"I think you'd want a biofilter over the whole country - this might have ecological consequences but it can be tweaked around those - an airlocked bus stop with border agents interviewing entrants under truth magic about their intentions, a bulletin circulated among all the licensed teleporters that they aren't welcome to bypass that unless they've been expressly whitelisted and that this is a delicensing offense, and maybe if you can afford it a subscription to a precog service about people who might manage to enter despite this and then commit crimes."

"...That seems likely to cause problems for fishers but perhaps we can figure something out. Is it going to cause problems if we make it clear that we'll accept people from anywhere other than Vanda Nossëo, or at least anywhere that won't insist on enforcing their laws in our territory because of it?"

"You can also take outright immigrants even from Vanda Nossëo, what we want to avoid here is people who are - used to anywhere they can get to being Vanda-Nossëo-like in that the worst it can get is that they are kicked out of the polity, thinking it's fun to sneak into places and get away with things there. Elf adolescents don't do this but I'm reliably assured that we're the odd ones in that respect."

"...Ah. I do know the type. I don't believe you that the worst it can get them in Vanda Nossëo is exiled but I believe you that you don't think anything else you do is worse, and I further don't expect you to agree that perhaps your idiot boys need to learn a lesson before they become idiot grown men, though if you don't agree then I suppose it's no wonder you're so terrified of unscreened people getting access to your magic and so willing to resort to making people unable to do anything you don't approve of. Well, and it must be us bearing all of the inconvenience here, never you and yours, fine, I worry the biofilter will cause serious problems for us but I would sooner live in a barren crater somewhere than let you impose Vanda Nossëo's idea of justice on my people so working out the details isn't important right now. It's looking like I probably do need to outright stage a coup - I'd rather ask you to help me arrange a sufficiently spectacular bribe to get the Star-of-Stars to do whatever I want but I have no particular expectation that that would be productive at all."

"That might depend on what kind of bribe would be spectacular enough? - I don't know if you know how biofilters work, they keep out specified species. Limiting them to just standardly sapient species would have negligible effect on the ecology but would let námor through without even necessarily being aware there was anything they were bypassing if they were in morph, or a familiar, or something like that."

"And nowhere in all the worlds do you have magic that, instead of keeping all the birds out, just causes anyone crossing a particular threshold to hear a voice warning them that they're entering the territory of evil barbarians far inferior to Vanda Nossëo who might cause them a bit of pain because of being too uncivilized to grant them the mercy of merely having a subtle artist muck around in their mind to make them unable to defy Vanda Nossëo again."

"I guess it might be possible to rig up a technological solution for that but it won't work for birds high enough overhead."

"I shouldn't even be working these details out with you now, I can hash them out with Nelen once I rule Sesat. The sort of bribe that would be spectacular enough would be - something more than what everyone has, I expect demon powers would do it. Possibly a large and expensive estate in a coveted location and several golems and the effective ability to take advantage of some set of people - I'm sure you hate that idea and if you'd rather I instead hire a demon to construct a tower with no doors and teleport him into it and forget him there I am wholly willing to make that happen."

"- I don't want you to do that! There are, uh, some - obligate servile species - if the effective ability while they technically retain the legal right to go elsewhere is sufficient?"

"Perfect. How quickly can all that be arranged?"

"- I'll ask Procurement. Uh, he won't mind his estate being in Warp?"

"Probably not unless it's specifically frequented by betazoids."

"I will tell Procurement nowhere specifically frequented by Betazoids." Compute compute. "Will, uh, six - servants - be enough?"

"Likely yes."

"Good, apparently they found a group of six on the... market." Tarwë is not wincing but he is moving his mouth the absolute minimum necessary to produce words. "- estate lined up, servants being moved in, golems will be there in a few minutes."

"In that case, I can act... as soon as the guard shift changes, I think, which should be soon enough it'll be worth getting my family out now - do you mind if they visit your ship, by the way?"

"Not at all. They're welcome to come have a look around."

"All right. Valan - "

Valan looks up from texting his cousin to round up the kids and wait for him. "Need to warn Lonan first."

"Actually I was going to show you the throne room, see? For after."

He looks, sends his message, looks again just to be sure he remembers, and then he disappears.

Feris sighs. "Think while he's out I should start hashing out biofilter details with Nelen or something?"

"I think Natsuko would be the better person to ask, she's from Cube where they were invented."

"Sure. Where's she?"

"I'll check - cafeteria, looks like."

"Thanks." He'll go start wandering in the direction of the cafeteria, twitchily waiting for an interruption that does not immediately materialize.

Nobody interrupts him!

The cafeteria has a lot of people in it, and a view of the planet - it's currently over some ocean. Natsuko can be located with enough squinting around. Some other people wave at him while he's doing that.

He waves back grimly.

"Natsuko?"

"- hi!" says Natsuko, looking up from her bowl of soup. "What's up?"