for; important to be healthy, but losing sight of the purpose of health to refuse all risk and pursue ever more heroic measures to preserve a deteriorating life."

"I see. I think. Yes, taking anything to its extremes tends to cause nonsense results. Ecosystems are constantly in flux with many small factors combining in unexpected ways, and it is impossible to have a full picture of an entire biome and determine exactly what is needed for a particular goal, much like our lives. Even attempting the analysis is a poor use of resources. Actually part of what I am trying to get at is how we are used to... Less governance. A dull forester might bemoan the loss of his work, while one cleverer realizes that the recent wildfire is part of the cycle and an opportunity to plant new species. The second forester is acting more in accordance with theology. But these are stories, not laws."

"You live in much smaller groups than we do, which might be right for Dwellin but is not the tradeoff that makes the most sense for Amentans. Some Amentans like living in rural places, but they can get what they want while others get what they want best by living near farms, not having unsettled wilderness; here on your world you need the wilderness as safety."

"Maintaining the wilderness is also a terminal value. Important in itself. Amentans are more driven by dense populations, since they don't inhibit fertility for you?"

"They don't inhibit fertility and they let us make more efficient use of space. Not just in terms of how much room apartments take up versus houses - Amentans in cities also produce less air pollution, for example, per person, because they can walk where they need to go, and batch shipments to the city instead of per residence, while rural people often need their own vehicles."

"I think there are gains to be made in densifying Dwellin population without harming quality of life. Especially if Amentan science is able to identify exactly what factors crash fertility by observation. We could give more people families, bring more of ourselves out than before, without disrupting everything. There are stories about fertility drugs, but as far as I know none of them actually work. I am still uncertain about caste, incidentally. Or- I don't have sufficient context on the different castes and what can be expected of them. Is there a theological basis for caste?"

"Yes! There are some things that every Amentan needs to do to be healthy and happy - eat, sleep, raise children, enjoy some kind of entertainment though the details vary. But there are some things that a single Amentan cannot hope to do all of. For an advanced, technological society to work, you need specialization: not everyone doing their own hunting and gathering, not everyone farming because agriculture is not to the point that anyone's labor can be spared from the fields, but interdependent specialists, each with training and a narrow career supported by others with their own tasks to perform. Some training can be acquired in adulthood, like learning how to use a particular sort of tool or keeping up with the cutting edge research in a field; some training is sufficiently generic that everyone will learn the same content, such as speaking and reading and doing arithmetic; and some is best learned early, yet not necessary for everyone. Any blue is well served by learning a second, third, even fourth language, early on before they will lose the ability to pick up new sounds and grammars easily; a purple isn't likely to need it. Any green is likely to benefit from learning to process a formal research paper, and the typical grey will not. Many greys will value time in their childhoods spent developing stamina and habits of posture and flexibility; yellows generally don't. And so on. So, by specializing, not just on the level of an individual's life and training and career, but by caste, we can gather more of the benefits associated with specialization, acculturating everyone into an appropriate domain. There are also eugenic benefits but that's not really the province of theology."

"Dwellin rarely change their major career paths after one or two lives. While not all kings can reclaim their thrones upon rebirth, they tend to find some sort of leadership. I suppose having more opportunity to accumulate experience is our method of specialization, though we do have less of it."

"Yes, you're inhibited in other ways. Not having castes seems to work for you! It's just not the way that makes the most sense for Amentans to do things."

Nodnod. "I would be interested in learning a thorough understanding of Amentan theology, but being thorough would take time and I'm sure we are both busy people. And the obvious method to educate oneself without inconveniencing others, reading, is not especially open to us. Alas. Regardless, would you like me to summarize the basics of our theology? We are still in low-hanging fruit territory here."

"I assume audiobooks wouldn't solve your problem there? But, yes, please, I would be fascinated."

"...You can make a book that is a voice? Oh, some sort of extension of the voice transmission. Ahem."

"Firnu is the Smith and the Breath. His key characteristic is strength and foreverness, and his aesthetic and symbol is fire, stars, and the daytime sky. From Firnu we learn that working hard, holding to your responsibilities, and patient diligence are good."

"Dela is the Farmer-Forester* and the Blood. Her key characteristic is love and thoughtfulness and her symbol is the oceans, blood, and summer. From Dela we learn to take care of the land and our families, and to think of the future our actions build a path to."

"Kanku is the Mother and the Loins. Her key characteristic is fertility and fertility** and her symbol is the soil, sex, and dawn. From Kanku we learn how to care for children, the constant change of the world, and of nutrition, health, and ecology."

"Elbon is the King and the Brain. Their key characteristic is temperance and caution and their symbol is stone, bones, and winter. From Elbon we learn that not all change is good, to remember the impact our actions have on others, and that all can be forgiven."

"Hessen is the Teacher and the Hand. Their key characteristic is ambition and drive and their symbol is wood or metal, fighting, and storms. From Hessen we learn to challenge ourselves to learn and do more, for stagnation is akin to true death."

*This is a single word denoting both jobs

**The first in the sense of children, the second in the sense of plants

"That's a lovely set of symbology. How are those lessons learned from those figures?"

"I don't hold, though some of my colleagues and dedicated theologians do, that our current understandings of the gods depict actual beings with any accuracy. The gods surely existed, but people cannot be reduced to a few symbols and things grow warped in the retelling even with the most dedicated oral tradition. Our conception of the gods is thus not of people, but of convenient symbols in a vaguely personlike shape of the sort memory holds onto more easily, and also stock characters who are understood to represent them. The wildfire parable has stock characters symbolizing Firnu and Dela appear briefly, while Elbon's stand-in has multiple long conversations with the blank subject of the tale."

"Interesting! So they're more of a mnemonic device for Dwellin theological principles than the direct teachers of those principles."

"In the symbolic tradition, yes."