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high-energy physics
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Federation political prisons are not particularly uncomfortable. She's not going anywhere, but she can read, she's considering taking up an instrument, the only really awkward thing is that she doesn't particularly want to be supervised while she's sweating her way through her next pon farr one way or another but that's years off. That and she wishes she'd taken longer to get caught. But she was running out of the really low-hanging fruit anyway.

This is what she signed up for. She makes up imaginary profiles of people on the planets she got to, people who can live longer fuller lives with the stars in reach, one per day. One per day and she'll have loads of estimated impact left unused when she dies. Perfectly reasonable tradeoff and she can still read books.

Someone wants to interview her about Vulcan; they don't want to lose anything that anybody remembers; she gives the interview and then picks up some poetry.
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Bella? says a voice from behind her, and it's clearly the voice of a small child, and there's no one present in her cell. Are you Bella? You look exactly like her but we couldn't think - I'm invisible, sorry, I thought there might be monitoring magic or monitoring science or something. I'm rescuing you.

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...sorry, who are you? Responding from more than touch range takes a little work, but apparently the other party has enough psi to bridge the gap.
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That's really complicated, can I explain it after I rescue you? My Bella wanted to wait until we had more of a plan but I don't like waiting for things and if my Bella were in a jail she'd be really scared.

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I'm not scared on account of being in jail, I'm more or less here on purpose. I would really like to know what's going on.

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We landed here about a month ago. They speak so many languages here and I've mostly been learning them but also it's a real science fantasy paradise here, one with no gods, so eventually we're going to get starships and things and summon everyone here from Materia and Valinor who might not want to keep being in Materia or Valinor. My name is Curufinwë Fëanáro Finwion and I am going to be an epic wizard scientist and it shouldn't even take too long, I think this world is one of the places where I'll grow up faster.

We saw you on the news. My Bella went really pale, because you look like her, and then we looked up everything about you on the science ethernet.
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You "landed here"? Not this moon, surely?

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No, I just mean on this plane. We landed near Phoenix, Arizona, because we were looking for something like the climate we'd shifted from, and we were in the south of Valinor which is kind of a desert because the Valar don't look there as often. Bella and Rúmil are both better than me at explaining things.

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Well, if you take me to Earth I'll just be arrested again, she says, however it is you're planning to transport me.

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We can just do another planar shift, at worst, though I'd be really sad to leave this one when I don't even have starships yet or understand how they work or speak all the languages. And you can be invisible like I am, that'd make it hard for them to find you. Or Bella and Rúmil might have a better plan than me, they were working on one.

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There are planets where I wouldn't be arrested, it's only the Federation that wants me locked up. How'd you get here?

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So I only have a planar shift, not a teleport, but you can really easily approximate the latter with the former. We can go to a planet where you won't be arrested but we have to get my Bella and Rúmil first.

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And you're inclined to rescuing me solely because I look like 'your Bella'.

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Where I'm from there are no jails and only the Enemy held anyone prisoner.

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...that's interesting.

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And I and Bella and Rúmil are all powerful wizards so if you turn out to like torturing people or something we can put you on an uninhabited plane or one where everyone can't be tortured or something like that.

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I would be in a different jail if I had tortured people, this one's for nonviolent political prisoners.

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I think I object to jails for nonviolent political prisoners.

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Well, if you can figure out how to get me to - let's say Davlia - I will be happy to be rescued from it, but you needn't consider it urgent.

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Do you want me to go build a house there and tell Rúmil and my Bella and everything, or should we just go now?

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...I'm not sure why you'd need to build a house there, but I will cope if dropped off alone.

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We don't have any money yet. Bella's still getting used to not being small and Rúmil and I don't really understand the concept. And I'm not going to leave you alone! You haven't even met them!

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This psychic child makes no sense. Davlia is reasonably likely to take me in as a refugee in spite of the fact that I'd have a hard time accessing my Federation accounts from there.
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And us? We're not really refugees, Bella's universe eats people and the Valar are scared of me but they didn't keep me in a jail or anything.

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You I don't know about, but you can always teleport back to Federation space if Davlia doesn't care to have you as immigrants and the Federation will look after your basic needs. It's very good about that.

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Not as good as home, you can't eat the trees. We're developing a spell for that.

I'm going to go tell my Bella and Rúmil that we're taking you to Davlia.
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Thank you.

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And he pops back and stops being invisible. One of them will have to do the rest of the planar shifts because he spent the morning doing research on the trees and he is out of mana. "Bella!" he says. "I met the other Bella and she's a nonviolent political prisoner and we're rescuing her and taking her to Davlia and I know you said we needed to think about this a lot first but that felt really time-slidey and anyway we can think about it on Davlia just as well."

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"You - of course you did," sighs Bella. "I'm quite sure there is no time slide here. Do we know where Davlia is? Did she say what she was a nonviolent political prisoner for, it wasn't anywhere in the news and I'm not sure I want to go ask her mother?"

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"She didn't. I can't go ask her, it was two planar shifts each way and I'm out of mana. We can look up Davlia on the science ethernet."

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So they look up Davlia on the science ethernet: recently postwarp, qualifies for Federation membership, declined invitation, populated by people with twirly horns and digitigrade hooves. It is over here, first visited when it registered a warp signature.

"Well, did it seem like she was in a hurry or do we have time to invent a more efficient teleport?"
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"She was not in a hurry at all," he says. "Maybe the moon is timeslid, though."

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"I do not think any parts of this world are timeslid."

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"Maybe I'm still really impatient even when there's no time sliding. Let's invent a more efficient teleport. She looks exactly like you. She talks a lot like you too. Asks sensible questions."

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"She doesn't look exactly like me, she's greenish and has pointy ears. But yes, it's uncanny. How hopelessly confused is she now?"

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"Well, yeah, but other than that, I mean. It's an even stronger resemblance than it looked like on the science ethernet. She might be kind of confused but she didn't seem mad or anything."

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"That's good then. I wonder why there is a pointy greenish Isabella here in the first place, it's weird."

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"I searched the ethernet for Fëanáros and Rúmils but I didn't find any."

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"Well, her name's not exactly like mine, maybe they're just too different to find searching like that. And not everybody can have copies or whatever she is; if everyone did, there would have been a me in Arda and I feel like someone would have noticed, and there would have to be the same number of people in every plane."

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"You could look if there are other people from your plane doubled here? And I also looked at all the places that had Kings and Queens, to see if any of them had a Miriel or similar, and then whether they had a son, but I didn't get all through them so I don't know for sure."

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"It's possible that people's copies aren't always politically similar," she points out. "Anyway, I'm not sure who I'd check. Pointy Isabella's mother's name sounds like she might be one of my mother but her father doesn't have a science ethernet record I could find..."

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"Once we have a more efficient teleport we can ask her her father's name," he says.

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"Sure. And maybe she's picked out a planet that wants to host a bunch of refugees from our original planes, that'd be convenient."

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"Yeah. Or would know how to find one." He pulls up his magic notes for the planar shift spell. "Teleporting should be easy."

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"Here's hoping."

Work work work.
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It's not easy, but they have it by the time Rúmil comes back from acquiring groceries, an adventure he has no desire to repeat and have they figured out how to make trees edible? Oh, teleportation, that's a good priority.

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Poor Rúmil. Bella would grocery shop next time but she is slightly afraid there might be a warrant out for her double's rearrest which could catch her. Maybe next time they need food they can be on Davlia and make Pointy Isabella do it. Oh, by the way, Fëanáro went and introduced himself to Pointy Isabella who is apparently a nonviolent political prisoner isn't that nice.

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"Lovely," he says. "Let's go get her out."

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Teleportation spells! Which can take science ethernet coordinates as input!

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And groceries! Which they can, confusedly, cook and should perhaps take with them to Davlia because he doesn't want to try this again tomorrow on yet another planet with different rules.

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Sure. Also Davlia might have less palatable food than Earth, which has a lot of overlap with both sets of organisms they remember from their own planes and less with any other planet in the galaxy.

Eventually they have a teleport worked out. Maybe Bella should go get Pointy Isabella out of jail.
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"But she already knows me," Fëanáro points out.

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"I guess if you really want to be the one to fetch her and you have the mana for two jumps..."

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He frowns. "I don't. Not unless I sleep, and we should leave today. You could take us with you, though."

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"I'm not planning to stand around in her prison cell for very long, just enough to explain what's going on and get her to confirm she would like to teleport to Davlia."

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He pouts. "Okay. If you pick coordinates on Davlia, we can pack and then meet you there."

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So Bella finds the science ethernet's opinion on where Davlia's capital city is and picks a spot easily flyable from there to land.

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And they wave her off, see you soon, good luck with Pointy Bella.

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So Bella turns invisible and goes to visit Pointy Isabella.

Hey.
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...Are you Fëanáro's Bella?

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Is that what he called me? Yes.

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You can call me T'Mir, if that's less confusing. He said you were better at explaining things.

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Right. Uh, there are alternate planes where the fundamental rules of things in general can be wildly different. I'm from one, Fëanáro and Rúmil are from another. I got to theirs by an accident, and some things happened, and we all decided to find another one we liked better and wound up here and then saw you on the news when you got arrested. And we look just alike except you're greenish and pointy-eared and we have the same name and our mothers have similar names and we were going to be more circumspect about this but Fëanáro went ahead and visited you anyway, so. I can teleport you to Davlia and finish explaining there?

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Is this dangerous or unpleasant in any way and will it have any results other than us being on Davlia?

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Nope. I picked a spot a ways from the capital, is that okay?

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Should be fine. I've never actually landed on the planet, you understand, I just think they'd be favorably disposed.

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Well, say when.

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T'Mir tucks her PADD into her pocket. When.

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And here they are on lovely Davlia!

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They've arrived already. Fëanáro is even younger than she's have imagined him from hearing his voice, if he were human he wouldn't be older than five. He's holding the hand of a very pretty man who has pointy ears himself but obviously is not a Vulcan. They both have long hair in elaborate braids and Fëanáro leaps thirty feet in the air at the sight of her. "Pointy Bella! Welcome to Davlia!"

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"You can call me T'Mir, both of my names are personal names and it seems like it'll be less confusing that way. Thanks for the rescue."

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He lands. "Hi, T'Mir. You can call me Fëanáro, and this is Rúmil."

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Bella turns visible. "And I'm Bella."

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"- that's really uncanny. You look human, though."

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"I am."

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"The science ethernet says you're half-Vulcan," Fëanáro says. "What's your father's name?"

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"My father's name was Chalek."

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"Charles. Charlie."

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"Tomorrow once we have mana we could do a planar shift to all planes with Bellas on them, I think I could specify that. Though some of them might be like Materia and eat me."

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"I think we should do scrying first."

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"Nobody but my mother calls me 'Bella'," remarks T'Mir. "Materia? Eats people?"

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"Materia's what I decided to name my plane now that there's more than two to factor in. The plane itself only metaphorically eats people but some things on it literally eat people and the plane in general is very dangerous and inimical to the practice of science."

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"...that's awful," says T'Mir. "...I would like to name my plane Warp."

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Fëanáro and Rúmil look at each other consideringly. "Ours is generally called Arda," Rúmil says, "though that might not be used for the whole plane, now I think about it."

"Warp suits yours," Fëanáro says, "it's the first we've found where you can travel between stars."
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"What's Arda like?"

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"You have all kinds of people, and so does Materia, but Arda only has the Quendi, that's us. And it used to be very dangerous but then the Valar invited us to Valinor. Valinor is safe and beautiful and inventing all kinds of things but the Valar are scared and sometimes do stupid things and they exiled Bella so we had to fetch her and then run. My parents are going to miss me so we're trying to figure out how to message them and tell them I'm safe. And it takes forever to grow up, there. I'm a hundred and twenty years old."

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"They exiled you?"

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"Things move very slowly there. I brought a lot of Materian concepts and then built on them very rapidly and they thought I was a bad influence."

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"The Federation arrested me for telling pre-warp civilizations how to warp."

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Fëanáro bounces. "You're the same! Why aren't people supposed to tell that?"

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"The justification is that they should be allowed to develop on their own without interference from farther-along cultures."

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"That's really stupid."

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"They have historical reasons that make it less stupid, but yes."

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"The Valar should interfere less," he says, "but it'd have been awful for them to leave us in the Outer Lands to die. Taking us to Valinor was right. They just should have given us more power over how we lived our lives once we got there."

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"The Valar are...?"

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"The creators of our world."

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"These don't constitute a kind of person?"

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"They do," Bella says, "and so do the Maiar, but they're pretty much gods and it's not a really natural category to count them like another species on Materia or here."

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"They're mlliions of years old," Fëanáro says, "and don't understand people."

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"The Maiar vary more. I'm not positive the Valar were operating with consensus either now that I'm not stuck on my plane and I can think about it more fairly. But yeah, they have serious people skills gaps."

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"Sounds like a serious deficiency in a god."

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"That's why we're here. We were hoping this plane wouldn't have any gods at all."

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"There's a lot of variance in technology and innate power, so whether there are gods here depends on what your exact definition is, but one can generally do whatever one likes without expecting anything like divine intervention. I was arrested by purely mortal authority. Who, I should mention, are mostly very good at being mortal authority, or I wouldn't be so keen to prompt prewarp civilizations to meet their entrance criteria."

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"We were not planning to overthrow your King. Or equivalent." Rúmil says.

"We would've if he was bad, though," Fëanáro says.
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"The Federation has a President," she says. "One typically doesn't overthrow those, one campaigns for and elects a different President. You've been here how long?"

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"A few weeks, but Fëanáro's the only one who soaks up languages like a sponge and it took a while to figure out how to use the science ethernet, which unlike talking to people doesn't respond to subtle arts. People have been thinking I'm something called a Betazoid."

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"You don't actually look Betazoid but they're pretty close to human, cosmetically, and the obvious guess if you display psi. I'm not sure Betazoids would do the thing you're doing where you talk but fill in the gaps, though."

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"I'm trying to practice the language. This is the one it's important to know, right?"

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"In the Federation yes, on Davlia no. I don't speak the languages here either, though."

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"I'll learn them," he says. "Languages are beautiful, almost as beautiful as the whole concept of writing."

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"Arda didn't have writing when I landed. I had college textbooks in my backpack and he thought they were the most beautiful things in the world."

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"Writing's important!"

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"Anyway, assuming the Davlians are okay with us being around - and we can psi at them, or at least the three of us can, as a stopgap - Fëanáro will be conversational in a day and fluent in a week and the rest of us can catch up."

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"Wow. I do have psi but it's touch range, awkward to negotiate without preestablished communication."

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"Quendi have osanwë, range is a few hundred miles."

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"...That's really something, even Betazoids don't have that much range and they're basically the gold standard for psi around here."

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"Well, you have to know someone well. I don't know if I'd count as knowing you well, since you're Bella but not my Bella."

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"Nobody but my mother calls me Bella! It's Isabella, or T'Mir."

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"Since you're sort of like someone I know, I might have a lot of range on you. Might not."

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"Maybe we should find out before we know each other more individually, then."

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"I don't have enough mana for another teleport, so let's try after I sleep."

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"Is all this magic learnable?"

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"Yes! Well, probably, I don't know if it'll turn out that everybody from every plane can learn it, but in principle yes."

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"And on science fantasy planes we can test it and experiment and develop more of it."

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"Science fantasy."

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"My world doesn't allow science - experimenting systematically on things best case scenario gets the rules changed on you and more than likely gets you killed or worse if you don't stop. But we have fantasy stories about science working and how nice that would be, so I've been calling planes where science works 'science fantasy'."

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"Our plane is technically science fantasy but the Valar will make magic stop working if they're worried and mad."

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"I feel like I'm getting an extremely spotty picture of the other 'planes'."

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"Sorry. I've got a lot of books and crystal balls full of notes from both, you can pick up whatever you want to know about them, but it's hard to know where to start!"

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"And she doesn't speak Pax or Quenya," Fëanáro says. "We can translate for you, though."

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"I mean, you can probably program a computer to autotranslate to readable quality, if you can get the text in digital form and give it enough of a corpus and starting correspondences to chew on the languages for a while, but I have no idea of the compatibility issues with crystal balls..."

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"The computer is the science ethernet? We haven't figured out how to make it talk to crystal balls yet but I'm sure it can be done."

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"Computers are the thing via which you access what I suspect is the thing you're calling the science ethernet."

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"I haven't learned how they work yet," he says, frowning. "We were trying to get interplanar messaging. Speaking of which, is this a good planet to dump everyone in Materia?"

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"...You should really ask the Davlians first. I suggested this planet because they seemed nice and didn't join the Federation and might be glad that I gave them warp anyway."

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"This plane probably has some unoccupied planets too, we could put them there."

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"Sure, plenty. If you want to go steal my ship out of impound we could all cram into it and go looking for one that isn't claimed, it's designed for survey."

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"Tomorrow," Fëanáro says, "when I have mana, we shall steal a starship."

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"It's called the Prometheus but I don't know where they're keeping it."

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"Prometheus," he says. "That's not English. What language is it? What does it mean?"

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"...Greek. It means 'forethought', but I named the ship that because there's a mythological figure called Prometheus who was said to have stolen fire from equally mythological gods and granted it to humans. And then the gods were irritated with him and chained him to a rock and had his liver eaten once daily by a bird, which is a lot worse than Federation political prison."

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"Where's he? Rúmil, you still have mana for two teleports, right?"

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"Mythological," says T'Mir. "He did not exist, it's a story, it is not necessary to go rescue chained-up Titans."

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"It's sort of like what Manwë did to Bella, if Manwë were more gruesome and less callous."

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"Less callous?"

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"...no, you know what, I think getting sent to Materia is actually a clear win over being chained to a rock and having my liver eaten every day, Materia might well have killed me but I'd have had decent odds of it being quick and instead all that happened was I got my degree and my license and saw some patients."

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"Still," he says. "It wouldn't have taken me six years to rescue you from a rock."

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"This is true but however long it took you I would probably have gotten my liver eaten and that just sounds irretrievably unpleasant."

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"I am pretty sure the Valar would have had a war on their hands," Rúmil says.

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"- they couldn't possibly have known if I was dead or alive, under the circumstances, whether it was me or Manwë who was right about whether I'd die, and that didn't do it."

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"They trusted Manwë was right, he swore to it, you were well and happy and back in a mortal university. If he were torturing you - Melkor did that -"

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"- how did he know I went back to school, was he watching? Can he do that?"

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"I have no idea."

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"Well, I played my time there very conservatively because I didn't trust the Valar to have actually safeguarded me against all the hazards. Didn't cast spells in case all my arcana was too science-infested, or tickle sleeping dragons, or do science experiments. It makes a difference in the extent to which he was or was not torturing me that I thought I was in constant danger, even if I wasn't literally chained to a rock."

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Fëanáro hugs her. "I think it's just as bad."

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Hug. "I don't, but it was still pretty bad."

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"Well. No gods here. No one to rescue, except T'Mir, and now we should probably go learn the language. Languages. There might be lots of them!"

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"It's about fifty-fifty on planets that have a standard planetary language by the time they hit warp level tech," says T'Mir, "but they're almost guaranteed to have speaking populations of others who just learn the standard for wider interactions. I don't remember off the top of my head how much my computer had to chew on before I could make forum posts with this planet in particular but the Prometheus would have the notes. Or we can, I suppose, just rely on psi and a small language sponge."

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"I'm older than you," he mutters.

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"You mentioned. I apologize, I can refrain."

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"I think on this world it'll only be forty years to grow up, instead of four hundred."

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"- why the disparity?"

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"Valinor was slow. Magically."

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"To the point where it would take hundreds of years to grow up? Why would anyone do that?"

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"The effect is really sort of soothing if you're not concerned about using your time efficiently," Bella says, "and I guess they wanted people's childhoods to match everyone's sense of how much time was passing, although Eldar take a really long time to reach adulthood anyway."

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"We live forever. People in Materia don't, they die. Even if they're not eaten."

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"Not all of them, some of them are actually immortal until something kills them."

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"Bella's kind of people," he amends.

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"As far as I can tell I'm the same kind of basic thing as an Earthling."

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"How were you telling?"

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"Subtle arts - the thing you're glossing as psi that I have - can make species distinctions. It's not usually that useful, but the humans here read about like humans at home except none of them are themselves subtle artists."

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"And nothing here is a Quendi, it was one of the first things I read on the science ethernet."

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"We haven't contacted all the people in the galaxy yet, let alone the universe, there could be prewarp Quendi or Delta Quadrant Quendi or Andromeda Galaxy Quendi or something."

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He shrugs. "I mostly want to know if there's another Fëanáro. Since there are two Bellas. One of whom is named T'Mir," he adds quickly.

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"I wonder if there are more of us."

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"I wonder that too. I'd hesitate to try naming us something less obviously temporary than 'Bellas' without more examples to draw on."

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"Scrying," Fëanáro says, "and then all the plane shifts we want to find all the Bellas. Though maybe we should evacuate Materia first."

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"And its afterlives. We're going to need a lot of space. And more wizards. And a sensible immigration handling system."

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"So, steal T'Mir's starship, find an uninhabited planet, teach her magic, get started?"

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"Let's at least talk to the Davlians first. They're well positioned astrographically to be the middle of a non-Federation power with enough elbow room and depending on the reception we get they might be a good choice for a culture to introduce refugee immigrants to Warp."

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He looks torn. "Languages," Rúmil reminds him, and he nods.

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"Which way is the capital from here?"

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"Should be that way."

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"Have you flown?" Fëanáro says to her. "You should try it. It's great."

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"Not without a spaceship. Except the time Renée took me to Luna for low-grav, that was sort of like flying."

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"It's less fun if you're not directing your own flight," Bella says, "which isn't really introductory wizardry, but we'll teach you eventually, it really is great."

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And they head towards the capital city.

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It is bustling with antelopey people. The antelopey people are surprised to see non-antelopey people but are quite friendly when addressed. T'Mir warns her companions that they're oriented around a culture of anonymous accomplishment and it can accordingly be a little hard to find people who are experts in particular things without going through the pseudonymous "science ethernet" of the society.

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Osanwë's useful for that, Rúmil says, or are they also a culture that values mental privacy?

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Please assume they do until they indicate otherwise. Can you use it as purely communicative psi? - Bella?

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I can do pure intentional communication.

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We can do transmission. We shouldn't listen at all if the person we're speaking with doesn't know how to do intentional communitication, we'll catch everything.

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I'll take point and find somebody for Fëanáro to sponge at and tell them how to aim thoughts at you two.

And eventually Bella has located them a family of Davlians who are very curious about them and the mom of whom definitely does not admit to being significant political shaker in Federation-related shenanigans. The small children will happily jabber at Fëanáro and think it's cool that he can tell what they mean without knowing Davlian yet.
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Fëanáro is going to know Davlian really really fast just you wait.

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And meanwhile the definitely not a politician mom and the actually not a politician dad are happy to help their visitors sort out accommodations. Do they all four want to live together?

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(T'Mir manages to pick up on the way in which Mom Davlian is definitely not a politician and gamely attempts to be definitely not the warp equation dispenser in the same way.)

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All together sounds nice, if that won't cause any political complications, Rúmil says to her privately.

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Yes, all four together, but they're accustomed to private bedrooms if that's something Davlian architecture accommodates gracefully?

And it turns out Davlian architecture can do exactly that and here is an apartment in a building that looks very spiffy and has a sort of brook running constantly in a groove in some of the walls in lieu of more conventional plumbing and the beds dipped under and flush with the floor. Four bedrooms.
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Fëanáro is Not Tired and is not done learning the language.

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The Davlian family will come up and show them the place and show them where to get food! They have the correct orientation of proteins and a Federation ambassador's attaché back when Davlia was still considering joining up cleared all the staples on a tox screen for both of T'Mir's parent species - which means Bella's safe which probably means the Quendi are safe too. Whether they'll like it is another matter. Here, have a bowl of priv.

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The Quendi are curious. The Quendi prefer Tirion's food. No gods here, though, and these are the tradeoffs one must make.

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"The Federation will trade to some extent with nonmembers; once we're set up we can import Earth crops."

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"Sounds great," says Bella, suffering through her bowl of priv.

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"We're trying to get the kind of trees that do whatever seems nicest," Fëanáro says, "but it seems like a hard problem."

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"Yeah, directly copying Vala-exclusive tricks is very epic."

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"So how many Bellas and Fëanáros do we need to find?"

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"Possibly as many as four."

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"This galaxy just might be big enough to hold them."

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"There's more galaxies and you can apparently teleport, if it's really one-Bella-or-Fëanáro-to-a-quadrant."

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"I mean big enough we don't have to make ourselves small," he says.

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"What do you mean?"

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"Metaphor for - limiting our capacities and ambitions so that my universe doesn't eat you or the Valar don't get spooked or whatever."

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"Valinor didn't want us to grow too fast. Materia didn't want you to want to be grown at all. Here I think we can just - do things that matter, and learn, and invent, and it'll be okay."

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"It looks that way. Or at least if something stops us it'll be regular people, like the Federation."

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"Why would they stop us?"

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"Well, they arrested T'Mir. Also I'm pretty sure Arda is a pre-warp civilization."

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"So our first spells need to be ones we can use to get away from them," he says, "once we've learned the language, I mean. If they try to interfere with Valinor the Valar will send them away."

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"Teleporting should do the trick, but we should make sure we're not, like, spied on to the point where they'd be able to ward against it or something."

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He frowns. "We want to teach the whole realm magic. Is there a way to not teach wards?"

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"Not exactly, they can always reverse-engineer stuff and invent things the way we do, but it's probably a good idea to stay ahead of them until we're reasonably confident they're not going to obstruct anything important. We should try to learn that early anyway so people don't have to abandon multiple planets in quick succession evacuating for nicer planes."

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"Yeah," he says fervently.

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"So we should start with a handful of people and then go ahead and look really disruptive and be ready to bounce out if somebody takes issue with us that we can't sustainably handle."

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"Are there people you know from Materia who'd be good? If we suck people out of Valinor a few at a time that will be an impetus for the Valar to prevent that," Rúmil says.

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"My parents are still alive."

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"- both of them?"

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"Yeah. You can borrow Charlie if it helps, I don't think he'll mind after he's over it being weird."

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"Do the dead on this plane die forever?"

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"As far as I know."

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"We'll probably figure out a way to fix it eventually."

"Fëanáro," Rúmil says.
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"Resurrection's divine magic but healing was easy and wasn't supposed to be; the real sticking point is if they don't have an afterlife, I'm not sure what resurrection would act like then."

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"- very careful time travel, I suppose."

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"I'd feel safer on a plane with an afterlife," Rúmil says. "We might have wanted to put that in the criteria."

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"...I'm not sure we should assume that the local afterlife of a plane will reliably catch travelers."

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"Oh, hmm, perhaps not. Fëanáro, if you get yourself killed here that might really be it, all right? There might be nothing we can do."

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"I mean, he might also snap back to Mandos but that's not good either."

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"You have to travel to the Halls of Mandos when you die. You don't automatically arrive there."

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"- oh, I didn't realize. Um, if there is a thing that can do traveling that's better than just nothing for purposes of figuring out resurrection... but yeah be really careful, Fëanáro."

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"I don't want to die," he says. "We have two Bellas now, I think that's enough to keep me safe."

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"...What have I just been signed up for?"

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"If it looks like he's going to do something that is a bad idea, tell him why it is a bad idea," Bella summarizes.

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"I grew up in Valinor, you couldn't really do dangerous things there."

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"It's a very safe place, most definitions of safe."

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"All the other planes are scarier but Valinor wasn't very good for me. And you have starships. My Bella's world you couldn't have starships even if you knew how to build them."

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"Why not? If you weren't doing science per se to invent them..."

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"There's a crystal sphere above the earth and if it cracks monsters pour through."

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"Really?"
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"As a matter of historical consensus fact, not as a matter of I went up and knocked on the thing and monster voices said 'no soliciting', but yes."

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"I'd have done that," Fëanáro says. "That's probably why there's no version of me in Materia."

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"Maybe your Materia version would be very, very lucky and be a dragon or a demigod or something and survive to adulthood on that kind of birthright clout."

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"Or the Emperor's son? Would that do it?"

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"Not in the right way, that's political power, not epic power - it's a little boost, you hear about a disproportionate number of princes and princesses making it that far, but I don't think it'd cut it for your kinds of hazards."

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"Well. I was born in Valinor and I was fated to die but only once I was grown up, and in Valinor if you die you can come back."

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"Fated?"

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"Eldar - and Maiar and Valar - technically 'don't have free will'. Which means they can swear unbreakable oaths and there are some reliable prophecies about what's going to happen to them. Then I showed up and now everything's all wacky."

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"I wonder if oaths work here," Rúmil says.

"I swear that -"

"Fëanáro!"

"I was going to test it with something like 'as far as I know I haven't lied in the last five minutes', don't worry!"
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"- please don't play around with those but would that even do anything? Would you be able to tell?"

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"You feel it when you make one, yes, at home," Rúmil says. "I agree with not playing around with those."

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"If I'm being deputized into telling Fëanáro why things are a bad idea should I have more context on this?"

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"Oaths are unbreakable and not in a, a friendly narrativey way where you turn out to have accidentally fulfilled them even if you were trying to do something else, or in some neutral cosmological force way, it's more like compulsion plus intolerable psychological consequences for digging in your heels -"

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"We very rarely make them, and take them very gravely," Rúmil says. "Don't we, Fëanáro."

"My mom swore to kill me - she didn't mean it, she was giving birth to me and it really hurt and she said something she didn't intend - and it nearly ruined all our lives."
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"Oh no."
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"Bella helped fix it."

"Oaths compel you to try. Making the task you've sworn to do literally impossible makes the Oath - not absent, but it can't get its hooks in."
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"How did you...?"

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"Patient confidentiality," sighs Bella. "Doesn't affect what they can say, just me."

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"Subtle arts lets you do all kinds of things," Fëanáro says, "like make it impossible for people to do a thing. And if it's impossible for my mom to kill me then the Oath lets her wait. Forever."

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"That's, um."

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"Nice for her but creepy that I can do that?"

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"Yes, exactly."

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"Well, I don't just go around doing subtle arts to people."

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"She gave the whole continent a lecture about therapeutic ethics," Rúmil says, "That provoked picketing of a major deity."

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"...what was the major deity doing?"

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"He was responsible for bringing the dead back to life, and he was fixing them first. With consent, but Bella felt it wasn't very much consent if they had to work with him to stop be dead."

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"...fixing... them?"

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"Those who have been under the correction of Mandos will not speak of it, and indeed, being healed, remember little of it; for they have returned to their natural courses, and the unnatural and perverted is no longer in the continuity of their lives." He says this steadily, as if speaking from memory.

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"I first noticed there was a problem when I heard the reembodied were coming back with fuzzy memories - not even just of being dead, but of things before that. I could clear off the fuzz, but that wasn't quite - everything. Sooooo I gave a really passive aggressive lecture."

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"It worked at persuading the populace. Did not impress the Valar." Rúmil is beaming at her.

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"Maybe they're fated to be - that."

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He frowns. "I did worry that - that somehow, things always end up happening in a manner close to how it's fated, that they can't have the information they'd need to actually change - but here we are. That's not in fate. I think we may have outrun it."

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"I know I managed to give it a solid kick, I just don't know if I managed to knock it over and steal its toys. Valar fates might be harder to knock over. They might be stuck acting in ways that would make more sense if I weren't going around kicking things."

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"I've been debating whether it's worthwhile to negotiate with them. Get messaging up, observe that Fëanáro would go home sometimes to see his parents if he could be assured he wouldn't be trapped there, get their promise not to do that..."

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"- I'm not optimistic they'd give it. I'm not sure they know how compromise works. They're not supposed to have to compromise, not with incarnates."

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"Finwë won't leave Valinor while his people desire to remain."

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"Yeah. Although you said there'd been some attrition - how much?"

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"People were scouting for a relatively safe place to build a new city. Lots of interest in the city once it was built, but that'll take Years."

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"Naturally."

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"I think my parents will have more children," Fëanáro says. "Normal children. Who are happy in Valinor. They'll be okay without me."

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"Children are not a fungible resource."

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"Parents kind of are. I have you and Rúmil now."

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"...Parenting is a slightly fungible resource, but I would argue that parents are not."

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Are you and Rúmil -?

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Nope.

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Rúmil does not notice this exchange at all. "I think your parents love you very much and miss you very terribly, and that it was okay for you to leave anyway."

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Bella nods. "Their priority should be your thriving, and that involves not being in Valinor, it's pretty clear, but that doesn't mean they'll just shrug and figure as long as they can have more kids they're all set. It would be good if we could work something out with the Valar to allow visits."

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"And messaging at a minimum."

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"Interplanar earwires," Bella nods.

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Fëanáro is picking at his fingers. "They could visit sometimes. The Valar'd let them come back for sure."

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"The Valar might decide that if you want to see your parents you have to go there and stay, and not let them leave in order to make that the choice you get. It would be stupid, but it would be Valarishly stupid."

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"I'm getting a really bad impression of these people."

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"They're better than the gods on my plane but it makes their failures really conspicuous and disappointing."

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"They did a great deal of good," Rúmil says. "They just weren't good enough, and their errors were very very bad."

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"And they don't wise up when people explain the problems to them. Sounds dangerous."

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"They might, eventually. They do not wise up fast enough."

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"Well, there's plenty of room here. Fill up as many planets as you like with evacuees with my blessing. ...I seem to have begun construing myself as owning the universe for interuniversal contact purposes, that's interesting."

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"You're Bella in a universe that doesn't eat people," Fëanáro says, as if this explains everything.

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"I suppose I am."

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"Materia probably stunted my growth. I imagine typical specs for being one of us involve way more hubris than I have."

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"She invented so much stuff in Valinor," Fëanáro says. "So fast."

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"I've never been the inventor type. Survey's not a very demanding occupation and people kept telling me I was wasted in it. But at last estimate giving out warp like I did had a lives saved count exceeding twenty billion so I think I made out okay."

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...Bella makes a small envious noise.

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"...does that job still need doing?" Rúmil says.

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"It won't work the same way anymore. The Federation caught me and now they've got a procedure to check for 'tampering' and delay or refuse membership for societies that didn't invent or acquire warp on their own and impose trade sanctions; having warp would still be better for some of these places than not having it but it's no longer a ticket to a seat at the galactic table and Federation post-scarcity plenty. There's also a sweet spot of high tech enough to make use of warp equations and not about to invent them next year anyway and I was actually having a harder time finding any that met the criteria by the time I got arrested."

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"And changing Federation policy so that warp equations aren't the only way for a society to have plenty and opportunity?"

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"Long annoying political project difficult to achieve from political exile, although no harder than it would have been from jail. Worth doing, will not produce numbers like twenty billion in spans like five years."

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He nods. "Congratulations."

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"Thanks."

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"The Arda refugee place could be that," Fëanáro says.

"I was thinking the same thing," he says, "a pre-warp society that obviously benefits from post-scarcity and galactic contact while retaining its own character."
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"Teleportation's faster than warp anyway."

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"It'd be ridiculous to keep us out of the galactic community," Rúmil says, "but there we'll be, not having warp."

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"...That will put the Federation in a really funny pickle."

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"And before they've decided what to do about us we can always go around to other pre-warp societies, let them know they're not alone out there."

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"In which case they won't have to be on the cusp of developing the tech."

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"Twenty billion in five years sets up a pretty high bar. Maybe if we make contact with a few hundred far pre-contact planets, teach them arcane healing..."

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"Ooh, that might have very different scaling prospects than medical tricorders and advanced drug synthesis and such."

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"In Valinor it caught on pretty quickly. I don't know what sorts of beings it works on, though."

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"It's really all purpose on Materia but maybe not universal here."

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"We can test that," Fëanáro pipes up. "I'll go ask the locals as soon as I have some mana."

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"Well, Davlians might be different from other species we could meet, there's tons of variety. - I wonder if your psi works on species that are conventionally immune to it, Ferengi and such."

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"We should write up a list of experiments," Rúmil says gently, when Fëanáro looks paralyzed with indecision.

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"I should unpack the crystal balls - I have my Valinor one and my Materia one, I should dump all the files onto one of them and T'Mir can have the other." She heads for the luggage. Rummage rummage.

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Fëanáro watches. And clings to Rúmil's leg a little. "Do you really think the Valar won't let me ever go home without trapping me there?"

"I think they might do that," he says, 'and it'd be a very very bad mistake, their worst so far. Let's start that experiment list."
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"Experiment list and project list. I'll teach T'Mir to use the crystal ball while you're getting going on that."

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They do. Project list is the evacuation of Materia and possibly partial evacuation of Valinor, figuring out how to create a model planet that causes the Federation trouble, teaching pre-warp societies arcane healing, and so forth. Experiment list is mostly interactions of magic with the species of this world.

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Bella and T'Mir mess around with crystal balls. T'Mir is enchanted and catches on very quickly and wants to add ball/computer interface to the project list, about which Bella is enthusiastically agreeable.

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ball/computer interface is a great idea, and a general education on starships and other advanced science fantasy technology.

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T'Mir's happy to provide, although it might be easier if she had the Prometheus or at least its files.

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Tomorrow they will steal a starship! The Elves do not even have a concept of theft but promise to do it anyway.

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Well, it is technically hers, just impounded.

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The Elves do not really have a concept of property rights at all, but okay. Tomorrow it will no longer be impounded.

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"...I didn't actually notice the extent to which the gift economy was not a property economy."

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Well, taking something out of someone's house would be odd and rude. Unless you had a good reason, and even then, being unwelcome in their house would be a problem. Peoples' houses are theirs, maybe starships are the same idea?

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"I did live in it."

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That makes more sense. Someone has taken her house, and they're taking it back.

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"Property rights in general are more important in a monetary economy. Was this part of what had you so confused when you went grocery shopping, Rúmil?"

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"More the way everything was wrapped up, actually. I'd read on the science ethernet in advance and knew you had to trade currency for the food."

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"This was on Earth?"

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"The post-scarcity places wanted to us to have official standing within the Federation of some kind and we didn't want to interact with that without knowing what we were dealing with and the money place asked fewer questions."

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"And it sounds like that was the right call, since we may not want to get the Federation's attention."

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"Especially once it transpired that my face is an arrestable face."

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"Sorry about that. If it's any consolation they would've noticed you were the wrong species."

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"Perhaps we should develop illusions next," Fëanáro says, "after interplanar messaging."

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"So Bella doesn't look arrestable, or do you have something else in mind?"

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"So neither of you look arrestable and I don't look like a kid and also we'll need to make the place for the refugees pretty or no Quendi will come."

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"...really?"

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"Really. It has to be gorgeous. I'm not sure how much of it is snooty aesthetics and how much of it is like, an actual need they have as a species."

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"When I didn't have eyes I still had strong preferences about it, for whatever that's worth," Rúmil says. "I think it may be innate."

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"Huh. Well, I guess illusion would presumably be a way to do that."

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"We should see if we can get Mahtan to come," Fëanáro says, "to help build the city."

"I do not think he'd be willing to do that."
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"How come?"

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"He has young children. Most people with young children who aren't desperately unhappy in Valinor would think that the fact this plane apparently has permanent death outweighs its benefits."

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"Is 'time travel variety resurrection' on the project list yet?"

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It is immediately added to it.

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...Bella glances out the window at the sunset. "And nowish I need sleep."

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"Good idea, adjust to local time," agrees T'Mir.

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"Will you make me sleep too? I need mana for lots of the things on the project and experiment lists."

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"Sure." And Bella scoops him out and puts him in one of the strange low beds and tucks him in and kisses his forehead and sleeps him.

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Rúmil is a grownup Quendi, and doesn't actually need sleep yet, so starts making plans for evacuation challenges and complications.

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Bellas sleep.

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When they wake there is an effort to make food with the transported Earth groceries! It is not as good as the food back home, but he's sure he can get there with practice.

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...Bella theoretically knows how to cook but this kitchen is bewildering.

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T'Mir knows how to cook and is less bewildered by the kitchen but it's still pretty weird to her.

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In Tirion you could fly through the streets and people'd hold delicious food up to you, Fëanáro does not contribute to the breakfast effort by observing.

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Well, they could just go down the street and get more priv?

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It is not super appealing, but yes, they could do that.

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Bella, with the most applicable psi, goes out and comes back with priv - "I think they also use money but we're on some kind of credit for reasons? I don't fully understand it -" in case they manage to burn all their Earth groceries. And she gets to teaching T'Mir introductory magic.

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And then plan a starship heist? Fëanáro's getting quite excited by the idea.

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Bella doesn't think the current teleportation design will actually carry a whole ship, even a smallish ship, and presumably if it's impounded it can't take off from where it is.

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Oh, right. Well, they'll also want a larger cargo teleport for rescuing people from Materia, people would probably like to have their houses.

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They probably would! Also they could steal a library. This would not be very nice of them but then they would have a library.

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Fëanáro bounces. When he calms down he argues this would be very nice of them, they will appreciate the knowledge in the library better here than in Materia because here they can test it.

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...That is not what nice means. They should probably replace the library with something like a library of Warp music on a crystal ball or something as compensation.

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...okay. How's Warp music? Is it magic? This should be on the experiment list. Rúmil could test it right this minute, by singing.

So Rúmil starts singing.
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...T'Mir is confused.

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There's a sound of a babbling brook and a refreshing fall breeze blows in the room. Rúmil stops singing.

"Quendi singing is magic. A different kind of magic." Fëanáro explains.
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"That's very weird," says T'Mir. "Music is not normally magical here."

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"It might be a Quendi thing," Rúmil says. "You could try to learn it, but I don't think that should be our top priority."

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"Wizardry seems like lower-hanging fruit, I'm not very musical unless you count humming along to things while there's miles of vacuum between me and the nearest lifesign."

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"And wizardry's a lot more flexible and a lot faster-acting." He nods. "Still, it's good that music works; it doesn't have a mana limit."

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"Would recordings work?"

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"...recordings?"

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"This might actually be the same question as whether illusion sound of magical music would work but I don't know if anybody got around to testing that, I never invented a longer-duration spell than that and you need a lot of practice to push the cantrip version long enough..."

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"Machines can be - shown a song, once, and then play it just the same as many times as you like. I listened to music a lot in my ship but I wasn't producing much of it."

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"That sounds like it should be at the top of the experimental priority list. And no, Bella, I don't think anyone did get it working long enough to test."

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"Well, the Prometheus can record and play back sound."

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"And how are we retrieving her? Improved teleport?"

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"I think that's the going plan."

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That one will take a fair bit of work. Fëanáro learns the language and then races around labelling everything in the local alphabet, and tells the story of how they did that to make Tirion literate.

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That's a cute idea. At some point she should teach him Vulcan, she's fluent.

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He'd love to learn Vulcan! He wants to speak hundreds of languages. He will probably need to invent memory magic to remember them all.

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...That would probably be necessary, yes.

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Might not be. The Quendi aren't supposed to forget their lives in five Ages, are they? But it might be, so he'll invent it.

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"Now, fair warning, Vulcan script is considered very hard to learn."

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"... can we do it right now?"

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"I'll see if I can etherscape well enough yet to do without reams of paper."

And she shows him Vulcan script.
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"Oh," he says. "Oh, it's beautiful. Rúmil, come look."

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T'Mir giggles.

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He stares at it, enchanted, for the next twenty minutes and then demands a lesson.

"You're not the crown prince of anything here, Fëanáro," Rúmil says warningly.

"Please," he says, still looking at it.
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"It's a somewhat endangered language," she says, starting on a clear background and writing out some introductory swirls. "The planet was destroyed a little over a decade ago."

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"That's horrible. Is this planet - likely to get destroyed too?"

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"It - seems to have been a one-time thing. The news about it was confusing but no other planets have been threatened."

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"We'll get it back."

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"That would be really something."

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"If it takes rounding up ten of you and ten of me we'll do it."

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"There's no way to be sure there are that many to be had."

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"Then it'll just take me ten times as long," he says. "I might actually be grown up by then."

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Is he always like this?

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Pretty much.

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He is studying Vulcan very intently.

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T'Mir is a reasonably good teacher. When he's got the basics of the alphabet she shows him how to write out one of her favorite poems, translating as she goes.

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"It's such a pretty language. It's such a pretty poem. I like Vulcans."

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"Vulcans have their good and bad points like anyone else, but yes, the language is lovely."

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"Would you like me to translate a poem of ours? Quenya's lovely too."

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"Sure."

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He picks one about the Noldor and the arrival in Tirion, the Year spent naming all the things that now required words.

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It's very pretty! Things requiring words is a situation that English and Vulcan handle very differently. Vulcan likes compounds, often metaphorical; English flat-out steals.

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What does it steal from, are there more languages he needs to learn?

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It steals from everything. It stole from other Earth languages, and now it steals from other galactic languages. Here are some words it stole from Vulcan to talk about Vulcan-related things.

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This delights him. Quenya stole from Pax, a little, but they spent a lot of time refining the borrowed words to be beautiful by Quendi standards.

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English makes things pronounceable, and often abbreviates or diminuates from there, but is not optimized for beauty; it's much too decentralized and people's tastes vary too much.

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...the Quendi definitely optimize their language for beauty, otherwise talking wouldn't be a source of joy and delight.

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Well, English has pretty words and people make pretty sentences of them, but it actually has several words that are widely considered unpleasant to hear, like 'moist'. People complain about it but no one has the ability to decide by fiat that it's not what people say anymore. If someone tried to replace 'moist', it would just wind up with different use cases and connotations, like 'damp', and then there would be another word but the one people don't like would still be there because it would sometimes be the most precise word for something being described by someone who didn't avoid saying it.

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If he thought a word was ugly they could debate it in the forums and if enough people agreed then it'd be changed officially and everyone would stop using it.

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There are Earth languages that police or used to police what words could officially belong to them. English proved more adaptable even though it's got awful grammar and irregular spelling and a gigantic vocabulary and sounds some people can't pronounce: it is annoying to learn but once you have learned it it will do its level best to be the most useful language for any situation.

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"I don't think it's ugly. I don't think I've ever heard a language and thought it was ugly. But some are so beautiful they're a joy to speak."

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"I wonder what you'd think of Klingon. I only know how to say a couple sentences in it though."

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He looks at her expectantly.

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She snorts, and says-and-translates that this is the Federation survey vessel Prometheus etc. in mediocre Klingon.

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"I have to learn so many languages."

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"There's lots! Most people get by with one or two."

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"But aren't they just sad, all the time, that there are all the other ones they don't know?"

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"Not so much. I only speak English and Vulcan and translations of that utterance in Klingon in a few more languages and that's it."

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"Bella do you think we can invent something like the necklace that makes us go even faster?"

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"I'm not sure it would be a good idea..."

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"Why not?"

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"When we came up with the necklace it was shielding us against an effect that Valinor was having; this would be different, trying to accelerate us as an effect of its own. Also at some point you'd run into problems where you couldn't move fast enough to keep up with your brain if you wanted to do anything other than sit and think, so it seems like a good idea to focus on ways to be more efficient that don't have that problem first and then resort to that later if we really need it. T'Mir, ballpark how many languages are there in the galaxy here?"

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"Um - with living speaking populations - counting uncontacted planets - certainly billions, possibly tens or hundreds of billions."

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"...and I think you'd run into a problem if you decided you had to learn them all this week and the best way to do it was going faster. You might be able to invent a magic thing that helps with languages in particular? There's translation magic in Materia, you could try to come up with a kind that teaches instead of just translating."

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"I guess I can't learn all the languages before we fix everything else on this plane, then."

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"Yep. And as long as you can't learn them all in anything resembling a timely manner however fast you go it seems more efficient to find a way to deal with not knowing them than to just try to go really really fast."

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"Like doing other interesting things. I can tolerate not doing all the interesting things if I'm doing some of them and they're really interesting and this is."

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"Sure."

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"Should we work on the teleport? They might look over T'Mir's ship when they're looking for her if they notice we vanished her."

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"They might. So we'll have to be able to leave behind people who might be in the ship... Would that maybe put them far enough off the ground to hurt them?"

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"Uh, it might actually be docked and in vacuum. If there are people on the ship it's probably better to bring them along with it and then put them back somewhere with air."

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Everyone nods earnestly despite only having had a couple weeks to figure out what vacuum is.

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"Or maybe send two people, one to clear the occupants off to a location with air and then go home, and one to bring the ship back."

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"What kind of reaction should we expect from the Federation, T'Mir?" asks Rúmil, frowning.

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"They take the Prime Directive very seriously and will definitely want me in custody. I am almost positive they won't attack Davlia over it. Taking my ship back is only illegal as a direct result of my not being allowed to go places because I'm supposed to be in jail; they don't claim ownership of it per se. So they'd take the opportunity to perform a rearrest if possible but it wouldn't compound the crime of jailbreak. Or is that not what you mean?"

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"That's part of what I mean. Do they know already that you're here? Are we wanted as accomplices to your escape, and would we be if they had full information? Can Fëanáro be arrested at all under Federation law?"

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"They won't have any idea how I got out and will probably suspect someone in orbit of the moon of having transportered me with a cloaking device or something on the ship to explain why they didn't see it. Taking Prometheus will be more obviously not a stealth transport, especially if there are people aboard to shoo. You three aren't Federation citizens and belong to what is technically a prewarp civilization to which they are unable to practically return you unless you choose to go; that really ties their hands as long as they're obeying the Prime Directive. Visiting a prison moon without leave is technically illegal, probably, but Fëanáro's a minor and he didn't actually break me out so he'd not get more than a warning even if he were their jurisdiction; Bella's probably guilty of a territory violation for unharmonious purposes or something euphemistic like that. You I don't think they could nail on any charges at all except maybe conspiracy and that would be very hard to cause to stick to a non-Federation citizen who is not occupying Federation space. If you go commit crimes on Federation soil or station - of which taking my ship for me with my permission isn't one as far as I know, I'm not illegal to associate with or run errands for or anything - then they can certainly stun you and lock you up while they figure out what to do with you, with Fëanáro much more likely to get away sans arrest with any nonviolent crime than an adult."

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"Stun weapons are non-lethal for most known species?"

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"Yes. The same weapons have another, lethal setting, but you'd have to seem quite dangerous for it to be authorized against you. Especially Fëanáro."

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He nods. "It sounds like establishing a planet here for our pre-warp and therefore untouchable civilization is a good intermediate step towards many of our broader goals."

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"It would not be particularly difficult for them to declare you effectively postwarp once they know you can do interstellar teleportation, but it'd give you a head start. And then they'd still be trying to arrange diplomatic contact and treaties rather than enforcing their laws on us."

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"And if they make that declaration, any civilizations we teach teleportation are post-warp?"

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"Well, yes, but they'd be absolutely lousy with signs of tampering. Trade sanctions et al."

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"I don't think I yet have enough context to evaluate trade sanctions as a concern."

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"Shouldn't inconvenience us much, we have magic and we can if we like trade with non-Federation people. It might inconvenience the prewarp civilizations we teach to teleport, but probably not more than having to wait until they invent warp drive."

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"And sanctions last how long, probably? An Age? Less than that?"

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"I don't know what an Age is but probably less than a century?"
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"Oh, all right. Even Fëanáro can be patient for that long."

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"...Really?"

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"Maybe not if it were something more important to him than trade sanctions, but yeah probably for this purpose."

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"I know it's going to take centuries to build a planet that's better than Valinor without the Valar and Maiar to help us and save Materia and become epic. I don't mind it taking a long time as long as it's not taking longer than it has to."

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"I will live a little longer than a human but not that long."

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"...I don't think I've aged since the Valar booted me and they weren't being sufficiently blatantly malicious to actually strip me of the anti aging protection, so I'm probably good for a thousand years, but it hasn't been long enough that it would be really obvious if I just happened to be one of those people with a young face..."

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"So perhaps youth magic should be a priority," Rúmil says.

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"I'm not going to die of old age for at least a century, something else is much likelier to get me before then. But it would be nice."

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So they add it to the list, but not near the top.

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And when they have an improved teleportation which can handle Prometheus's dimensions, Bella and Rúmil go to the Prometheus. There is not as it happens anyone aboard (Bella checks), so they just teleport it back to Davlia.

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Fëanáro thinks starships are the second most beautiful thing in the multiverse, after books.

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T'Mir gives them a tour! And displays the function of the computer, which has more peripherals and voice command than a crystal ball but is conceptually similar. They can try recording sound now.

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Recording and playing back magical songs works!

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Cool! What can magical songs do?

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"Mostly things that were needed by Cuivienen," Rúmil says. "Heat a rock, light a fire, lure an animal."

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"...Well, assuming you can sing them without setting my ship on fire or whatever it can't hurt to have recordings of them even if their utility isn't immediately obvious."

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So they do (you can in fact target the fire enough that the ship doesn't catch) and he says he can try to remember the hang of composing new ones.

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If he can operationalize it enough it's just barely possible a computer could do that!

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That would certainly be interesting. He should try learning computers anyway.

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Computers 101.

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Computers are even more convenient than crystal balls in some ways.

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Yep! Interfacing them will be great!

Davlia is tentatively interested in belonging to a friendlier version of the Federation if they're starting one, it transpires.
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Ooooh. They are in fact possibly starting one.

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"We should name it. At least a working title."

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The Elves definitely agree that names are important. The name should be really pretty, that's also important.

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Pretty in what language? Different species have different aesthetics.

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...pretty in all the languages but he doesn't know them all, yet, so it'll suffice if it's pretty in Davlian and English and Quenya and Pax.

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"Well, it could be just a sound, or it could mean something. We could be a League or an Alliance or a Coalition or a Pact or an Entente, if we want to start with English."

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"Those are all English words?" he says suspiciously. "They sound - not. Entente is pretty. What are the shades of meaning, which best communicates the differences between us and the Federation?"

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"English has been stealing words for a long, long time. It probably stole Entente from French. It'd communicate a friendly, informal understanding between member units."

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"Like, we'll share our magic with you, but we won't fight because that might be courting my fate? That sounds about right."

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"Huh?"

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"I would be astonished if your fate somehow grabbed you from here. Swords and boats," snorts Bella. "But it's probably still worth being careful about tendencies revealed by the fate, however much I rendered it obsolete in the particulars."

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"...anyway, any of those words would indicate that we wouldn't fight with people who belonged to the whatever with us," says T'Mir, "and none of them strongly suggest that we wouldn't fight with other people, I'm not aware of a noun in English that does that, we'd have to start prepending adjectives."

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"Or we can just establish ourselves, and eventually our names will be known," he says contentedly.

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"I don't think the Federation are going to just call it 'that thing Davlia and Isabella T'Mir and her alternate universe double and the Quendi are running', so I'd like to have a name to present to them before they decide to call us the Counter-Federation or something like that."

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"Valinor was called the Blessed Realm. I want something that means - the connotation 'blessed' has of peaceful and safe', but not the connotation of divinely made that way."

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"Serene? Tranquil? Pacific, but Earthlings will think of the ocean named that."

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"Science fantasy?"

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"...The phrase doesn't mean anything here. Bella?"

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"It's not very namey. I'd put it in a brochure if I were advertising it to Materians but not the name."

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"Elendilmë or Elendil would be Quenya for 'star-alliance' or 'star-friendship'."

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"Are we planning on having names in several languages, or just one that transliterates?"

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"The more names the better," Fëanáro says.

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"That sounds confusing!"

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"I mean, if people can't pronounce the name they'll call us something else, we need to either self-translate preemptively or live with anyone who doesn't get use out of the primary name making something up. That is not quite 'the more names the better', though."

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"'The Elendil' works in English and Pax and Davlia," Fëanáro says.

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"Yeah, the Federation will call us the Elendil if we introduce ourselves that way. The Ferengi or somebody might not."

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"Ferengi? What's their language?"

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"I don't know any of it, even the sentences I know in Klingon."

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He bounces in his seat. "We'll go meet them and figure out what to call ourselves with them after we are established."

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"You might want to put off meeting Ferengi till you have monetary economies more figured out. They're very into trade and commerce."

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"I bet in a Year I'll know enough about that to learn from them, at least."

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"Monetary economies are useful for a lot of allocation problems if you have a large population. I like the Federation model, really - I like almost everything about the Federation except how unwilling they are to let more things be the Federation. And their genetic engineering policy."

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"What's their genetic engineering policy?"

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"'Don't'."

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"And what's genetic engineering?"

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"...your home worlds probably don't have genetics to begin with. Uh, the reason cats have kittens and not puppies, and people look like their parents, and so on, is because of descriptions of how to build their structures encoded into every part of the body. The instructions get shuffled around when people have children but it's still half from each parent, in two-parent situations. Genetic engineering is the science of shuffling the instructions around, or editing them, on purpose instead of by luck of the draw, traditionally to make children turn out stronger or smarter or prettier or healthier or all of the above. Genetically engineered people are called 'augments'. There was a war some augments started, and now there's so much bad feeling about genetically engineered people that no one is allowed to have it done or seriously study it."

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"There aren't going to be any rules about what you can seriously study in our kingdom," says Fëanáro fervently.

"I don't know if that's a wise commitment," Rúmil says, "but making children healthier is no question."
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"Are we being a kingdom? Monarchies aren't very popular in this galaxy."

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Fëanáro looks more excited than disappointed. "How else are things run?"

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"The Federation is a republic, and so are most of its member states, republics or democracies with various structural customizations - it's possible to qualify for membership without average citizens voting being the central feature of your government but it requires special circumstances. Ferenginar is I think a plutocracy. The Klingons are an empire, ostensibly, but haven't had an actual emperor for a while. Cardassia's run by its military. There are planets that organize themselves theocratically or are governed by a noble class without centralization or implement various buggy attempts at meritocracy or technocracy."

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He mouths the words as she goes, enchanted. "I think all the Quendi are either in small self-organized tribes or are monarchies. I don't think we tried those other things, though."

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"The basic idea of a democracy is that you vote on things - there are various ways to register and count up votes, but the simplest to explain is that the most popular idea wins. The basic idea of a republic is that the main or even only idea you vote on is who should, as their job, decide about all the other things. If we were going to be a monarchy I am not sure it is obvious which of us would be the monarch, which seems awkward."

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"I already have a kingdom," he says, "and Rúmil doesn't want one I don't think. Would both of you want it?"

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"It's her world, I'd probably let her have it because she knows more about the sorts of things likely to come up with running a political unit around here."

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"That's more or less what I was thinking, but spreading it around seems like probably a better choice; then we can specialize and my specialty can be 'being from Warp'. We could be an oligarchy, if we don't want to deal with elections for the top spots."

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"What kind of precedent does that set for other member nations in our consortium?" Rúmil says. "I would trust Bella with absolute power but have mixed feelings about its wisdom generally, and wouldn't necessarily want to influence other peoples in that direction."

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(Bella smiles.)

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"Davlia's a sort of pseudonymous democracy," says T'Mir. "So there's their example to point to. I suppose the question is partly to what extent we're discussing the governance of our own member world and to what extent we're discussing the organization of the entire Elendil."

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He's adding things to the priorities list. "We should read your histories, get more of a sense of the different options and their consequences."

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"Sure. I can get you some recommended reading on a PADD from the ship computer." She does that.

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Technology is so delightful! The Eldar will probably redesign all these interfaces, too utilitarian, but still.

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PADDs definitely aren't pretty to look at. It is not what they are for.

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It is kind of weird that there are things that aren't for being pretty to look at.

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Maybe Quendi aesthetic sensibilities will be soothed if she puts on some music. Nonmagical music. Vulcan classical.

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Quendi aesthetic sensibilities approve of Vulcan classical music.

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(Bella and T'Mir exchange an amused look.)

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Quendi start singing along to Vulcan classical music after a while. They are astonishingly good singers.

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And T'Mir studies wizardry under her double's tutelage.

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"How long will it take to find a planet?" Fëanáro asks after a while.

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"Depends on how much terraforming we want to do. If we just need an uninhabited rock with an atmosphere and no anomalous ambient effects, a couple days, tops. If we want one with a pleasant climate and a nice continent/ocean ratio and edible plants and it has to be pretty, potentially much longer. There might be something appropriate I've already surveyed, if you want me to look through my history?"

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They are inclined towards a pleasant climate pretty place, and would love it if she'd look through her history.

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So she rummages through her history and finds some options! This one is a moon around a gas giant. The gas giant's pretty nice to look at. The moon would be comfortable unterraformed but doesn't have edible plant life outside the oceans, which at least means imports wouldn't have a lot of competition. It's not convenient to Davlia, it'd be several days at high warp, and it's not near anything else either. This one is full of organic life, which has a certain aesthetic to it but does present a potential hazard. It's got rings and it's near Davlia but also a little close to the Romulans, by and large not super friendly. This one is downright Earthlike except for very low gravity; maybe they could fix that with magic so their bones don't dissolve. It's been flagged for possible Federation colonization, but they haven't established a base camp yet so they could take it and be only provocative, not warlike.

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Teleportation will solve a lot of the problems with being inconveniently far from other worlds; in fact it might be preferable to be far, at least until the Federation learns teleportation. A war would be really bad.

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So, gas giant moon? Or they could find someplace astrographically isolated and prowl around there in case they find something they like better.

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"Gas giant moon," Fëanáro says instantly. "I don't want to wait. People in Materia might be dying right now."

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(Bella hugs him.)

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"We should figure out what we're telling Davlia before we vanish."

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"That we're grateful for their aid and a place to live, that we are establishing a new neighbor of theirs as a first step in the creation of an alternative to the Federation, and that we'll visit regularly and more regularly once the evacuation of the people in current danger is complete?" Rúmil offers.

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"Not bad. How many people are we talking about evacuating, here?"

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"Billions but not everybody is likely to want to go, especially not if they'd have to join the sort of place we'd design and make according cultural compromises. For instance, I assume killing and eating people will be illegal. I'm nervous about establishing communication - I'm not sure it'd be dangerous for them to receive it and it seems firmly established that my universe can't or doesn't reach outside itself and 'nearby' planes. We might have to be vague about the advantages of the Elendil. But figuring out a way to ask is better than just kidnapping people en masse."

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"Killing and eating people will definitely be illegal," Fëanáro says firmly. "We can just tell them that there's always enough food and that it's safe for everyone and that you don't have to work and can work on anything you want and nothing will hurt you, we don't have to explain starships or genetic engineering."

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"If killing and eating people is illegal we can rule out large proportions of several species," Bella says. "Similar results for other commonsense laws. But we'll get some response and it may be large. We have to invent interplanar earwires first though."

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"Let's do that," he says, "so I can tell my parents I'm safe and have two Bellas to look after me."

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"I hope that helps. - Maybe we should invent a version that does multiperson conversations."

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"Interplanar first," he says.

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"Sure. T'Mir, you're okay to independent study for a bit?"

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"Think so."

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Invention time!

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They are sitting in a starship inventing interplanar earbuds and it is great.

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They have all the building blocks for this one - basic earwire design, planar transfer. It does not take long to come together, although they have to find a thing to enchant once they have the magic part down.

"Who should be called first and by whom?" Bella asks, once that's done.
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"My parents," Fëanáro says.

"I agree," says Rúmil.
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"But we don't have multi-person conversations, so which one, and who's calling."

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"I'll call my mom first," Fëanáro says. "She'd be more sad about me calling my dad then he'd be about me calling her."

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So Bella hands him the earwire.

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"Amil? I went and got Bella and took her to a safer place. Did you get the note I left? And the note Rúmil left?"

"Oh, Fëanáro," she says. "I did. Are you okay? Are all of you okay? We're petitioning to get Bella let back into Valinor-"

"No," he says, "this world is nicer anyway, it has another Bella and it has starships and we're getting a planet and saving everyone in Materia and founding an alliance and there are billions of languages."

"And no danger?"

"Nope."

"...can I talk to Rúmil about that? Not right now, maybe later?"

"Yeah. He's here. We're in a starship. I'm sorry for scaring you but I had to get Bella."

"I know you felt that way. We love you. We just want you to stay alive."

"Well. I'm alive."

"Fëanáro, please come home. Just to visit, if you really like your world better. Come home and tell us about it and we'll talk."

"The Valar might not let me leave."

"Then you could build starships here."

"I don't want to come home until I'm grownup."

"And we don't want to miss you until then."
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(The bystanders are not privy to this conversation because that is not how earwires work. Bella and T'Mir chat about Bella-and-T'Mir things.)

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After a few more minutes he hands the earwire to Rúmil.

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"What'd she say?"

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"She loves me and is glad I'm safe. Uh. I said this realm was perfectly safe. It pretty much is! The universe doesn't eat people, there are no dragons..."

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"It's not perfectly safe! There are all kinds of anomalies if you explore deep space long enough, there are hostile cultures with advanced weapons, I'd be legitimately terrified if we met Klingons or Cardassians."

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"Why? What are they like? The Klingon language is weird but that doesn't make them bad people, just ignorant..."

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"Their language has nothing to do with it. They're a warrior culture, very easily provoked and very good at fighting."

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"We can teleport."

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"It takes a little while to cast a spell. A disruptor beam is fast."

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"What's a disruptor beam?"

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"Klingon energy weapon."

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"No, I mean, what do they look like? What do they do?"

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She pulls up a picture. "Same basic principle but different underlying technology compared to phasers, which the Federation favors and which have stun settings. Point, pull trigger, energy shoots at the target and they're stunned or injured or dead."

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"So if we see one of those things, we teleport out right away." He shrugs.

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"Which works if and only if you can do that faster than the Klingon can draw and fire."

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"I'm really scared of dying," he says, "but I'm not going home where I'll be safe. Anyway, I died there too, in the fated version."

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"It's still probably a good idea to avoid Klingons. They have a well-documented language for a hostile species, you can learn it without meeting any. And listen to their opera if you like."

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"Okay. Why do they not get in trouble, if they randomly shoot people?"

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"Well, the people who are authorized to get them in trouble are other Klingons, so they need reasons that are satisfactory to them, but not to us. And Klingons find many reasons for violence satisfactory."

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"Our world shouldn't find any reasons for violence satisfactory."

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"What, any? What if Klingons attack us, what do we do?"

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"Teleport them to another planet with wards so they can't teleport right back out."

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"...so, put them in prison against their will but it's not violence because we aren't injuring them?"

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"Not a prison, a planet! A really pretty planet."

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"The moon I was imprisoned on was perfectly nice," she says. "But you objected. Was it because of the decor?"

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"If you'd kept trying to attack people we'd probably eventually have had to leave you somewhere pretty where you couldn't attack people."

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"I am quite confident that the average Klingon warrior holds the prettiness of their surroundings to be a very minor consideration."

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He waves a tiny hand. "I mean, a planet that is designed to be nice for whoever we're teleporting there. If it were a Quendi it'd be a pretty planet. But Quendi never ever hurt people. Except for me in the fated future."

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"You weren't fated to act alone."

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"Me and the people under my command."

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"Completely pacifistic species are rare. Vulcans come close but only since certain cultural revolutions; it used to be a very war-torn planet. Betazoids are less consistent about it modern times but have the better long term track record."

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"So we'll be the only ones? If we manage never to muck it up?" He looks delighted.

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"Well, there might be some somewhere, I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of every species there is, but maybe."

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He nods. Rúmil has finished talking to Miriel. "Bella," he says, "would you like to speak with the Queen before she gives her earbud to the King?"

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"Okay. - Are they mad at me?"

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"They are angry with me but not with you, I don't think they can think of anything you could have done."

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"Could've distracted him with language textbooks and sent him back," she sighs, but she takes the earwire and puts it on and calls Miriel.

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"Bella.


I am glad you're safe."
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"Thank you."

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"I'd much rather you all came home and - waited on your ambitions a little - until he's older, but I know that you're doing the best you can with the options you have."

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"I - I don't want to go anywhere the Valar can decide to move me when I don't want to be moved, again," Bella says. "Even if they say that I can stay this time. I don't even know if I'm still alive because they managed to protect me or because I didn't provoke my universe on its own turf. I'd probably stay here with my copy even if Fëanáro and Rúmil decided to go back to Valinor. My copy is really cool."

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"So I've been told. I understand. I don't see Fëanáro deciding to come back more than to visit, not while you are there and doing things. Can you keep him safe?"

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"I - I think so, not necessarily to Valinor standards but safer than not, and so much less stir-crazy."

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"All right. Please contact us if that changes, or if you need anything - or just all the time, you know, we miss him desperately -"

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"I'll make sure keeping in regular touch is a priority. Maybe we can get interdimensional ethernet working and send pictures."

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"That would be nice."
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"I'll put it on the list." She puts it on the list.

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"Thank you. We miss you. We're so sorry for everything."

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"You're welcome. I miss you too. It's not your fault."

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"We drove our son away."

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"I'd pretty much blame that squarely on the Valar."

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"We clearly failed to communicate with them well, yes."

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"Or something."

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"Take care of my son, please. He's our whole world."

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"I'll do my very best."

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And a similar conversation with Finwë follows and afterwards Fëanáro is sullen and scoots off to the corner to read.

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...Mental note to ask about that later.

Gosh, so many things to prioritize. Davlia's not kicking them out any time soon; they should probably have terraforming spells before they go to a terraforming-needing planet; and a basic system of laws and stuff...
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The Quendi just recently founded a kingdom and had a lot of thought on the laws and so forth, but the needs of this society will probably be very different. Rúmil shares their process and results anyway.

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T'Mir gives herself a crash course in Federation law for another perspective and they proceed to mishmash.

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It's interesting and productive and the time zips by while they make plans for Materia contact.

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(And Bella thinks Fëanáro should call his parents every day, or at least every sleep cycle.)

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He does. The conversations are usually very short, but he does call.

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Good. Is he feeling okay about the whole thing? Inquiring minds want to know.

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He feels like he should miss his parents but he doesn't but he is worried they'll stop loving him.

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"I don't think they'll stop loving you. I don't really miss mine either, honestly."

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"But you're a grownup."

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"...so?"

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"It's normal for grownups not to have parents, or not to miss them, or only to see them once a century."

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"I'd ideally like to see mine more than once a century. I like them fine. They just don't interact much with the life I'm trying to have and I'm not sad about that, I just plan to evacuate them so I can look out for them in a way I couldn't in Materia."

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"My parents won't be evacuated, I don't think."

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"Yeah, probably not. But they're also not slated to die in the next ten to forty years, so it's different in that way."

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His eyes widen. "I forgot that! We have to get anti-aging in ten years, then!"

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"Yep. It's on the list."

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"But it might be hard - might be divine magic, right?"

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"It might. But arcane healing was supposed to be hard and it wasn't really, not given that we can do science to magic."

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"Okay. If we do it really fast we can have it when we rescue the first batch of people from Materia. We can tell them that on our planet they won't age."

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"That'd be a selling point for humans and other species that age."

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"And Materia has lots of humans."

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"Tons."

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"So let's end aging."

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"Sounds good to me."

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Picking plants for their new planet, designing its capital city and system of law, all the magics needed to communicate the offer to Materia and mount the rescue... the priorities list is getting very long.

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Well, they like to be busy, right?

Davlia has some trade tentatively starting up with the Federation. They haven't had to explain that they have the missing prisoner and her magically vanishing ship. A few trivial enchantments on some things for useful Davlian purposes and they'll be delighted to solicit seeds for favorite crops.
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Rúmil knows all the crops that were planted around Tirion, do they exist here?

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Some of them; what does he want?

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He has a list. There are songs to make crops grow, perhaps Fëanáro can ask his father to teach them next time they talk?

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That would make it much easier to handle the fact that none of them are... actually farmers!

Anyway, there are plenty of these things available, often in startlingly different varieties than the ones that predominate in Valinor but recognizable one way or another.
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Great! Plant importation shall begin. Construction of the capital city next? They have designs. The designs are astonishingly beautiful.

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They sure are. Nnnnone of them are architects either. Maybe they should import some Davlian help.

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Rúmil is actually passably an architect, did two Years of it when they were newly arrived, but Davlian help would be great.

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Some Davlians who demur energetically about their architecture skills would be delighted to come over and help build things. Are the things accessibly designed for hoofed people?

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They should be accessibly designed for everyone on Materia, some of whom perhaps have hooves? And there might be other worlds that require evacuation.

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Hoofed people are actually not that common on Materia, and evacuating satyrs would be... complicated. ...Several species on Materia are going to come with really weird sexual norms compared to what Quendi have going. Like REALLY. Like if they started by importing nymphs and satyrs with population: Bellas, Quendi, and Davlian architects, um, the nymphs and satyrs would, um, starve.

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...why?

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.........reasons. She has never had to explain this before. Um. They should make sure to have Materian humans around before importing nymphs or satyrs. On the plus side if they get domestic nymphs and can bring their fields too those crops don't need... conventional... maintenance?

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"If nymphs and satyrs eat people they can't come,' Rúmil says, frowning.

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"They absolutely positively don't eat people they only eat plants not even animal meat."

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"All right. Materia humans first."

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"But uh you should be ready for people from Materia to be weird about sex things in a wide variety of ways."
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"...okay. I'm not Mandos, Bella, I'm not going to propose correcting people..."

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"I don't just mean there are gay people! I can explain gay people without spluttering!"

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"I am very curious what you can't explain without spluttering!"

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She takes a deep breath.

"Nymphs and satyrs are sort of literally powered by sex, they don't actually have to eat although they do it anyway, they just have to - have lots of sex. Which is why we need a population of other kinds of people around because I'm pretty sure it doesn't count nutritionally amongst themselves."
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"...ah. That is very unusual, and would not work well with the Quendi, yes. Okay. Humans - enjoy having sex with them? Do they force anyone if they're starving?"

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"No! - I am positive that nymphs don't, anyway, and have never heard of a satyr getting more than mildly pushy. And they are quite popular among a subset of humans and other species."

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"In that case it seems like your solution is perfectly adequate - Bella, do you think the Enemy stuck with Quendi monogamy laws? I am sorry if we're embarrassing you, but you're not going to shock me..."

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"I have just never had to explain this before! It's common knowledge on Materia, I don't even remember how I learned it, and it never came up in Valinor." Sigh. "As far as forcing people goes I'd worry more about elves, who don't need it as food but have a cultural - thing - that doesn't work that well in contact with anybody else with different needs and is kind of unpleasant even amongst themselves. This is surface elves, I'm less sure about subterranean ones."

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"Hmm. We - can't have Quendi on a planet with significant sexual violence, under the wrong circumstances it's literally fatal to us. Though we could have separate continents."

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"...didn't know that, noted, should I know what circumstances? And elves don't age, so they're not on so much of a ticking clock as humans and stuff, they can still die of violence but it's not inevitable."

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"If the event would force a soul bond, and is unwanted, you die. The parameters on both 'would force a soul bond' and 'is sufficiently unwanted' are unclear to me - it might just be that you can die if you prefer that to being soul bonded, might be involuntary - and there are things I would prosecute as unlawful that result in a soul bond but don't count as unwilling enough to kill you."

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Nod.

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"Hasn't come up since the Enemy was defeated. We're a peaceful people."

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"It's nice. Materia's kinda full of unpeaceful people."

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"I'm realizing that. They still deserve to be rescued but designing a paradise for them is going to be even harder than designing one for Quendi, and that surely went badly wrong enough."

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"Yyyyyeah. Serious culture design challenge."

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He shrugs. "We'll figure it out."

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"We probably want to start with people known to someone who's already integrated. My parents can vouch for some people, say."

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"Good idea. And then they will hopefully adopt the norms of the surrounding society - if a single elf came through, maybe one who didn't like their system, would they have to adopt it here? Could they have a different attitude?"

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"Oh, yeah, they vary plenty - and most of my exposure was to college-age elves, they seem to mellow out a lot after they hit their hundredth birthdays, there's a thing where stuff they do before that doesn't 'count' as far as other elves are concerned anyway. I think that's purely cultural and some of them start acting like serious adults when they're in their twenties same as humans."

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"Then doing it by recommendation of others seems wise."

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"And then all we have to worry about is the people who keep their unsavory habits secret from their friends, which I'm sure nobody does, ever," she sighs.

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"We can read minds."

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"I don't - I don't want to make that a condition, if we can think of any other way... Also Materia has subtle artists besides me, they could hedge you out or plant false thoughts..."

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"I don't like having criteria at all." He frowns. "Hmm."

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"I am sure there is at least one dragon who wants to live in a science fantasy world and I would view that desire very carefully."

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"Dragons are all amoral?"

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"Probably not. And noble dragons keep their promises - I don't think they metaphysically have to like with Quendi oaths, but they just in fact do - so I might let one of those in if it promised to be law-abiding and I thought we had the right law set for sure. Dragons are just the kind of thing that may eat you in proxy of the universe if you fuck up, and I'm not totally easy about - letting them out?"

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"Yeah. Very much so. It's your world, I'll defer to your judgment."

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"There's not very many dragons, anyway, it's probably not a bad plan to add one species at a time and allow a while to adjust every time."

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He nods. "Starting with humans?"

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"Already got one and a half."

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"And they don't seem to have species-wise proclivities to murder or dependence on other species, so. I'm very glad Valinor didn't get a nymph thrown at us."

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"...the poor nymph. I mean, the Valar could have sent her back... or maybe somebody would have wanted to marry her smart quick, nymphs sometimes do get married..."

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"I am very sure that if she needed to be married to stay alive someone would have married her, but it doesn't seem exactly ideal for either party. Probably the Valar would have sent her back."

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"Yeah. Honestly I'm not sure we'll get any nymph immigration to speak of, Mother Khaele might disapprove and they're all hers."

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"I do not think we should let Materia's gods immigrate even if they're so inclined."

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"Yeah. They can stay put."

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"Will they?"

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"...Probably. I mean, they'd lose their being-epic universe-enforced protection, if they left..."

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"...but they'd still be extremely powerful things, right?"

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"Yeah. We should leave nymphs and anybody else they'd be likely to take notice of until we are also extremely powerful things, I guess."

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"At this rate I'm not sure that'll take very long. Even the gods can't invent spells, can they?"

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"Spells do get invented, gods can invent them - they can't do science though."

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"I suppose perhaps we should be learning some combat spells, here."

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"Yeah, maybe."

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"How many of the humans we pull through are going to be more powerful than us? At a guess?"

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"Depends how we pick them. My parents aren't. Their friends... aren't, but might surpass us in some specialty, since we haven't been doing combat magic and I'm not a very offensively powerful subtle artist. A lot of people if we insist they leave their magic items behind won't be anything special but would have threatening magic items."

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"Speaking of magic items. I noticed you're back to your old boots. Did the ones that let you ice skate break in Materia?"

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"...well, this is a new pair, but yeah, storebought, the ones I made broke."

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"I wanted to go ahead and make them for you again but I couldn't find a human-shoes shop here at first glance. I'm sure there is one, just a bit farther afield. Can I go ahead and give that a go?"

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"That would be great. T'Mir would know where to look," Bella says. "Or she might just have a spare pair of shoes in, y'know, my exact size. She says she's clumsy compared to a Vulcan but not that bad for a human," she adds. "It might be an us thing."

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"Oooh. Are there - other things that might be 'you things'? Your names, parents' names, ambitions..."

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"Eerily similar personalities down to how we format our thoughts when we're working on problems and the notetaking habit. She's basically me with different starting conditions, and not all that different, similar parents except her dad was a Vulcan and they're apparently kinda odd."

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"I am very intrigued by what will result from our interplanar scrying for Bellas."

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"It'll be exciting! I like having her around, she's great."

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"She's picking up magic very fast, and we couldn't do anything this ambitious without someone with local knowledge of the world."

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"I know, so convenient! And of course she is delighted to be learning magic and founding an Elendil instead of catching up on her reading in prison."

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"I wonder if a lot of the Bellas are in - hmm, constraining situations. Since it seems like otherwise one of them would have invented interplanar scrying and found you. Unless no two worlds have the same magic systems, and yours is the only one that permits this kind of thing?"

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"What seems likely depends on how many of us there are, how lucky we got. But Materia type wizardry being the only or nearly only solution to interplanar travel is not a bad guess."

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"We certainly wouldn't have developed it. And then - boats and swords."

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"Boats. Swords." She shakes her head.

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"He's a good kid. But I can see how if you'd been banished to the Outer Lands instead of to Materia, and he needed a boat to get there -"

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"...mm."

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"I just want to make sure we avoid situations where he could make the sort of mistakes he's apparently prone to."

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"I mean, if they'd only banished me to the Outer Lands we still could have communicated. I could have said 'I am okay, you do not have to steal any boats, especially not by means of swords'. And I make sure I call him on it whenever he guesses something silly about what I'd say in some situation, so maybe eventually he'll have a model of me he can consult even if I'm not around..."

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"The fated version happened without you, I think the scary tendency is less 'recklessness for Bella' and more 'when fixing something requires doing something everyone tells him is a bad idea, he does it anyway'."

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"Yeah, my point was that I could have reassured him about the extent to which it needed fixing, which I couldn't do from Materia. Hrm."

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"It doesn't help that he was right to fetch you and come here."

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"- he could have left me. I wasn't, it wasn't awful after the first few days."

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"He was right. I'd have done it more carefully but we were not going to let that pass."

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"What was your plan?"

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"Scout a suitable destination plane first, once we were there petition the Valar to 'help' us permanently gate it to Valinor so Fëanáro could go home at night and so forth."

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"Do you think they'd have done that?"

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"I was pretty sure the worst they'd do was make interplanar transit out of Valinor stop working at all and I think they might have done it - they were under a lot of pressure, Fëanáro was so upset -"

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"But you'd already have gotten here and I wasn't in Valinor so you could've gotten me, I suppose, it'd just - leave everyone else in Arda stuck. I guess unless they went to the Outer Lands."

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"Until the Valar realized the error of their ways, which may take them a while as you count time." He nodded. "I was afraid they'd do it when they noticed Fëanáro'd brought you back, that seemed likelier to provoke them into it."

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"Yeah, that was nerve-wracking."

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"I did tell him I was working on it. He was just disinclined to be patient. Or didn't believe me - I can understand that -"

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"- why wouldn't he have believed you?"

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"We told you that you were safe in Valinor. I told you that."

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"But you were there, you saw, you heard me -"

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"But the way he saw it, the last time I said something I was wrong, so how could he trust it to me? I understand that way of thinking, I've been there myself."

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"- mm?"

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"Other people can't be relied on, if I actually care about anything I shall have to just be the one to do it".

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"It is a little tempting, sometimes - I think T'Mir has more of it than me."

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"I think depending on the situation it can be a necessary tool or a serious handicap. Needing other peoples' eyes helped me refine my sense of it..."

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"It did?"

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"Well, most people won't just be ordered around, you have to convince them that whatever you're doing is worth their attention, and some people are much more convincible than others but also some attitudes of mine made it easier for me to make the value of my work apparent, and less impatient, and better able to ask help when I needed it even when my needs were less obvious."

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"You had the hang of it by the time I was there, I think."

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"I am coming up on a thousand years old, you know."

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"Years or Years?"

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"No no no, just years. We weren't in Valinor until recently ourselves."

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"Just checking. It still feels weird that I'm pushing forty. I don't look it, I don't feel it..."

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"Have all the Ages of all the worlds ahead of you. Is forty a milestone for humans?"

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"Round numbers in general are, we count by tens and only get so many divisible by ten. Forty's early middle age."

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He nods. "We could try to christen the planet as a birthday gift."

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"Oh, we haven't even started thinking about what to name the planet."

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"The list of things to do is really getting a bit absurd. It's so exciting."

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"I know, right? It's like the opposite of the time slide in the best possible way."

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"It really is. Not for everyone, obviously, but I can't imagine a better place for you."

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Giggle.

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And they get back to work. A day later he has a pair of T'Mir's shoes for Bella. "Skating was fun, I want to do that again. And I want you fast on your feet if there's any trouble."

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The shoes, of course, fit. She jumps and clicks her heels together and lands.

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Do Davlia people like ice skating rings? They can definitely do an impromptu one, if it's of interest.

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Davlians have hooves and are intensely skeptical of the concept.

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Fair enough! The Quendi will put on a figure-skating exhibition if anyone is interested, and sing their own accompanying music!

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...All two Quendi?

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It's mostly Rúmil, Fëanáro likes flying too much to be a responsible ice skater. They have a grand time, though.

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It takes Bella a little while to get the hang of it again. T'Mir proves able to ice skate on only storebought boot level of boost and picks it up as long as that's what's happening.

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That's what's happening only when they need a break from spell development and politicking and logistics.

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All of which are wonderful and highly absorbing activities.

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And coming along! They have a plan for the evacuation, they have better earpieces, do they have other nations interested in joining Elendil?

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There's this one planet that T'Mir dropped warp on which only recently put it into practice and has been denied Federation membership for showing signs of tampering; they're tentatively interested but would like a better idea of what they'd be getting into.

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Luckily they now have a backbone of a constitution and a procedure for admitting members and rules about trade and immigration and so forth!

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And now they have three member planets (and a moon, the new guys have an inhabited moon - well, and the one the oligarchs are building on is also a moon. Two planets two moons).

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Is the Federation taking them seriously?

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The Federation thinks they're a flash in the pan; apparently people attempt to federate all the time and it seldom sticks. But it's really confused about how they're getting around.

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Good. They'll keep that under wraps for a bit. Can they announce that Valinor might be an interested member nation, and that it's pre-warp, and not where to find it? Would that just be asking for trouble?

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It is entirely plausible that someone with surveyor skills could have found and not reported the location of a prewarp planet!

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Fëanáro asks his father if Aman will join the Elendil and his father says Aman will certainly be talking about it.

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"It will be sort of awkward if the Quendi leadership there and the Valar disagree on this point."

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"I think the King realizes that outcome needs to be avoided," Rúmil says.

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"...presumably by agreeing with the Valar, one way or another."

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"Yes."

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"I realize I'm not getting a balanced understanding but they sound like they might be more trouble than they're worth."

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"...I don't think so, they've been highly inconvenient to a small subset of people in - in their care, but on net compared to viable alternatives, no."

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"They fought and stopped Melkor; no one else could have done that. They created the world and might actually be necessary to it, I'm not sure. And even beyond that - no one has died in Valinor," Rúmil says, "no one goes hungry or wanting for anything at all, everyone can study anything that interests them and usually find a Vala or Maia who will help with the research insofar as they're able - and on some tasks, they're tremendously able. Even with the slow pacing we are growing in leaps and bounds as a people. When they err they err very badly. But I don't think even Bella wishes she'd been summoned to a Noldo tribe besieged by monsters in the Outer Lands, where death was permanent..."

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"...I mean, I could have helped with the monsters. Once I was convinced it was a science fantasy world. But. Yeah."

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"All right. But I'm not sure they're a high bar to clear with such versatile magic on hand."

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"Yeah."

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"I think we can do much better here," he agrees, "and 'paradise for Quendi' is a shockingly easy problem compared to the ones we'll be solving."

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"Quendi are easy mode. ...Except Fëanáro. He's at least a medium."

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"What's a hard problem?" says Fëanáro wonderingly.

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"Oh, if we were trying to import Materian gods or something, that would be really hard."

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"What about people who become gods, what are we going to do about those?"

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"I'm not sure if ascension will happen outside Materia - there are some magical changes associated with it. If it does, well, I guess we maybe have a hard problem on hand."

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"We should just do it first. Just in case."

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"If ascension happens outside Materia, getting there first seems like a plan to me."

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"How powerful wizards are we? Compared to ones in Materia? How many are there who are more powerful than us?"

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"...power levels in Materia are prrrrretty much calibrated by how good you are at killing things, maybe if you have a soft specialty how much money you make. It's hard to evaluate us on either scale. If we go by something like mana capacity we're, maybe tenth or fifteenth percentile among people you can call wizards, now, but that underestimates us because we've got better-customized spells."

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"...a more selective teleport, maybe a teleport that takes other people and not you, would be a good next spell if we are expecting trouble. Also, those personal space rings you tried for someone in the Outer Lands! They work!"

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"Oh good! Maybe we can work out an arrow deflection variant that works on energy weapons too."

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Rúmil nods. "I think Fëanáro's parents would be very much happier if they learned he had spells so that no one could touch him without permission or fire on him at all. And that reduces risk rather neatly."

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Bella puts it on the list.

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The Quendi would also like to build themselves a nicer house. This one is a little stressful to live in.

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T'Mir is perfectly happy living in her ship but it's not really designed for more than one person to inhabit.

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Bella magicked herself a bungalow like the one she magicked on Tol Eressëa. The spell should be adaptable to non-bungalow designs if desired.

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The design is very non-bungalow; it has three stories and a stream running through it.

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"...why do they need three stories?" T'Mir asks Bella.

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"...Quendi?" offers Bella helplessly.

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They mostly work on it when the not-Quendi are sleeping.

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Which the non-Quendi do on a regular basis. The day cycle of this moon is a little longer than Earth days, which seem to be similar to Materian days. But T'Mir can stay up longer than Bella can, a week if she really wants to.

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Fëanáro is baffled that anyone who could only sleep once a week wouldn't do that.

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"It's not very comfortable and I can do less and less complicated and interesting things the less recently I've slept," she explains. "Besides, now I have mana to worry about."

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"Mana is pretty annoying to worry about," he agrees.

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"I usually find that going two days without sleep is plenty if I want to do anything more complicated than read or listen to music, anyway, and learning and doing magic and studying law and diplomacy and such is definitely more complicated than that."

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"I get more energized the more I work."

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"That's very lucky for you, then."

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"I do fall asleep eventually though. I'm going to find magic to fix that." He scowls.

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"But then how will you get mana?"

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"Don't know yet. I'll find a way."

They finish the house a few days later. It is in fact gorgeous.
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For which they receive all appropriate compliments.

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Bellas can stay too, if they'd like! All the glass is to Bella's credit anyway. And there is a lot of glass, stone thin enough to be translucent is a hard trick to pull off outside Valinor.

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It's very nice, but T'Mir is fine in her ship. It's cozy and she's used to it and it has her ship computer in it.

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Bella's all settled into her bungalow, too, but of course will visit.

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And the capital city is built, and crops are planted, and crop songs are conveyed by earpiece from Valinor.

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It takes a little finagling to get the computer to accept earpiece calls, and it's slightly awkward to call T'Mir's mom and explain what's going on and ask her to buy Federation-computer-compatible music players for someone to go pick up (Davlians are working on getting system compatibility between their computers and Federation standard, but it's complicated work), but presently they have a device singing in every field.

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....can a method of importing precious and semiprecious stones from Valinor be arranged? They'd make the city prettier and it looks like it'll be hard to find them here.

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...sure, summoning objects is not likely to be technically impossible. If this is a priority.

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Well, they'll need it anyway to steal a library, won't they?

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This is true.

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Accepting gifts from Valinor will be a good use of the spell before they try using it for grand theft library.

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Reasonable. Work begins on object-summoning. This will also be convenient for immigrants who want to bring their homes.

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The city is laid out to permit people to arrive with homes or without them, and for people who prefer living in beautiful open-air stone buildings or in trees or in ordinary houses. Trees are being sung up to make the streets shady.

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What a nice city. Bella is proud of it.

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Everyone is proud of it. It really is beautiful. It has a not-exactly-a-palace central administrative building which is a glorious mishmash of everyone's favored architectural styles that somehow comes out quite well. Fëanáro developed a variant grease spell that lets him go wildly skidding around the floor.

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So cute.

What's the news from Valinor? Bella doesn't expect it to move very fast, but as long as they're calling on a daily basis...
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The Valar want all Ilúvatar's children - which is currently the same thing as 'all Quendi' to be safe and wish they'd stick to places where they can definitely find their way to Mandos but agree that this could not wisely be enforced. There's still a city in the works in the Outer Lands. There might be visitors to this planet but probably no one would stay.

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Well, visitors are welcome.

It may not be time yet to start mass-importing Materians but it is probably high time Bella's parents got a look at what she's been up to. ...This is going to be an awkward earwire call.
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Fëanáro hugs her. "They'll probably be proud of you."

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"Maybe. I can hope." Hug. "Well, here goes."

And she goes outwardly quiet, talking to her mother first.
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"Well?" he says when she's done.

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"...Uh, Ranae thinks there is a decent chance she is possessed or something and a demon or something is imitating my voice but agrees that a demon probably wouldn't be able to summon her to a place like what I described and says I may do it after she's had a few hours to write letters and pack."

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"Okay," he says agreeably.

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"So I'm supposed to call back in four hours and see if she's ready. I guess I call Charlie now."

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"I sort of wish my parents weren't the King and Queen and could come."

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"That'd be nice, wouldn't it." Sigh.

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"Yeah. Though if they weren't we might not have met."

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"You don't think you'd have come and seen what all the magical commotion was about if you lived somewhere other than exactly where I landed?"

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"I mean, my parents would have let me roam the city and I'd have gotten through apprenticeships unusually fast and I'd have been less sad all the time, I think."

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"Sure. That doesn't sound like a bad thing to me, and we still could have met."

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"Yeah, I guess. What about your dad, is he coming?"

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"Still need to call him. They don't live together, so Ranae couldn't ask for me. ...He might just want to stay behind. He's really attached to his home town."

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"Can't bring the whole town?"

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"Uh, some of the people in the town might object. And I'm not sure he'd think it was the same if it were the whole town but on another planet. And the mana expenditure would be ridiculous and we don't have any Maiar around."

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"Right. We should see if we can get Olórin to come look after me."

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"I suppose you could call him and ask, although Maiar might not be very portable."

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It transpires that Maiar are not at all portable, they don't think. They expect they only exist at all in Arda.

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"Oh well. I'll see if I can convince Charlie, anyway."

And she calls her dad.
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And Fëanáro waits patiently for her to be done.

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"Charlie'll wait to see if Ranae disappears like I did and calls him before making any rash decisions."
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"That's fair enough," he says. "So now we just give your mom some time."

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"Yeah." Sigh.

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"Are you sad?"

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"Not exactly, I'm just not sure what it'll be like having them here. They're - comfortable with being small, they brought me up to be small for good reasons, and here I am founding an Elendil and sciencing wizardry... T'Mir's going to be very weird for them..."

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He hugs her. He still cannot really reach past her knee for hugging, but it's a very loving knee-hug.

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Scoop. Snuggle.

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Rúmil comes by a little while later, is encouraged to hear the news, shooes Fëanáro with a project idea. "I don't know that we should have him doing introductions for new people."

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"I mean, my parents are not high-stakes in terms of what impression they have of the company I keep, I can probably salvage things and Ranae in particular adores kids, but as a general matter probably."

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"I was not worried they'd wreck any familial relationships. He's the one likelier to avoid someone if he hits it off badly with them." He shakes his head. "Congratulations. I hope they are a fraction as proud as they should be."

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"Well. Not yet. But maybe later."

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He shrugs. "All right. If you have a few hours and don't want to spend them standing around, there's more here on the Elendil charter..."

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She has a few hours until she's supposed to call Ranae back! Charter.

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The time passes quickly.

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"Okay. Mom calling time."

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"Best wishes."

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And Bella calls her mom again and finally reports, "Okay, she says I can summon her conditional on my actually being myself etcetera."

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"Lovely. Do we have a nice place for summoned people to arrive?"

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"...I was just going to land her in my bungalow. She is not a Quendi and will not need to be overwhelmed by beauty to like the place."

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He laughs. "Okay. I'll leave you to your family reunion, then, call me in if for some reason it needs to be courteously interrupted with something important for you to look at."

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"Will do. Thanks."

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And they leave her to summon her mother.

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Which she does.



An hour and a half later she and a person who looks like an old version of her with much shorter hair emerge from the bungalow.
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"Hello," Rúmil says in Pax. "I'm Rúmil, I do some of the design and advisory work here. It's a pleasure to meet you."

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"Hi," says Ranae. "Do, uh -"

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"Quendi."

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"Do Quendi shake hands?"

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"Some do," he says, and shakes her hand.

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Shake shake. "I'm Ranae. Ranae Swan. It's very nice to meet you."

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"Welcome to our city, which is yet unnamed, and its world, which is also unnamed."

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"We should really name those. In at least one language."

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"Pax, probably, if it's going to be the main one spoken here."

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"There's arguments for Pax and English and Davlian and Quenya. Not all humans in Materia speak Pax, not even a majority, although that's most of what we'll get if we start with my parents and go by word of mouth. English makes us an easier refuge for genetic engineers and other people who want to leave the Federation, which interests T'Mir. Davlian because by the numbers they're the most populous founding members of the Elendil. Quenya because we're sort of modeling it off Valinor Only Better."

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"Genetic engineering seems the most important of those considerations."

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"And nothing says people can't speak whatever they want for miscellaneous purposes, but English for official business - with translations generated - seems like a strong contender."

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"What's a suitable English planet name? If we're playing up the refuge-for-engineers angle, perhaps?"

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"I think English speakers don't like to name most things in English. Sometimes but not with common words. They like dead languages and stuff. Anyway, T'Mir would be a better generator of names than me, I'm still working on English."

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"Fair enough." He smiles at Bella, at Bella's mother, then walks off.

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Bella takes Ranae to introduce to T'Mir. It is moderately awkward. She makes Ranae a bungalow near her own and helps her unpack into it.

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And Materia immigration slowly begins.

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Introducing Charlie to T'Mir is differently and more awkward!

The twin bottlenecks are finding approvable immigrants, and qualified summoners and their mana. It's very slow.

The Federation is beginning to take more notice of their behavior. They would like to establish communications and consider trade opportunities. They have sent a Starfleet vessel about it. May they come down?

Well, do they promise not to arrest T'Mir?

They do promise not to arrest T'Mir.

So here's an away team in primary-colored Starfleet uniforms.
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The Quendi dress up for the occasion. Hello, Starfleet away team. Does the Federation know yet how they get around?

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The science officer would really really like to know. Her guess is that it's some variant on transporter tech.

They also sent a linguist, isn't that considerate of them?
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We, too, brought our linguist. He looks like he's five but our species grows up really slowly. He speaks English just fine but would be happy to teach your linguist Quenya, or if she speaks other Federation languages he's only had the chance to learn about fifty of them.

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The Federation linguist really wants to talk to the Elendil linguist. This is so exciting.





There is a Vulcan on this away team. He takes T'Mir aside for a very quiet conversation.
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Fëanáro is happily explaining Quenya and Pax and Davlian and everything else he's been trying to pick up since his home world made contact with Davlia - he knows not to say 'since I developed planar shifting' - and no not all Quendi pick up languages as fast as him but most of them are pretty fast at it, they have excellent memories. He's nearly a hundred and twenty one Earth years but yes, by the standards of his people he's a kid.

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Well, the linguist is very impressed by his command of all these languages. How is he picking which ones to learn?

(T'Mir looks a little pensive after she and the Vulcan Starfleet person rejoin the group.)
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He's mostly been listening to sound samples and learning ones that are pretty but he's also been trying to learn ones that the Elendil might need.

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The linguist's personal opinion is that the prettiest language is Japanese.

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In that case he will try learning Japanese! Would she like to speak it for the rest of the conversation? That's the fastest way he'll learn.

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The linguist can do that!

(Now the Bellas are talking to each other telepathically, a little distracted from bamboozling the science officer and refusing to explain her tricorder readings.)
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Rúmil is not as oblivious as Fëanáro and will notice this, but not do anything, except step up the bamboozling to the degree this can be done. Fëanáro will startle the linguist slightly by using osanwë to pull Japanese vocabulary out of her head so he can speak faster.

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The linguist is indeed startled! Are Quendi psionic? (The science officer is distracted by this question.)

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They are! They have decided not to reveal all of their range but do say that it can be up to a mile.

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Gosh. That's competitive with Betazoids, says the science officer. They don't have a Betazoid handy.

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He hasn't met a Betazoid, what are they like?

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So the science officer talks about Betazoids, who are very psionic indeed and casually read minds a lot. (T'Mir opines that this is very rude of them and they think she's rude when she goes around blocking scans in places with significant Betazoid populations.)

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Some cultures of the Quendi read minds a lot and some only do it to communicate but all Quendi learn how to keep thoughts private.

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And how does one do that, the science officer would like to know? The Betazoids don't seem to abide by an equivalent distinction.

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So he patiently explains how Quendi can make their thoughts private to osanwë, it should work for humans but Bella's a subtle artist so he hasn't actually had the chance to try.

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She's a what? says the science officer.

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"Her species has psi too."

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It's convenient.

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They'd been assuming she was a human. Huh.

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The people settling this planet look human but some have psi. Maybe there's a Betazoid ancestor. Is that how ancestry works?

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Half-Betazoid half-humans have psi, but less than Betazoids, and usually only do emotions, not anything more complex on their own. Quarter-Betazoids have even less than that.

(T'Mir volunteers that she's got a below-average but still similar to a full Vulcan dose of her own variety.)
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Maybe the people here have Quendi ancestry, then. Fëanáro shrugs. There aren't any Quendi here yet because it's not pretty enough but eventually there might be.

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The Starfleet anthropologist is curious about that!

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Quendi like beautiful things. He'll show her Valinor.

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The Starfleet anthropologist is really impressed!

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"We are," he says rather pointedly, "very pre-warp, we just invented writing. But the gods help when they're not hindering and Bella's world was nearby and more advanced."

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The Starfleet people are all politely curious about the "gods".

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They created the world and one of them was evil and kidnapped and tortured Quendi but the other ones were good and stopped him and invited the Quendi to come live in Valinor. And they were trying to teach all sorts of things, but panicked at Fëanáro and so he had to leave.

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The Starfleet people are all very politely skeptical about these entities' godhood but move on when they have this explanation.

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The Starfleet people could go and meet them. That'd be interesting.

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T'Mir does not think that would be a particularly good idea.

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Fëanáro doesn't know if it'd be good but it'd be really funny.

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Bella doesn't think it'd be funny.

(The Starfleet people are confused.)
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"The gods might send you home," he says. "They can be awful and mean; that's why we left. And they might change things so it's harder for other people to leave which would be bad. But I feel like if all that weren't true and you could just go walk through Tirion and then meet them, they'd be delighted, and it'd be lovely."

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"Yes, well, it would still be problematic under the current conditions."

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"I know." He pouts.

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Shoulderpats.

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Back to Japanese?

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The linguist is all for it.

Eventually the Starfleet ship goes away. It is expected to come back later with an actual ambassador.
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"That went well," Fëanáro says cheerily.

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"I'm not sure how much we should talk about the Valar."

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"Why not?"

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"It'll sound really weird to the locals and they might want to go investigate and we can't exactly just tell them where Valinor is."

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"Warp doesn't have gods," T'Mir reminds him. "It probably sounded to him like there's a powerful species oppressing some Quendi somewhere and it won't be at all obvious that they're doing it with godlike power instead of by tricking you into thinking they have it."

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"Oh. Okay. Would that be a thing they'd try to stop?"

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"Well, the Quendi are technically pre-warp and so are the Valar, but they might want to observe. Especially since Valinor is in contact with," she gestures at the Prometheus, "a warp-capable civilization."

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"And they can't go observe, and they might get suspicious when we don't say where Valinor is?"

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"Yeah. They won't know why we're letting them know where we are and not where you came from. Or where 'Bella's species' came from."

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"...once they know we have instantaneous travel, we can just say that it's in another galaxy. They can't check that."

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"...Might work."

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"But they haven't figured that out yet? Have they?"

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"Transporter technology does something a lot like teleportation. It takes a few seconds and it's tricky to do and it's visible and audible and it's shorter range, but so far they aren't sure that we don't just have a cleaner version of that."

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"With a range of galaxies," Fëanáro says with satisfaction.

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"That, they haven't even begun to guess."

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Rúmil asks her later. "The Vulcan member - did they have something to say?"

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"Apparently my having departed the Federation for a viable alternative instead of just generically fleeing - and the fact that they know now that they want to look for evidence that warp equations were planted in a society - mean they're no longer interested in rearresting me. New Vulcan wanted to invite me to some kind of ceremony about it. I may go."

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He nods. "Well. I'm glad you're no longer wanted."

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"Me too. Would've been potentially inconvenient, and it means we don't have to go through my mother to make legal purchases too small to bother commercial traders about."

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"When's the ceremony?"

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"In a couple weeks. It'd be more than enough time to get there by ship if I were going to travel that way."

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"Are you? Might show our hand if you teleport in. I suppose you could teleport the ship to a few hours' out."

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"Yeah, I think I want Prometheus present but I have no real desire to fly the long way."

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He nods. "Aside from straightening our stories about the origins of these peoples, and how much of their capabilities we intend to try to hide - does the Federation not send spies? - that went well, I think."

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"They probably have spying capacity but we're not a big enough city to make it easy for spies to hide in the population yet. We'll want to do some background checking on the genetic engineers and the like. And yes, it was very pleasant."

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"How does osanwë differ from psi, and are we going to make any mistakes if approximated as Betazoids?"

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"Betazoids are less prone to using sensory modalities the way you often send mental images by psi. Ferengi and similar species are immune to their - or Vulcan - psi, and may or may not block osanwë. There's not a known way for a non-psionic, non-immune person to block a Betazoid from their current thoughts, whether they're meant to be private or not; the defense for those people if they require one is to think about things they don't mind being read. I think those are the major differences."

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"Hmm. I wonder if we're immune to Betazoids."

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"Bella can block me if I try to establish psi contact with her and she's not cooperating; but she's yet a third sort of thing. I don't know."

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Quendi cannot block Vulcans from establishing psi contact. This suggests they also can't block Betazoids. Inconvenient if anyone were to want to spy on them.

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T'Mir thinks that use of Betazoid mindreading as a spying technique on a nonhostile neighbor is illegal, but that doesn't guarantee no one will try it.

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Can Bella provide shields with subtle artistry somehow?

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Bella is in fact really good at shields but she can't produce flexible shields that have to live in non-subtle-artist brains. They might have trouble using osanwë through anything really robust.

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Oh. Inconvenient. Perhaps they'll find her if there's actually a Betazoid in town.

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She thinks she might be able to notice one trying to listen to her, so there's that.

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The long priorities list consumes the next few weeks until T'Mir has to go, if she's going, to New Vulcan.

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Yeah, she's going, a little early. She teleports Prometheus to an obscuring nebula nearby and then flies the rest of the way.

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Two days later Bella suddenly teleports away without pausing to explain.
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They are anxious, but wait for the two of them to come back.

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Bella is back four hours later looking like she's been crying.
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"Hug?" Rúmil says.

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Hug!

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"Do you want to talk?"

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"She wasn't okay and now she's okay."

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"I'm glad that she was able to reach you when not okay."

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"Yeah."

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There's obviously more but he doesn't ask.





"Should we expect her back?"
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"In a week."

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"Okay." Hugs.

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When T'Mir comes back she is doing a - thing.

It is sort of hard to identify exactly what the thing is. She doesn't so much have flat affect as... no affect.
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Rúmil definitely notices this. Rúmil is worried. He does not say anything. He does mention Utumno occasionally, in case anyone would like to know that that's a topic that can be discussed if it'd be helpful.

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"What is Utumno?"

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"It was a stronghold of the Enemy during the war. I spent about a century there as a prisoner."

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"I see. - My current lack of emotional state, if it concerns you, is voluntary and I will end it soon."

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"Is this a Vulcan attribute?"

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"Vulcans learn to induce it. Most of them make more frequent use than I do."

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"All right."

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"Thank you for your concern."

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"Let me know if there's anything I can do."

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"I do not expect that there is, but it is kind of you to offer."

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So they wait for her to decide to turn it off.

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She keeps it another day and a half, and then disappears into her ship for a bit, and then comes back a little green around the eyes but otherwise calm-but-having-emotions again.

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And Rúmil does not comment on this unless she would like to talk about it, but Fëanáro goes "you're back!!"

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"...I've been back for a couple days."

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"You were being like a Maia who doesn't know how to do faces. What happened?"

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"Oh, I don't lose my ability to make facial expressions when I'm suppressing, they just wouldn't be meaningful and I don't prefer to make deceptive ones."

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"That makes sense. I've never seen anyone but a Maia not do faces before, though. Are you - not feeling anything? When you're like that? Why would you want that?"

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"When I'm doing that I don't feel anything, and I do it so I can think clearly instead of being distracted by upsetting feelings. Then I deal with the feelings after I already have thoughts about them set up."

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"Can I learn it? I have a blasting spell for emotions but maybe that's not the best way."

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"It's pretty hard for people who aren't Vulcans or part Vulcans to learn, but I could try, if you want."

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"In my fate when I'm mad I kill a lot of people."

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"...Vulcan used to be a very violent planet, and then everyone started doing the kind of meditation that lets them suppress emotions and it became very peaceful. I usually prefer to have my emotions, but they're usually pretty nice; it's preferable to have the off switch. I'll walk you through a book on it to start and we'll see where you can get with it."

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"Thanks. These emotions were not nice?"

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"They were not."

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"But you didn't kill anyone! Or burn any boats!"

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"...No. New Vulcan, like Vulcan, is a desert planet; I'm not sure there's a single boat on it."

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"What was the bad thing that you didn't want to have feelings about?"

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"The Vulcan government tried to make me get married and I didn't want to."
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This makes him go quite still.

"That's evil."
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"Yes," she says, "I know."

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"We need to overthrow them."

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"It's a little more complicated than that. But I am considering organizing a more moderate political complaint."

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"It's not complicated, that's evil and they might do it to someone else who can't teleport."

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"I couldn't teleport. I was - unwell. I had to call Bella, and it was still more complicated than that."

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"Okay. Well if you decide to overthrow them we'll help you."

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"Thank you, Fëanáro."

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"And I think you should overthrow them."

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"Vulcans have very complicated marriage arrangements and they had reasons. They were wrong, but they were not doing it to hurt me."

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"Among Quendi forcing someone to marry is one of the evilest things you can do, more awful than killing them."

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"Sometimes if Vulcans don't get married we die."
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"Oh.


It should still be your choice, though."
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"Well, I know that, but Vulcans are an endangered species now and the Council did not think it was the time to be exacting about what things are and are not my choice."

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"So they're evil and we should overthrow them.

Also we should get resurrection working. Then Vulcans won't be endangered."
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"That would be nice. The resurrection, not the overthrowing."

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He looks skeptical, but does not again suggest overthrowing.

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Then T'Mir will not have to correct him again about whether the Vulcan government requires overthrow.

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He does tell Rúmil as soon as he sees him. "The Vulcan government tried to make T'Mir get married and so we need resurrection right away."

"Resurrection?" he says.

"So there are enough Vulcans and they don't do that. And because they might die if they don't get married."

"I see. Yes, let's work on that."
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"...I don't object to inventing resurrection, but that's a little more obviously magic than a cleaner longer-range transporter."

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"Still," Fëanáro says. "That way people wouldn't have to decide between dying and being forced to be married, and we can't fix them being married."

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"That's not usually the exact choice, I was simplifying a little."

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"That is the exact way it works for us," Rúmil says, frowning, "so it makes sense he interpreted you that way."

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"It's... Should I just actually explain it? It's normally Vulcans-and-people-involved-with-Vulcans-only information but I do not feel strictly obliged to abide by that."

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"That's entirely up to you, unless you want our help figuring out the best magic-that-might-pass-as-tech cure to it."

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"...It would actually be fairly easy to pass something off as a technological cure." She sighs. She goes emotionless. "Vulcans, and some but not all half-Vulcans, have an obligatory seven-year mating cycle. It can be disobeyed, not comfortably, with drugs, meditation, and approximately a ten percent chance of death, which is what I did when I was caught in the middle of deep space alone and discovered I was not one of the lucky half-Vulcans - full-blooded it hits at a predictable age, but I couldn't make arrangements for it ahead of time because it could have been any or no occasion in a span of years.

"Normally, Vulcans are betrothed as children so there's no last-minute scrambling, the elder of the pair reaches the relevant age, they can sync up their cycles via telepathic contact during sex which leaves an enduring psychic bond that is considered equivalent to marriage, and then they make sure to be convenient to one another every seven years. There are ways to shuffle partners around, if the match is disagreeable to the principals - my father and mother were not engaged as children; his intended had to find someone else.

"I was not betrothed as a child either - my mother thought it would be barbaric - but even if I had been, when Vulcan was destroyed many people were left widowed or without their affianced. The Council is acting in loco parentis to pair us off. It's possible that they are typically announcing this to people beforehand but I did not make myself available to them in a - lucid state - and was thus surprised. I can only assume they knew my schedule because I provided it as medical information to my mother in case it was ever relevant and I couldn't disclose it."
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"Oh dear," Rúmil says. "A ten percent chance of death each time? And you arrived at this event to discover they'd picked you a spouse? I am very sorry. That's appalling."

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"Yes, each time, but marriage isn't the only alternative because the telepathic contact part is optional. They'd found someone on almost my schedule, delayed my intended departure to pursue alternate treatment, and expected that would be that, but I managed to call Bella. Who then had to duel my affianced as though competing for my hand, because otherwise he would have died, but fighting is an acceptable substitute on a biological level - if seldom orchestrated to leave both parties alive in the state of nature. She put up enough of a fight to calm him down, knocked him out, and hauled me to my destination."

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He nods. "I'm sorry. That sounds very scary and unpleasant. They could also have told you several weeks ago when you were here.... a magic fix to this specific affliction might be much more tractable than general resurrection."

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"I do not believe the Starfleet officer knew anything about the trap that was set."

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"Is any of this permitted under Federation law?"

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"Federation law officially doesn't know about this feature of Vulcans. Vulcan was a founding member and has some latitude. However, I believe public opinion would be strongly negative."

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"Are you planning to pursue that?"

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"I'm considering it."

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"It seems inappropriate to make observations about our larger political goals and how this could fit into that, unless that's something you'd want to discuss."

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"No, that's exactly the sort of thing I'm considering. I don't want to make an enemy of the Federation or its members, but a carefully moderated statement - perhaps a series of them, this and genetic engineering and the Prime Directive, say, so it doesn't look like I'm taking my original grievances beyond the bounds of appropriateness - could coax its approach closer to ours, or lure worlds into the Elendil."

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He nods. "A series might be the best way to present that - also keeps it at the forefront of peoples' minds. Is there much precedent for peoples leaving the Federation, does it tend to be good for them?"

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"It hasn't happened yet, but there's a provision for it in the constitution."

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"Sanctions? Lose access to any tech? Are any of the unfriendly neighbors inclined to attack newly vulnerable places?"

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"It depends on why they leave. Voluntary exit by a qualifying member, no, they just downgrade membership into alliance. If they flagrantly violate a membership requirement - if they institute a caste system or practice slavery or commit war crimes or something, and they don't accept the appropriate penalties and inspections and top-level restructuring - then it'd be less friendly."

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"But we're not going to cause problems if we do succeed beyond our wildest dreams and lure some members out."

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"Right."

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"I - appreciate that it's not likely helpful to have strangers of a different species angry on your behalf. But. If it ever does seem helpful we can definitely be very very angry on your behalf."

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"The people I need to convince are Vulcans and people who, for this purpose, need to think of me as a Vulcan. This means I will probably record my impassioned speech with exactly zero passion."

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"A useful skill. Are they likely to be persuaded? Is this unacceptable by Vulcan mores?

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"Vulcan mores are about what is logical, in contrast to what is driven by instinct or emotion. Obviously, this approach is very susceptible to different opinions about what tradeoffs are appropriate to seek what goals, but I have a case to make, even if there will be a faction of the opinion that the continuation of the species and acknowledgment of Council authority should supersede what are after all merely my feelings about whether I should be married to a complete stranger. My argument will probably have to be mostly that the Federation would not admit a species that made a habit of this practice and Vulcan's founding membership should not logically grant it special status, and they must stop or exit; they'll choose the former if it does come to that."

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"It seems also that not informing someone in advance, as a policy, only makes sense if you expect that they wouldn't give informed consent, and that the only marriages that would be undermined by changing their approach are marriages that the parties would not have so given their consent for, and that the parties being Vulcans might have logical reasons for declining which the council denies itself any chance to become informed of."

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"Well, I'm a half-Vulcan only and was principally brought up on Earth. They do not assume I am impeccably logical. It's possible they're informing most people."

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He pinches his forehead. "Charming. The - party Bella had to fight for you?"

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"May or may not have been informed. He was not in a state to have a conversation and I did not go visit him."

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"Are there other people we need to be rescuing?"

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"There are very few Vulcans left, and meditating through a cycle is widely considered illogical and most will have already had opportunities to remarry or re-betroth as appropriate, and even if there are a dozen like me they will be spaced out at irregular intervals over a seven-year span. I do not think this is likely to be urgent to the point where it must be handled clumsily in order to get results sooner."

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"All right."

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"But I do think I will record political speeches, and that one on this subject will be among them."

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"I think that's a great idea."

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So she goes off and does that. The one about the prime directive is first, but the one about her attempted forcible marriage is second, once she's gauged response. (The first is delivered in standard emotional range. The latter she decides to show off her ability to drop in and out of suppression very fast.)

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They all think it's a fantastic speech, though they might be a tiny bit biased.

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Well, the science ethernet thinks it's pretty good too. (Although there's a large fraction of lewd remarks about pon farr, which was not previously known to most people to exist.)

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Ethernets bring out the worst in people, Fëanáro says solemnly.

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T'Mir confirms that this is the case. Unless those people are Davlians, who seem psychologically very well-suited to having a science Ethernet.

People REALLY freak out about the genetic engineering speech.
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The Quendi are definitely lacking some cultural context here. Obviously everyone should at a minimum be immortal, not get sick, and have better eyesight? They can confirm those things are just straight pluses?

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But there was that war that one time, don't they see.

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They give it a try.


Nope.
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Anyway, it doesn't take very long for a genetic engineer to spend his life savings on Ferengi transport to their planet.

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They are delighted and are happy to acquire things a genetic engineer might need to do work here.

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The genetic engineer is delighted. Some of his customers might be taking more discreet routes out.

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Are they screening for Federation spies? How are they doing that?

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Well, the genetic engineer is probably not a Federation spy, although it's possible he traded his way out of prison by agreeing to turn spy for them - not a characteristic tactic but not that unlikely. They can do background checks - they can do this really thoroughly with science-ethernet-connected crystal balls - and they can invite people to be mindread before they are offered access to anything sensitive?

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Seems reasonable. The Quendi are picking up all their espionage instincts from spy media and will trust T'Mir about what's actually a warranted security level.

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Well, she doesn't want to let spies in and they might really try to come in but she also doesn't want to abuse mindreading, and besides, if they want a large population they can't realistically run all of them past Bella, who is the only person who'd be able to suss out a spy determined to hide.

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Material has not sent them any other subtle artists? Though of course those wouldn't be inherently trustworthy either.

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Yep, that's the issue, and they wouldn't know as much about what to look for until they too have absorbed spy media.

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Well, spy media for everyone is pretty easy, what with improving compatibility between different kinds of magic and science systems.

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The Materians find Warp media very samey in setting (so much of it is science fantasy about Warp in particular!) but familiar in many respects. For instance, both worlds have invented the action movie.

...anything moving back in Valinor? Interplanar crystal balls are really hard, she is sorry she cannot send Fëanáro's parents cute pictures, but she's taking a bunch to send when she can...
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Fëanáro's parents are in touch every day, but Valinor remains Valinor-paced. They are debating three candidate sites for the city in the Outer Lands.

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Wow, Valinor pacing is kind of amazing.

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Isn't it just.

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"The debate over whether to accept the invitation to Valinor lasted thirty years," Rúmil says.

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"...that's not even Valinor pacing, then, is it..."

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"It may in fact just be Quendi pacing."

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"I suppose I have been exposed to an outlying sample."

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"Fëanáro hated it so much he left. I - well, I advise rulers, I am currently wedded to Bella's pace. I suppose otherwise I'd have been happy at Finwë's."

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"Is there much variance apart from Fëanáro?"

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"Yes. But people who are faster-paced just take on more things simultaneously; you don't mind a debate going on for thirty years if it's one of a dozen projects of yours, some of which come together much more quickly."

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"Huh. I think I'd rather work sequentially."

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"Lots of the projects of building a city take long enough to come to fruition that doing them sequentially means a very leisurely pace."

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"Sure, that makes sense, you want to work in parallel for anything best done that way if you have the labor available, but when the tasks themselves don't get handled better for it..."

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"Ah. Then, yes, it's a matter of preference, and I got accustomed to the Quendi way. Sequentially has its advantages."

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"Prerequisites are a thing."

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"Probably moreso for the projects of this world than ours, where we were just inventing every field of knowledge and no one had any background or advantage."

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"I suppose that would affect it, yes."

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"Bella told you that she invented writing, right? And glass, and magic, and therapeutic ethics."

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"I didn't invent them!"

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"But yes, she mentioned having imported the concepts."

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"Most of them we would have discovered eventually. Magic perhaps not, since your world never did."

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"Which is very curious, really, since it works fine here."

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"So does magic music. I wonder if - there's a way to import systems from other planes, in some sense, but they cannot arise organically."

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"Fits the data. Did wizardry work as normal after the Valar sent Bella back to Materia?"

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"Yes. The Valar could disable it, and have done so with some specific types, but if they're not meddling it works fine."

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"So she's not just bringing it with her, causing it to work around her..."

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"I don't think so. Or, if so, once she's brought it it will stay."

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"I suppose we can do more experiments once we have more worlds to visit. This one's no longer a control group."

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A broad smile. "No, we've gone and rather mucked it up. I wonder if planes with magic are safer and more peaceful - or if they inevitably slide towards Materia - there's a lot we really ought to look out for."

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"Well, in both the case of Materia and in that of Arda there's a sample size of one planet. If your sole exposure to Warp were Davlia..."

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"Arda has stars. It might be possible to explore for other inhabited planets there."

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"Well, I'm not worried that the Federation will deny it membership. Although we might have to export dilithium unless it's already a known substance or something."

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"Technically Valinor was supposed to have every kind of substance, including ones that weren't stable anywhere else, because Valinor has no decay. I don't know enough chemistry yet to tell you about dilithium."

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"It has no radioactive decay either? But that's a completely different process from biological decay."

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"I really wish it were safe to send some scientists down to go poke around, it'd be fascinating."

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"Alas. Maybe we can send them a few tricorders and get the raw data back in thirty years."

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He laughs. "Bella's been working on how to send images, I think. So Fëanáro's parents can see him growing up."

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"That would help too."

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"Tricorders should be fundamentally the same problem as pictures, unless I don't understand science very well."

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"Oh, yes. I just meant they might not get around to tricordering very many things very quickly."

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"They would set about it with all due Quendi haste. Also they might find the tricorders objectionable and need a delay to decorate them."

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"Tricorders aren't pretty enough?"

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"I find all of your technology appealing in its own odd way. But I think people'd decorate the tricorders."

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"Fair enough."

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"This plane must be a dream for people who are curious about all the ways societies can work."

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"Anthropologists here have lots of fun."

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"Everyone here seems to mostly have a lot of fun, for having no gods to keep things perfectly safe and having so many needs to take into account."

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"Well, there's lots of room for improvement."

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And they are working on said improvements at full pace.