"All of the things we use. Microscopes, pocket everythings, vehicles that go faster than horses, even spaceships themselves."

"It would of course be our pleasure to learn how such things are built."

"Great! Is this a good time to talk about where we can put factories for things like that?"

"Yes. What are they like? Do they produce waste or noise? How big are they?"

She can pull up pictures of factories! "Factories produce some waste, so we will need to account for space to set it aside safely where it will not get into the water or soil or air. Some are noisy, but if there are neighbors who want them very quiet, we can make thick walls that prevent most noise from getting out. Different kinds are different sizes. We could use almost any amount of land, as long as we know about how much so we can plan for it, but parcels that are only the size of a house will not be very useful for factories specifically."

He has detailed questions about the types of waste and how they're sequestered and how if at all they can be composted or similar, and how those correspond to different types of factory, and what types of factory there are in the first place...

Some factory refuse can compost no problem, other kinds are not great to have out in the open and you put them in sealed barrels or something and warehouse or bury or sink them. Would he like to watch a whole compilation video of factory machines doing specific-ass things? Or this timelapse of a starship being built to soaring background music?

Yes, he'd love those things.

They have lots of those; they took a copy of all the most popular websites including the big video repositories before they set out.

In that case, after a while (a longish while) he'll assign the soldier who was learning Tapap to watch more videos so he can focus on politics. His obvious wistfulness about the videos is mostly sincere.

Mashu hands off the video-showing task to an underling likewise. Oh, here's something that might be useful, would he like to see a satellite image of the region and help them identify where all the borders are?

He can help with that, and even point out where some countries are mistaken about where the borders are. (Sesat has a disputed northeastern border with Iral and firmly defined borders with Azan and Niazon, the latter along a river.)

Good to know! Is there anyone who can teach them/their computers those languages, here?

Azani and Irali are mutually comprehensible with Sesati to the point that he can probably get them nearly fluent by listing specific differences (in some cases large structurally integral differences like Azani having dropped middle voice and being ergative-absolutive); whether the language they're speaking now is called Sesati or Niazoni is one of not that many regional variations and actually the dialects have been moving closer together recently rather than farther apart like Azani, and at any rate Niazon will take being spoken to in a centrally Sesati dialect better than Iral or Azan. But there are a couple of people from Iral around that they could talk to for practice, and a larger number of people from Niazon or who've spent a lot of time in Niazon.

"Really you'll only need to start from scratch on language-learning if you go much further inland than that - northeast of here you'll need to learn Neza and Roiti, at least, but Sesat doesn't border anyone we can't talk to."

"That's so convenient!" And now Mashu wants to look at the map some more, do they have internal political divisions, what are the towns called, who owns all this land, do they worry much about poaching/trespassing/water rights/etc. etc.?

There's some independence at the municipal level and they have this treaty with Niazon about the river and this other treaty with Niazon and Iral and Azan and Sonas and Lia about the ocean...

This is all really helpful for getting to know their way around the local politics! How do they usually get along with their neighbors?

"I don't really know enough about your experiences to usefully compare! We have treaties, we have wars, we have peace, we have tension and cooperation, and I couldn't yet say if we have more or less of those things than you're used to."

She will talk about the history of Amenta! They have less land area, practically everywhere is on the one continent or an island economically dependent on same, so this one Empire was able to conquer much of the known world; they didn't get Tapa specifically, where these Amentans are from, but it was a big historical event when it rose and fell. Since that time they have had little dustups and sometimes have had to make threatening postures about international treaties having to do with things like particularly destructive weapons, preventing spikes in grey population and the use of non-greys in combat jobs, making sure everyone is letting inspectors in to verify that they're obeying these treaties, etcetera, but nothing big.

"We have treaties about very different things than that, and do not normally cooperate with attempts to... learn how many of a year's infants were born to soldiers? I confess to being confused about your greys. Your international treaty inspectors are not quite analogous to anything we have. Territory does change hands and empires do rise and fall, though Sesat and its immediate neighbors have been fairly stable recently."

"Greys are one of our castes. Have you noticed here that people are often good at the same things that distinguished their parents?"

"Yes. Our soldiers are often the children of soldiers who themselves are often the children of soldiers. But I don't see that I have any cause for complaint that Azan does it differently. It only means their soldiers are less trained and have less experience working together."

"So, when Amentans noticed that people were often good at the same things that distinguished their parents, we started specializing education to take advantage of that, and requiring people to go into fields that draw on the same or similar skills as the ones they are likely to have inherited. By now all the castes have a most common hair color, though some people have to use dye. It's especially important with greys, because we don't want to have the kind of war where every person is part of the fighting. The harvest still needs to come in, the medics should be understood to be off-limits as military targets, as much of life as possible would ideally continue without interruption by all the adults picking up weapons and going to join the war. You don't want your scientists and your accountants to waste any time learning to shoot or to run wearing armor. So we have a rule that only greys can take combat jobs. If everyone cooperates on that, wars don't have to spread beyond the caste that's suited for it. If someone breaks that rule by having, say, purples fight, they're putting everyone's purples in danger, because they're making the war bigger, and all their neighbors will cooperate to make them stop. And this means that we can tell if some country is thinking about being more aggressive, if they have more greys than they should."

"In general that's incompatible with how wars are conducted here - if I invaded Iral, I might be interested in Iral remaining prosperous and its serfs remaining alive and productive and its food stores unburned, but Iral would not be. We could agree not to deny each other the fruits of conquest, but it would be good for one party and bad for the other in equal measure, and conquest would seem more rewarding and thus be attempted more frequently. - In addition to that, I think our neighbor Azan would never consider ancestry-based limits on not only soldiers but any class of people - Azan he claims descent from slaves, openly and with pride. And it would hardly be reasonable to enter into any such agreement while any of our neighbors refused. I am... not entirely sure this is responsive to what you're trying to convey here, and suspect there are things I yet do not understand."

"Well, you don't have castes the way we do, so of course this isn't a system you're using! But we do, and you seemed curious about why, so I meant to explain it. Certainly it wouldn't make sense to adhere to a treaty like this without everyone else also agreeing, but once that was accomplished it was a matter of no one wanting to be the one to destabilize the standards keeping their purples and so on safe at home."