"So, our honored Polymath who came through first, he says you're a young species and age slowly and want for nothing concrete. Our planet doesn't have those luxuries. Our calendar goes back almost thirty-four hundred of our years, we existed in a less civilized form before that, and there are nine billion of us. Most nations of the world have realized that they have to do something about population growth - or at least, that they do until we have sustainable access to new habitable places - but we aren't coordinated on this. A nation that grows too much will, inevitably, have consequences for its neighbors. This is true whether their enforcement is lax or they have no control system at all or they guess wrong about the carrying capacity of their territory or if anything else happens. They'll start starving, they'll crowd each other and get agitated and find an excuse to go to war, they'll try to sneak into other, more responsible countries, they'll strain humanitarian aid budgets from the rest of the world that could instead have gone to countries who through no fault of their own suffered earthquakes or epidemics. This is something we've learned from history; we wouldn't expect it to be obvious here. Are you with me so far?"

"Yes."

"So every individual country has a temporary advantage if it grows more - it can throw more bodies into fights, it can put more minds to research, that sort of thing - and everyone's populace is always crying out for more children, two to a family on average is stable but isn't satisfying to most people - but everyone will suffer if that impulse isn't checked. And the only way available to check that impulse if diplomacy fails is violence, again something we've learned from history. Once it's clear that someone won't stop harming the entire planet with their irresponsibility because it's been explained to them that they must, swift inevitable force can at least provide an example for third party nations. The Emperor's vision for the world is a strict, meritocratic plan of stable childrearing. It's likely that will change if we can access more planets! No one would be more delighted than us! But at the time the event Avalor described to you occurred there wasn't any prospect of that occurring in the next fifty, maybe even a hundred years. So the Empire, as the strongest nation on the planet and the one best equipped to get everyone on the same page about how to grow, has been issuing ultimatums."

"That nations constrain their population growth to a certain rate or make dispursements corresponding to the harm they are causing their neighbors?"

"The former. The trouble is you can't easily make up for excess growth, down the line, if everyone has three children then those three children will want whatever the going average is even if it's checked to something more reasonable and you have a permanently swollen population, it's not the sort of thing where compensatory damages would solve it. The offer is to join the Empire and participate in our enforcement of our population control methods, or demonstrate a satisfactory containment strategy of one's own, or to be conquered and absorbed and the blue caste symbolically cut down to size. Voa's laws were inadequate and its enforcement moreso."

"The cutting down to size did not as described seem remotely symbolic."

"It's symbolic in the sense that it's only the blue caste which is a tiny fraction of the population. The other castes aren't responsible for the aristocracy's too-gentle handle on their habits, they'll just have as many children as they're allowed and it's not their job to figure out what it would be reasonable to allow them and we'll all just have to cope with there being more of them than there ought to be. The blues ought to know better. I'm sure it sounds - imprecise, unsurgical - but remember the idea is that on the international stage we need everyone else to decide they would rather not have had too many children in the first place by the time Imperial attention turns their way - and that's a high bar to clear. The nature of the problem inherently means we can't make exceptions for children, or their families, or there will be five times as many of them."

He nods. "It sounds like the conquests can stop immediately, then. I'm glad to hear it."

"We'd all much rather be busy colonizing, if you can really provide more planets!" smiles Kahago.

He looks at Varda. 

We can provide transit to planets. Identifying ones habitable for Amentans remains a challenge, though perhaps they have observed some candidates in their own universe and are prepared already to explore them. 

"We've got telescopes but that only lets us look at planets, not examine their chemical composition or anything," says Scholar Ajenk. "We can provide specifications, though."

We could build portals such that you could go examine chemical composition. She glances at Finwë; he shakes his head slightly. How could we best make it known to all the nations of your world that this service is now available, and that a condition of its continued availability to them is the end of all wars and aggression?

"We'd love to help you with that," says Kahago. "We've got channels with all the other nations of Amenta."

She glances at Finwë again.

He is reading her mind.

They do have channels with all the other nations of Amenta! They'll even convey the message, although they're going to need some clarification on the exact meaning of "ending aggression", just not right this minute it'd break this rapport and sound shifty. A planet is worth way more than adding Rivik to the Empire or something.

Then we will gladly accept your assistance.

"The message will need to be translated into the appropriate languages, of course, and people will want an idea of how planets will be divided up and other details. I'm sure we can figure all that out."

"We are eager to learn all the local languages, though I doubt we will pick them up quickly enough to aid in translation," Finwë says.

"That's all right, we've got plenty of translators on staff. I assume you mean you want national borders all to stand as they are right now."

" - we would like no more blood to be spilled over them in the next few weeks. If the justification for the empire was the necessity of population control, then perhaps some of the empire's members would prefer to be independent nations and the time to arrange that will be once some planets have been found."

The Emperor would also probably still rather have a planet than Voa but still. "I can certainly see why that would make sense as a proposal, but reverting borders is more fraught than might be clear from a history of so little conflict. The nations we've absorbed didn't exist in a vacuum; they had their own border disputes and separatist movements and histories of membership in other larger entities and in many cases track records of conquest. The only clear and principled way to draw the line is that at the moment we made contact with a way to stop fighting over living space, our boundaries were as they are now and there they should stay."

"We will of course solicit other proposals for a clear and principled way to draw the line but I suppose if no one can put any forward then I would be poorly positioned to disagree with you that that's the only one."

Kahago smiles and nods.

"Are there other terrible necessities that magic might make less necessary or less terrible?"