"I understand, no field has that much consensus. They seem like sound principles to hang a theology on."

"Theology does extend past the gods, there are not merely five poles. The nature of power, political and military. Meditations on tactics and negotiating. The use of different weapons and dangerous animals as symbols for different personalities or approaches to a problem. Many of my colleagues are rather hung up on conflict, from my perspective, but I find those parts less compelling. Also, I am not a full-time theologist."

"It's usually a career, for Amentans, but I think we may be more careerist in some ways."

"You seem to have thousands of narrow specialized tasks through high technology and high population. A job that one in a million people need to do can be a career if you have a million people. It's tacked on to someone else's tasks here, if we have something comparable at all."

"In some ways it's unfortunate that we've developed so much complexity that not only can no one person do all the things needed to support them, they probably don't even know what they all are. But it's enabled some things that are very important to us, like being able to cross the sky to meet you."

"And hopefully also find less annoying planets to build new cities on?"

"We're working on it! Most planets don't have breathable air, but even one that we had to build domes on to live there would be good as long as its years were close to our planet's length. This one isn't far enough off that no one can season here but we're still cycling personnel a fair bit as people see whether they do or don't season here."

"I heard a bit about your labyrinthine hormonal system from one Pon, Sa-something I think, I'm no good at remembering double names."

"Job names are for if you meet someone while they're doing their job, and personal names are for other contexts. I haven't met Pon personally but I know of her."

"Is Pon a job name or a personal name, then?"

"Job name. They come second."

"I see. So from what I understand, an Amentan might consider an ideal life to be one where their home is clean, they are safe and healthy, have productive and valuable work, and have multiple children for whom the same holds?"

"That sounds about right, yes. They generally also want hobbies and friends."

"For us that list would include the ability to feel accomplished at something and would not hold clean specifically aside from safe and healthy. I've also heard that if I wish to visit Amenta I'll need an extensive cleaning. Can you tell me more about that?"

"We care a lot about being clean! We're pretty sure this evolved because sanitation improves the disease environment a lot, but of course that doesn't change how we feel about it any more than knowing that love is derived from kin selection pressure does. And it isn't just germs we're concerned with; pollen stains on a window are also troubling to have present, and satisfying to have cleaned away. But the things that are the most distressing are all serious infection or contamination risks, to us or to things like food stores."

"Love is real, the joy of battle is real, and cleanliness desire is real, regardless of their ultimate origins, I agree. Ah, just so you can alert someone relevant, there is a pest species called the mask-rats who are terribly clever for their size and excellent at hiding signs of their presence and will gladly eat anything there is to be eaten. They can even change color, scent, and move silently. Only common in the more dangerous kinds of jungles and in cave systems, I believe."

"I'll pass that along to the naturalists, thank you."

Nod. "I believe I mentioned the parable of the wildfire, I feel it's a good piece to introduce some ideas with..."

Karakan will gladly spend an hour or two discussing theology, though not much more than that.

He's perfectly happy to abide by her schedule.

Eventually, Karakan says she enjoyed the discussion and leaves. She spends another day in Three Bells and pronounces the Wells healthy before moving on to a circuit of the outlying villages.

A few days after that, the diplomat to Tapa from Three Bells requests a meeting with his counterpart regarding developments in the conflict against the pirate clique Three Kills.

...is that supposed to be a pun? Also sure, what's up?

"I'm not sure what looks like a pun? The group calls themselves Three Kills. They were formed by a group of deserters from our navy. Anyway, we won. The satellite photos helped, we knew what port facilities to bombard and where to go ashore. Burned several ships, extracted a surrender, took a lot of prisoners. The bulk of the attack fleet will be back in three days, so the window of danger is closed."

Both groups being called Three followed by a plural noun looks sort of punnish. "What do you do with prisoners here?"

"In this case we'll likely have a trial for the leadership and ransom the rest, returning them if Three Kills agrees to stop their piracy and accept a few observers to enforce this."