No, no they are not.

"Trade laws? How do you handle federate defense?"

"Trade is mostly handled privately. There's a species called Dwarves that on the whole really take to economics and business and trade, and they run a lot of the trade infrastructure. Vanda Nossëo subsidizes things we want more of, and so do a lot of individual charities. For defense we mostly use magically-empowered agents who do things like teleport invading forces away, conjuration forensics to identify violent actors, precogs to avert anything really big before it happens..."

"- How do you have teleportation working?"

"- there are several magic systems that enable teleportation, including sorcery, wizardry, and wish magic."

He makes a "go on?" motion with his eyes.

(Your extremely large sacrifice in doing exactly what you wanted to do to buy us time to think has been appreciated, Sori.)

The questions are how we deflect them from a direct takeover, and just what else they're up to while they're talking to us.

"I'm not sure if you want to know things like how precisely we can move around with what cargo, what the learning process to get one of these types of teleportation is...?"

"How they work? Whichever is the most mathematically simple and comprehensible first, ideally?"

"- I think it might work better if you handle that for us instead of keeping the whole group here?"

"Right, that's best for when we go to committee."

"They're not mostly operating on the level of - math -? They're magic. They don't reduce to elementary physics the same way technological things do. My version does reduce to elementary something but it's nonsense to people other than the inventor and can be used without knowing what it means."

"Everything reduces to math," he says with quiet confidence. "Sometimes we just don't know what math yet."

"So, other than sending us a diplomatic mission, where else on our world can we expect to see you?"

"We've sent a team like this one to every identifiably separate polity we could spot from our vantage point and can send more if you know of places we've missed and if anyone's asked for, say, a float healer team, or something, there'll be those about, but not here since we'd've been notified."

"- Polity is loosely translating," she says. "Float healer teams - what else should I let my people know about, so that they can not be surprised by your arrival?"

"Political unit. A country or nation or state. We can follow your lead on what to display around here if it'd be alarming."

"... I hope I don't offend you by saying this, because I am not trying to do so but trying to convey information about culture clash:

We, at this point, don't really understand what you're doing, and so we don't know what might offend you. I think the same is true of you and us. I think it is generally wise, in Mir where there are not currently any major unsolved problems, to do everything slowly and carefully and after consulting with relevant committees, so that nothing goes too wrong." This rebels against her fundamental spirit, and, also, it gives her more time to figure out if anything will go horribly wrong.

(Fortunately all the Four are alive and nobody is really old right now, or they'd have bigger problems.)

"That makes sense. In our diplomatic capacity we try to be pretty hard to offend, but of course that can't completely close a gap this big. Would the relevant committees like to meet us soon?"

"Absolutely."

And then they can discuss which committees! They're going to want a Trade one (to discuss the thing where Vanda Nosseo wants to open shops) and a Magic one (magic!!!!!) and then a combined Prosperity/Justice one to organize a factfinding expedition and a Foreign Affairs committee to see about organizing an exchange of diplomats and probably an Environmental Impacts committee...

... Environmental impacts?

I have a brilliant scheme, Riss! Trust me! <3 

That all sounds fine - should Vanda Nossëo get some more people down here to parallelize better or will this batch of five do?

Depends on how much they know about setting up factfinding missions, trade, magic, and establishing permanent embassies!