Well, he's willing to trade with them if they want anything he can do, so hopefully that will be fine. It is somewhat urgent for him; he should be able to feed himself indefinitely, if not comfortably so, but he only has a couple days' worth of food for his dog unless the fishing situation here is somehow much better than it looks.

There's some mixture of relief and amusement in the familiar five's posture, while the new three (and the five hanging back on the water) are all stony-faced. After a moment of additional writing, he's presented with a new message, "Fishing will not be good, no. Some people in the west have pools with fish made by--" another compound, constructed from 'eat', 'human', 'power', and a smaller iteration of the same 'decision-making people' phrase they used a moment ago, "before they were slain. Those are the only fish here. They are different from the fish of the secret land, which your home seems like. They are artificial and recreated only from memory."

The white-suited one speaks up, and another message is written. "Related to the eat-human-power-decision-making-people, the correct-thoughts decision-making-person wants to know where crafting comes from, and whether it needs to be fueled by anything unpleasant." There was a significant amount of thought and eventual compromise evidence in the familiar five's posture as they figured out how phrase it.

He hopes to get explanations of some of these new terms soon.

Crafting doesn't come from anywhere; people learn the basics as young children, similarly to how they learn to walk and use objects. They've seen how making crafting material works; depending on what he's converting the conversion process can be mentally tiring in the same way any other kind of mental work is tiring but it doesn't require any resources aside from that mental effort, and working with crafting material doesn't even particularly require that.

There's another bit of discussion, then another message. "The information packet that is being translated will contain an explanation. Do you know what causes crafters to have crafting while other animals can at most only communicate?"

He's pretty sure it's related to intelligence; occasionally a Crafter will be born who doesn't pick it up and they always have other cognitive problems, and there are stories about particularly clever apes or elephantiforms being able to do basic object crafting.

More discussion, then another reply. "Is it known how intelligence results in crafting, or what physical process mediates the connection between intelligence and crafting?"

Not particularly, no. He's heard that there's a minor genetic component to crafting skill but he doesn't know much about that, he might be able to get a book about it for them, and he'd be pretty surprised if crafting itself was genetic, communicative crafting occurs in clever animals from apes to fish.

There's more discussion, and some space is cleared on the signboard, then another message is written. "Is there a way to make it so that something cannot be converted?"

No, but he's not going to go around converting things they don't want him to.

More discussion, and more space being cleared, then another, longer message. "More will be explained in the information packet. This settlement is part of a group of settlements, whose people are bound by strong written agreements to follow the decisions of the decision-making-people. There is another group of settlements, in the west, who follow different agreements, and who are a threat to us. It's good that you are not going to convert things we don't want you to convert, but if we don't know how crafting works, then don't know for certain that the other group won't find some way of accessing it for themselves, and if they do, they might use it to cause the people in our group great suffering and death. The decision-making-people want your help to make sure this doesn't happen. They believe that studying how crafting works is important for achieving that goal, and think it is probably what your help is most needed for."

...a threat how? ...no, that makes sense, his species doesn't threaten each other but other species do. He wouldn't expect them to be able to pick up crafting from him from here, if it's possible to pick up at all, but he has no idea how he got here so he has no idea whether someone else might have ended up there.

If he helps them figure out crafting, what are they going to do to the western group with it?

More discussion precedes their reply. "The three decision-making-people here now are not enough to make a promise, but they expect the plan will be to see the western group agree to strong written agreements that are more like ours, and put together groups like the one the five of us who have been translating are part of, to watch people and stop them from breaking the agreement, so that they will not have the opportunity to do things like use crafting to create very dangerous objects, or other things that the decision-making-people think the western group is doing but which are secret."

It sounds to him like they'll want to learn what crafting can do so they can get the other group to agree not to do the scary things it can do; that seems fine to him, and he's generally willing to work with them on the project of keeping things from getting worse between them and the other group (or better yet making them better), to the best of his ability - the best of his ability might be less good than they'd like, though; most obviously he can't live in one place for too long or he starts having emotional problems.

The familiar five nod at that, and there's only a brief further discussion before the next message is written. "We all understand that people have limitations, even if crafting itself isn't something we're familiar with. The legends say that before the eat-human-power-decision-making-people rose up and made everything theirs, all people traveled, and settlements were all temporary. Consequently, our group tries to be accommodating of people who want to move around."

That's good. Plenty of Crafters live settled lives, he's just personally not suited to it. He's usually fine in one place for a season or so, though, if he gets enough time traveling in between.

The reply is more or less immediate, perhaps having already been decided as some kind of conditional, or just going from the familiar fives' own judgement. "That will probably be okay. Do you think you would be alright if we followed you around, at about the same distance the ones circling right now? Alternatively, if you're able to know what your most likely route and destination will be beforehand, would you be able to let us know when you're moving and where you're going to?"

Well, he'd rather they not follow him, but he can't stop them, and he is going to want to wander. He could also check in via ansible (a paired object where any change to one part also changes the other, so for example you can use it to send messages) if that works for them.

There's a brief flare of somewhat more energetic discussion before the next reply. "Is there more information on ansibles in the primer you've given us?"

There might be; he hasn't read it recently. They're not exactly complicated, though, there aren't caveats to 'any change to one also changes the other' except that you can move them around independently.

More discussion, though not as much and not quite as hurried. "Is there a known way to find out what paired ansibles are shaped like, if you don't have access to either member of the pair? Is it possible to add a third, after the first two are made?"

No and no; they're only ever paired, trying to split them again breaks the effect. There are some possibilities he'd worry about in their position if someone dangerous got ahold of the other half of an ansible they had but as long as both ends were safe he wouldn't worry.

The representative of the familiar five nods their head, and then get into a longer conversation with the newer three. After a while, the signboard is cleared and the next message is written. "Checking in via ansible should be okay. The decision-making-people think that, along with helping us learn more about crafting, that making ansibles that can interact with our machines would be another way you could help us. Our group and the western group are not fighting with weapons yet, but members of both groups go and watch the other group from inside, stealthily. This is how our decision-making-people know that the western group have plans. Many of these watchers from the western group watch us in part by finding the messages people in our group send each other that are supposed to be private and make copies of the messages that they send back to the west. If we have ansibles to send private messages, it becomes much harder for people who the message was not written for to find it."

That seems reasonable enough to him. And machines are another common way ansibles are used; that's how he's getting the books from his world, his book printer has an ansible in it with its other half in the world library's book-sharing machine.

There's another pretty intense flurry of discussion at that, though it slows down quickly and there's a long lull in their talking. Minutes of quiet pass, before another group of five flying people descends from the darkening sky, landing on the water with the other five and the second vine-box. They're carrying a pretty thick stack of papers with crafter-writing carefully inked on each page, which they float over to the familiar five after land, and who in turn place it down on the shared table for him to retrieve at his leisure. Laying on the table, it's clear to see that this is indeed a considerable tome.

On the signboard, a new message is written. "This is the translated information packet. It contains an overview of history and pre-history as we know it, as well as a somewhat more detailed description of the current political situation and how it emerged from the destruction of the eat-human-power-decision-making-people's way of doing things. There are appendices for our current understanding of nature and of the natural laws govern things, including further appendices on all-part-power as it appears in most living things, the different way it manifests in the known magical beasts, the three ways it is known to manifest in power-using humans, and what we have managed to learn from analysis of the smoke-things left behind by the eat-human-power-decision-making-people."

A moment later, another short message is added. "Smoke-things behave in a few important ways similar to crafting material. These similarities made people worried that you might have been an eat-human-power-decision-making-person that had escaped from their death and was now returning, and thus extremely dangerous. We know now that you are not."

Well, that book is going to take him a while to get through. Before he does that - there's a chance fleshcrafting interacts with person-eating magic in a useful/dangerous-to-opponents way; he doesn't want to enable them to hurt the other group without knowing quite a bit more about the situation but he doesn't want to leave them vulnerable if the other group also has a Crafter, either. Do they want to give him a quick overview of things with regards to that?