"I really recommend against that. If there are other planets, even if a particular country hasn't gotten one yet, everyone'll be patient; if the first planet ever is for reds it'll seem like a colossal insulting waste of resources, like lighting money on fire in front of a homeless person, people'll be mad and they'll be less cooperative with sending their reds there. They'll be safe in the rainforest and can take advantage of the time spent somewhere with internet access to learn the things they'll need to manage on their own planet."

"Is this enough rainforest to fit all the reds who might need it?"

"Not if every country expelled their reds but I wouldn't expect most of them to - Anitam's not going to, Voa's not going to, Tapa's not going to, it might be enough to fit everyone else."

"Okay."

"Should I go ahead and talk to the appropriate people about elemental theft?"

"...yeah."

And he takes it to the council - elementals are the ones who can do interplanetary travel, and Penumbra has friends who are currently enslaved and prevented from using their magic, she can't make promises on their behalf but they'd probably look kindly on a country who rescued them, it seems to him that Anitam would be much advantaged by a rescue operation. 

The council agrees.

He writes Kalana Shenla.

Council should be forwarding authorization for an operation to rescue some elementals who can terraform for us. What do you need to know to make that happen?

As much as possible about the layout and terrain, nature of resistance especially magical, nature of exit strategy, likely reception from rescued elementals, and how many we can field from what fallback position.

He goes to visit Maurabel again. "This a good time for rescue operation planning?"

"As good as any."

Email. "Here's what they need to know."

She needs help with some of the words, and then she can draw a school map and start speculating on defenses. "Penumbra can only take people between worlds every now and then and even regular teleportation is expensive but she can go between places that are dark more cheaply and so can regular Shadows if any of those want to help. We could set up over as long as we need to bring in all the soldiers somewhere, and go in at night, and fall back to wherever we set up - in a cave or something. The school elementals know me and I think will cooperate once they can, it'll be harder if we have to try again with more who don't."

"How well does information travel, will elementals in other places hear there was a mass breakout at the mage school -"

"Elementals are used as messengers and translators, so some will. They won't know anything about the intentions of who stole them though."

"And we can't tell them lest some relay it to the slaveowners. All right. Mage school first and then maybe some people rescued there will have information about where else might be tractable."

"Yeah. There might be some elementals checked out, so we won't be able to get all the ones the university owns in one strike. They have several of all the non-hybrids, though. You want Shadow for going to other planets and Air and Earth and Water and maybe Wood and Fire for making planets nice, but the other kinds can be useful too."

"And we're not going to leave anyone a slave because we don't have an immediate need for them ourselves."

"Yeah, I mean if for some reason all the Shadows are checked out when we go in you might want to abort and try again, or go looking for who has them, but if all the Adamants are missing you might not want to do that."

"Makes sense." And he forwards Maurabel's comments to Kalana.

Kalana has a few more questions (if it's important that it be dark, how dark, what's the lighting on campus like? If someone is injured what are prospects for solving that with magic?) and Maurabel has answers (some torches, some magical lighting objects, but it's still dark enough for there to be lots of places suitable for shadow-walking at night, as long as they aren't stuck right under a light stone; magical healing is pretty good, Shine for healed-or-dead-in-the-next-five-minutes emergencies one per elemental in any reasonable amount of time, Lightning for that but you have to wait more than five minutes to get to a Shine and also one per elemental, Ice for that but you think you could fix it without Shine in particular, Earth for smallish patch jobs - Fire's for youth and infection and Water's for disease and not directly relevant.)

"Will the elementals do healing for us -"

"Penumbra can but that's drawing on the same reserves she'd use to do shadow-walking, Shine healing is expensive. I have some Earth and I know how to use it - no humans have enough Shine or Lightning to use those for healing. Uh, same caveats as basically everything else, regarding elemental willingness, but probably at least some of them would."

"Okay. Want to visit Cene first or do this first?"

"Is the rainforest still useful if I die?"

"We would probably have enough leverage to put it to the use you intended if there were still prospects of planets. What happens to the elementals we rescue if you die -"