"Hmm! I wonder if humans where I'm from are like that—or elves, for that matter, I haven't noticed much of a difference in what we like to eat but I also didn't know there were issues besides boredom with eating nothing but fish."

"Elves? Is that -" Arela gestures to where her ears would be if she had ears. "You look more like a human subspecies than anything else, though admittedly humans are already kind of implausibly similar to asari and that's posed some significant questions to xenobiologists through the years - irrelevant, sorry, I get distracted. Are you considered a different species? Are you interfertile? Am I being horribly invasive?"

"You're being a little invasive but I don't mind a bit," Isaure assures her. "So, the situation as I understand it: the four peoples of Thedas are elves, humans, dwarves, and qunari. Elves are like so," she indicates herself. "Humans are closer to your height and build than mine, closer to my colour palette than yours, and have, as you guessed, rounder ears. Dwarves are shorter than elves and better-muscled than just about anyone and I've heard they can do strange things but I've never met one. Qunari come from a different continent and they're enormously tall and grey and have horns and keep trying to conquer everyone. Mostly you can only make children with your own kind, but it's not impossible, I know someone who's managed it. An elf and a human, and their daughter came out looking so human you couldn't have known otherwise without her telling you."

"Huh! Parapatric speciation, maybe? I can't imagine the evolutionary pressures that would give you narrower ears, though. Do you also hear better than humans, it could be a spandrel..."

"We might hear a little better, but not so much that it's obvious. We do see in the dark better, and we turn up mages more often, not that that's necessarily a good thing."

"Oh, I forgot about the magic I was so excited about biology - magic! My home universe only has Mass Effect manipulation, which is pretty cool but not as cool as actual magic! Um, the Mass Effect lets you manipulate how much things effectively weigh and apply force to them, which amounts to some pretty effective telekinesis plus a couple of other lesser effects. In addition to that, as an asari I can interface with alien nervous systems and manipulate them in various ways, usually purely communicative, but I guess that's enough to net me an invitation to MCU."

She chuckles. "Yes, magic. I want to say it's less exciting than it sounds but I suppose I don't know how exciting you find it."

"Extremely!"

"Magic," says the girl stepping daintily over the threshold, "is stupid. I really wanted to be a wizard, but I studied for two semesters and all I learned was that without a mutant trait, you're basically fucked. Unless you lived in bronze age Greece and had nothing better to do for three thousand years, in which case you're Circe."

"I don't know what a mutant trait is but I don't think my world has magic that can be learned without a born talent either," says Isaure. "Sorry. Apparently there's magic lessons here that will work regardless, though. I wonder how that works?"

"I'll bet it's still not cool enough to spend a significant amount of effort on it when we've all got our own more specific talents."

Diki raises Tynan's hand and waves it at the new arrival. "Everybody introduce? Diki is Diki, jawa, Jedi with Force powers. Tynan is Tynan, baby human, also with force powers but not good at them yet."

"Oh, cool, a baby. Love not being informed I'm going to be rooming with a baby. I'm Tessa, Tessa Argyris. I'm a mutant - specifically a package-deal psychic. That means at any given time I can be telekinetic, or psychic, or a Gadgeteer, which is a kind of ESP that lets me instinctively understand technology."

"I'm Arela K'Bael. I'm an asari, which is a kind of sexy blue alien that wants to fuck your wife, and that means I'm also a biotic - telekinetic - and able to meld with other species' nervous systems for communicative and reproductive purposes. I can't do anything particularly fucked-up while I'm in there, though."

"I'm Isaure and I am an elf. I was hoping to dodge the question of whether I'm a mage, but apparently we're all sharing, so yes, I am."

"Why dodge the question? Just general inclination to hide your capabilities?"

"Habit. At home it's not wise to admit to it."

"Ah. I'd say 'what kind of dystopia are you from' but I'm pretty sure we'd all have been burned for witchcraft where I'm from a few centuries ago, so." She shrugs. "Apparently a relatively common kind."

"In defense of the Templars, unsupervised mages do turn up full of demons pretty often and it's a problem. I just don't want to be dragged off to prison and forced to spend my life in other people's service just because I had the misfortune to be born with powers they fear."

"Oh, that's significantly more dystopian than I was imagining actually."

"Damn," Arela agrees.

Diki hefts Tynan, patting him rapidly on the back. "Tynan needing nap. Okay if Diki go to settle in yes?"

"Of course!"

"Yeah, go right ahead. Might take a nap myself, see if I can outrun the jet lag."