A team of five alights in the city center out of nowhere! They are visibly unusual, such as one of them having big pink-feathered wings, and wait a moment in case anyone has a response to that before they start taking further initiative.

The near-uniform response from the people frequenting the square is to blink, stop for a moment, and check that everyone else saw that too. Once it has been established that something actually happened, they break into spontaneous cheers for the Fair Ones. A handful of runners disappear into the city, and a young man with a limp stands from the edge of the square and limps toward them with the aid of a cane.

"As one who attempted the journey, to one who attempted the journey, I salute you. I am Sortinel, advisor to Kepras. Are you hurt?"

"...no, we're fine, thank you. Is there some reason you'd expect us to be hurt?"

"The crossing from the homeland of my Mother to this one is dangerous. I myself arrived soul-worn and remembering little of my time in Mother's court," Sortinel explains. "But, of course, I made the journey by mind and not in body. Your method may well be superior to the one known when I left."

"I don't believe we've been to the homeland you speak of," says Nelen. "We're from what we call Vanda Nossëo."

Sortinel frowns.

"The name is not familiar, but few speak Mother's tongue..."

At this point a taller woman with a dark green cloak and bare breasts makes a whistle that Allspeak translates as "I disagree; Attend".

"If they aren't fair ones, they aren't fair ones, you disagreeable absolutist. We should ask them what they are."

She turns to the envoys.

"I am Hragash. You stand in The City at the Meeting of the Rivers and the Minds. Although they might have to rename it if people are going to start appearing here by magic."

"People are appearing all over the world by magic to meet the inhabitants of this world! This is just the team that's been assigned to this city. My name is Nelen Utopia, and these are Tanaka Natsuko, Tarwë, Zanro, and Cassiel Jones." (The named parties wave.)

Hragash and Sortinel talk over each other for a moment before Sortinel graciously waves a hand.

"It's a pleasure to meet you all, I'm sure. Are you Archivists, then? Or traders."

Sortinel coughs.

"Or omnibenevolent royalty from beyond the veil of madness," he contributes under his breath.

"We're envoys, here to learn about you and answer questions about us and where we're from. Vanda Nossëo is a big group of many worlds and peoples working together. We do some trading too - for example, we have a lot of interesting magic available. I could heal you if you'd like," he adds to Sortinel.

He perks up at this, as far as that's possible with his leg.

"Yes, please!"

Nelen extends a hand. "It's touch-range."

Sortinel takes his hand, and then straightens up with a sort of wonder, and starts rubbing his face with his hands.

"Thank-you-and-goodbye," they remark, breaking eye contact and carefully going through a series of stretches.

"So, like a trading conglomerate or alliance or something?" Hragash questions, not apparently bothered by Sortinel's strong reaction.

"Will you be wanting to put up a sign, then? The southeastern face of the building with the carved square pattern permits public signs, so long as you don't obstruct other signs newer than three days."

"Vanda Nossëo does a lot of trading but it's more of a federation than a conglomerate," says Nelen. "It's possible we'll want a sign, what sorts of things do people put up signs for?"

"Well, they're a way to make general announcements. Like that a new store is opening, or there's been a change to caravan schedules, or that there's a change in law to be debated, that sort of thing," she explains.

And then, because some of these people look like pretty serious aliens, and they're certainly not acting like they've been watching humanity from afar, she adds:

"... if you don't have an announcement written down, then you need to either speak to people one-on-one, which is time-inefficient, or employ a crier, which is loud and will upset people. Or rely on gossip, which can twist your words. So in a city, where people often want to make public announcements in a more reliable way, we set aside locations for signage. If I imagine myself in your place, I think that you might want to put up a sign explaining who you would like to talk to you for more information, and how they can do so."

"Sometimes we put up a store, and then people can come meet us in our store, and get things from offworld if they'd like any. Would that work?"

"Should do! A permanent storefront, or a market stall? The latter you can pay a fee by the day, but the former needs coordination with the architectural advisory council or for you to rent space in an already constructed building."

"Well, we don't have any local money yet, we only have Vanda Nossëo money right now."

"Having personally seen your healing, I'm happy to front you ... forty marks? To be repaid within a week. You'll probably make it back in five minutes by running a spot-auction for healing, but it's enough to cover market fees for that same period, I think. Alternatively, there's a bank by the gate to the city that would probably be happy to extend you a line of credit."

"Alternatively alternatively, we could figure out a currency exchange rate and you can buy some marks off me for Vanda Nossëo currency, but that sounds like a longer conversation since I'd have to hear about your banking practices and we'd have to work out a basis for exchange."

In the background, Sortinel has gotten through the stretches, and is now eyeing the rough stone of the nearest building speculatively.

"Currency exchange will certainly need to happen eventually but we're not specialized in that ourselves. Am I allowed to sell healing outright without a market stall? About how much does a mark buy?"

"You can certainly sell healing, I was just offering to remove the ordering constraint. There are ordinances against disruptions in the square, but I personally think that 'miraculous healing' meets the bar for general public interest. A mark buys ... a loaf of bread, or six pages of nice paper. I don't know how you usually charge for things like this; would you like a description of the typical local practice for selling a good of unknown value?"

Sortinel launches himself into a climb, scrambling three meters up to the lowest ledge of the building with a cackle.

...Cassiel's gonna keep an eye on that climbing situation.

"The standard practice is actually to exchange things like healing and offworld goods for stories, or songs, because we're interested in the local culture, but there's no rule against taking money instead if we need it."

"So it can be tempting to barter directly, because of the overhead of involving bank transactions, but actually having an established currency is good for several reasons."

Hragash can launch into an impassioned speech about the benefits of currency, from the perspective of a retired merchant-captain who had to explain things like this to the uncivilized peoples living on dangerous far-off islands. The core of her argument boils down to the fact that knowing the prices of things is a useful decision-making strategy, and that barter makes it difficult to have efficient spot-auctions for things.

"Now who's being a disagreeable absolutist!" Sortinel heckles from the ledge. "If they want to barter stories for healing, they're eating the cost of the market inefficiency in exchange for a streamlined process. Not everything has to be mercantile; I bet your ship had high insurance premiums*! Time is money, in this fallen world where people wither and die, separate from the all-Mother."

*Translator's note: a mild insult.

"Oi! Business is happening, you no-good storyteller! Although I suppose that is evidence that they're fair ones, given your predilections."

At this point a young child steps toward the group of Envoys and clicks for attention, which makes Hragash and Sortinel pause their exchange.

"The non-arguing plaza is that way," they explain, pointing down one of the streets. "This is the arguing plaza, since it's in front of the house of judgement. In case you want to go be somewhere that arguments aren't. But it's okay — you shouldn't be scared, because they're not being impolite, since they're in the right place."

"I don't actually need an introduction to economics," Nelen attempts, when the introduction to economics is happening. "...I'm not sure if we want to be in the non-arguing plaza or not. What things count as arguing?"

The child thinks about this seriously for a minute.

"I think it's mostly about whether it's impolite to sound angry at people. It's always okay to sound angry as long as you're not angry at them."

"That's a good attempt at a definition, but it's not a hard-and-fast-rule," Hragash adds. "It's about self-sorting people who want vigorous public debate from those who just want to enjoy a sedate time in the city. If what you're doing is more arguing-ish than not, then you should generally do it over here and vice versa. I wouldn't have called Sortinel a no-good storyteller if we were in the non-arguing plaza. I probably would have just informed you that not everyone agrees with him and then left, because priests are dead weight!"

The last part of that is aimed back at Sortinel, who wiggles his fingers at her.

"Hm. I think we have low enough context that we might want to be here so nobody has to hold back from saying things that might be relevant, even though we're not really here to argue in particular."

Hragash nods. "That's why I'm here. I like a bit of vigorous public debate. That's my southern heritage — it's how the warm sea does things."

At this point the news of mysterious appearing visitors has had time to spread at the speed of feet, and a runner in a short brown kilt comes jogging up to them.

"The city face would like to convey an invitation to come talk with him at the library," they inform the envoys. "In case you want to talk to a specific, designated person."

Someone in the crowd boos the concept of a designated point of contact, on general principles, but everyone else seems ambivalent to the message.

"Maybe you'd like to leave someone here to do a healing spot-auction, and send someone else to talk to the city face?" Sortinel suggests. "Being healed was pleasant and I expect other people to benefit from it, so I'd like to see it happen, even if it happens in a suboptimal fashion."

Hragash grumbles about wishy-washy northern compromises, but doesn't actually speak out against the idea.

"I have the best healing of the bunch - Tarwë, Natsuko, how about you two go meet the city face?"

They nod and will follow the runner if that's available by way of direction.

It certainly is. The runner leads them to a large building decorated with carvings of sand dunes. The inside features carefully stacked shelves of clay tablets, paper books, and woven nets that Allspeak turns into jumbles of words hanging from the ceiling.

There are also small reading rooms, where Tarwë and Natsuko are greeted by an enthusiastic man with flyaway hair.

"It's so good to meet you! I am Ganim, and I speak for the city in matters of diplomacy. I would apologize for the manner in which you were received, but we had no notice of your arrival. Please, sit. I'm told that you yourselves speak for a much larger organization?"

"Yes, we're an envoy team from Vanda Nossëo, a federation of many peoples and cultures from many worlds."

"Wonderful. It's not often that we establish contact with a new settlement; all the good spots for villages nearby are taken up. Where is Vanda Nossëo, in relation to The City at the Meeting of the Rivers and the Minds?"

"So, there are many worlds - not just different planets around different stars, but entire worlds that you can't get to by just going between places normally. Vanda Nossëo is distributed across many of those. Some of them are next to each other, I can show you a map." He pulls out his computer to display an adjacency map. "Your world is here. I'm from this one, and my colleague here is from this one."

Ganim leans back in his chair, running a hand through his hair.

"I see. And 'next to' each other — is this a simplification? Can you tell how many worlds are next to ours?"

"They aren't next to each other in space, but ways to travel between worlds will fail if you try to go from here to here," he uses the same two worlds as an example, "but succeed if you take all these intermediate steps. We don't have a way to tell how many worlds are next to yours besides trying methods that will get a random adjacent world, enough times to expect we've found them all, and most worlds have many neighbors."

"Hmm. And how do you navigate these worlds once you've discovered them? I ask, because there are ... stories, of people from another world watching over this one, and occasionally making the dangerous journey here to help people in their time of need. They can only send their spirits, and they come to live on in the bodies of those they make the crossing to help. I imagine that many of them would welcome the chance to visit home, if such were possible."

"We're not aware of any worlds that have prior contact with this one, though that could easily be just because we haven't searched for them, but we travel by teleporting, which doesn't work very well on immaterial spirits but could probably bring along any that are attached to bodies."

Ganim nods thoughtfully.

"Well, it's something to think about. 'Teleporting' ... Can that take you anywhere? How hard is it to do?"

"There are several kinds learned in different ways, but in general yes, if you can teleport it can get you anywhere, maybe with several steps if you're going between worlds."

"Our insurance rates are going to be terrible," he murmurs to himself.

"Is there any way to prevent people from teleporting into an area?"

"...there are ways to do most things. There is not a cheap commonplace way to do that which works more emphatically than asking and preventing pictures of the area from being widely available. To be clear, doing that would work pretty well, teleportation is an ability most people have to be thoroughly vetted to receive. Why do you ask?"

"I ... really know very little about your worlds, but I have to assume you have theft? Also sometimes people make poor decisions or get possessed. These things don't have to happen very often to be a serious problem, if there are many worlds adjacent to ours."

"Theft is extremely rare in Vanda Nossëo because goods are cheap, every citizen gets an unconditional income, and identifying criminals is also cheap."

Ganim doesn't say 'well good for Vanda Nossëo' because he is a professional, actually.

"You mentioned earlier that Vanda Nossëo was a federation; what are your criteria for membership?"

"A majority vote of the entering polity - a majority of the people in that polity, not just of the votes - agreeing that they want that, and that the polity have and enforce sufficiently firm laws against torture, rape, and murder."

"Hmm. That sounds like a low barrier to entry on the face of it. What does 'sufficiently firm' mean?"

And he can give details about the existing laws against all of these things in the city, to see whether they meet the criteria. A more typical þereminian would get lost in the weeds, but Ganim is happy to stick to broad understanding and leave nitpicking to the argumentative assembly.

The things that usually trip places up (Tarwë explains) are if they have some kind of underclass whose victimhood isn't considered by law enforcement or some people whose perpetration is above the law - this also trips places up at the voting stage, they have to include children if they have those and slaves if they have those (they will presently stop, part of joining VN is agreeing to the freedom of exit rules) and so on.

Ganim is pretty sure they don't have an underclass. There are some laws that are enforced differently for children. Usually in a way that benefits the children, although not always. But 'adults' don't really seem like an underclass.

How does Vanda Nossëo handle suicide when multiple people reside in a body together? They don't actually require every inhabitant of a body to file an affidavit or anything — that would interfere with people's right to pass on the burdens of the world. But it does mean that theoretically a priest could get away with murdering their visitors, if they were willing to take themselves out as well.

They don't have a lot of cases of multiple people sharing bodies but they do have other cases of one person relying ontologically on another and there's quite a bit of case law about it. In general they allow suicide but there's some due diligence people are expected to do about it if they have inseparable dependents (they have, like, magical depression treatment and stuff).

Magical depression treatment isn't going to stop people committing suicide to avoid the negative effects of old age, but it will probably help a lot with other cases, Ganim notes. So that requirement seems plausibly tolerable. If he gets some paper to transcribe, will they go through the due diligence requirements so he can check them against existing law?

Oh curing old age is for most people a day trip to this one place. They have as yet no reason to think that this world makes that complicated, though it's possible it does and they'd need the more expensive solution.

They can go over whatever Ganim finds relevant!

... wow, that's going to be popular. And change a lot.

Actually, that is the third or fourth time he's been surprised about the capabilities on display here. Can they give him a rundown of what the peoples of Vanda Nossëo can do, in a broad sense? Things on the level of 'remove depression and old age' or 'teleport'. That way he can get all his surprise out of the way at once and actually make a follow-up plan.

There are widespread magic songs that have relatively minor effects but can be replicated to play autonomously as much as desired for very cheap. Some people can conjure arbitrary material objects for post-scarcity and forensic purposes. There are people with psychic powers but it's pretty tightly regulated (Vanda Nossëo requires that you let people leave, but you're allowed to keep people out on lots of possible pretexts and that's a popular one). There are pricey magic items that can make their wearers smarter. There's a place where you can make wishes - that's not technically Vanda Nossëo but it's a sister polity they work very closely with, and it's only not formally part of it because they run their infrastructure on the wishes thing and stick to the area where it works. There's precogs, who only work while they are in their neighborhood but can act on information sent into that neighborhood and send information out of it. The old age thing is because there's a world where you can do shapeshifting and people use that for other purposes also. There are both magical and technological robots. There's lots and lots of relatively niche stuff.