Okay, do they have written records of the legend or just oral tradition?

"Why would- No. No. We would not write such things. The Well and oral tradition is the proper way. Writing is for... Practical things only. Hungry animal lives here. This is poison. Bread costs this much."

"The Well?"

"The Well of Souls. Where your memories go, so you can come back again in some new mother's arms?"

They would like to hear more about that!

They make sure to touch the leaves of these special trees as often as possible, it's a pretty distinct feeling as the Well accepts your memories. When new babies are born, at about a third of a year of age they are 'baptized' by touching them to the same trees. And most of the time, the baby receives the soul of someone who died and starts remembering lots of details of their past lives as they grow up.

Wow. Does the same set of memories ever appear in two different children? What happens when the child doesn't get a set of memories from touching the tree? How did they originally learn to do this?

It's been this way as long as anyone can remember, and they have heard of someone being alive twice at a time but it might be a tall tale- Someone who became a hermit and avoided the trees for decades, the Well thought they had died and split the soul into both the hermit and a child. New souls are blessed in their own way and often have interesting ideas about how to do things, though of course they mustn't take those too far.

Too far like how?

"Like the Black Emperor, for one. He was a new soul." There's a round of muttering at this. "Breaking things that work fine already. But- Amentans do not have a Well of Souls?"

"That kind of tree does not grow on our planet."

"...We should do the dying if there's dying to be doing. We mostly come back, and that means more kids for a while too. This place is mostly safe, though."

"It means more kids?"

"Yes. If things are crowded, no kids no matter how much you fuck. More deaths, more space, more kids, and the dead get to come back sooner or later. Nobody likes dying but better us than you, if you don't even come back!"

"...how crowded?"

"You definitely wouldn't live on one of your cities if you were trying for one. The biggest city I remember visiting had buildings with four floors and basements and there were hardly any kids around."

This concerns the Amentans very much. They are all quiet for awhile.

The Dwellins aren't asking many questions but they're a bit concerned at this. The one in the fanciest armor walks up (handing his sword off to another) and asks if they've offended their visitors somehow.

"No, no, you haven't offended us at all," Kasotu assures him. "It seems like it might not be good for Amentans to live here."

"Maybe, maybe not." The chief says thoughtfully. "I think some of you would not be a problem at all, but perhaps not as many as you would like, mrr? We all have a lot to learn here. I don't know if we can expect the same thing to happen to you with crowding here preventing children. I would guess not, that it is a Dwellin thing and not a here thing, but I don't know. I don't know how far you can push before nature decides it doesn't like you, and I can not imagine a safe way to find out. But both of those things are things you'd really rather know, mrr? Not good."

"Does it happen with animals?" she ventures.

The chief thinks hard. "...I do not know enough to say. The most dangerous animals have not left their homes and spread across the world, and I think a purple forest predator would dominate places like this if unopposed. Then again, I know small animals can grow rampant for a time and eat and dirty all your food stores, if you don't have ways to stop them from doing that. And food birds multiply well enough if you're eating some regularly. But I did not set out to study this, so, I do not know."

Maybe a few Amentans will hang out on this planet and do science experiments, but not build an entire city right away. Hopefully there will be other planets that don't have this problem but they were very optimistic about this one.

They would be perfectly welcome to build a village as big as the local one for... What is 'science experiments'?

Science experiments are when you try to figure out how the world works by trying different things! They can study local plants and animals and learn more about the locals, too, but mostly they'd be trying to figure out how the trees work and how the natural population control works.