"As far as I know your rocks aren't people, but if they were those conditions wouldn't exclude them from the population that Vanda Nossëo looks at when determining if a vote to join is valid."

"I must be more confused about democracy than I thought because I don't see what possible goal is achieved by giving the vote to people who are dumb as rocks and have no skin in the game."

"Well, you don't enforce laws against rocks now, but if you found out they were people you might start! And it's a strong signal that Vanda Nossëo won't back any disenfranchisement, which can be pretty important to get communicated early on - otherwise it's more deceptive than we prefer to operate and it gets some people convinced that we'll back them in what they're doing."

"I expect this never comes up because rocks aren't people but it's very silly of you and in a way where I'm concerned it will come up in cases that don't involve rocks." Azan's laws have almost no protections against people coming in, declaring themselves citizens, staying long enough to vote, and then leaving. Why would they, people coming in and declaring themselves citizens for a day isn't nearly that much of a headache with a monarchy. "Like, say, donkeys. Donkeys have extremely strong preferences and if you're telepathic you don't need them to talk, and frankly it'd be good to get a telepath to come let us know how to treat our livestock decently, but letting them vote on government policy seems even less likely to go well than letting all humans vote on it."

"Donkeys are not to my knowledge sapient on this planet unless they assigned..." She checks her computer. "Donkeys are to my knowledge not sapient on this planet. But, yes, if they were, and Azan couldn't countenance letting them vote, you would not be able to join Vanda Nossëo. We'd still trade with you and individuals from polities that haven't joined can immigrate to many Vanda Nossëo polities and some places do choose that option."

"What exactly does 'sapient' mean?"

"- let me check real quick if there are any translation patches I need to be implementing." She looks. "Okay. The way I think of it it means the capacity for agency and reason and preferences. There are a lot of definitions and you're welcome to read a list. In practice if there's controversy over something maybe being a person we err on the side of caution."

"I am very confident donkeys have the capacity for agency and preferences. Not so much reason, I guess. Do you care if humans who don't have the capacity for reason vote?"

"If there is a large class of humans who don't have the capacity for reason that isn't an already-understood category like 'babies', we can look into it. If there are individual humans who lack the capacity for reason, like comatose people, they still count as part of the population a majority of which has to vote yes, but a normal number of those won't sink a well-liked membership campaign."

"No, that's basically who I mean. It sounds like you expect people to vote to join by a wider margin than I thought was typical of elections."

"It's a very wide margin, yes, votes do fail for lack of turnout. Sometimes you get a setup where most of a planet joins and some individual states don't, and the non-joiners wind up with most of the people who voted no or abstained - who of course can't be prevented from leaving their member homes - and the people from those places who did want to join filter out, but obviously there's no solution that makes everyone happy and we settle in this case for requiring overwhelming support to join."

"Did you have that with very many countries on the other version of this planet?"

That's about when someone shows up and hands him a book containing among other things the treaties with Niazon and Iral that he mentioned earlier. Valan refrains from explaining how they knew to do that.

Maybe they have telepathy from whoever else they've been talking to, how would she know! "Thank you so much - Casjan, if you don't mind looking these over as a first pass? - thank you - yes, including the Azan there, but not the Sesat at all."

"What happened with Sesat?"

The treaties are notably less idealistic than Azan's previous foreign policy. They pushed pretty hard to make their concessions mostly in land rather than in border controls, but still. The war with Sesat wouldn't have happened under these terms, because Azan has, if not given up entirely, at least ceded a lot of ground.

"The planet looked pretty uncomplicated - as they go. They sent some less experienced teams - they have to start somewhere - and one of them, assigned to Sesat, didn't swap out for replacements when they had a personality conflict. I don't know the envoys who were there personally but I believe there is now a scathing book published about how he was terrible and everything was his fault. I can get you a copy if you like."

"Was that all, they decided to never join because that person insulted the Star of Stars personally or something?"

"I don't think anyone insulted the Star of Stars - although relatedly there was a coup shortly after contact."

Which would normally mean they backed the coup to push through their preferred policies but not if Sesat then didn't join. Also that isn't an answer, that's a distraction.

"Would you feel more comfortable having this conversation with someone who has a tattoo."

"Oh no. Okay, maybe it wasn't a personality conflict so much as crosscultural conversations being extremely difficult - I have no idea what I've said that led to you replying in that way."

...Plausible, really, his first few years in Azan did feel about this confusing. The last magic people to land on them were practically Azanis, and these people have been emphasizing how they're basically Azan with more power, but.

"My apologies, cross-cultural conversations are one of the hardest things I've ever done. It feels as though you're being evasive, which is understandable, I've been evasive several times in talking with you. I was trying to clarify - it sounds like you were saying Sesat didn't join, for a length of time I've been assuming was at least a few years and not a few decades but I might be assuming wrongly, and you're not hoping they'll join in the future, and it's because a conversation went in a way that could be described as 'a personality conflict' or 'cross-cultural communication difficulties' - at least, I think that's what you said - and if that's what you said then maybe you're worried giving me details will make me as angry as everyone in Sesat must have been. But maybe I have that wrong."

"Sesat didn't join because they didn't like us. They still haven't and still don't. I've seen forecasts of three to four generations before they put it to a vote again. I think they found it extremely insulting that getting even carefully exactly-worded lip service for their treatment of slaves, which seemed of utmost importance to the movers and shakers of Sesat, required being very overt and direct and it was impossible to instead rely on subtext and avoid losing face. I think they felt threatened and when it became adequately clear that the threat would not manifest in genuine violence chose distancing themselves from Vanda Nossëo as the dignity-preserving option. And someone decided to stage a coup and, for some reason, subsequently... export... the previous Star of Stars to a world in our sister organization Elendil where it remains possible to meaningfully own slaves because there is a domesticated sapient species that prefers slavery as a lifestyle available on the open market there. I think it took many conversations to get that bad, and that the leader of the envoy team should have bowed out much earlier and let someone else try to rescue the situation. I am willing to answer all of your questions, I don't know any classified information, if I sound evasive it's because I'm not sure how to put something in a way that will be informative across the culture gap or I don't understand the relevance of the answer to you such that I can pick out a useful response out of the possible topical sentences."

"Thanks. I could probably get more than you from a public statement by the new Star-of-Stars if there is one, or pick apart diplomats' statements for accidental subtext, but I'm mostly trying to figure out if this is - something that will matter to the Sesatis living in Azan, something that ought to matter to everyone in Azan but was easier for Sesatis to notice, something where that thing you keep doing where you disavow the diplomats involved every time it comes up will be important to letting everyone decide it's a stupid fight other people are having that we don't have to get involved in, or something that basically only matters to one guy who doesn't have that much power or might be dead. If it was about slavery we - I don't know if you'll decide we still have slavery or not, it probably depends on how your translation works, but at any rate I think it's not something that would be very disruptive to get rid of."

"Do you have anyone who would be prohibited by the licit use of force from walking up to me and asking me to teleport them to another planet, never to return?"

(Zua pulls up a search for public statements by the new Star-of-Stars to show him.)

"Not in the way you mean. Azan doesn't currently have anyone enslaved, but it would be legal if it came up in the future under certain circumstances, and then there isn't technically a law against leaving the country so much as them being confined somewhere specific and not allowed in the parts of the country between them and the border. Also, we're in an interior courtyard of the palace, and while there are procedures in place to escalate complaints from literally anyone to Azan she, that doesn't actually mean just anyone can wander any part of the palace grounds at any time. But if there were such people and they left with you we wouldn't ask an Azani teleporter to hunt them down."

And he'll look at whatever Zua finds...

So the most immediately notable thing about this video is that the new Star-of-Stars is an alt of someone Valan knew once.

He's furious, almost vibrating with it, explaining that it is possible to grow greater than Sesat ever realized, that Vanda Nossëo has that potential with their magic and technology, and that they are squandering it in favor of constructing a society of docile sheep as fat as any king and as cowed as any slave. Sesat will grow as rich as Vanda Nossëo - its people can already wake the dead; its people will soon be able to make jewelry that produces flameless light, or that grants immortality; Sesat has seen its last famine and its last plague no matter what happens next.

Vanda Nossëo is as rich now as Sesat will be in six months and if you strip away the temporary disparity in wealth and look at what they do - in Vanda Nossëo they maim people who get drunk and commit manslaughter. Like Azan. They do it with mental editing, so they don't have to look at what they've done, which is important because they're squeamish. Sesat has been coming to recognize that no person, king or serf, ever deserves that.

To join Vanda Nossëo would mean making this bargain: that any time one of their young men gets too deep in his cups and starts a fight, they give him up to be maimed and kept apart from society, in exchange for which they would all have enough food.

Vanda Nossëo's leadership staked their honor on their boasts that they would not annex Sesat until all the people of Sesat united in begging them to. They'll keep their word. They won't even be closing their stores. So even were there any in Sesat so contemptible as to want to take them up on their offer, it would hardly matter. Nothing is lost by turning them down.

He does, in the end, smirk about that.