Other Azan: Recent member country, nicest Bronze Age settled civilization they've ever met really, cut it out with the blinding people and stuff pronto when asked nicely, extremely open immigration law mean it's becoming an interesting and increasingly densifying melting pot of folks who most places won't admit or who just think the principle is admirable (though it's not the only place with extremely open immigration law so it's not taking the full brunt of these populations).

Other Sesat: Shitty honor culture, diplomatic catastrophe, did Vanda Nossëo back a coup for some reason?? is that legal??, claim to be upset about magic licensing and subtle arts, biiiig into slavery and also the bilateral abuse of restraining orders, enter at your own risk.

Manalabs: An online archive of published nonsecret magical research, awards the following badges to research that can prove it's particularly rigorous/replicated/honest/meticulous/whatever, organized by type(s) of magic at issue, additionally hosts profiles of unique magic users so people can find papers relating to their magic individually and get a sense of how their individual personalities might have influenced or limited the research.

They’re fucked. He’s spent years trying to keep the peace, trying to help people who have wronged each other beyond healing live with each other, and he's been succeeding and they've been okay, and now it's not at all obvious how to keep this from ripping Azan apart at its very fragile seams.

He reads Manalabs for a while. It seems important to know as much as he can about the magic they have and how to gain as much of it as possible and how to defend against as much of it as possible.

There are so many kinds. Resurrection requires an interaction from this one and that one. Experiments are ongoing on whether this genetically induced magic can happen in kids conceived and born outside of the relevant world or not. That one is mostly illegal but they use it to kill Melkors.

He makes a few mental lists - magic they're not gatekeeping very much (resurrection, artificing) that they should make it known is available and encourage people to go get and come back to Azan, magic they need to think through how to defend against (subtle arts, morph, wizardry, their teleportation defense strategy still leaves something to be desired), and magic where they might want to test the gatekeeping procedures and see how corrupt they are (Loki's spells, wizardry, turning into a magic rock).

At this point - it's been a while, he's running out of ability to absorb new information, and he's got a ridiculous list of things to talk to Azan she about and an additional list of things to talk to Dama about. He finds a polite excuse to pass the envoys off to someone else.

And of course Azan she is always happy to meet with Valan, and additionally Dama is always happy to meet with Valan.

"I’m worried about their culture tending to... encourage the kinds of mistakes Azan he would have made if the war had gone differently, and I'm worried about the... way that they hate the alternate Sesat exacerbating tensions here if there’s a lot of contact - not just the fact that they do, but that they do for reasons almost no Sesatis are going to agree were bad things. Sometimes on the basis of things that aren't that much different here. They want the right to refuse to let us give our own people magic and they want to refuse people on the basis of having ever struck anyone in anger - they think it’s barbaric and you should be locked up in prison for hitting someone who says your family didn't deserve to die cleanly, but fortunately they've mercifully decided that everyone is going to forget all their old grudges now that they've showed up to enlighten us, and no one else has any complaints about how they do things, oh, except the ones who vanished never to be seen again. - To be clear, I like them fine and I think they mean well."

"Meaning well isn't enough if they don't understand the people they mean well towards."

"Yeah. But it means we're looking at round number fifteen of 'but will you please explain to me why you're so barbaric as to not want to be just like us, maybe I'll listen this time' and not a war."

"True. I just think you're right that we shouldn't join them outright."

"The big thing they're offering is being rich enough to pay for all their citizens to feast every day, and they do that and they say it's - important, I think because they don't like desperate people and want more of the sort of work people do when they have time to think - I saw two of their cities and one was just made of art - and I think we can pull that off now that we know them and know which world to go to to meet people who can conjure any object - but we can't guarantee we can maintain that with our own people unless we, uh, pick up our whole planet and move it into another universe."

"That sounds drastic."

"It does. But it'd mean our children's afterlife was in a place where we could contact them and confirm it was nice."