"Yes, we can do that, but if it keeps happening it could become a huge drain on police time. Amentans who can't stay out of places they aren't welcome are sometimes fined, or imprisoned, but I don't know if either of those would really be suitable."

"Is that not what police are for? Also fining someone doesn't feel really relevant since amaliens won't be using money to get into the city it the first place?"

He grimaces.

"Also I don't think anyone would be happy about Meelia being imprisoned. It sounds like it would make lots of amaliens really sad and angry."

"Fines are mostly for deterrence and for recouping costs associated with enforcement but a lot of amaliens have no money and not much use for it so it would, yeah, not really suit. That's what police are for, but usually we want to use police to handle unexpected things, and longer-lasting solutions to handle anything that just keeps recurring. So if she comes to the city uninvited once, then the police can remove her. If she does it again, especially since she also went places she wasn't supposed to go on Amenta, it stops being a central case of police response. Do amaliens have something you do when another amalien is coming into a place they aren't wanted repeatedly?"

"I wouldn't really expect deterrence to work on an amalien? In Meelia's case I'd expect it to make any problems worse - she'd just think of them as obstacles prolly and she usually tries to use adventuring to solve obstacles. Which is really great sometimes but not really great other times. Amaliens would talk to the person a lot if the person kept going somewhere that was making people sad and try to figure out why and how to solve it and give them hugs and talk some more and try things. I'm not sure what we'd do if that didn't work. Usually with monsters we can just leave where they are. Sometimes I guess we have to move them far away maybe?"

"- sorry, you think deterrence doesn't work on amaliens in full generality?"

"Depends kinda? Someone might decide they wouldn't enjoy something cause of the downside but if they're trying to help someone and they still think it'd help people I think doing bad things to someone if they try to help won't make them want to stop? Might for a few amaliens I guess, but also I sorta expect more amaliens would decide that meant helping was even more important."

"Why would that mean helping was even more important if whatever means was chosen was specifically something that other people didn't want to happen and were working to prevent and make unappealing? Is it more important to feed someone if you have to steal the food to do it?"

"I think if you can easily purchase food for someone and then a law is passed making it illegal to do that and than I think it could make sense to try even harder to get that person food? Not sure why though."

"I... suppose... that could make sense under some sets of assumptions...

...this doesn't tell me how to have a persistent unwelcome amalien removed from city limits short of putting her on another celestial body, though, which I presume would be awfully uncomfortable for her if it wasn't one with anything anyone else wanted on it."

"I can't actually rem-ember a time when amaliens needed to do that. I suspect part of the issue with Meelia is Amentans didn't know how to de-escalate with her and she didn't know how to de-escalate with them?"

"That seems likely. Also she spent a lot of the escalatory period deliberately out of contact, apparently she left her pocket everything behind."

"Huh. She might have had a reason but I bet at least part of it is she just didn't consider having a pocket everything to be important? A lot of amaliens have trouble adapting to them and Meelia in particular tends to be fairly slow to adapt her methods of approaching problems. It's possible it wouldn't have occurred to her the pocket everything was even capable of communicating with people."

"...there's not enough detail in this report for me to contradict you, though I admit that sounds very odd to me."

"It's also possible she abstractly knew that it was capable of communicating but didn't think of it at the time. Amaliens are very old and pocket everythings are still new to us."

"Understood. What deescalation techniques work well for amaliens?"

"Explaining to them that someone is sad or angry and you want to talk about it. Expecting that if you tell them they can't do X because of Y then if Y doesn't apply to them/they can solve it, then they might do X. Expressing willingness to hear them out. Showing that you care and have empathy. Giving them an obvious way forward that they trust might help. Asking another amalien to come and talk to them."

"This... makes sense for small communities of people who don't all know each other. I'm worried it won't scale well and having to find someone who is personally and individually offended about an instance of incursion into the city, or someone who is sincerely empathetic about the state of being exiled due to having committed serious crimes, is not something I have a procedure for or expect much success with. Perhaps I should have some amaliens on retainer for situations like that."

"That might be a good idea. I also really don't expect this to be a common issue - amaliens are pretty well behaved and Meelia is an outlier in terms of trouble making."

"You have quite a lot on your plate already, is there someone you'd recommend as a mediator to retain?"

"I can think of a bunch of amaliens who are good at mediation - like Keeta or Po - but I don't think that any of them aside from me actually know Amentans very well. I can mediate for anything that comes up for now and help train someone as my replacement? I don't expect mediation to take too much of my time, though I suppose when it does come up it'll be urgent."

"It does seem like it might be, though we can certainly hope it doesn't come up; with any luck Meelia won't decide she urgently needs to visit Chaspanti."

"I can pre-emptively talk to her about it if you'd like - I'm planning to travel to Keetim to meet her when she lands."

"That sounds like a good idea, thank you. I'll send you the updates widget for her flight."

"Thanks!"

Lucien schedules a follow-up with the mayor for a week from now so he can help some other amalien start learning how to be a mediator. He heads home for the evening afterwards, doing a bit more research on how Amentans deal with law breaking before bed.

Amentans really don't like it when people break the law. There are some minor regulatory infractions that just get you told to fix it, but other than that breaking the law will tend to get you punished - fines are common, there are a ton of jobs you lose or can't get if you have a criminal record, they use sterilization as a punishment sometimes (the country of Met will also sterilize your relatives if you do something really bad), the death penalty exists, house arrest and prison exist but one has to fund one's own imprisonment expenses.