"Personal relationships and admiration - I'd never, say, marry someone whose character I didn't respect. And trust with delicate responsibilities and judgment calls."

"In what contexts do members of your species have differences in character that would affect their suitability as partners?"

"Elves are a bit more - uniform, in that respect, than humans are, but one might reasonably prefer a partner who was - more prudent than dramatic, say, or more bold than patient, or more compassionate than exacting, or vice versa on any of the above, even if none of the Elves one rejects on that sort of basis are going to be wicked renegades. And there have been some more serious issues at times; I wouldn't marry someone who'd participated in genociding their world's Dwarves unless they'd very thoroughly repented from that and grown as a person since then."

"...Couldn't you just ask them to swear not to commit more genocides?"

"- I mean, that's fine for letting them go about their lives, but I wouldn't marry them."

"What would be unpleasant about it, and for that matter why can't you just swear to be satisfactory spouses for each other?"

"Well, for one thing we don't treat oaths like that, it's fairly taboo to ask for an oath from someone. I - is this actually important to your understanding here or is it a tangent?"

"I'm trying to figure out if you admire people for their virtues or if this is more along the lines of a night owl not wanting to share a bed with a morning person. Also you previously said you employed oaths for things like someone having destroyed a neighbor's sculpture."

"We take sculptures pretty seriously. Anyway, yes, we admire and appreciate people for their virtues."

"I'm concerned about walking the tightrope between saying offensive things and not saying enough things to let us come away from this conversation understanding each other and I think I'm going to end up on the former side by saying this but how can you say that and employ mind control."

"...do you mean oaths or do you have something else in mind?"

"It didn’t sound like oaths are only kind you have but yeah."

"There are other kinds that exist but they don't see common usage. Anyway, I do not, personally, employ oaths or any other sort of mind control. It's not part of my job and it doesn't have a place in my personal life. Someone who had impulsively destroyed someone else's projects might use an oath to control future impulses and to make sure their neighbors are willing to accept them as a neighbor - someone they can live with, trade with, say hello to in the street - not to make friends or pursue romances."

"I'm very confused now. Do your courts keep records of sentences passed and can I review them?"

"Among... Elves?"

"In Vanda Nossëo in general but sure."

"Sure." She can pull up court records on her computer. Prison sentences, exiles, fines, exile commuted to local alternative, loss of various professional licenses, anger management classes, substance abuse treatment, exile commuted to mental health treatment, loss of child custody, probation, exile commuted to community service - domestic abuse, reckless manslaughter, public health violations, noise ordinance violations, assault, fraud, kidnapping, trespassing, stalking, arson, corruption -

Excellent! Now he has concrete questions, which is a huge improvement over the previous state of affairs.

He doesn't mention it but the set of crimes makes him think well of them. All of those things seem bad. They're probably like Azan in that you can get away with calling the king a dumbass, and this is one of his favorite things about Azan.

"I would like to know more about professional licensing, mental health treatment, prison conditions, and what distinguishes community service from unfree labor."

"We can visit a prison, if you want. 'Commuted to' means that they would have been exiled but opted to stay in their polity and do the community service instead; they could have quit and left at any time. Mental health treatment varies a lot by mental illness, I'd look up this person for you but I can't access their medical records, they might have wound up with some kind of therapeutic classes or psychiatric medications or subtle arts - again, this is a commuted sentence, they could have just left for anywhere that was fine with people having that kind of record and illness move in. There are some magical powers you need a license to operate and some businesses also require licenses in some places, and abuse of the powers loses the license so you can expect that anyone operating under such a license is responsible with them."

" - Which magic powers require a license and what happens if someone wants to visit without having declared all of their powers?"

"A lot of magic powers require a license because they're so dangerous - anything you can trivially kill people with, anything that allows mind-controlling other people, if you're born with the powers you can be born with a probationary license but just because some people are born subtle artists doesn't mean they can go around incontinently projecting into people's brains... The powers requiring a license is not particularly local, it's things like license to operate a restaurant that are more like that."

"I see. And is there a list of such powers, and can you tell me what happens if someone visits without having declared them - actually, can we go back to Azan and then you can tell me?"

"...sure? Visits where, though -" Pops ensue.

"...Oh, for a random example, let’s say Bangalore."

"That specific Bangalore, the Revelation one? I don't believe it has special requirements about declaring licensed powers or powers that don't require a license before you go in."