"They are accommodating. Disembark and act perplexed."

"I'll come armed for peace, then. 神祇不拝。"

"You will make friends here. May God watch over you."

Praem nods slightly. "They will find accommodations first. Meeting after is a good idea."

Marisa is gleefully heading towards the foyer! There will be math, after all. And maybe magic?

Nazrin stops by the ship's mess hall to collect her charges. "I'm ready to take us on land. Try not to creep out any humans, okay?"

Various youkai follow her abovedeck. They look around at the sights in awe and appreciation, while Nazrin tries and mostly fails to look innocently confused, scanning the dockside for someone paying attention.

Nazrin appears to be a fairly small (that is, around the height of Marisa-plus-hat) young woman with clearly visible large mouse ears, holding what looks like a fairly heavy pack with her tail. Some of the assembled youkai behind her have similar odd traits, like feathers or in one case horns.

"Well, if you'd like to head out and invite her over to the church, I'm sure more of my Carta are still lurking around the docks to ensure you all feel well disposed towards us when handing out the trade agreements," replies the bishop. "And if I don't miss my guess, Juno will be chatting up the doorkeeper on your way out, if you'd like an escort around the city."

The foyer of the Blood Red Quays Art Gallery does indeed contain a pair of squabbling mathematicians.

"Your problem is, you haven't taken account of the difference between riparian geometries and celestial geometries," one is impatiently explaining, a lady who is rather blue around the gills - yes, definitely gills - whose barbels are wobbling dramatically.

"Everything to do with celestial geometries is either astronomancy or conjecture!" asserts another, who has pointed ears easily visible through a balding mess of grey hair.

Ginevra is hanging out with them, looking rather embarrassed.

Meanwhile on the dockside, there are indeed more Carta Notturno watching out for additional arrivals, as well as the draughir with the clipboard hovering around in a vaguely supervisory fashion.

The youkai are getting their share of double-takes and funny looks - a few feathers seem to be entirely unremarkable, but mouse ears is definitely out of the ordinary.

"Greetingsss, and welcome to Sssarvos!" enthuses a young woman with scaly cheeks, a nice set of fangs and a few feathers of her own growing amongst her hair. "What can the Carta Notturno do to make your visit a sssuccess?"

"I will return presently. Good day."

Praem nods politely, and heads out.

"Well, celestial geometries are tricky. You must be from the math department? I'm Kirisame Marisa, just an ordinary magician. Well, an ordinary magician from outer space, I guess. Call me Marisa!"

"Thanks. We're hoping for accommodations for the six of us; don't worry about the other two, space for six is fine. I seem to have a meeting after that, but these five could use a tour guide. It's their first time offworld."

It's her first time offworld too, at least in the starship sense, but it's certainly safer than Makai. These people don't need to know that, though.

"I'll go with you until my people are accommodated, and then double back to meet Praem, probably. That's the creepy ice stare one, if you didn't catch their names. Oh, and I'll want to stop by someone who can give me local money for diamonds, and then a tobacconist, if you have those here."

"Tartuccio i Diora i Sarvos at your service!" replies the old pointy-eared gentleman, essaying a clumsy bow.

"Jania Diora von Temeschwar," replies the merrow, impatiently. "I suppose if you come from outer space, you must have more information than us on celestial geometries. Tell me, does the orbit of the inner stars stutter or does light have a speed?"

"I'm sure a great many innsss would love the honour of accommodating you; do you have any requirementsss or preferencesss? Clossseness to the dock, ssseparate rooms, exemplary food, the best feather bedding, the most delightful available companionssship?"

"Light has a speed, yeah, it's pretty fast on human scales, I don't have the astrometrics at hand but I think about 500 seconds from here to your sun? In the pretty typical range for somewhere inhabited. Usually we measure time and length in the same units for geometry, with the speed of light equal to one, it's simpler that way. You have a model of gravitation, right? Is there somewhere with a blackboard and chalk?"

"Yeah, six rooms, at a nice place, my expenses are all reimbursable. Wherever merchants who just had a great voyage go to live it up, probably. I'm going to lead monastic chants at odd hours, so a place where there's carousing anyway wouldn't go amiss. Monks are forbidden from drinking alcohol, but not a single one from our temple has successfully followed this prohibition, so expect carousing."

She spits tobacco-colored juice to her left, annihilating it in midair with violet magic from her left hand. "What do the natives do for fun around here, anyway?"

Praem spends a minute or so staring at the nave before seeking out Juno. Any invisible spirit life lurking?

"There'll be a room at the University, if you'd like us to take you there," notes Tommaso.

"We do indeed have a model of gravitation!" replies Jania. "It turns out you can derive it from a pendulum, and it seems to apply fine to the orbit of the moon, but there are ongoing arguments as to whether the quick stars are distant masses or something more esoteric. Especially the Wanderer."

"Everything comes back to the Wanderer with you!" exclaims Tartuccio. "There is no proof whatsoever that astronomantic entities are anything other than magical signifiers. The record of eclipses suggests we orbit the Sun, as the Moon orbits us, but there is no proof whatsoever for other 'celestial bodies'."

"So, good wine, good beds, ssomewhere that'd be okay with Asaveansss; do your carousssers have a preferred variety of professional companionssship, including 'none'?

There are a great many entertainments in Ssarvoss - anything from art galleriess, to theatre, to opera, to fighting pitss; from dive barss to wine tasting emporia; cicisbeoss to fit all budgets, recreational ssailing, academic argumentation, ssimply taking the air around the city; all manner of purssuitss."

There is, in fact, a surprising lack of invisible anything here. It's almost like anything that might have taken up residence has been fastidiously cleared away.

"Yeah, to a first approximation, masses are attracted with a force proportional to the product of both masses and inversely to the square of the distance, you can derive orbits from that, but it's a first approximation. There's a few planets in this system, I think, I didn't pay much attention, just went straight to the habitable zone. If a planet's too close, the water boils, if it's too far, the water freezes, so you get like one or two livable planets for a star like this. I don't remember anything super weird. It's, uh, divining the local orbits from down here would be a pain, maybe when I have a few hours free, but I have the Earth system already, one second."

She casts (using way too much power, if anyone is watching the magic as magic) a three-dimensional orbital diagram of Earth's solar system, with the Sun and planets through Saturn; Earth's Moon appears as well, but no other bodies.

"This is not to scale, the distances are much larger compared to the bodies but that makes a horrible diagram, and there's like 30 planets omitted, plus thousands of non-planet bodies, this only has the magically relevant ones. Uh, there's no end of fighting over terminology but the way I'm describing it is the mercantile convention, a star is anything massive enough to support fusion, like the Sun or the fixed stars, a planet is anything smaller than that but big enough to be round, like what we're standing on or the Moon or the wandering stars, anything too small to be round is an asteroid or a comet or something, depends on what it's made of."

"Uh, this spell is actually combat magic with the combat part suppressed, it'll only last like 90 seconds, I should really make a better one. I can do that while figuring out yours; how many magically relevant bodies are there? I can get all of those in a diagram."

"Talented hosts would be appreciated, we're appreciators of music and dance where we're from. Now, monks are in theory celibate, and I can personally vouch to you that none of them are married. I've got a lovely mouse husband tending the hearth back home, of course."

She grins, showing off teeth that are perhaps sharper and more carnivorous than the typical mouse's.

"I might haunt the dive bars a little, when I'm done with my work. Look for down-on-their-luck treasure hunters diving for shipwrecks, that sort of thing."

If Praem has thoughts on the silence, we are not privy to them.

She heads in the direction of Juno.

Ginevra and Tomasso are vaguely attempting to shoo the assembled mathematicians out of the art gallery foyer, although they are held up a little by the illusion, which is starting to draw something of a crowd from other interested gallery patrons. One of those patrons swift-casts Detect Magic: Identify Ritual Performance and looks extremely confused by the results, and asks another patron to have a go and see what they think.

"Only the Wanderer of the wandering-stars is magically relevant," replies Junia, "but there are also the constellations - the Phoenix and the Three Sisters are generally the easiest for a beginner to find, there are seventeen standard constellations in all and the Wanderer atop that. Ginevra, do you have a beginner's guide to Astronomancy on you? I could list them all out, but it'd be quicker for her to read them."

"Do you know if there is another 'livable planet' in this 'system'? The mystery of the Vard would suggest there might be, although I suppose they might have arrived by whatever mechanism you did, just in a slightly less controlled fashion," asks Tartuccio.

"Talented mussicianss and dancerss, likely to have sssix rooms available, unflappable... I think I know the place. Let me convey you to the Cockerel's Wattle."

The Carta naga leads them off down the docks, towards the great statue that dominates the harbour.

The streets of Sarvos are moderately crowded, especially as the group of youkai appear to have attracted a variety of curious bystanders tailing them with varying degrees of subtlety. Stall-holders and shop-keepers with open-fronted stores, mostly selling food items with occasional vendors of trinkets, clothing and household goods, call out to them from the roadside; the entire place appears to be somewhat one giant market, at least the parts they're being conveyed through.