"Yes, things changed - a lot of little things, adding up, we started selling food and they weren't so acutely stressed about their locally farmed frog supply, and someone from this town," he pokes part of his illusion, "went shopping in Vanda Nossëo and heard some conflicting perspectives on theology and came back with a prayer wheel, which is an invention some religions like for automating the recitation of a prayer, and attempted to pray for rain with it several million times, and it didn't rain, and that cooled off the religious arguments a lot, and one of the folks on the border they were arguing about here decided to move to Beach and start a frog restaurant -"

Hum.

"Did they end up joining Vanda Nossëo?"

"Yep, we stuck around through the end of the vote and then Integration took over from there for making sure they had services and lines of communication and so on and I got promoted and collected this team, which brings us to... now."

"Why do people usually join?"

"The two things that come standard with joining are defensive support and a universal basic income. Everything else you could theoretically get by being on a teleporting-bus-line and going and buying it and bringing it home. But theoretically isn't actually, it's much easier to get investment and development in your area if it's covered by Vanda Nossëo law."

"If someone requested safe territory outside our universe to stick a portal on for one of our pocket dimensions - how easy is that to get?"

"- huh. Well, we don't know yet if that would work, it's possible that your magic only works in this world, but other than that it doesn't sound like it would be hard to wrangle as a signing perk, all you'd need would be an unoccupied rock with an atmosphere so you could step outside if you needed to, right?"

"Pretty much, yeah. Could we negotiate individually with other members who have spare spaces for us to stick portals, even if we don't join?"

"Probably, most places that want a rock want it more terraformed so your request would be relatively cheap. Why?"

"So, the idea I'm expecting people to be interested in would be to have our own settlements we can get between more easily than right now, since teleportation is a rare and inconvenient power and traveling outside the bubbles is fraught. We wouldn't need a lot of space, and - yeah we can handle our own terraforming and infrastructure, though people are going to appreciate if it's easy to travel to places not-us - probably we'll have some logistics headaches at first since people will want to travel a lot more once they're allowed to, and we'd need to negotiate rules for the commons between the bubbles, but I don't expect that'll be any harder than what we're dealing with right now."

"I see why that would be appealing. Is there something you're expecting to find unappealing about membership?"

"Dunno. People are very good at inventing objections to stuff, though, and while I'll be greasing the wheels, it's not me you have to convince."

"Is there anything people usually find unappealing about membership, either with like, terms of membership or knock on effects from having it?"

"A lot of people don't like our voting policy, which is that every person in a polity has to be invited to vote, including children and members of any other categories typically denied political voice. Some places have issues with the minimum laws requiring free emigration and against murder, torture, and rape. - since it might be relevant that's nonconsensual instances of all of the above, it is legal to perform assisted suicides, engage in consensual, uh, kink practices is where it normally comes up but here it might be religious practices."

"Well, emigration is extremely tightly restricted right now, but I suspect that'd change if anyone leaving a bubble had a destination other than somewhere with gods who might try to fuck us up if we allow people to travel there. Most people dislike the current emigration situation."

"We do have restrictions against, hm - so, death and pain and all are regulated by the Church of Suffering, and the thing they care about isn't exactly consent. Like, if someone tortures you, and this causes you mental harm, you can bring a suit against them with the Church even if you consented - though if you were given sufficient information to make an informed choice, they can use that as a defense - and if you weren't mentally harmed the best you can do is bring a suit for them being reckless about that, even if you didn't consent."

"...are a lot of people... tortured, nonconsensually, in a way that does not cause them mental harm?" asks Nelen.

" - Yeah? I mean, not asking first is super reckless if you don't already know someone, but like, for a lot of people it's not a big deal, especially for something brief or not really disruptive. It's usually harder on people - consent and expectation are kinda protective against mental harm - but normally that just means you're more likely to get a Favor out of the whole thing."

"- This probably comes up for me more often than for most people. Like, most people don't wanna risk accidentally harming someone, or if they're willing to risk that they get in trouble pretty fast. But I've got enough of a reputation that basically everyone who knows of me assumes I can't be harmed, and I'm a fun challenge to kidnap apparently." She says this with a fond expression. 

"Okay. I can see how that would make you a pretty awkward candidate for membership, and I don't think it's obviously one of those things we can just staple an amendment to the law about, either. But there shouldn't be much issue about you getting somewhere to put portals, and if anyone would like to come to Vanda Nossëo instead of here, we have plenty of room."

"You'd wanna talk to other people to confirm if we think that's worth changing, and the Art of Suffering would be the one commanding any actual law changes there, but, yeah, I think people are unlikely to be enthusiastic."

" - Oh, relatedly, if you guys' species are easier to accidentally harm, we might need to figure out ways to handle potential issues for people visiting here? Not at all my wheelhouse, though."

"How do you tend to define mental harm?"

" - Uhhh, that's honestly weirdly hard to articulate - ending up in a state of being you don't endorse?"

"Or like, ending up anxious or miserable or despairing, or having your resiliency reduced really dramatically and noticeably - also people who are anxious and despairing usually say they endorse being that way which doesn't make it not harm, because their ability to realize what they endorse is fucked? And you can be in a state of being you claim you endorse but your meta-self wouldn't endorse. And - stuff that makes you stop taking actions, or start taking actions your meta-self wouldn't, that's mental harm. And I've heard some people say that anything that moves you away from your meta-self is mentally harmful, and I'm not sure I agree with that but it isn't a terrible model."

"That's not... All the things that are mental harm, and some things that are those wouldn't be mental harm on balance, but... They're pretty big examples?"

"Hm. The framework of meta-self is new to me but I think you should assume that visitors here from other worlds may both be easier to accidentally traumatize and dramatically more likely to be furious and hostile about attempts to torture them that do not happen to result in them being traumatized to that extent. You don't have to worry about this very much with us, we're trained and selected for risky situations, but kidnapping and torturing a Vanda Nossëo envoy will at minimum not get good results. If it's for some reason culturally important to torture a Vanda Nossëo envoy we can find one who's up for it, there are plenty and we've thought up weirder contingencies to recruit for than that, but none of us in this team - as far as I know?" He glances at his teammates. "- yeah none of us."

"There's no like religious demand people be tortured or up for that or anything, and someone doing official stuff is unlikely to get into misunderstandings, and you're not going to get into that kind of situation just walking down the street."

"The problems I'm expecting would be more shaped like, some tourist goes to a club, finds someone to hook up with, and miscommunications about what exactly is implicitly okay happen. That wouldn't bother people here normally, so it's... Not something people are cautious about, and it's the main case where 'person didn't consent but wasn't bothered' happens between strangers here - most of the other cases are like, the people involved know each other well enough to know what someone's bothered by or not."

"That kind of problem can probably be mostly fixed by warning people about potential miscommunications, though?"

"- The kidnapping thing specifically probably would only come up if you make it broadly known you think getting for-real kidnapped sounds like fun and you don't sufficiently specify what you don't want within that. Though the Art of Suffering might actually just intervene if that seems likely to happen to an alien? She usually pays enough attention to the aether to notice when someone's about to be in prolonged distress. And if it's bad enough she'll step in, and she could probably be talked into being more proactive around aliens. Main question then would be if people not from this universe cause ripples the same way..."

"Okay. We can very carefully warn tourists about this, and they won't be coming anytime very soon."

"We can figure out stuff on our end, too, but yeah it'll take a while."

" - Probably actually the biggest thing to figure out with visitors would be keeping them very out of divine territories. If people in your worlds can teleport wherever, that could go badly very quickly."

"It wouldn't actually be trivial to teleport from inside a bubble to outside of one without some help. We can use dead reckoning, or go by an image, but dead reckoning assumes spatial contiguity. It's possible we'll wind up marking this whole world no-tourism, it wouldn't be the first, but it doesn't seem quite as dangerous as would require that designation..."