do you recall when the war was just a game?

"Does it? I do imagine that some of those applicants will choose to withdraw the restraining orders in fifty years. But there isn't an official schedule of maturation they must adhere to such that we won't defend their reasonably construed rights while they haven't yet moved past the need. There's no reason they can't continue to have restraining orders out against people who badly hurt them for the next thousand years as far as I'm concerned."

"...Can I take out a restraining order against a literal toddler, barring them from getting access to teleportation for as long as I happen to feel like, if I can goad them into hitting me while they're two."

"No. There's a 'reasonable person' clause in the limitations on what constitutes sufficient cause. I suppose you might be able to if you had a thoroughly verifiable history of being upset by and trying to avoid children."

"Can you explain the 'reasonable person' clause to me?"

"Restraining orders may be taken out following 'acts which a reasonable person may construe as threatening or incompatible with comfort in a cordial coexistence'. They'll bring in ordinary people who don't normally work for the government if you want to appeal it and say the judge was being ridiculous about what a reasonable person would say, but they're going to be random humans or Amentans or orcs or Elves or what have you who have not themselves gotten into any legal trouble before, one would have to have an amazing dissertation about a cultural context you don't, actually, have, about how really the victim should be reasonable about tolerating their assailant living or working or vacationing near them."

"I think when chattel slaves start themselves taking out restraining orders their supposed assailants are going to perceive it as genuinely random and unpredictable, and I don't think you want to specifically deny former chattel slaves and not deny anyone else."

"That's unfortunate but not actually something that constitutes a legal argument that a chattel slave should, reasonably, be comfortable in cordial coexistence with their assailants. In fact it seems very unlikely to me that they should; I'm not sure anyone from Sesat has, for example, suggested that Vanda Nossëo treating someone as a free citizen renders them a moral patient if they were previously a chattel slave, and considering someone not a moral patient is the sort of thing that makes reasonable someones nervous."

"Look. It'll be clear in a moment how this isn't a non-sequitur. Why haven't you just come in and stolen all the chattel slaves already?"

"We're still hoping that we can convince you to sell. Even if we stop being optimistic about that we won't in our official capacity steal them, we'd leave that to the interest groups."

"But why won't you steal them in your official capacity?"

"We're better received when we don't immediately overwhelm by force all the local structures of society."

Feris laughs bitterly. "True, very true. And yet you don't do anything to turn them away from Azan - even if, say, a chattel slave got their hands on something from an envoy shop, even bought something from an envoy shop since there's nothing stopping them from knowing a story or two, and if that chattel slave then used your goods to escape to Azan you would not stop them. Right?"

"No, we don't obstruct them from fleeing to Azan."

"And if one of them was able to use, I don't know, an engraved comb with flowers on it, or something, that they got from one of your shops, in some clever plan to free everyone, how would you feel about that?"

"They're not subject to our laws yet, so we wouldn't have to officially disapprove. I expect most people they met would think it was very heroic. Acting as a diplomatic entity does tie our hands in some ways regarding individual heroics even if they're very admirable."

"Yeah. Some chattel slaves are actually heroic and moral patients, right? Even sometimes if they've done things that seem terrible - Nelen defended patricide to me before, for instance - someone who did such a thing could still be heroic and you wouldn't want them to fail, even though you couldn't help them, right?"

"Yes. I'm really curious where you're going with this, it sounds promising..."

"Oh, I guess I forget how it was going to be relevant. Anyway, on the unrelated topic of why you're letting us coordinate to prevent people from leaving Sesat without officially immigrating to Vanda Nossëo and becoming able to teleport. You're very sure that's not somehow an abuse of the system?"

"- free people are being prevented from leaving Sesat? Restraining orders don't do that."

"They prevent people from getting teleportation."

"You can't get teleportation within Sesat anyway, no one is offering lessons here! It doesn't stop anyone from getting on a bus. If anyone parks in the bus stop trying to make sure their assailant can't leave and we have reason to think they can't just go hop on the Azan bus line which goes to a different stop, they'll add another line."

Feris stares. "...Yes, that's why you'd have to first leave Sesat, if you wanted to get teleportation and had the ability to get out, an ability which many people do not have in the first place. Certainly most of the people, including but not limited to chattel slaves, being prevented from leaving Sesat don't have a realistic chance of escaping over the Azani border or to a bus stop. If even one of them did make it out, though, it's always possible they'd have some, I don't know, sentimental attachment to Sesat and not choose to become a citizen of Vanda Nossëo, and unrelatedly that they might want to learn some magic, like teleportation, for all sorts of possible reasons since it's such a useful power."

"I think you're talking around something and we don't have a wonderful track record of understanding each other perfectly even when we're both trying very hard so I don't care to try to read into it. Would you like to talk to someone sworn not to reveal what they hear from you to discuss this?"

"Would that person be able to tell you 'stop granting Sesatis restraining orders' and be obeyed?"