:We have been working on machine translation for Tapap and Standard Asteralian but we want to also use telepathy to avoid miscommunication. Our intention is to display what we can offer you so that we can trade for supplies and the very large crystal that we talked about yesterday.

Before we continue, would you mind if we (ex) pray to our deity, Teiatat? You may join if you wish.:

He is now doing what Mekapi did yesterday and saying the words he's transmitting out loud in Asteralian.

She too is speaking aloud for posterity. "We would be curious to watch, but don't know how to do that."

Hm...it is possible that the aliens have no concept of religion at all and he needs to give more context.

:Teiatat, the Generous Patron of Desire, is the entity which grants our Crowned, the Hierophant, his powers, and from whom we also learned our magical lore. It is also through this connection that we have access to orgone.

Praying is an invocation or an act intended to supplicate or request something of another. It is also used to focus or declare one's intentions. There are prayers with fixed wordings said at fixed times, but one can also pray extemporaneously with free wording. We will now do so. The language that we use for prayer is different from our regular language.:

The rest of the Asteralians join in saying the words.

:O, Generous Patron of Desire, your Asteralians have met with the Amentan people through fortuitous accident. May you enable us to have pleasing, profitable, and productive intercourse with each other. May this be the beginning of a fruitful partnership. Years from now, may our children and their children beyond that celebrate this occasion. Let it be so.:

The Lavender Language is sibilant and rich in vowels. Standard Asteralian is English-derived in phonology.

Nothing else observably happens.

The "may it be so" construction does not translate neatly into Tapap. They wind up kind of expectant, waiting for the delivery of the miracle that they just ordered to show up any minute now.

Tragic. Does Tapap not have any hortatives?

Rauha was thinking that Mekapi would want to say some words of her own but he should be more explicit.

:If you wished to say some words to mark the occasion, this would be the time. Otherwise we can begin immediately.: He sends this only to her and doesn't say it out loud.

Tapap has hortatives but they are not usually used in situations like this one. This situation is, grammatically speaking, unheard of. They are not saying "let's go to the mall" or "you may want to use the rear entrance".

"We would also appreciate this," she says, for lack of a way to match the style.

Oh well.

They've decided on the strategy of showing off what they can do first before telling them what they want. So they're going to do that.

:Much of our equipment was destroyed, so what we have to offer immediately is limited. Also, the nature of orgone means that, even if we give you the exact specifications of our artifacts and you made them, they would not work if you tried to operate them. 

However, we are open to sharing a large portion of our knowledge, both magical and mundane, and also offering our services in managing magical artifacts or infrastructure once it is built by you. We are going to demonstrate some of these now.:

The Lore of Stone and Rune is used for manipulating forces and orgonic energy. It's made by carving runes into stone and perhaps inlaying them with various materials. Trying to analogize it to mundane sciences, it's a combination of assembly programming and mechanical engineering.

The experimental drive that led them here is built using it.

It is possible to use stone magic to create orgone collectors which gather it into batteries. In this way, large constructs requiring enormous energy can be powered, like the aforementioned experimental drive. It can also be converted into mundane energies like electricity to power industry. It would also enable the Amentans to have a limited number of their own orgonic artifacts by charging them with said batteries. They sell orgonic batteries to various states back home which don't have access to it. The orgone collectors themselves still have to be managed by the Asteralians or they stop working. The experimental drive used many orgone batteries and they had to have a separate hauler travel with it to carry them.

Stone magic is also used for material reinforcement. They use stone magic to create stuff like space elevators, the outer hulls of spaceships,  and g-force isolated rooms. Every spaceship in the Accord has these and they function as panic rooms or escape pods. It's what allowed them all to survive the crash without injury (though some people did get injured afterward during their survey of the ship).

Stone magic can also generate or nullify gravity. They could have zero-g rooms on the surface of Amenta or full-g in space. They also construct some shuttles out of these so they don't need to use rockets. They land so gently that they could potentially land on a city square. They show a video of a shuttle touching down on a field and then flying back up, the plants underneath trampled but not burnt.

They're willing to demonstrate stone magic in person by showing them one of the shielded rooms, which are kept at zero-g. However, this is inside the ship. Are there people who are willing to enter? They have prepared the path from this airlock to the nearest one so it should be safe to traverse.

They've got an artificial crystal engineer on hand to give them a preliminary estimate of how long that will take and a ballpark guess at how expensive (not that they are expecting the Asteralians to pay in tap but it's useful as a benchmark).

Where does orgone energy come from, that it can go into batteries, do Astaralians just generate it on a continuous basis or do they have to do something?

Do they have any use for Amentan medical anything? Drug compatibility is probably low to zero but maybe they set bones, or need disinfectants?

They can have their pick of these Amentans to come on board!

It's probably going to take months or more. They appreciate the estimate.

Orgone comes from other dimensions, called 'the higher planes'. They readily admit that they don't actually know that much about the basic theory of it and mostly know its application.

Asteralians have to, broadly speaking, live in Asteralian society. And be observant to the Edicts. They don't generate it but they channel it from their connection to the Hierophant's Edicts and the Hierophant's connection with Teiatat and the higher planes. Orgone collectors tap into places where the higher planes are especially 'near' in a figurative sense. They have sensors to measure which places are most suitable.

They do not need Amentan medical supplies — the shielded rooms have some water magic equipment and they were able to recover the living wood staves necessary for it, even if many of the elixirs have been spilled.

They can come inside! Everything is built to be for people bigger than them but this means that they won't have any issue fitting through the doors and corridors.

The shielded room has been prepared for them and most of the stuff has been cleared out. There are metal bars on the walls and cords stretching from one side of the room to another, intended to be handholds. It's not clear where the runes are — the walls seem bare. The walls and most of everything in the room is pure white. The room is around the size of two shipping containers.

The Asteralians warn them that the moment they stick a leg or an arm through the threshold, it immediately ceases to be affected by gravity and so the appendage might jerk suddenly as the muscles exert against a force that is no longer there. Also, if they begin to feel nauseated, they should immediately tell them and be escorted out — it would be very bad to vomit in zero-g because they might aspirate it. Also, they should make sure to always be holding onto something or otherwise have forward momentum. Otherwise you risk getting stuck in the middle of the room. They'll rescue anyone who does, though.

They are going to escort them one by one if they want to enter, holding them by the waist and arms. The people tasked with this aren't those in the main negotiating group and can accommodate zero-g playtime for as long as they want.

One of the Amentans hangs back, having had an experience in zero-gravity that Did Not Go Well, but the others forge in bravely. One of the greens wants to go in last and play with the gravity/zero-g boundary but nobody here is actually that enamored of bouncing around per se.

That is valid.

And yes, they can play with the boundary! It removes the force of gravity but does not remove other forces: if an object enters with some momentum, it will retain it. If you throw an object at an arc such that it goes down and into the doorway, it will continue going "down" but won't be accelerating anymore.

Is anyone interested in an aerialist show? Yes they did get prior approval for this from the captain!

Oh yes PLEASE says photographer green.

They remove one of the cords and bring in a hoop with two cords tied to opposite ends, and then attach these two cords to opposite walls.

One of them will remove his boots and go up to the hoop at an angle to get them both spinning.

They explain that zero-g aerialism is way more accessible than weighted aerialism because you don't have to contend with gravity (so you need less strength) and if you make a mistake, you just float away rather than falling to the ground. It's super common in the Accord.

There are no strength holds to be found but lots of displays of flexibility — it's somewhat obscured by the coveralls the performer is wearing, though. And a lot of moves alternating between stretched limbs slowing down rotation and then bring them back in to speed up.

Zero-g soccer is also common but regrettably they don't have the setup for it. They offer to let other people try the hoop.

The greys try, one at a time, and one of the purples brought in to consult about the giant crystal.

They can do so! If they are done, they can bring them back out, supporting them through once again, this time to prevent them from crumpling because their muscles aren't resisting gravity.

Meanwhile, the people back at the main meeting talk about the Lore of Fire and Crucible, which is used for transmutation of matter and creation and manipulation of mundane energies. Fire magic requires very precisely calibrated alloys of different metals. The composition of an artifact determines what it can do, though to a lesser extent the shape matters too.

They use fire magic to transmute different materials into other ones. So you can conceivably turn lead into gold. Doing something with precision or which preserves the original structure is very difficult, though. Useful for recycling! Relatedly, they should shift away from using precious metals as currency if they're doing that. The Accord uses fiat currency managed with wind magic. Although there are still rare materials — materials which are inherently magical and which are difficult or can't be transmuted into with fire magic.

Fire magic is also used for the creation and transmutation of mundane energy. They use it for lighting and sometimes radio transmission. Also heating, both for industry and domestic purposes.

They demonstrate with a lightpencil. Felicity takes out a pen-shaped object — it's white, tipped with a silvery hemisphere at the end. There are a couple of dials near the opposite tip plus a button near the end. He turns the dials and the holds it, pressing the button.

The hemisphere glows and leaves behind a trail of purple light, like a neon sign, except it's immaterial and just hangs in the air. He draws flowers with it, then fiddles with the dials again and adds green stems and leaves.

He waves his hands through them and they remain in the air, though they're a little distorted by it. He explains that the markings will last several minutes to hours, depending on the setting. They can also be erased: he demonstrates by fiddling with the dials again and passing the tip across a glowing line, which is extinguished.

Felicity offers Mekapi the lightpencil if she wants to try!

Amenta does not use precious metals for representing or backing wealth any more. Are these magical applications for things like lighting cheaper or merely cooler than accomplishing them technologically?

Mekapi will try the lightpencil, though she keeps her drawings unambitious - triangles, a bit of text, swirls and stars.

It can be cheaper for the Asteralians, because you only have to pay the one-time cost of the metal alloy rather than continuously pay for electricity, but since Amentans don't have a native source of orgone, it may not be economical.

Fire magic can also be used for lasers and very directed heating, which can be useful industrially.

They also use it for weapons, but they don't talk about that.

It makes sense that they wouldn't talk about that since they do the armed neutrality thing (which strikes Amentans as pretty sensible).

They have gotten the sense from the provided media that it might be possible that some Asteralians are trans-species?

Yes! A requirement to join their society is also to change form to be like them. It is one of the Hierophant's Edicts. Presbyters and apostles — a higher rank of priest — can perform the ritual which effects this change. The ritual is instantaneous but the change occurs over the course of months. It is a requirement for being a citizen and being able to vote. Also, you will receive the blessings of cleanliness, ability to channel orgone, and agelessness.

The Hierophant is unaging and bestows this blessing upon all of the citizens of the Asteral Accord. So they don't senesce or die of old age. They can still die, though, through accident. Though basically never through disease, because of water magic! Which they will explain later.

Rauha predicts, but does not guarantee, that the Asteral Accord would be very pleased to have Amentan immigrants! The Accord does accept a much more limited number of permanent residents who can live in their spaces but retain their original forms and citizenship. There are also Asteralians who wish to live in other places and they would permit them to immigrate to Amenta or Tapa, if they allowed them. He says it in a tone which implies many countries Do Not allow emigration.

Also, how many people live in Tapa, or Amenta in general?

Tapa's got about a billion, approximately 1/13 of the global population.

Would emigrants... turn into Amentans? Besides the anatomical changes, and the code of conduct, what else changes about a person who turns into an Asteralian? Since they have population controls, why are they interested in taking immigrants? What limits do they place on non-trans-species permanent residents, and how long can impermanent residents stay?

Wow. That's a lot of people! The Asteral Accord only has seventy million.

Emigrants would not turn into Amentans but there are water magic ways to turn people into Amentans if desired.

Biological impulses would be altered. For example, since Asteralians don't have breeding seasons, they will stop experiencing breeding seasons. Otherwise, it does not itself effect any mental changes.

They have population controls in the sense that they have mechanisms to restrict reproduction. He explains that the Asteral Accord began in the asteroid belt, in a single asteroid with limited magical lore, and resources were very limited such that they could support very few children. But now they have many more holdings on asteroids and moons and habitats and orbitals and now there is great abundance in space and resources. So while the population controls are still in effect, the barrier for getting a permission is very low. Most of the people in the ship could decide they wanted a child and be permitted to have one within a month...though obviously they're not going to try to do that in this situation.

They are interested in taking immigrants because they think that the Asteralian way of life is a very goodly way of life and there are many people who would be suitable for it and flourish within it. They think that people should be allowed to move to where they feel they would be the happiest, again with the sort of phrasing and tone which implies that other countries Do Not think that way.

The restrictions on non-trans-species permanent residents and impermanent residents are decided on an asteral basis. An 'aster' is basically a 'province', but in space, so it's typically a single large habitat. It is its own political unit and it can set how many of these it will permit. And it's also dependent on the nationality of the resident. Some may allow lots or none at all. Citizens have free movement between asters, but they may not necessarily obtain voting rights for that specific aster immediately (though they retain federal voting rights).

Generally, 1% of the population is allowed to be non-trans-species permanent residents. Things are much more free with impermanent residents and tourists though, and they have many free movement or visa-free travel arrangements with various states.