"We only recently put together enough astronomy to figure out there could be life on other stars, and it'd have weird religious implications so I don't think anyone has taken it seriously enough for speculation about aliens to be a genre."

"Religious implications?"

"Uh, our world has no gods but Muggles overwhelmingly believe it does and have holy books he supposedly gave them two thousand years ago which say things which imply nonexistence of aliens."

"...huh."

"In fairness to the Muggles the world does have magic just not of the kind they're expecting, so they observe supernatural phenomena and fit it into the schema they've got."

"I suppose. Religions exist in Amenta but they're not enormous social forces in most spheres and don't involve belief in anything like the Valar."

"Muggle religion is a huge deal - most of their wars are at least in part over it, when they discovered a uncontacted continent they sent missionaries to convert the locals first thing - also enslaved them and so on but there were genuinely lots of people making sacrifices to make sure the natives knew about the religion - what does a religion without belief in gods look like?"

"They philosophize about uncleanliness and what the virtues of each caste are and tell people to get up early and have balanced hobbies and cope calmly with childless springs and so on."

"Huh. No, Rebecca's religion teaches that God got a woman pregnant and his son went about teaching about sin until the local government executed him for rabble-rousing and heresy and so on and then rose from the dead, and that if you follow his rules then after you die you go someplace nice and if you break the rules then after you die you go someplace horrible."

"...how odd. And one of the rules is no birth control?"

"Yep. Muggle infant mortality rate is, like, thirty percent, though, so the population doesn't really grow that fast."

"We used to have an infant mortality rate about that bad but we fixed it."

"Electricity is great!"

"...that's mostly not directly related, but yes, electricity is great."

"Everything else is great too but most of the non-electricity stuff wizardry can achieve one way or another. That, though, and everything that followed from it, magic can't do."

"Speaking of things magic can do, if we get sea portals, is there a way to send the houses and the music hall through?"

"It would be a bit of a hassle but we could probably float them on over, sure."

"I don't know how the value of the buildings trades off against hassle but it might come up."

"If we get persistent interworld travel then we'd want to hire a team to build you all a warded house. But I don't know what to expect on that front."

"He was talking in terms of portals, they might just - stay. If we promise not to colonize the place, anyway."

"Will that be a problem?"

"It would have been before warp. Shouldn't be now."

"Oh good. I don't see Elves tolerating Anitami colony status very well."

"Even if Anitam decided not to, the prospect of vast swathes of empty continent would be a bit much to pass up, even if it doesn't have long enough seasons, someone might literally go to war against Anitam for it, their citizens wouldn't stand for letting it lie."

"Oh, I'm not saying I think you'd be horrible for considering it or anything just - it'd be ugly."