"Thanks. Hey, I'm wondering something. What was behind the decision not to open negotiations by giving everyone on the planet a personal space ring or something?"

"You want yours invisible, can't you think of ways it might break down if everyone knew everyone had them? They're also not trivially mass-produced."

"Of course I can think of ways it might break down. Much like your actual system, which has broken down and still might get my entire family tortured and has gotten other people tortured already. And if instead of absolutely mangling first contact at your current rate, you handle it productively a tenth as often, that sounds like a success to me. But honestly that was metonymy and what I really want to know is why you didn't start out by increasing everyone's capacity for self-defense, and if personal space rings specifically aren't the best option for it then that doesn't sink my point."

"It's unusual for domestic hostage-taking to ensue when we show up. This is by far the most difficult polity on this planet, which doesn't excuse our failure but hopefully contextualizes the failure rate. I hope we'll be able to learn from it but we didn't have a way to guess that what you were going to need was widespread self-defense and not morph technology or servants or lead remediation or a Lórien or the extinction of mosquitoes or a colony planet or to have us only interact with certain ritually authorized diplomats without even looking at anyone else or to be toted entire into Wish to have your laws of physics changed or impassioned poetry composed in your native language or any number of hundreds of other things. And now that you've mentioned the hostage-taking we can try to address it! But we aren't going around reading minds, because some people need that to not happen, and until we meet you, we don't know who you are."

"Hm. Offering us all morph would have been far more disruptive but it would probably have sufficed to avoid the specific problems we're having now. If I understand lead correctly, we do, also, need to do something about that, but it's my understanding that that's the sort of thing it's safe to do on a more relaxed schedule. A Lórien might have helped, if there were a place to put it. I am not sure any of those things would have been counterproductive except changing the laws of physics. Anyway, I'm surprised to hear things are going much better with the rest of the planet, if one of your teams has finessed things with Niazon then you should ask them how."

"Nelen did. They're not doing anything different on a policy level. We can replace Nelen as the team leader, if that will help, but it seems like it might be too late at this point and we didn't do it earlier - usually we have a bias against doing that because it can feel manipulative or confusing, if we try several people till one who's ingratiating enough manages to click into place."

"Huh. Do you have... videos or something, of their version of Nelen interacting with the Niazoni government, or is that all confidential? Or maybe I should send people to Niazon to scope out how things are going from the local perspective. Or both."

"I don't know if they were recording, and if they were I can't authorize releasing the videos to you without the Niazon government approving it, but I can ask."

"Not sure I want them to know I'm interested. I'll think about it and send people first. Anyway, you were saying you wouldn't want to read minds, but - you've read the books that I published about how people think. You've read The Use of Kindness in the Retention of a Population. You could have read Musings of Azan or Kings and Cities, maybe you already have, I don't know. All of these books are published. Any demon could have gotten all of them for you. Had you read a single one before you made contact?"

"Yes. They don't help nearly as much as you'd think."

"Huh. How so?"

"The background assumptions are too different, the context is too important. - do you want to read a pre-contact article from my home planet? As an example."

"Yes, please!"

Contra certain voices on the invitation of Casari guests into the Valian system
Arnostalë Varno

It has become fashionable in the literature to discuss petitioning the divine Valar who watch over us to reconsider their decision that no Aftercomers be extended a welcome into the sphere of influence of our generous suns Telperion and Laurelin. It seems some would find no greater joy than to show off the marvels of Valinor to Aulë's children. I humbly contribute my list of considerations in determining whether this petition is wise.

1. The crossing is already at times difficult for the Eldar, for whose comfort the ships going between worlds were crafted. At present we have no guidance on the matter of whether it might prove overwhelming for Casari, whose needs may differ. In particular, I understand it to be the case that they principally dwell under the ground, the virtues of which arrangement are too mysterious to permit confident imitative ship-engineering. Any error in ensuring their safety could potentially be irretrievable due to their lack of souls.

2. Due to this lack of soul, and perhaps yet other differences not yet known to me nor to those against whom I argue, Valinor itself, its civilization crafted for ourselves, may be inhospitable to Casari visitors, and catering to their needs may disrupt the bliss of Valinor.

3. Our friends and relatives upon Endorë have a history of tensions with the Casari about which we know little. Reports have been so incredible and extreme that it seems to me impossible that our intrusion into the situation could be sincerely expected to soothe rather than agitate the disturbances and conflicts that have historically occurred, in our ignorance of and distance from the situation. Suppose our friends and relatives have erred? Then will not the Casari take it amiss that we bear them affection nonetheless? Suppose the Casari have erred; then is this not itself a reason to leave them time undisturbed to grow away from and repair those faults? Suppose no one erred, and the matter entire is a misunderstanding, instilled by the Enemy or by chance. Would not the complication of their attempts at resolution by introducing ourselves during such a fraught juncture do more harm than good?

4. It has been related to me that the habits of law and order the Casari pursue amongst themselves are very alien indeed, as befits an alien race, but may not befit guests within Valinor. Can they be relied upon to adopt our kings as their own during such time as they might live among us, and obey their commands? They may likewise have some expectation of us we will be poor hosts in failing to meet.

5. If in a well composed frame of mind, observe this portrait of a Casari by celebrated scientific illustrator Morconer.


6. Aulë, having created the Casari, is assuredly aware that they exist, and we may safely presume he hears their prayers, if they offer any. Yet Aulë resides with the other Valar, and has made no attempt to bring his children here nor to go to them as they develop. I will do no more than speculate on Aulë's reasons for this decision, but it seems to me to forego the conclusion of any appeal regarding the Casari; he has made his decision about how their race is to take root and venture into the world, and it did not involve inviting them to Valinor or to any nearby world the way we ourselves were invited. Would his brothers and sisters gainsay him? I cannot expect it.

7. The most commonly cited advantage of Casari travel to and from Valinor is that they are great lovers of trade, a sort of elaborated all-consuming version of terrain tile exchanges in a game of Ainulindalë. But freed of want, we have no prospect of benefit from such an activity.

8. If instead our motive in an invitation were to boast of the conditions we enjoy, this would betray a worrying pride, not least because so little of the beauty of Valinor is our own! While our cities are lovely, we have the benevolent Valar to thank for our oceans, forests, plains, mountains, rivers, moons and stars. As in point 6, the Valar are already aware of how beautiful their creation is. If they have elected not to hold a broadly open showing, to what end might we wish to entreat them otherwise?

9. There is some reason to be concerned that opening Valinor to Casari would embolden parties who wish to, furthermore, receive Orkor into the embrace of Valinor, of which I hope no further need be said into any reasonable ear.

"I would take a lot from this, though perhaps not all of it would be accurate. It's clear that Valinor fears visitors and is not trying to entice anyone to come visit. It's clear that Valinor at least wishes to pretend to want nothing, which I think is probably accurate. I wouldn't know much besides that, but I'd have concrete questions - not 'do they have tales of gods?' but 'are the Valar real?' I think before knowing you I wouldn't actually have thought that 'souls' might be a mistaken translation - though I'd guess that now for reasons that have nothing to do with having read about computers, and even before I'd have known I wanted to know more about what that meant. I might guess you had horrible taste in beard ornaments, or felt intimidated - I don't think that'd be right but I also don't think I'd be confident of it. I would get the idea that Valinor is ruled by a specific group who prefer to resolve all disputes by sending everyone they have any disputes with away from them and avoiding them forever. I would expect to be unwelcome and almost definitely choose not to contact them."

"The picture is included because the Dwarf in it is not pretty, and because he's bald - his beard ornaments are fine except insofar as beards are always uncanny. We'd have been excited to meet new aliens. We weren't afraid of Dwarves, not really. The article doesn't really tell you that Endorë Elves once thought that Dwarves were animals and hunted them for sport, because the article author thinks that's 'incredible and extreme'. At the time of this writing no one had been exiled from Valinor."

"What's the latest Arda in which it was still true that no one had been exiled from Valinor?"

"I think it's still the case that no one has been exiled from the Valinor in Shine. They had a cleaner war."

"Ah. So the others have exiled people, then, and it's not surprising for it to take a while given that you're all very slow and somewhat more agreeable than most humans and didn't have famines. I don't think that really goes against the impression I get from the article."

"Well, in our defense we were exiled for trying to leave."

Feris makes a face, and a noise, and then several different faces in succession, and finally buries his face in his hands.

Tarwë waits patiently.

"That's... anyway, Valinor sounds horrible and I want nothing to do with it and I think I'd successfully pick up on that from this article, but I suppose if I wanted to make contact anyway it wouldn't tell me enough about what might be taken as an insult. Also, I'm tempted to get into the weeds asking about your ideas of what is and isn't pretty, does there happen to be a collection of examples or rules of thumb somewhere?"

"We usually like the same things humans will describe as 'pretty' in most domains, just with much more exacting standards and lower tolerance for things not being pretty at all."

"...My introspective access to an example of human beauty standards did not confidently flag that picture as inadequately pretty even with strong contextual cues but maybe if I poll people they'll mostly agree with you. And maybe it doesn't matter. Anyway, taking it as given right now that reading doesn't help enough, and you don't want to read minds - have you ever run into anyone who found that offensive, actually, if people vary that much it seems like someone ought to - "