Rubiel is excited to be here! Honestly, that's their usual reaction to meeting new people, but to their slight embarrassment most of the good friends they've made since contact with Vanda Nosseo are elves, so this is also in some ways a new experience. Probably all these other people want to help make new worlds better and help people as much as he does, so they'll all get along great without much difficulty, but if not he'll still do his best to make connections.

What a nice place! Valerian says so on arriving and asks Melda if she picked it out.

"No, it was assigned - there's a team building exercise setup and here's where they put it."

"Oh, cool."

Prior to contact with Vanda Nosseo Havvi had never been outside of a city, and all this wide-open space still feels a little odd! She's happy to be here, though, and excited to meet everyone. She waves at the group.

Wave wave! Smile.

Rubiel will happily wave back!

“It is cool, I agree. It’s not the kind of place I usually go when I’m on a planet but I like it!”

<An excellent plain>, 'says' Zinai as the courier drops her off. <I am pleased to make your acquaintances>.

"Ah, that's all five of us now, welcome. Let's all introduce ourselves - name, something about our team role, and, hm, favorite thing you only have because of interdimensional contact - normal summonings don't count," she adds to the angels. "I'm Melda. I was just promoted from Liu Mibai's team to lead my own and I have the Loki spellset. And my favorite thing is shorefolk music."

“I’m Rubiel! I’m an angel, and I’m pretty good at healing, but mostly what I’m here for is I don’t mind having my mind read and it’s generally pretty easy for me to get enthusiastic about things. My favorite part of interdimensional travel is I can see my friends who live far away a lot more often without having to arrange summons ahead of time.”

"I'm Havvi Sefet! I have Materian wizardry, and I was working for a diplomat pre-contact although I'm not sure how relevant it'll be. I like being able to have kids without needing a permission!"

"I'm Valerian. I’ve previously worked as a float angel and as a retail envoy, I can teleport, and before all this stuff I studied medicine. I'm torn between a few different favorite things, like telepathy and teleportation, but I think the throughline is that they all break barriers that were previously in the way of understanding each other and interacting with each other."

<I am Xinai. I am an Andalite; my purposes on the team are> to not be an elf and demonstrate how there are species that don't just look like a bunch of humanoids without being horrible and disgusting like Yeerks <Rhetoric and philosophy. I was formerly an officer in the sixth fleet's logistical bureau before joining Vanda Nosseo> because it would have been immoral to give her a ship command because she's a woman, and never mind that everyone would have worse-than-died if they lost.

<My favorite part of interdimensional travel is> the war being over! the opportunity to emigrate! <living without the fear of scarcity.>

"All right. It's great to meet you all. Now, the reason we're here in particular is that we're supposed to do a sort of scavenger hunt thing as a team building exercise. I think someone had arguably too much fun designing it and it's very open-ended with several possible paths to solving it. The main idea is that we should be able to come to a consensus about how to turn all our skills into a decision about what to do next in a way that would work all right in a real envoying situation, so, without snapping at each other or anything like that - the simulation doesn't include going over my head to shipboard as an option but you can mark for the designers or Personnel when you'd have done so, if it comes up. I have a checklist I want to do first, though. Any questions before we do that?"

<The sole requirements are 'without going over your head to the ship' and 'that we would have access to in a genuine crisis situation?> says the person responsible for six changes in the tournament rules of the Andalite homeworld's leading popular starship simulator.

“If it involves objects, is the point definitely to find them or is making them okay if we can? Scavenger hunts with demons usually don’t allow that but when it’s just angels it could go either way, and I’m not sure what the rules are for elf scavenger hunts.”

"My understanding of the success conditions - which is likely incomplete, since I'm being tested too - are that while creative lateral thinking is encouraged and routing around a presented problem by having magic powers at it is if anything standard practice, that will tend not to be sufficient. And it's a team-building exercise - your assignments can still be changed if it turns out we don't blend well as a group - so I don't know that the description of 'sole requirements' is quite right. For example, if you snatch the first clue out of my hands and run off to solve the whole thing yourself in record time, that might qualify you for something, but not this thing."

"Because that’s usually a bad idea or because it’s rude or because it’s not a good test?"

"Sort of all of those? They send groups this size so that we can all be on the same page but still usefully split up when there are things to do in several places and so we can all contribute different perspectives. If one person does it all themself that means we're not a group that can do that."

Xinai nods. (She hates this kind of test. She will deal.)

"I have a question about how that reflects - so, it's obviously important to be able to work well with the team, and it can look less efficient than it is, right, because you end up doing a lot of administrative and communication work that lets things scale, but I'm concerned about the possible implication that if the test genuinely has been set up so that some people's contributions are net negative the scoring might be designed to assume that's not true and penalize the wrong - actually, is this test scored in such a way that that's a relevant concern at all or are we too" (jazz hands) "just culture for that?"

"You're all allowed to tell Personnel if you think someone else is net negative for the team, and request a reassignment if Personnel wants to keep them on. The test isn't so much scored as observed."

Havvi doesn't have any questions, although now she's a little nervous that the other people in the group will decide she's "net-negative." Probably that won't happen, she's made it this far. She smiles at Melda.

"Okay. Everyone ready for the checklist?"

The first item on Melda's checklist is to make sure that nobody can get and stay dead on a mission. Everybody insured? Except the angels, presumably?

"I'm insured." She has a copy of the paperwork saved to a convenient part of her computer in case anyone needs to see it.

Xinai has really good insurance and is also indestructible. For obvious reasons. <Yes.>

And has everybody read the employee policy handbook?

She has! <Yes.>

Twice! He nods.

Also twice! "I have!"

Just the once; it was surprisingly well written, but they didn't feel the need to go over it excessively. "Yes, I have as well."

"Oh good. Does anyone want to clarify anything in there, or about how I'm planning to operate the team in general, before we get underway?"

"The handbook said that we wouldn't be punished for checking your decisions with Shipboard, within reason. What kinds of safeguards are in place to make sure that we actually don't get in trouble for something like that?"

"Well, for one thing, they won't even tell me it's happened unless I need to change my behavior, and they'll check with me occasionally about how you're all doing and they'll have a truth spell playing while they'll do it, so I couldn't get away with retaliating for anything you're supposed to be able to do with impunity. If you manage to bother Shipboard enough that they get annoyed, they'll tell you to raise your threshold, but they can rotate in who's taking the reports so no one person is fed up enough to get emotional about it."

"What if we err on the other side and there isn’t an audience to notice?"

"My performance is also assessed by my superiors; if they notice me having made errors that they think you should have caught, you'll hear from them."

Xinai will nod.

Valerian also nods.

"Nothing else on the handbook? Okay. Do you all have all the enchantments and equipment you're going to need to be comfortable in a nearly arbitrary location for hours or days in an environment that may have hostile weather, wild animals, preindustrial sanitation, and other stressors and dangers?" She's looking particularly at Havvi.

"Yes! I also have stuff downloaded on my phone that I might need even though that probably won't actually be a going concern."

This is a rather easier task for angels, as you might imagine

She has a prestidigitator (and can also just prestidigitate things, but the redundancy can't hurt). She and her family went on what the guidebook called a "classic Earth-style camping trip" so that she could make sure she'd be okay and it was fine, mostly.

(...and if things don't work out and she decides not to stick around after this assignment, it's not like she'll be giving up her best chance of ever having children.)

"I should be fine."

"I have everything I think I'm likely to need but it’s conceivable I could be wrong about that."

<I have extensive invulnerability enchantments and sufficient supplies and expect no difficulties.> She also has a handcomp and a small Hazel-made foldbox that looks about the size of a pocket and is loaded up with more gadgets than most houses, because why not, there are demons.

"Okay," says Melda. "If everybody's ready, we can head out to point A. There are actors involved! We're supposed to pretend they're all humans who started industrializing in the last decade or so, for this scenario. Socially engineering the actors as opposed to their characters is construed as mind-affecting magic use and accordingly gets you dinged. If they need to go out of character they'll pull on their ears. Questions about that?"

"What if their ears get injured or one of us can’t see them for some reason?"

"Unlikely to happen, but if one of them says 'ear pull' that counts too."

"If there're no further questions, I believe our first port of call - our landing site, if you will - is over there. Walk or teleport, folks?"

How far away does "over there" look?

It's a tree; she can see the branches but not count the leaves.

"I'm alright either way, if anyone here has a strong preference."

Shrug. "I’m easy."

<Teleporting will consume less time prior to arrival and signal more accurate information to the local population,> she says completely straight-faced.

"Teleporting it is," smiles Melda.

Pop.

Their first actor is a middle aged man nursing a beer. "Ho there!" he says. "Now there's something you don't see every day!"

Wave wave!

"Hello! I actually do see this almost every day, but I do agree it's objectively pretty unusual!"

"Ain't you fancy. You do this all the time, appearin' like ghosts?"

"Pretty frequently!" says Melda. "Can you tell us where we are, sir?"

"Oh, this is the Venner Shore rangelands."

Xinai has a chip in her head! Is this an alt of any known location?

Not in a way that is intended to be obvious, at least!

"We are envoys from another civilization, known as Vanda Nosseo, which is very far from here. Who do you recommend we speak to?"

"Oh! Well, I don't know that I'm the person to ask. The Yes-men'd tell you one thing and the Nay-sayers would tell you another and I'm staying all out of it."

"Can you tell us more about what the Yes-men and the Nay-sayers are?"

"Political... bundles of folks, I suppose. Against one another and sometimes against themselves! It's all a big mess."

"Oh wow, that sounds confusing. How do you tell who is who?"

"The Yes-men wear white or yellow and the Naysayers favor blue and brown." He himself is wearing faded red.

"So what are they saying yes or no to?"

"Well - lots of things but mostly the war, I reckon?"

"Huh, we're from really far away and don't know what war you mean."

"Oh. Well, like I said, I stay well out of it."

"Sounds like a policy with a lot of upside, really. At least one of us should go find some people who don't stay out of it but can we and our fantastical powers do anything for you while we're here?"

"- well that rather depends what they are, now, doesn't it!"

“Valerian and I can change things - almost anything into anything else, which includes healing! Our team can also do stuff like teleportation, cleaning, music… all kinds of things!”

"You're... magic performing housecleaners?"

"Also healers! And diplomats. Mostly diplomats. And Melda can turn you into a bird or make your graceful - there are kind of a lot of things but if you don't have an obvious single one you're interested in right this second the thing we're actually mostly here to do is talk about maybe inviting you to join our alliance or at least trade with us." He glances at Melda like he's not sure if he's doing this right.

"Well, now, that sounds like politics," he snorts. "Except for turning into a bird. I don't even know what that one sounds like."

"It's understandable that you'd want to stay out of it," says Melda. "Is there anywhere the Yes-men and Naysayers have - debates, or anything like that, where we could hear from both sides?"

"Oh, over thataway - or maybe it's thataway, I'm not very good with directions - there's the city center," he says, pointing at a fairly featureless area of the plain. "Usually someone or other is shouting there."

<Thank you,> she says. <'Seek out the shouting individuals' is very helpful advice.> And she will thoughtspeak her team (but not the person they have interrupted), <Time to go, I think?>

She nods.

Nod.

"Thank you for your time," Melda tells the man, and off they go.

The "city center" is a bunch of larpers hanging around. Some of them are pointedly ignoring each other! A group of three is shouting down a single one who is trying to give a speech whenever he opens his mouth! One over there is doing the "I'm not touching you" dance with another! The colors are as described.

These are, of course, a simulation of the circumstances that they are going to encounter when they enter the world, of far lesser scale. These people are actors, this is not a crisis, this is not about to brew over into war, and if they waste any more time than is necessary that is more seconds that somewhere truly desperate is going to suffer without float healing.

<I speculate it to be functionally democratic,> she says as they walk, <since these newly contacted people appear to be humans and the statistical supermajority of non-democratic human states in Vanda Nosseo records ban open dissidence.> Also Amentan states, but there's no need to be rude about how her species is one of the good ones.

Valerian shrugs uncomfortably. "I guess that's what we have to go on." Since this simulation is stripped of nearly everything they'd normally use to infer anything about a society. There are still clothes and words and body language and that'll have to do. He'd add if their government is still functioning but that seems rude to speculate out loud about in front of people.

Probably Melda will decide who to talk to and probably if for some reason she doesn't they'll draw a lot of attention anyway, but he's still assessing who it might be a good idea to say hello to anyway.

Xinai is trying to calculate odds of getting good results out of the three people shouting down the one. Probably not. Anyone look... mature?

One of the ones doing the pointed ignoring is just spinning and determinedly not looking at the argument.

Eh, that'll do. <Her?>

(What color clothing is the spinning one wearing?)

(Rust-brown!)

She nods at Xinai's question and starts to walk over.

The determined ignoring extends to Havvi till she gets quite close, and then she notices the shoes and looks up. "Ma'am? ...Sir?"

Human genders are really weird a fascinating cultural phenomenon that should be handled respectfully. 

She smiles. "Ma'am is fine. We are envoys from a faraway civilization called Vanda Nosseo. We were hoping to better understand the conflict between the Yes-men and the Nay-sayers, and to learn more about the war."

"Well, the Yes-men think we should involve ourselves and the Nay-sayers reckon we should get less involved even if that's pretty hard to do."

"What is the war about?"

"What are wars ever about? They're fighting over - territory and resources, respect and - do you not have wars wherever you're from?"

<Yes, but the one I was part of was an attempt to stop an evil clique of slug monsters from enslaving the known universe, so we try not to assume too much about what other places are like from our own experience.>

"Slug monsters! Yuck!"

<Yes, my people had that reaction. Most of the species proved quite reasonable once their leadership was removed, though, and once the war was decided> it was decided, it was not over, <Vanda Nosseo arrived and then they could provide them solutions to their problems that did not involve slavery. But you understand why I do not know what your war looks like. Is it between two groups of your species?>

"Oh, well, that's complicated and I don't expect it'd be very good for my marriage to go on about it much."

... Anyone who has pair-bonded have comments on this? Xinai is unmarried and intends to stay that way for the foreseeable future. The very foreseeable future.

(If nobody does she'll try to turn a listening ear to the speaker, though.)

Some human societies consider coparenting with your best friend while both of you sleep with other people to be essentially the same sort of thing as a regular marriage, but others take offense at the suggestion that these are at all equivalent, and she's not really sure it's particularly relevant to this situation anyway.

"I'm sorry we don't know much and don't know who to ask. For what it's worth we're interested in hearing things everyone knows, or hearing about what different people have to say; we're not just interested in hearing something - detailed and definitely accurate that someone from around here would think of as insightful?"

"Oh, honey, even things everybody knows aren't things everybody says."

"How does everyone learn them?"

"That is a fine question," she says. "A fine question."

Oh, it's one of these places.

<This is a common pattern in human societies,> says the person who is not a human and whose society never does this at all (privately to her teammates), <This could simply be certain phrases obtaining symbolic meaning separate from their literal meaning and thus causing the literal meaning to gain the symbolic meaning of 'I am a fool who cannot use symbolism,' but in the strong form presented here it also suggests that there is censorship, enforced either by their government or by a large and angry portion of their population. I suspect she is at least one of an unusual person, or treading close to the bounds of what can be said.>

<Huh, I don't think I would have thought of that. We don't have a lot of that in heaven; there are some things people will get mad at you if you talk about in certain neighborhoods, I guess, but that doesn't seem like the same thing. Should I try and contact them telepathically, or do you think that would panic them?>

Remember, thoughtspeak doesn't do conference calls. Use the chat for private conversations - if that's too slow for Havvi, of course Xinai can relay.

I do want to see if we can solve this problem with mind-reading if we can do it consensually but I don't know what the best way to broach that is. Also maybe someone should be talking about something less fraught with her while we try to figure this out, if it's going to take a while?

Sure, I can take point on that; I'll keep an eye on the chat for any comments.

"So what does art look like around here? I've always found that to be one of the most fascinating parts of going to new worlds, learning about what people do for architecture and singing and clothing and painting and so forth; you get to see all kinds of things I wouldn't ever have thought of myself!"

"Huh. Well, I don't know any painters, but I dye fabric with rust and herbs and onionskins and so on."

I don't know if we need specifically to read her mind, or if discussions with others will clarify what we need to know

And then Rubiel gets started before she finishes composing.

The obvious test for my theory is to see if others are incapable of mentioning the same topics.

"That does sound interesting! I mostly just change colors directly when I'm experimenting on new designs, but some humans I talked to a century or so ago introduced me to ways to do it manually and I think the limitations add a lot of fun. I think my favorite is tie-die, which gives rise to some fascinating colors - it looks something like this."

Rubiel changes their shirt into a blue, green, and purple spiral coloration to demonstrate.

"I can imitate it now that I know what it looks like, but none of my designs had anything like this until I had an example to work from, and of course it's just fun to do."

Using a handcomp is a little slower, but not prohibitively so. (Hopefully the "locals" aren't bothered.)

If we want to test Xinai's theory, it might be a good idea for some of us to split up.

Does anyone else in the "pointedly ignoring each other" category look promising?

I think it's wise to talk to more people but it sounded to me like the woman's spouse just isn't seeing eye to eye with her about this topic.

The laundry person seems less likely to be bothered by being interrupted. She walks over to them. (What color clothes are they wearing?)

The laundry person is wearing yellow and washing clothes of all colors. "Morning."

"Good morning! My companions and I" (she gestures) "are envoys from another civilization very far from here. I was hoping to get some more context on the war, and on anything else you think would be helpful for us to know about."

"...why're you here talking to us?"

"The civilization we represent wants to explore the inhabited worlds, establish trade and free movement and the flow of information between them, and improve the standard of living for all sapient beings," she recites from memory. "We are very new to your world, and we don't know who we ought to talk to."

"Well, I'm a laundress, but over there is Chaplain Maaru." She points at a fellow wearing white.

"Before I talk to them, could you tell me a bit more about what it means to be a chaplain here? I don't want to accidentally give offense."

"Do you not have chaplains? Goodness, what do you even do?"

"The place I currently live has city governors elected by an unweighted vote of all citizens in that city and a national council elected by a general vote, as well as various appointed administrative positions. The place I lived before that also had an elected national council, but it was a lot smaller, only certain people were allowed to run, and in practice everything important was controlled by -- the people chosen by the Council to allocate a scarce resource."

"...sounds complicated."

"It works for us, but I don't think it would be good for everyone. In any case, it leaves me without much understanding of what a chaplain does."

"Well, he talks to the spirits. More than everyone does, I mean, he manages our - relationship with them."

"Thank you very much for your time."

I've been told to talk to the tall one in white. Apparently he's a "chaplain," meaning he's in charge of talking to local spirits.

:That sounds useful. Who seems most spirit-like to speak with him?:

At a complete guess, you by virtue of not speaking aloud.

:Plausible. If I am going to speak with the chaplain, I would recommend that we split into multiple groups, so as to gather maximum information and not to overwhelm any one speaker.:

Seems reasonable enough to me. Who do you want with you, anyone?

:I doubt it will be necessary; if it is, I will alert you.:

All right. Good skill.