"Something to speed up one survey ship might turn up something suitable, though I wouldn't like to count on it. I don't suppose there are any monsters that specifically do warmth we could add to the search party?"

"I was thinking of speeding up a col-ony ship, and using Neh for survey."

"Issue is finding a way to heat Neh up even-ly and fast enough when she gets keeping heat sucked out of her by jumps. There are a bunch of heat monsters that I don't think can do that and a few other interest-in monsters that do transport, though not as fast as Meow at all, or other weird things that are hard to rep-licate with techno-logy?"

Vira lists a bunch of interesting monsters and what they do, with Lucien occ-asionally adding suggestions.

"So candidate solutions are - find a way to keep Neh warm, or get him warmed up comfortably and quickly enough after freezing that he's willing to tolerate it to scout, or another amalien who has more tolerance in that department who can accompany Meow who Meow will tolerate. Find a monster or combination that allows us to remotely view, or collect samples from, planets, without any persons visiting them. Find a monster or combination of monsters that does terraforming, so correctly orbiting planets can just be rendered livable - this could be incredibly minimalistic terraforming, almost any situation where it won't hospitalize someone to be outside for an hour will cut it with enough support. I want to make a multidimensional spreadsheet of all these monsters, can you list them again from the top, slowly so I don't accidentally write them down in Cryptophasia and render myself unable to understand my notes later..."

Vira is happy to help!

Lucien leaves for a bit to go and see if there are monsters Monument remembers that might be relevant. He comes back with more suggestions for the spreadsheet.

Pelape considers it a perfectly good use of her time for the next week at least to come up with heaps of stupid monster combinations and drill down into the ones that aren't facially absurd as they come up. Can Esteel Tree grow custom seeds? Could Aurorite hold in an atmosphere on a planet without a magnetic field of its own to help while it was getting started? The triceratops that shows far-off locations, how does that steer? Is the pufferfish creating the substances it puffs up with ex nihilo, does that scale? Do any of these monsters duplicate other monsters, even temporarily? What if you injected Neh with antifreeze? If you gave Meow a subspace transponder and taught it Cryptophasia could Neh steer teleports from home? This heat monster probably won't keep Neh warm well but could it warm up an iceball planet sustainably, turning it into a mostly-ocean planet? This one that eats rocks sounds useful for later stages even if it can't kick things off. Does that one secretly teleport? Does that one? Why does teleporting involve being cold, anyway?

The Esteel Tree can grow seeds that are close to the sort of seeds that could exist normally.

Aurorite could do that, yeah.

That triceratops let's you see alternative worlds, not far ones she's pretty sure. It's easy to steer to find worlds with things you want just by sorta looking for them, but the more specific the thing the stranger everything besides that thing gets.

It's actually more like a newt or salamander than a fish, and yes the things are created out of nowhere and she's pretty sure it doesn't scale. Maybe if you made the monster itself bigger but she doesn't know how to do that.

Yeah, Mimic can duplicate most things, though by default it's bad at that, but it can do lots the things with coaching. The things fall apart when it leaves.

She doesn't think antifreeze would do enough for it to help too much.

Meow isn't smart enough to learn Cryptophasia, and communication needs to pretty fast for Cryptophasia to be in two places at once? Hm. Aurorite is smart enough to learn Cryptophasia - maybe she could direct Meow? And maybe possibly they could manage to make her not freeze more easily then Neh? Though if she froze all the way through she would maybe die, unlike Neh, so they'd have to be more careful.

Maybe that monster could heat the place up, it does belch enough lava that it might work. Would be hard to transport since it's mountain sized but did she mention she could blow things up into space if they needed that?? 

Rock one is important for the Volcano Watchers, but maybe they can replace it with Amentan mining stuff for that.

Yes, the Amyris Tide does teleport, but only to shores part of the same contiguous body of water.

No, Mimic is actually incorporeal, the copies are just things it ~puppets sorta.

Teleporting involves being cold cause of zero space transfusion energy. ... Okay she just made that up cause she had no idea and it sounded cool.... Maybe the actual reason has to do with lower entropy colder states being better able to survive stably in whatever dimensional bubble Meow is accessing? It shouldn't go below absolute zero though.

Could Mimic mimic Meow and send the puppet copy scouting? Meow himself doesn't freeze, right, could he... swallow... Neh??? Even blowing a lava monster into space would leave the issue of getting it to where it needs to go, though if there's an icy rock in this system that might help, is there? How many things can you hold constant about an alternative world at once, can they just look for one where they already have lots of star charts of habitable planets?

Hm... Mimic's Meow, even if it could teleport (which Vira isn't sure of at all), wouldn't be able to teleport Mimic itself, so it would fall apart right after it went away. Probably the puppet wouldn't even be able to teleport, since transit still takes con-stant time and it'd fall apart then.

He could swallow Neh but Neh would still freeze.

There is an icy rock in this system! It's mostly frozen ocean, with some mountains poking out. No atmosphere or magnetosphere though.

You have to be able to sorta imagine or keep in mind all the things at once, and maybe the star charts would work without it getting really really weird and brain melty. Might be different stars but might not be.

Right, so, can they decide that one of the things they're trying to hold constant is the... galaxy?

What is keeping Meow from freezing?

Does the icy rock look seasonable?

She's pretty sure that you can only hold constant things you know and are thinking about - prolly the galaxy is too abstract but they can manage to keep constant the night sky looking roughly the same as one they visualize?

She's not sure what's keeping meow from freezing, but the fact that he's ~shadowy just like the shadows he teleports between might have something to do with it. Prolly is cause he's made in a way that's easier to teleport like he does somehow.

Yeah, it does! A bit small but it would work.

Does Meow have, like, a circulatory system, that could be hooked up to Neh's - this is all thoroughly horrifying and she wishes to clarify she's aware of that but they quite reasonably seem to have a different relationship to their physical integrity than Amentans do - is the prismatic triceratops friendly enough that it'll tolerate many attempts -

She doesn't think that would work for Neh but it's not impossible - it depends on how weird Meow's thing is. Prolly it wouldn't effect Neh enough to matter, it's hard to do things to amaliens.

The prismatic triceratops would definitely be okay with many attempts. It's very friendly. You might get a headache or a bit woozy but that goes away pretty fast.

...maybe just in case she should not try it and only amaliens should in case what's going on is brain damage they can heal off and she can't.

She's pretty sure it's not, but okay.

Maybe someone will be up for trying it eventually but not Pelape.

Okeydokes. Should Vira go and try that or one of the other things?

Vira's personal expertise is probably most relevant to star chart cross-checking, maybe other amaliens can run other experiments?

Sure, Meelia and Lucien and her and others can help. 

Lucien has specific rec-o-mmendations for the others.

[Continued in trading places]