"Visitors within the bubbles should be fine? The Art of Suffering can declare new guidelines for keeping alien visitors safe - people really do listen to Her, and the background chance of problems really is low - it's just outside of them that could cause problems for everyone else."

"I suspect we'd also benefit from tourism that doesn't result in people going around annoying the gods, and that we could benefit others - I admittedly though have no idea though how we compare to other worlds on that. Our magic should be shareable if nothing else, but you'd need to check with an Art to be sure..."

"Can you say more about the Favors - how they work, how people get them, what they do?"

"A Favor is a magical power, and once you have it, it can't be taken away. The Arts grant them to people who, hm, create beautiful things within that Art's purview? And who dedicate those things to the Art in question. There's a huge variety, and how much you impress the Art usually influences how powerful of a Favor you get. Most of the Arts grant Favors on a theme, but, hm - that theme can stretch pretty far? But they have a core set of powers they'll grant first, or will grant most often. I have a vague sense they have more trouble granting some powers than others? But they're really cagey on the exact mechanics here."

"So, the Art of Battle might give the participants in an exhibition fight his Favor, or might give one to someone who exhibits a fighter's spirit in a spar with him - he's a bit weird in that he'll give you a Favor on pure gumption sometimes, you don't actually need to be good at fighting, just committed to becoming good at fighting. His most common Favors are inexhaustibility - if you really impress him he'll do a version that extends to mental and even magical endurance; accelerated healing; resistance to disease or poison; magical senses centered on fighting - how something can be used as a weapon, what an opponent's about to do next, how dangerous someone is; greater strength, speed, or flexibility; greater, hm, capacity to control how much damage you do; and general enhanced senses. There's degrees within this - a near-total but mildly slow healing factor is pretty easy to get out of him, but you'll get a minor increase in your endurance long before you get true inexhaustibility."

"The Art of Transcendence gives Favors that allow people to alter their own minds and bodies, and ze'll offer outright immortality as one of the higher level Favors. Ze is impressed by self-alteration - there's kind of a theme in general of Arts giving Favors that make you better at their art type, though they'll usually then raise the threshold for how much you have to impress them to get more Favors. The Art of Architecture grants enhanced abilities to do math and to imagine things in detail; to shape and alter physical materials; to affect space - he's the major source of the bubble power; to analyze buildings; and to create kind of an assortment of magical effects relevant to extremely weird architecture - permanent floating platforms and lights and stuff."

"The Art of Suffering gives - a pretty large array of powers, She's extremely unusually inclined towards stretching the definition of Her purview. Healing of oneself and others; immortality; a sense of others' desires and fears; a sense of what actions will harm or benefit others; telepathy; a perfect memory; an assortment of offensive and defensive powers - those used to be a lot more common before the Art of Battle appeared and started seeding mortals with his spark of divinity everywhere and otherwise went around handing out combat powers like candy, and before the Art of Architecture began granting the bubble powers, but like She still does routinely raise Her greater priests to levels where they can hold gods at bay. She gives out at least basic Favors pretty liberally - and She grants them for overcoming hardship, for helping others find their path through hardship, for being masochistic or sadistic, for pushing your boundaries - for a lot of life, really... The primary beauty She judges offerings by is the process of self-exaltation, experiences that build people up through adversity - though pure thrill pleases Her too." Tiny smile.

"Most people here have a self-healing power, though, usually through Suffering but also often through Battle or Transcendence. The people who don't are mostly kids - Battle's the only Art who gives kids Favors, really, and most kids don't respond to seeing the Art of Battle with trying to punch him. Though he does also stretch the definition of 'Battle' sometimes if there's like, a kid with some terrible disorder that's giving external healing trouble - his self-healing power is arguably the most comprehensive? Except I guess if you're using Transcendence's Favors to circumvent 'running on biology.'"

"Interesting. Do you reckon that these might extend retroactively - if, for example, I teleported in someone who has already had a really epic combat history, would the Art of Battle be likely to bestow a favor on them or would they have to demonstrate here?"

" - So he's never genuinely lost a fight, he finds this very frustrating, and he'd one hundred percent demand they try to kick his ass first, mostly because he'd want to see if they could. Normally you can dedicate works you've already made at least sometimes - the Arts vary in how much and what they'll accept - but he's weird there. If they've since lost the ability to fight like that... Maybe he'll give it retroactively? There's a lot of legends of him doing that when he first appeared."

"There's people in my homeworld who turned into dolphins and are just dolphins all the time now," volunteers Natsuko. "Would Transcendence like 'em?"

"I bet! You have to get into like, solid attempts at undimensional eldritch existence or uploading yourself or something to be Transcendence's favorite, but opting into being another biological species entirely definitely pleases zem, and ze's one of the Arts more willing to do retroactive dedications."

"So you'll probably have some people swinging through to pick up magic powers for things they've already done with the tools available in the rest of the multiverse," Nelen says. "- dolphins? Really?"

"Really!" says Natsuko.

"Would there be any volume of that which the Arts would tend to find - draining, or annoying?" Nelen goes on.

" - The big thing they want to do is incentivize their thing? The volume they'll tolerate for people they're encouraging or enabling to do more of their thing or who intend to move here and join their worshippers would be a lot higher than for rewarding people who've already done the thing and then promptly leave. I'm not... Sure they really have a limit on their attentional capacity - many of them have an area limit of some kind, but like, the Art of Suffering is at any given time interacting individually with at least several thousand people. I'm not sure what the volume limits would be though, or if they can be meaningfully drained. Some gods will be more easily annoyed than others, too."

"I think it would incentivize people being dolphins if they could expect to be dolphins with magic powers," says Natsuko. "But they wouldn't be doing most of it here where the Arts could - look at them, or whatever it is they're getting out of it."

"They're... Getting a universe filled with beautiful things? Regardless of whether they can see it. I'm not sure if all of them will care about a multiverse filled with beautiful things - though if their people start settling and bringing our art outside this universe, they'll follow if they can - and I expect Suffering will care about things outside Her borders more than most, and will be most willing to grant powers to people passing through. - That sort of thing might be an interesting knock-on effect of getting our own safe harbor, actually, especially if it'd have room for us and immigrants..."

"If the Arts are likely to want to leave the universe we're definitely going to need to work out how laws can apply to them, even if the most interested are also the most benign."

"I expect most of them would be perfectly willing to keep within the borders of whatever polities their people secure, and in general act as members of those polities - the Art of Suffering is... In some ways our ultimate head of government I guess? The Arts will enforce our laws and protect us if we're attacked, and Suffering would continue enforcing laws on the other Arts, but... They are what they are and cannot be anything else, and Suffering is ours."

" - So probably that's going to look like 'negotiate with the Art of Suffering.'"

"How do you recommend we go about that?"

"Try talking to me," purrs a deep, lovely voice from right behind Nelen.

Nelen only startles a little, and Cassiel sits up on the chaise, but otherwise they largely maintain their composure. "- hello," says Nelen. "I'm sorry, I didn't know how much surveillance you tended to do or whether there were particular protocols to observe. It's nice to meet you."

"I pay more attention to my darling Lace than most, and your teams have made quite the splash in a few of the bubbles. Most of them got pointed right to my Church, and I'm delighted to meet your team now too." She circles around them, gliding as much as walking, and leans against Lace's desk. 

"You did call me Your priestess than one time, My Lady, so arguably Your Church found them," Lace says teasingly.

"Brat," she says, and a light wind curls around Lace's throat, making her hair flutter.

Then a light shrug, and, to the diplomatic team: "I'm not much one for ceremony in diplomatic contexts," she says. "I find it gives the other gods a false impression of how far I'll budge."

"- ah, I don't know how much the Arts in general tend to interpret that sort of thing or in what direction?" says Nelen.

"If you ever have to negotiate directly with the unfriendly Arts, I'd suggest approaching from a position of strength but not aggression - you have your territory, and you will not permit them to infringe on it, but you will not infringe on theirs more than needed to defend what's yours. Dissembling implies weakness, to them."

"I prefer frankness as well - I'm a strange Art, though, and I don't assume that what is stated is the only thing that could be said, and I enjoy a dance of words every now and then. So if your own negotiators prefer ceremony, or indirectness, or etiquette of some kind, I can operate within that."

"I'm only indirect insofar as directness seems like it might offend," says Nelen. "Which is often when talking to strangers from a strange culture, but still."

"Understandable," she says with a little dip of her chin. "Taking offense to anything said in these discussions seems likely to be unproductive, however; I want what will increase the beauty* of my people, and needlessly casting goodwill aside is not the path towards that."

*She's doing something like overriding or circumventing Allspeak, here. It is somehow very clear that this phrase is synonymous with flourishing, with reaching the pinnacle of your self-realization and then creating new heights to climb, with wonder and satisfaction, with progress towards an unassailable pleasure.

"I'm glad to hear that," says Nelen.

"I suspect so."

"I am not careless with my people," she says, seeming to address all of them but focusing on Tarwë. "I do not delight in pain for pain's sake alone, nor in defiance for defiance's sake alone. My people have given me their love, and I give them my strength, and it is through our hardships that we grow together, and through our pain that we find pleasure."

"I am not that shadow in your mind - if even the tiniest fraction of what you fear was true of him, then his selfhood is utterly profane to me."