"...Hang on," Inlaith says slowly. "Why don't your worlds have Aluvai?"

"They're hardly going to know that, are they?" says Ashras. "Um, Aluvai and Ceirene are the same species, we're all humans, it's just some of us live on the inside of the planet and some live... on... the outside... oh, I see what you mean, Inlaith."

"So the reason why the extradimensional Kevarsins are a bunch of shortears is because they come from planets without interiors?"

Ashras makes a facial expression as of someone who wishes his brother hadn't used that word but isn't going to tell him off in front of all these people.

"Planets of the sort I am familiar with are solid - or liquid under a lot of pressure and heat - all the way through. ...The answer is probably 'no', but will anything about this apparently weighty ethnic tension be improved if I show you a picture of another alt of ours who had pointy ears?"

"Almost certainly not," sighs Ashras. "Okay. I guess we need to clarify a few things. First, our planet is a hollow shell shaped sort of like a thick, round-edged coin, with two flat sides and a broad round rim. There are chasms here and there that pierce the shell, and around the rim the chasms are so frequent that there's almost more air than earth. Since the sun orbits outside the shell, the outer surface gets a lot of sunlight; it's a good place to grow food, and the wild animals mostly aren't bothersome there. The inner surface, and the floating jungle in the middle, get less light and have more bothersome animals, where by 'bothersome' I mean 'tending to eat anyone who strays too far from civilization'. As you can probably imagine, the Ceirene and Aluvai have historically not been all that fond of each other. I'd rather not recount all the stereotypes going in both directions, but many an unsubtle political cartoon has involved a Ceirene and an Aluvai standing at opposite ends of a chasm, looking down at each other."

"Then the Enemy showed up and we all discovered we had bigger problems," says Inlaith.

"Yeah, I guess those are our monsters," says Ashras. "They come from somewhere far away from the planet, they want to kill everyone for unclear reasons, and we had to ally with the Ceirene to have a hope of fighting them off."

"What a bizarre sort of planet. What does the jungle live on, if there's so little light?"

"It gets the most sunlight in the whole interior, when the sun passes the edges."

"It's not that bizarre," says Mial. "A little overelaborate, maybe."

"It's bizarre in the sense that physics doesn't work like that."

"Physics doesn't work like 'ten mile thick square floating in infinite air', either, but tell that to Elcenia," says Ivan.

"Perhaps the shape of one's planet should be an item in the list of important world characteristics," says Stalas. "Actually, maybe we should all have written the names of our worlds on our nametags when those were going around."

"Solvei, what do you think of 'Wish' for ours?"

"Two votes in favour," says Solvei.

Bells write "Wish" and "Nexus" on each other's nametags.

Solvei takes it upon herself to add world names to the Miles table. Wish for her, Nexus for Miles and Mark, Thedas for Stalas, Chronicle for Milo, Elcenia for Mial, and then she shrugs and hands the marker to Ashras.

Triplets get "Suranse". Ashras passes the marker to the Ivans.

Who all also write their worlds on each other's name tags, corresponding to the choices of the relevant Mileses.

"Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you, Stalas," says Ashras.

"Happy to help," says Stalas. "So at this point it's definitely a bad idea for us all to sit down and play a strategy game, right?"

"Tell me you're joking," says Elarron.

"I will physically stop anyone who tries to get this number of Mileses and their siblings competing in a free-for-all of any kind," says Mark.

"Put them on teams."