Savil pinches her lips together, and switches to private Mindspeech. :Do we know if that - thing - has weapons?:

Tran frowns at the space shuttle. It looks very shiny and very advanced and powerful. :...Can't tell. It'd probably be rude to ask?:

After a long beat of silence, Taver answers the aliens - in Mindspeech, again, they seem to understand writing but not speech? 

:We appreciate the offer of friendship. We will welcome you in Haven: 

The aliens are not shielded at all and Taver is also absolutely reading their minds, now. He has - a bad feeling about this, though an inconveniently vague one. 

The ones who have emerged from the ship are:

- one with blue hair, the one who said "Amenta" aloud. She is very glad they're getting a good reception! It's hard to do diplomacy through such bad machine translation. Hopefully the locals have a linguist - or some more primitive precursor to a linguist? - who can help them out with the translation project all those greens in the sky are working so hard on.
- one with green hair, who is transcribing what Taver says telepathically into writing so the record of the conversation is complete and annotating their machine translation record with what they were originally attempting to say. This is very complicated to do in real time and is not what she is trained for, her fieldwork was in translations of international news incidents, and those are all on video so you can listen to them six times, but she is not going to fuck up on a mission to meet aliens, no siree.
- one with yellow hair, who is taking notes on the green's transcription to include things like "then the blue pointed at our star" and "this speaker is a telepathic quadruped". He is nervous about how the other delegations are doing, they haven't heard anything back from the people returning the library books or the shuttle that went to Karse, and that's at least a little weird, isn't it? Maybe Mission Control doesn't want to distract them?

:They sent an envoy to Karse as well: Taver informs Tran and Kellan. He's also relaying all of this to Randi's Sondra, who is not here in person; it seemed stupid to put the King at risk. 

:Huh. Wonder how that went: 

:Somehow I doubt it went well. The current Karsite leadership is - not exactly reasonable: 

Taver taps his hoof against the grass - his only visible sign of unhappiness, and hopefully the aliens aren't familiar with horse or Companion body language. 

After a moment, he addresses them again. :What do you hope to learn or explore most urgently?: 

Well, ultimately what they are really after here is living space, though the magic is also VERY INTERESTING, if it's actually magic, and what else could it be, and the second option is less threatening. The blue composes a message and puts it through machine translation for the green to frown at and then they display it: We are very inquisitive to do with magic!

That's...somewhat concerning. Why are they trying to colonize another planet. What happened to the one they came from. 

:We would be delighted to consider an exchange of knowledge, then: Taver answers. :We have magic, and you clearly have technologies that we lack: 

Yes! We are ultra happy to tell about new inventions! replies the blue. Like PLUMBING. They need PLUMBING. She wants to tell Lay Pipe that they can send fifteen thousand purples here YESTERDAY.

Savil, when this is relayed to her, rolls her eyes slightly and hopes the visitors don't notice. She's kind of offended that they're judging Haven's plumbing. The Heralds have done a lot of work on that in the last few decades! 

:Then we should organize that: Taver says. :First, I suppose that you will need accommodations here?: 

Ahahaha how about plumbing FIRST guest rooms LATER. Our boat of the sky is quarters! the blue replies cheerfully. Please let us introduce myself. We will say names that are ours!

The blue says "Kesha Nat". "Nat" means "star"; she changed it recently when she scored an interstellar diplomacy job.

The green says "Antai Tekma"; "Tekma" means "language".

The yellow says "Oshun Makutka"; "Makutka" means "observer".

Tantras politely repeats the names, then points at himself. "Herald Tantras." Points at his Companion. "Taver." 

"Herald Savil. Kellan." 

It is so goodness to meet you! Where is the place we are at land?

:The city is called Haven. The kingdom is Valdemar: 

How to translate from telepathy into sounds... "Havfen? Fvaldtemarr?"

Oh, that's surprisingly cute. 

"Haven," Savil clarifies helpfully. "Valdemar." 

The green tries and has better pronunciation. The blue is embarrassed; she speaks four languages and still has a pronounced Tapap accent in most of them.

:We should help you learn the language: Taver declares. :So that we can better exchange knowledge: 

The green writes Yes please thank you!

Then Taver can spend a while asking them in Mindspeech what sorts of words they want to learn, and then Mindspeaking sample sentences and having Savil repeat them out loud. 

The Groveborn Companion is exceptionally good at multitasking, and while he does this, he's also busy updating the other Companion in Haven, conferring with King Randale via Sondra, and worrying. 

And reading the visitors' minds, because he continues to have a very uncomfortable feeling about all of this. 

Antai Tekma, the green, takes point on the language discussion, though the blue checks over everything she says for diplomacy. Tekma's really absorbed in the language discussion. The yellow, Oshun Makutka, goes on taking notes and is now specifically flagging some of them for the translation project who are supervising from orbit but is also thinking that he's kind of hungry and could really go for picklepot right now. Kesha Nat, in between making sure none of the example sentences are too judgmental about the plumbing thing and that nobody whose facial expressions she might be able to read looks too annoyed, is prodding Mission Control for an update on the other two delegations. She was against sending them all at once but if they're going to offer to take either side in a war in exchange for stuff they want there are admittedly reasons not to prioritize one or the other before making a decision, and she went along with it, and now she has no idea how her counterparts are doing in the southerly country...

:What is up with them and plumbing, anyway?: Savil mutters to Tran in private Mindspeech, when that piece is relayed.