She nods.

"Adapting to the customs of others is an important part of engaging with people from across the sea. However, we pride ourselves on careful selection of our guests to ensure the maximum smoothness in the experience of learning the intricacies of new cultures. Please don't be worried that anything that you do will cause any significant accidental offense, or that you won't be welcomed into the activities aboard the Galaxia." 

I pull the mug closer to me, and glance up at her unreadable expression. 

"That makes sense. I assume the same applies in the reciprocal case?"

"Indeed."

"Is that true to the point of say, iterating through meeting everyone on the crew in some sort of hypothetical random numerical order, or just within expected terms of what I'm currently projected to naturally want to do?" 

"To an extent. Thallasa cruises as a matter of policy avoids irreconcileable ideologies amongst the guests on the same vessel whenever possible, and the synchronocity system is able to adjust things in the experience of the other guests to work to ensure smooth transitions, though it's considerably more likely in that case that you would experience additional awkwardness and transitional difficulties beyond that of the intended experience." 

"And Mythos? Light's Purity? The Classic? If the Summer Empire has parity power to you, I refuse to believe that they'd just leave an a big book of all their secrets unwarded from analysis." 

"Those can all influence the effiacy of the results, yes, though all of those sources are ones that are designed to operate neatly within the confines of your will and the purposes they are designed for - your mythos will protect the integrity of your story and your choices, your purity will protect you from the ills of the world, and the classic's protections are designed around exploitability of the system of manipulation of ontologies. All of those factors can be mitigated to a relatively neglible concern, if you so desire."

"So tl;dr, don't sweat it, you offer the good shit w/ the aligned operating principles?"

"That's a fairly accurate description, yes, especially in the cases of the powers that you have chosen."

I crack my knuckles and nod. 

"The resta us were thinkin' of askin' 'bout how we can like, actually introduce ourselves when resta the peeps here are gonna be filtered on present-interestingness rather then the potential shit you mentioned earlier? Fig. can just go for it and treat 'em like normal ass people 'nd go from there, but advice would be cool." 

I swig the tea, the unmelted sugar satsifyingly sliding down my throat.

"There's a wide number of sensible approaches. I'd encourage you to go with whatever makes you feel the most comfortable - pursuing adaptation to the task, finding places where the bounds of teachings are relaxed, or simply taking in the experiences that you'd otherwise wish for and experiencing social activities as part of that." 

"Must say, you do a good job at the whole "World's your oyster" thing." 

"Why thank you."

"Thank you for your time and thoughts. I'll think on that further in private, I suppose." 

She nods, and raises from her seat after finishing her own final sip, and turns and trots away. 

...I flop back. 

Talking is tiring. Still...

Does make some sense? 

We should try out some of the things here.

Mixers, for one - no need to search overly much specifically, I feel.

Superpower combat games!

Those are gonna be great fun, plausibly relevant later and also just icebreaky, too!

...That'll be fun to window shop too, I bet? 

M-hm!

Beyond that... 

Idk. 

Throw on the background materials about the summer empire, the light, the standard recommendations, get an exercise routine - glad won't have to deal w/ the bruising thing - all that stuff, eat up and just... get on with our lives? 

Yes. 

Though I would like to point out that we're procrastinating on the original question - what's the point at which it makes sense to initialize the Goldenvale visit? 

Not now, surely.

True enough but beyond that...

It doesn't seem especially tightly constrained? That being said, having a growing power for longer seems ideal.