Nod nod. It's not obviously time to cast Tongues yet but maybe when she thinks of some questions. Anybody else have remarks for her before she goes and reads books?

Just something bland about it being nice to meet her.

She goes and looks through books for a bit.

There continue to be books about history, spell collections, novels, poems, and occasional science books. Chanai and Tema will both also spend some time in the library.

And some time later she will venture out of the library and cast Tongues. "Hello, it's nice to meet you, I'm Belmarniss," she tells the visitor.

"You too."

"Did Tema explain about my translation limitations? Did you want to see a more obvious spell to demonstrate that I'm not a sort of person you're familiar with?"

"She mentioned that you have a spell for talking to people and a spell for understanding, and I believe you about it but I'd be interested to see something anyway if it's cheap. She also mentioned you might have questions about the old ones."

She casts Prestidigitation and starts turning random objects colors. "So on my planet," she says, "there are species that people will tell you are always evil. This is wrong - no species there is literally always evil - but there are some that are so overwhelmingly so that you'd need to sort through a few billion to find an unambiguous exception, and there are others that are basically normal people but with an evil culture, so if you happen to meet one and have nothing else to go on, they're probably bad news, but if you adopt one, it's fine. And there's a range in between. I'm one of the evil-culture kind but I'm not personally evil - we have magic that can check that. I'm curious where the old ones fall on this spectrum."

"They don't much resemble either of those descriptions. Closer to the first, they don't have a culture of their own at all anymore and the ones I've met who were raised by humans are - how do I put this. There's a... way that they are, something inside them, that makes them want to hurt people and not particularly want to give to the poor, and all the ones I've met have whatever that is, but I wouldn't call all of them evil. I've met an unspecified nonzero number of them who I'd trust absolutely - if I found myself tied up in their basement with all my spells spent I'd shout for them to come find me; if I needed somewhere to stash an orphan I would ask them for help. But they're still... cold and sadistic."

"What leads the nonevil ones to be nonevil?"

"I don't really know. I could guess but I'd just be guessing."

"I'd still like to hear the guesses."

"Patience and thinking ahead. Happening to really enjoy the company of someone who wouldn't want them to be evil and not feeling like having that person around and hateful is good enough. Objecting on principle to being limited and predictable. Abstract philosophical arguments. General benevolence."

"How do they come by general benevolence if they are cold and sadistic by nature?"

"I would really like to know. But - hm. You know how - actually I don’t know if things are similar enough where you come from for this analogy to work - do you know the thing where you don’t stop liking food if you fast?"

"Intimately."

"I think it’s like that. Not - the way they are on balance, necessarily. Just one of the ways they feel."

"I'm not sure I follow you."

"And I'm not sure I'm right. But I think they all get hungry for - evil, I guess - and I don't think they're all neatly lined up behind it."

"I don't suppose they can satiate it with exotic kink?"

"Some do. I'm not sure if it's an entirely adequate outlet. I suspect it isn't but it seems like a very personal thing to ask about."

"I was sort of assuming that anyone who'd tell you they were one of these folks was already on pretty personal-question terms with you."

"...Zorvey is the only experience you have of our entire planet, isn't it. The islands aren't so..." Shrug. "If I knew of any here I sure would have to be on pretty personal-question terms but then I don't think if I made a habit of keeping quiet about capital crimes like that I'd tell total strangers about it."

"I assume there is enormous global cultural diversity but also that a project to arrange that all old ones forever reincarnate without magic would require pretty strong consensus."