Well that's anxiety-inducing! Why do people keep having souls, it doesn't really seem to help with literally anything!

Down go Nelen and his wholly reductionist team. Except Zanro. But that's different.

Nelen and his wholly reductionist team appear in a very large city*! It's nice, though still below average by Elfy standards; there's a lot of pretty old wooden buildings and well-mowed lawns and some nice pagodas, and sanitation has been invented and implemented. Some strong, sleek animals that might sort of resemble horses, sort of resemble bulls, and sort of resemble giraffes are dragging fast-moving carriages down the street. The streets are fairly packed, but the people look healthy and not, on average, unhappy - the default clothing material appears to be silk, though mixed in is some unbelievably light and fluffy wool, and it was raining earlier and many of them are carrying colorful umbrellas.

They are somewhat surprised to see the Vanda Nosseo team immediately appear, but not, like, completely shocked, as if it was a thing previously unthinkable.

(*By the standards of people who are not Vanda Nosseo or Elendil.)

Well, if they're not notable enough to be questioned, they will have to do the questioning. Who looks interruptible?

There's people giving them curious looks! But nobody is going to rush up and bother them. This woman over here (short hair, knee-length skirt and slightly baggier version of a T-shirt, looks to be in her thirties, backpack full of books) is looking particularly curious.

Nelen drifts in her direction. "Hello! I'm Nelen Utopia."

She's interested in talking to him if he's interested in talking to her! "Hello! I'm Vidis i Nethra. - Forgive my, uh, lack of knowledge of your customs, are you from very far away?" May as well take the risk, right?

"Yes, we are! We're envoys from another civilization very, very far away."

"I'm pleased to hear it!" she says in the voice of someone to whom ambassadors from very far-off lands delivering royal gifts is, you know, unusual, but if you live in the capital it's something you sort of just see. "Did you just stop being invisible?" That's much rarer.

"No, we teleported."

"Wait, really?" Okay, this is interesting! "From another land? I thought that was impossible even in theory - the godwebs aren't linked, are they, they're separate systems..."

"The godwebs? - it's possible depending on what kinds of visitors you've had before that we're from farther away than that."

" - Each [untranslatable 6] has its own godweb - or thing like it - and you use the godweb to do magic," she says. "Is that not how it works where you are?"

"It's not," says Nelen. "Actually, the thing you mentioned as having godwebs didn't translate at all, and our translation magic is usually pretty thorough."

" - There are these things," she says, grasping for the basics, "that are very large, you stand on, rising out of the ocean individually or in a cluster, and each has their own sort of magic and sort of things living there. Uh. Land? Continent? Island?"

"So, an area of solid ground, surrounded by the ocean. Continent, island. And each one on this planet has separate magic?"

"There are contiguous landmasses that consist of multiple [untranslatable 6] but otherwise, yes?"

"Okay, I'm going to tweak my translation magic to call that concept a 'zone' for the time being, though of course if that proves inaccurate we can change it again." He does a sort of neck-rolling gesture to accompany this action. "Thank you for explaining. We are not from this planet at all."

She blinks repeatedly. "Wow. Does the Bureau of Diplomacy know about you?"

"Nope. We didn't know where to find it. Is that where we should go first?"

"You might want to skip them and go to straight to the Saviors* or something, but I think the Bureau of Diplomacy should tell you that, not some seeker of eternity.**"

(*: Connotations: "90% of the way to just being a proper noun but the literal meaning is still legible".)

(**: Literal translation. Cultural translation: 'Grad student'.)

"You want the Blue District back two turns -" she points "- it's mostly government offices and fancy restaurants, does your translation magic let you read as well as speak Mirran?"

"It does, yes."

"Then keep going until you see a Bureau of Diplomacy sign and that'll do it!"

"Great, thank you so much," says Nelen, bowing a little bit, and they all turn and head that way.

The day is hot (well, fairly; they're not that far from a coast or near to an equator) but not too bad. The streets remain both full and fairly clean. Large clocks are sometimes visible, displayed at intersections and in town squares with the craftsmanship and centrality that suggests someone who is really proud they made clocks and wants everyone to see.

The Ministry of Diplomacy building is where it was said to be - large and formal, a sort of oversized, tall, we-can-do-clever-tricks-with-architecture-and-you-can't-so-be-impressed that counties often build when everyone else is much poorer than they are, with a large park in front of it. The door to the building is huge and massive-looking, and a muscular doorman stands by in a fancy uniform, ready to open it on presentation of appropriate credentials.

"Good afternoon! We're envoys from offplanet," Nelen says to this doorman.

"Greetings, strangers, good afternoon!" he says, loudly enough that the people inside the room will notice, briefly scans the group, observes the wings, does a brief check for green veins, and opens the door with a grand sweeping motion. "Welcome to Mir!"

(this is loud enough that the small group of people sitting inside the Grand Hall can hear it and stop talking about any sensitive things they were discussing)

The architecture inside is somewhere between a cathedral, a great hall of state, and (off the central obvious track and so not immediately obvious to non-snoopy interstellar ambassadors) a collection of cozy offices and less cozy bureaucratic warrens. A diplomacy person will break off the conversation with another group of diplomacy people and come over and wave and bow them in!

Nelen repeats that they are envoys from another planet to this person!

Tarwë probably got an opportunity to hear snatches of the sensitive conversations.

"- the elections in Rossano -"

"- the question is if they're rational."

"Who is?"

"Next year if there's no rebellion."

(Shortly afterwards -)

"- We're honored that you came to see us," the specific diplomat talking to them says warmly, as he takes them somewhere comfortable. "The High Tribune will want to talk to you personally, I'm sure of that."

(Someone else nods. "I'll tell Her Ladyship*.")

(*: This is almost certainly the wrong translation, but English doesn't have a good natural term for 'she is my patron and I am her client and this is acknowledged in how I refer to her', which is the information conveyed to listeners in the manner of address.)

"We'll be glad to meet them! In the meantime, please let us introduce ourselves. I'm Nelen Utopia."

"Tanaka Natsuko."

"Tarwë."

"Zanro."

"Cassiel Jones."

"Ataniros," he says. "Tell me, from where do you come?"

(The room they are taken is comfortable for Elves, for fans of comfy furniture, and for lovers of tea and baked snacks, though if the baked snacks are an attempt to produce cookies they have the major problem that neither chocolate nor sugar are native to the Republic. There's a nice big soundproofed window that opens to a pretty-looking garden with a fence on the other side of it.)

"No two of us are from the same world!" says Nelen. "In addition to each star in the sky being a sun that may have planets of its own, there are also entire other universes you can't reach by traveling any distance through space."

"Really?" He blinks. "Fascinating. But you are a single embassy, not many traveling together?"

"Yes, we represent Vanda Nossëo, a federated union of many polities."

He would like to nod and invitingly say "yes, please do go on" while he extracts as much information as he can until the Important People show up or invite Vanda Nosseo to come join, if he can get away with that! A couple other more junior diplomatic people will also show up to take notes.

Sure, they can go on! Nelen can do a little illusion show of the map and some pretty locations within it and highlight where they're all from and explain how Tarwë and Zanro are from Ardas but different ones.

And then they can hear the hum of a jetpack outside the window, and watch a trained, professional diplomat flinch slightly as the jetpack lowers a woman outside the window who murmurs a very complicated spell and then hovers straight through the glass windowpane. She's wearing an elaborate folded blue robey thing with two dramatic white streaks (blue seems to be the color of the administration, here) and goggles and, yes, a jetpack. There's a wand by her side.

"Hello, people from another universe! How far did you get without me?" She'll wave a slightly acid-scarred hand. "Arimer."

Nelen will introduce everybody again and explain he's just been summarizing where they're all from.

"Right," she says, nodding and throwing herself into a chair. "So I'll skip all the 'that's impossible' bits, they are not my job any more, wanting to take apart your universal translator and see how it works goes in the nonurgent stack, so the obvious question from my perspective is if you can do sorcery on arbitrary zones for planet-to-planet teleportation what problems do you have left? Are there no unoccupied worlds to farm, are we the only place that has nonsentient construct laborers and you want to buy some..."

"- oh, no, we aren't here because we need something you have, though it's likely that your magic will find a valuable place in the multiversal market. We're here to see if you need anything and if you're interested in membership in Vanda Nossëo."

"Probably won't, it doesn't work if it goes more than about six hundred feet from our shores, though it'll probably have some manufacturing niche uses -"

"- In that case you are going to want to wait for everyone else to show up before talking about stuff, we don't need much, really but if you have a better eternal youth solution we wouldn't say no -"

"- Either way that suggests that there's time to explain how magic works - just as soon as Sorimer shows up -"

"We're happy to talk to whoever it makes the most sense to loop in," says Nelen agreeably. "And how your magic works is likely to be very relevant, we'd love to hear about it."

She did in fact mean how their magic worked, but is not too surprised if they want explanations first. "Every department head is going to want to talk to you," she says "- and probably not, if you can teleport from planet to planet ours isn't going to be able to do much you can't - assuming that isn't hugely expensive, can you use it to drive mills? If you don't have the logic we can explain - do you have a workable eternal youth solution?"

"Yes, we do! Species that aren't naturally unaging can in most cases travel to a specific area of the multiverse," he highlights the Cube neighborhood, "around where Natsuko is from, and there's shapeshifting technology that works there, and they can shift into a younger version of themselves and go home. You could use the teleport to drive a mill, but that's not what it's for and there are more efficient ways."

OH SHIT

"Cool! About how long have you had that? How does it work? Are you altering matter directly, using some engineered chemical to change the composition of the cells, transferring the soul directly from body to body -"

"This world," Cube, "has a subsidiary world attached to it with a lot of undifferentiated matter in it; it's called z-space. The technology allows you to use DNA from other creatures, or yourself, to create a new body out of that matter. If you don't spend long in your new form you just pilot it remotely with your original body's brain in z-space, but if you leave the neighborhood, or stay in the new form more than a few hours, the safety features kick in and your consciousness continues in your new body. Also it makes you communicatively telepathic, the inventors had that natively and didn't want to lose it when they shapeshifted. It has worked for species with souls who've tried it without a problem but if you have souls it'll call for some testing just in case yours are different. Most people don't have souls."

" - Oh, fascinating, I would have thought that the transfer would be almost impossible, have people tried using this for brain enhancement - wait, sorry, how do people act without souls -?" 

That is around the time the Savior with the highest running speed shows up, he being behind the Savior with the jetpack but not anyone else. Rissimer (a large, friendly golden retriever of a man) will rush in, grinning at everyone - "Hello!"

Simultaneously tackle and get tackled by Ari - "Riss!" 

"Ari!" And to everyone else - "Rissimer, Minister of Peace - her husband -"

Disentangle there's company and she just asked a question.

"Nelen Utopia, Tanaka Natsuko, Tarwë, Zanro, Cassiel Jones?"

(He gets them all right and even manages to attach them to the right people.)

"That's us, it's lovely to meet you! People without souls are basically the same as people with souls, we just do all the soul things with our brains alone and we're simpler to resurrect. Morph works a little bit for intelligence enhancement if you morph into a being with more processing power and stay that way long enough to pick up the habits you need to use it, but while it's certainly a lot cheaper than buying an intelligence-enhancing headband - those are a thing, but an expensive one - it's much more inconvenient in every other way. You do get the occasional person who's decided to change species but usually intelligence is only one factor among several in that decision."

He showed up partway through and will just listen.

"Simpler to resurrect?"

"People without souls can be resurrected by conjuring a replacement body - that's simple with the magic system common to the inhabitants of this world -" Hell lights up. "And then someone with a power wished on in this world," Wish lights up, "can awaken the body, which otherwise would be alive but not a person. People with souls - it depends on what kind but in general you have to locate the soul and by some means convince it to stick to a body, which has been figured out for Zanro's species and similar but not for, say, people from this world." Dreamward lights up. "More generic resurrection is in development with the same magic system my illusions are from, but it's slow and there is one qualified developer - she fortunately doesn't have a soul - and it's expected to take decades if not centuries."

"- So, in this world, everyone who dies reincarnates in a new body, so resurrection is a solved problem - it's memory recovery that matters. We've got it, but it's difficult and not retroactive - it's just a matter of making your memories go with you when you reincarnate in the future - so if you can slow down death rates that would help."

"Also if whoever's doing the developing could use time off I can ask Sorimer and his team to take a look at it and they can probably sort it out." Sheeeee wants to do that but she has a country to run. "If there's a list of magic systems and what they do that'll probably go much faster?"

(Also when the team gets time off, they need to go over all those TO ONLY TALK ABOUT IN A CRISIS arms-race preventions, they seem to be seriously outclassed and Ari doesn't think a disintegration spell is going to cut it if these people turn out to be nasty.)

"I believe she does take time off, the problem is that she was granted the ability to work intuitively with the system by a temperamental magic rock which won't repeat the trick on demand," Edda lights up, "and to everyone else it's so much gibberish. But if you have local magic that does information handling and they turn out to synergize, it's not one of the systems that can only be worked with in its own world, so maybe there's something there! Anyway, death rate slowing we can definitely do. Even if morph turns out not to work for you folks for some reason, there are magic items that do anti-aging more generically. And memory enhancement of various sorts, too, though none of it is specifically rated for reincarnation. We've seen reincarnation before but it's not common at all and nothing seemed to affect it where it did crop up." Stork glows.

She nods. "Hacking the wheel of reincarnation isn't that hard to do for an experienced sorcerer, it's just very easy to cause yourself permanent damage if you make a mistake somewhere - what do you mean by information handling?"

The third member will now show up, because she paused to get the five-second briefing. "Mirimer, Minister of Prosperity." And once introductions are over she will faaaaaade into the background.

"Information handling isn't a particularly technical term, but the spells I'm using are composed with a sorcerous alphabet of a few hundred atomic magical concepts and no one except Loki, the spells' inventor, can make heads or tails of it. I learned the spells by memorizing millions of words of complete gibberish by brute force."

"Not something we have a magical advantage at, then. Might still be worth taking a look, but probably not our first priority."

Oh stars Arimer what are you doing have you gotten into MAGIC DISCUSSION with terrifyingly powerful foreigners did you forget that our chief interactions with foreigners are PIRATE RAIDS.

I've been doing this for three hundred years and have leaked nothing that they could not get by talking to random grad students. "You were talking about a matter conjuration power - how does that work?"

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

"There's a species - it's actually both a separately occurring species and, for people who don't have souls and are born in one of these two worlds," Revelation, Space Arda, "sometimes also an afterlife. Everyone of the species can create arbitrary material objects. Not people, even soulless ones, which is why they need help to perform resurrections, and not magical things or a few other exotics, but books, materials, buildings, entire planets. A lot of the matter on your planet is too magical to conjure, though they can do things like 'a model of this otherwise unconjurable thing, but in glass'."

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH oh good good good good good not apocalypse.

"Interesting," she says. "If some magic works even as far away as different worlds, how do you define what's magical and what isn't?"

"There's actually some pretty lively debate about some edge cases but a lot of the categorization we do is based on magical detection spells that successfully register magic from other worlds."

She nods. "So what are the size limits for the conjuration? Should I be thinking that you've solved precision manufacture, solved hunger, solved construction, solved land shortages..."

"All of those, yep!"

"Huh."

Oh good, she has all sorts of ideas for experimental societies if she doesn't need to put them all on the same planet...

... I mean, in fact this is terrible, because they can conjure Stuff That Is On Fire to cover the entire zone, assuming they aren't bluffing which they hopefully are.

"It can be a lot to take in. Also it tends to make economies go a little squirrely - if you're currently using metal-backed currency we can just buy it from you, and membership comes with universal basic income for every citizen."

"Huh, how are you funding that?"

Their entire currency is going to explode! Also, the aliens seem to not know economics, which is perhaps not surprising, because Mirimer had to invent the whole stupid thing herself through trial and error!

(Mirimer may be in a state of complete if well-concealed panic.)

"A lot of people choose to work, and a lot of member polities charge some taxes, and a lot of people are interested enough in one or another Vanda Nossëo project to voluntarily fund it as a charitable budget item. The proceeds of selling some magical services and items that are meaningfully scarce also helps."

'A lot of people choose to work.' Make a note of that.

"But don't people produce less of what you tax?" 

Oh wow did these people do social experiments with their only society?

(PANIC)

So, nonmagical goods are so cheap that everyone can have all the goods they need, and that's free...

"Sure, to a point - some places use that to soft-discourage things they don't want to outright ban and tax, say, alcohol, or charge a lot of money for permits to operate loud appliances."

"But you - so is this basic income funded by member states, does Vanda Nosseo the super-entity tax member state - I think I need more of a picture of how your organization functions -"

(It is at this point that the slowest-moving member of the Saviors shows up. He's currently about sixty, but in fact is moving slowly because he does not own a jetpack and is out of shape for running for reasons that have nothing at all to do with how old he is and everything to do with how distracted he is.)

"Sorimer. Hi. You have magic?"

"They have magic! Let me catch you up -" and they'll move to the back and talk in whispers while Ari does her part of the talking.

"Vanda Nossëo doesn't charge taxes. It does have a lot of investments, but the original money came from a few interested individuals involved in the founding donating the proceeds of their valuable abilities."

This is SO COOL.

"So you're running your federation off of the - investment profits? Of a starting fund?"

"Mostly, yes."

"Fascinating." She wonders just what sources they're funding themselves with, it might just be 'extradimensional travel' or the first-mover profits from it.

" - and you can run a complete basic income that produces enough for everyone in all your systems out of it to 'not need to work?'" Ari may need to raise her game.

"Yup! It can still be expensive to live in the most popular cities or pursue certain hobbies or acquire certain magic items, of course. But someone who's happy to live in a lower-demand area can easily cover groceries and clothes and comprehensive magical healing and the most mass-transmittable formats of media and occasional tourism and some extras according to taste."

"Because of the matter conjuration?" She glances at Miri, who does a sort of tiny slant nod. "What do you do for transport?"

"There are a few different ways to teleport things. For anything that isn't very time-critical and doesn't have to go to a different planet there are machines that can move it around without needing supervision from people."

"Really? How do they work?"

"Really? How do they work?"

"They're little machines with some advanced technology in them that lets people program in their routes and have them travel unmanned. I'm not sure if you want to get into an entire detour on the details of that now or not?"

"It is not the highest priority thing for me to do with my time," Arimer says regretfully. (That remains trying to minimize the death toll.) "What does your magic healing look like?" That's a good way of getting at it - if they can actually just fix things...

"Is there anyone you'd like us to demonstrate on? Natsuko and I have different kinds, and there's a mass-produced low-grade version that Tarwë knows how to implement manually. And Cassiel can do some but it's not her primary training."

"- How do they work?"

"My version is touch range. It's pretty comprehensive and near-instant, but for historical reasons it only works on humanoids and birds and it's also not selective - uh, within scope; I can technically heal injuries without also removing poison and such if that's ever desirable. Natsuko's is more time-consuming and it consumes a resource that we have no shortage of but not in arbitrary locations, so she'd need to go refill if she were doing a lot of it. It's mostly less good but it can be selective if a skilled wizard is doing it and isn't limited by species. Cassiel can transmute matter into other matter and that has healing applications pretty much as you'd expect from that description. The low-grade one is a magic song - they have to be composed in specific worlds but work anywhere, including if recorded and sped up, but even at top functional speed they're only good for minor injuries or as a first aid measure while waiting for better help to arrive."

She nods.

"How does it know what health is?" asks a person who had to define health in what was only barely not assembly language.

"Well," says Nelen, whose spells definitely describe health in something somehow even worse than assembly language, "Natsuko's transforms generic magical energy of the correct sort into what is called 'positive energy' and that has healing effects for reasons we don't fully understand - the world that the system comes from is inherently hostile to science. Mine is Loki's, same as all my other spells, so I suppose she defined it but I certainly can't explain it. The song literally sings about health in natural language."

"We'll want to schedule experiments, but right now -"

"I think we'll stick with what we've got."

"Of course. We do have some precogs, if you have reason to be worried about the results we can consult them, but the spells despite their - unmechanical nature are safe for basically everybody."

Sorimer would like to give a speech about how this is, frankly, nonsense. He is four hundred years old (depending on how you count, give or take a few decades), and he knows perfectly well that there is no clear dividing line between "healing" and "reversion to a past state," nor one between "healing" and "editing." Making the word Heal required careful specifications of what every system in the human* body did, and he knows exactly how his systems failed in atypical cases. It was a large project - almost as large as their first two immortality projects, and better-funded, and he is basically not going to trust that he will not be stripped of all his magical powers if he's ever subject to one of these spells.

Sorimer is also four hundred years old, and has in these four hundred years brute-force learned an absolutely minimal amount of tact. He does not say that.

"Precognitives?" That sounds fascinating!

"They're really useful! They don't work if they're outside their neighborhood, but they do work on information that will be sent to their neighborhood, so they report remotely."

But - but that - 

- How have they not triggered a precognition?

Is this good news or really bad news?

Ari's odds that these people are lying is going way, way up.

"Do you by any chance have a cached prediction for what number I'm thinking, that the precognitives told you in advance?"

"Uh, no, we try to reserve it for higher priority things than guessing games, though if you want to set up something like that I can ask."

So that is the most archetypical "they are lying about their powers response," right?

Ohhh yeah.

Absolutely.

"Oh no, not if it's at all expensive." So far they have boasted about many extraordinary powers, demonstrated teleportation, and offered to show off transmutation and healing, which is respectable but not hugely impressive. At this point, Ari is really not convinced they're anywhere near as powerful as they think they are.

She will, however, pull a small copper coin out of her pocket. "For a much cheaper test - Cassiel, can I ask you to turn this into iron?" She presumes they have some kind of way to pull that off, but best to establish a low bound anyway...

"Sure." Cassiel doesn't even take the coin, just blinks at it. It's iron.

She looks at it. Looks at it. Tosses it to Sorimer.

He looks at it. Nods.

"Huh. Iron. Fair enough."

"My powers aren't expensive at all, if there's more you'd like to see."

"Uh, if you're - skeptical about the precogs that might actually be a priority to set something up to demonstrate it? Because by default we'll hear from them if anybody, especially a local since you have souls, is going to die, and I could imagine that being suspicious if we suddenly had instructions we were treating with lethal urgency and you didn't think the precogs worked," says Nelen.

"- People die quite often," she points out. "Then they come back."

"Yes, I'm really glad you guys have reincarnations catching you, but presumably it's still pretty unpleasant for everyone involved if - I don't know, a volcano erupts?"

"Oh yes," she says. "Preventing catastrophes is one of the things we're for."

"Right. So we'd get word of that sort of thing. Is predicting a number you'll say the kind of thing you'd like predicted?"

"How much does the cost scale with prediction complexity?"

"A bit. Since there's teams like ours all over your planet, and we'd all be using the same channel, we'd usually get our standard 'all okay' reports compressed together and then unpacked - sort of like multiplying a bunch of prime numbers. But we have plenty of slack for things like this, so really we're constrained on message length - longer messages will take longer for the precogs to register and relay. So you can ask for a very complicated prediction as long as it can be described concisely."

So, the problem is that there are other powers that are cheaper than precognition that they could use to fake this. In order for that not to be the case...

"Price of the top five goods at the Exchange in Mir multiplied together at the fourteenth hour."

... It needs to be something that is unknown in spite of competent people trying very hard to predict it until then.

"I'll send a runner over now who can report back to me what the prices are," and then she can do the math when that hits.

"Sure. For clean results you should assign the runner and then not communicate with them or the market till the message is back, otherwise the prediction could affect the result in a way it couldn't anticipate."

"Of course. If you can have someone do a quick demonstration of matter creation that would also help," she says. "Can you drop -" she considers what is economically nondisruptive "- a fifty ton* cube of carbon steel** cube on the experimental landing pad in Tormynon House?"

(*: Approximate unit of measure.)

(**: They don't quite categorize metal alloys the way English does, and "carbon steel" is not a uniquely distinct default for all steels.)

Rissimer will go out and make sure somebody's watching and nobody's surprised.

"Sure - Cassiel's not that fast about it but that's an easy enough to spot target that probably someone can do it from space." He taps on his computer and a minute later: big ol' chunk of steel.

He gives her a metaphorical thumbs-up.

"- Thank you." Runner sent?

You got it.

"And the precog report says..." Nelen rattles off some numbers, drawing them as illusions in the air so people don't have to look over his shoulder to see the message.

Mirimer will take notes! She's impressed by how instantaneous the message is; fast communication isn't something their magic is good at, telegraphs aside. (Assuming it is coming from elsewhere.)

Ari will also write it down! It unfortunately looks as if there may be the kind of power differential she was initially worried about, which leaves her in a position she hasn't been since she was, what, in her twenties? Thirties? And nowhere near this bad. Still, they ended up overthrowing every king on the zone, so...

"So is there a unified justice system for your federation, or is that handled at the member level?"

"Some of both. It's a membership requirement that states within Vanda Nossëo have and enforce uniform rules against murder, rape, and torture, and that nobody be prevented from leaving, but if a state is handling that on its own and doesn't want help it doesn't necessarily need help, except insofar as an accused person can also leave if they want to try their luck at the federal level instead."

She nods. "We'll want the Ministry of Justice to go over your definitions of these with one of your embassies, but all these things are illegal in Mir. An accused person - has choice of exile over all other punishments?" 

"Yes, that's about the size of it."

"Even if they are a danger to others?"

"A lot of places won't let them in if they're a danger to others, and if they've got magic that would let them enter such a place without help they might get locked up, but there are places that make it a point of pride to accept exiles even at some risk."

Well, then they aren't going to be joining Vanda Nosseo.

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!

They know or can contact people who know all the things they expect to need to know about those! Are they envisioning a large formal factfinding mission or should Nelen just take somebody on a tour of some places in Vanda Nossëo?

Large formal factfinding mission, definitely. They want to tour lots of VN members - especially republics - and learn how their industries work and their shipping works and how their administration works and really anything that isn't a state secret.

(Government design is Mirimer's special interest.)

Okay! That will cost non-zero genuine scarce stuff but not very much and they can cover it. Do they want to design their own itinerary by looking at a list of member states or have a proposed one supplied?

They propose that Vanda Nosseo should include a list of everything optional and then they should add Societies That Look Cool to the list. Does Vanda Nosseo have a list of their member countries for people to take a look at?

Of course! It is on the internet. Would they like computers?

YES.

They don't know yet if the brain surgery kind is safe for locals so Nelen will pop up to the ship and be back a moment later with tablets.

TABLETS!

TABLETS!

TABLETS!

"Thank you!"

"You're welcome! They come with tutorials that are adapted from some intended for spontaneous adults, but you might want our translation magic to be able to read more things - machine translation is only okay and it's worse before native speakers have a chance to correct its foibles."

"How do you make a machine for translation?"

"- it's extremely complicated but it involves having a lot of text, especially written text, and using a machine algorithm to figure out what words appear in what combinations in what contexts."

... Sorimer will let this go to committee. GRUDGINGLY.

The Mirran Republic will organize committees! The government isn't trying to engage in any complicated spread-of-information management, as far as Vanda Nosseo can tell; they announce that travelers from far off have showed up and are interested in signing trade and travel agreements, the people of the Republic, confident in their superior everything, shrug and keep going, and 

The committees begin investigating things! The Trade committee is chiefly interested in preventing smuggling and not allowing Vanda Nosseo to distribute deadly weapons, and wants to know how Vanda Nosseo can do that before it approves of opening shops. The Magic one wants to import magic teachers, computers, and anything that works in all universes so they can steal study it. (It is run by Sorimer, who is VERY EXCITED about all these things.) The Prosperity/Justice one wants to tour Vanda Nosseo and study factories and courts and systems of government so they know what to steal. (The Mirrans are very politely stonewalling attempts to get them to join until the Prosperity/Justice expedition is complete and they can compare their options, which given the size of Vanda Nosseo will take years.)

... The environmental impacts one also wants to prevent smuggling, apparently? Out, not in. For, uh, magical reasons.

(And, meanwhile - a quiet conversation between the people who really run the Republic.

"So this is obviously a catastrophe. And the best thing that ever happened, but - you know, both.")

("I'm mostly thinking catastrophe," says the team pessimist.)

("I'm less sure about that," says the team optimist.)

("Mild shapestone poisoning can probably be overcome by Vanda Nosseo healing, and Mirran magic won't work outside our zone, which significantly limits the damage potential.")

("Their magic will. We can stack them. And there is literally nothing to stop someone drinking a vat of shapestone and going too fast to fix, and it will happen eventually if we have free emigration the way they want. The fact that their precogs did not catch this is pretty good evidence they don't exist.")

(Or that Ari manages to short-circuit this somehow, but she hasn't found a magical solution to shapestone better than death-and-reincarnation yet.)

("You know, Ari, we could just tell them everything. It's worked well in the past!")

("For all topics other than shapestone, sure.")

("Mirrans aren't aliens. We don't actuallly know how to deal with these people. Our best bet is to say nothing and buy time.")

("So, what's your 'environmental impacts' plot?")

The Mirran Republic's Environmental Impacts Committee wishes to explain to Vanda Nosseo that the entire country's magical ecology and geology is a closed circuit maintaining a complicated equilibrium, and they're worried about ecological catastrophe and the permanent loss of all their magical stuff, dispersed to places where it doesn't even work, if they let people leave the country with it.

"Sounds like you need a customs checkpoint on all the bus stops. We have truth magic so we can ask people if they might be carrying any of - what is it? - and whatever other questions to make sure they haven't been slipped some without their knowledge by a malicious actor. It'll make getting in and out more of a hassle, but if your magic system relies on having plenty of the magic stuff and we can't make more of it for you, it's probably worth doing anyway," says Nelen.

"Any of the 27 magical materials on or in their body," explains the Environmental Impacts coordinator. They have a list! If you count alloys, it's a long list!

"All right, we can get customs arranged when we set up bus stops. What would be the first sign of a slip, for the precogs?"