"...In the sense that the fact that it seemed like it should is information about how you think about identity."

"How do you think about identity?" asks Tarwë.

"In a muddled and uselessly abstract way," Feris says wryly, "if you listen to some of my critics. The question to which identity is the answer is, how do we decide how to treat people now, based on our memory of the past and our prediction of the future? If a man has two sons and one is blind, he knows which one to train as an archer. Identity is the investments you make in yourself and others, and the investments others make in you - others here including the gods, or whatever it is they truly are if they're not gods."

"Huh. And so - námor with nothing to invest and no one investing in them, because it's all been stripped from them, are thus construed as having no identity?"

" - Stripping things from someone can be construed as relevantly an investment, in the sense that it can be an identifying trait about a námo that they want revenge for it, but yes, that's possible. Much like how, when the gods withdraw the breath from your lungs or however your learned people think it really works, what remains is less than the entire person that was before."

Tarwë nods. "What hypothetical did you want to pose?"

"If you could choose to serve a king who would find it inconvenient to kill you, and gave you exotic foods and fine clothing to keep you complacent, or else you could choose to be owned by a master who would find it trivial to kill you, but instead gave you exotic foods and fine clothing because it happened to entertain them to offer their chattel such treatment, but you must pick one, which would you pick and how would you decide?"

"First one," says Nelen, and, "inconvenient how?" says Tarwë.

Feris smiles and sighs as though that answer is a relief somehow. "Does it matter what makes it inconvenient? You could be able to outfight him, or personally dear to someone who was, or you could have an excellent hiding place, or you could be one of only a few people capable of keeping his estate running smoothly, or he could have sworn before all your people and all the gods never to harm you - are those different for you?"

"It matters enormously what makes it inconvenient," says Tarwë. "If I'm only inconvenient to kill because of my excellent hiding place, this has a lot of implications for how I have to conduct myself, namely that I probably have to spend a fair amount of time there. If instead my King would have an attack of conscience should he consider killing me that's another matter entirely. Being essential to the kingdom is somewhere in between the two."

"The scenario I was envisioning was, well, the one I grew up with," says Nelen. "Reds were essential but not essential enough that we had to be well-treated and I was always very accustomed to everyone trying our best to make sure we didn't get one bit less essential. There was a constant appetite from all the other castes to render us obsolete so we could all be killed. Being essential enough that we didn't just have to be kept alive, but comfortable and happy, that would have been a win condition. But I'm not sure my answer is right, really. It's just what I'd pick."

"Huh. It's interesting to me that the two of you have such different answers. So, Nelen, since you feel that way, was meeting the rest of the multiverse an unalloyed win for your people, or was it partly a loss?"

"- well, now we don't have a king or even a metaphorical king, and I think that's an - hm - it's an unalloyed good except insofar as our culture is changing under the new lesser pressures, but every culture goes through that over time, that's why all the story-collecting booths, the culture isn't more important than the people. There are various people who are capable of killing me but I don't dwell on whether they want to and I don't think they do either. When I was a kid if my sister had wanted to she could have smothered me in my sleep. This just wasn't a threat I considered much. Not because we got along, we actually don't, but because that's just not... something... that would happen, in the kind of life I had even back then."

"I - suppose I expect either your sister cared about you or someone would have been angry if she'd killed you, or possibly both, but maybe I'm wrong to expect that. Do you truly not have anyone basically like a king?"

"Even if she didn't care about me in the slightest and could easily have made it look like an accident, she isn't a murderer and doesn't want to be, most námor don't. When I'm at home I live with my favorite aunt on a a colony planet in Space Arda," says Nelen. "It's governed democratically. It's a member state of Vanda Nossëo and Space Arda's in Loki's range, but as far as I know Loki's never set foot there and I'm not aware of anything that's ever happened on the planet that needed to be escalated to Vanda Nossëo's federal level. When I'm working, I have a boss, but I'm not on a contract that obliges me to finish out any particular period of time before I quit, and even if I were, those contracts aren't enforced with demands for specific performance, I'd just sacrifice some wages if I disappeared in the middle of a job. I don't think I have a king."

"Why does it matter that Loki's never set foot there?"

"Well, it doesn't, since she has nearly arbitrary control over the configuration of all things within the Edda neighborhood and wouldn't need to, it's just an expression. I'm not sure she knows the place exists except in the sense that she has an eidetic memory and has probably looked at its name on a list. The way I hear it the two planets she is actually legitimately a princess of don't see as much of her as they'd like, she isn't going to interact with my planet."

"That seems more like being too inconsequential to merit your king's notice."

"And if she noticed me, I don't think she'd figure out how inconvenient it would be to kill me."

"It really seems like the reason she isn't killing or torturing people is because she has no desire to."

"I mean, yeah. But even if she... got... drunk..."

"Bells don't drink," says Tarwë.

"Right, I knew that... even if someone somehow slipped her undetectable drugs, and no one including her noticed that she was off, and they made her murderously inclined, and also she happened to have met me earlier that day and... didn't like my... outfit... then depending on how narrowly the drugs altered her, assuming all her other incentives were intact, I don't think she'd murder me. She could make it look like an accident - most people couldn't, not even most Bells - but then if she ever went to Eclipse a diviner might notice, or some new magic might turn up that would twig to it, and then everyone would freak out that she'd just up and murdered somebody. Most of the member states out of Edda range would secede; the ones in Edda range would get their teleporters to evacuate them to Aurum or Hazel or Hex or Revelation or off the map entirely and then secede. None of her alts would help her consolidate power after that, even if she was still on drugs that made her want to. All that and I wouldn't stay dead, most of my family lives in Space Arda and you can assume she did something about them but some of them are in Revelation or Warp and I have friends from all over, someone would get me resurrected and bill my insurance. I'd be completely fine and she'd disintegrate Vanda Nossëo over it, if this happened."

He nods. "So the power structures are such that, in fact, you can reasonably expect it to be inconvenient even for Loki, to kill anyone that a certain set of people - the teleporters? is it all teleporters? - care enough about, and you can also reasonably expect basically everyone in Vanda Nossëo to be cared about by someone in that set of people because - oh - I see it, yes, because the set is chosen for caring about everyone. Did the peal do that intentionally to lock themselves into their current policies? Do I have this right at all or am I totally wrong?"

"You... maybe have the material facts right but not the frame?" attempts Nelen. "I don't think it's policy lock-in that motivated the structure Vanda Nossëo uses, I think they could change a lot of things without provoking a disintegration like a random murder would."

"The real nightmare scenario would be if something like this happened to Gem," muses Tarwë.

"Oh, yeah, that would be very bad. She has a lot of very centralized magic power and also can time travel," nods Nelen. "I think she has extra precogs on call specifically in case something happens to her? And a contingency wish for passing on the wish-granter. Not that it's likely anything would happen, it's just a big multiverse."

"Does sound terrible. I am curious what frame you'd use."

"Member states would secede. They have the right to do that, because belonging to Vanda Nossëo is voluntary, doesn't make sense as an involuntary thing, was part of all their original agreements when they signed on that they could amicably or less than amicably leave if they wished, because one of the principles of Vanda Nossëo is freedom to leave. Anyone nervous about retaliation would get their entire planet skipped out of the world. They have the power to do that because that power was shared around with námor like me, not exactly with everyone who cares about everyone but everyone who was discernibly safe to give it to - if I quit my job to paint ceramic miniatures all day I wouldn't lose my teleportation license, I can keep it so long as I'm not dangerous, but this means plenty of námor are available either on active duty or in reserve to move planets if anything planet-threatening rears its head and the main power structure can't be counted on. The peal did that not because they were thinking about scenarios where Loki gets slipped drugs - they may have some contingencies for that but it'd be more along the lines of 'maybe Cam would grab the Tesseract away from Loki if it seemed like she was going crazy', 'maybe Sibyl would relay a precognitive vision to intercept the drugs', 'maybe Gem would pause time and head out of her neighborhood to do some heroics', 'probably the nearest Maitimo would notice right away and do something', they're not pinning themselves down to any values besides the ones they all share. It's just that those values include námor being able to leave and it being good for power to be shared around as long as it's not going to hurt anyone."

"Hm. Two questions. First, what does it mean that belonging to Vanda Nossëo wouldn't make sense as an involuntary thing? And second, are you trying to say that the peal is trying to retain the option to change their minds about their values as long as they all do it at once, or are you saying something else?"