do you recall when the war was just a game?

Yes - but he can't actually get them without that being publicly available. There's a list up, and he can find Nelen's name on it if he looks.

That's fine, he just needs failure not to be public humiliation. He applies.

There's a wait list, but now he is on it. (Secretly.)

Meanwhile in the future, the former slave who isn't even sure which of a large number of people she's supposed to not get a restraining order against or whether that's still important finally notices something about the culture in Vanda Nossëo and asks Rijaga how to go about contacting the person who dropped her off.

"Oh, huh, I don't actually know who the heck that would have been. What'd they look like, where did you run into them?"

"He was a diplomat visiting Sesat and could teleport. He had red and gold hair."

"Red and gold, huh. Okay... staff page... envoys in... Sesat... this guy?" And it's Nelen's picture.

"Yes, that's him!"

"It's got his email, if you want to write him a note."

"...Can you take dictation, I've only just started being able to recognize words I run into..."

"Sure, no problem."

"I want to say... uh... 'I don't hate you. I just realized if I said I liked you they probably wouldn't have threatened you over it. I guess I don't know if you figured that out.'"

Rijaga types this up and adds a postscript about it having been dictated and sends it.

Nelen answers a few hours later.

I understand. Thank you for trying to look out for me though. Are you doing okay? Do you like the city?

"I guess so. I don't know. It's good. I don't think I'd be happier anywhere else, I guess. Uh, tell him thanks for bringing me here, I guess?"

Rijaga transcribes faithfully.

"Thanks for helping with the emails."

"No problem!"

Feris gets the lists he set people to make. He emails Tarwë.

Working on improving on your justice system. By the way, I assume you've tried asking people to swear under truth spell that they'll cooperate with your justice system or not reoffend or whatever your main concern is that you're using subtle arts to solve. What went wrong with that?

The truth spell prevents lying, not changing your mind. Many Elf polities do allow swearing to not reoffend, but it works differently for us; the truth song alone doesn't manage that.

It's not surprising to me that you have failures like that but it is surprising to me that you have enough of them. What recidivism rate are you targeting? I'm also going to go look up what factors statistically correlate with criminality within Vanda Nossëo on the suspicion that they differ from the ones that correlate with it in Sesat but if you have a link on hand to a list you could save me five minutes.

Literature Survey of Criminality Correlates

Different recidivism rates are tolerable in different spheres; manslaughter like the fellow you met in the prison they appear to be tolerating an 11% rate of coming into contact with the justice system again, though not always for the same thing.

Coming into contact with the justice system isn't really the thing that concerns me. The thing that concerns me is causing more problems, which I would normally say is a broader category but in this case is likely instead smaller, as you arrest so many people for so many things. I think that target is notably low, so I'm not terribly concerned about inevitably tolerating more than that.

You know more of Vanda Nossëo's justice system than I. If you picture this venture being a success, people being relieved to have the option to come here and us being glad to have them, what are the specifics of that? If conversely you picture it being a failure, what do you picture?

People who prefer exile to prison and aren't too dangerous to release at all already have some options, but you can probably make Sesat a popular one if you develop fast and offer some kind of distinctive attraction, which could be anything from a theater scene to an architecturally unique city, on top of welcoming anyone no longer welcome at home.

We're repairing the old temple. Odd how much more popular the gods are these days, now that people have shown up able to conjure for anything they've ever written and any bodies they've ever had and turned up nothing. Is that the kind of thing you mean?

Whom do you consider too dangerous to release at all?

He attaches pictures of the temple. It's like if someone took a walled garden and put it in a blender, mazelike walls and statues draped and surrounded with greenery, dotted with small altars.