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The planet looks like an ideal spot for colonization from a distance. Covered with a range of biomes, from lush forest to long coastlines to roaring rivers. However, when the Amentans arrive they quickly notice anomalies on their scans.
A population of humanoids lives on the planet, scattered - sometimes individuals are spotted alone and other times they appear in groups of up to a few thousand. They appear similar to child Amentans, except for a general lack of bright hair colors. Civilization appears primitive - in some cases so primitive that it's confusing how they survive at all, with small groups managing to survive in environments as harsh arctic tundra huddled around campfires, in sandy villages in a desert with a single well. A small number of cities exist, most without obvious sources of sufficient food to support them.
As the Amentans investigate further they notice more anomalies of a far less consistent nature. There's an aurora in the northern hemisphere that shines continuously, day and night. One of the cities appear to change subtly in composition and position constantly, with no obvious construction visible. A group of the humanoids appear to live underwater, alongside a gigantic manta ray, hundreds of feet in breadth. A giant skeleton statue of green crystal seems to be moving. A blur of feathers and wings zooms across the planet like a missile at one point. Except for the humanoid species, none of the anomalies repeat.
These are just the anomalies they notice easily from orbit, more may be found on closer inspection.
Meelia is bouncing continuously during the tours.
What's the propulsioney bit do? What are the showers for? How do make it go up? Where do you stay when it gets off the ground? How fast does it go?
They will happily explain all of these things! Showers are for getting clean, they need to do that a lot to be comfortable and avoid getting sick. They strap in here when it's in flight. Speed gets kind of confusing in space, but it accelerates yea much...
Woah! That's faster then she went when she was in space trying to find a space cow that got away. She thinks that the space cow was actually made up though and never found it. If they see any cows in space they should let her know.
They haven't seen any cows in space so far. How did she get to space to chase the space cow?
There was a vibrating speed monster that sped up things it touched for a bit sorta and wasn't friendly and she and Peli took it away from a bunch of amaliens who it was hurting (by vibrating things they liked till they broke and also by speeding up the amaliens so their friends all moved slower then them for a while) and then afterwards she and Peli were vibrating a lot so she tried to see how fast they could go and then she got so high and couldn't breathe and was a bit floatey and later she checked and found out that that was space.
Not around the amaliens it was around before but around other places. She dropped it off on the other side of a mountain. She doesn't know if it's still there.
The blue doesn't have any hair ties on her, but if Fika does she will let the braids be fastened without complaint.
Fika considers climbing down but then she won't have as good a view of the braid so she stays where she is.
That is fine with the diplomat she's perched on.
Once the ship tour is done they can talk more about where good places to settle might be and mark monster locations more thoroughly till they have a pilot city site picked out. Speaking of cities what is the... citylike... thing.
The amaliens end up recommending a large valley with a river going through it that had a group of amaliens living there a decade ago that has easy to live next to monsters. There's enough room for a small Amentan city, which can be expanded further past the valley with work to befriend monsters and help monsters move if they are having trouble being friendly.
That citylike thing on the map is Keetim! Keetim is a monster who is friends with Keeta who is the mayor and there are over a thousand amaliens in the city! And also other monsters! One of the amaliens who lives there says it's a nice place to live though hard if you're scared of nightmares.
"She means afraid of the city's nightmares, not your own. Keetim moves around and changes and that's really nice most of the time and helpful but sometimes it has nightmares and then it can be scary until it calms down. Keeta helps with that so it's easier to live in than it used to be."
"- what kinds of things happen when Keetim has nightmares?"
"Did one of them get their name from the other?"
"It changes in scary ways. I think one of the very bad ones had things like sharp stuff growing on the ground and on the sides of buildings and then some of the buildings fell towards the ground like they were biting the things inbetween."
"I think Keetim was renamed when it met Keeta? Or maybe afterwards cause people forgot the name before that."
"Wow. Sounds like Amentans shouldn't go to Keetim, but I hope the amaliens who live there are comfy." And they can get underway figuring out what they will need to bring from home and what they will be able to extract locally to build what they will need here.
"It's not always sleeping so you could visit for a bit but it is pretty hard to live in and amaliens have to be super careful if they have animal pets there."
Natural resources are plentiful and most resources they might need they can find somewhere on the planet - though the amaliens can only direct them to ones that don't require special equipment to find. The bigger issue would be getting the resources from where they are to the nicely located valley. Lucien thinks they can probably do this by having multiple backup routes in case one has a monster on it and keeping the places where they get the resources safe (and small enough that monsters won't generally find them by accident).
Do a lot of monsters fly? Helicopters use a lot of fuel if they're carrying anything very heavy, but it'd be a reasonable backup at least for the workers if not the materials if there was a monster on a road or railway.
Most monsters don't fly! Those that do don't usually fly very fast. Monsters might notice the helicopters when they land and take off if they're loud but that shouldn't be an issue if it doesn't happen too often.
Also based on the way she's bouncing he can tell Meelia wants to go on a helicopter ride.