King's Tour [Invite]

"Well, to the rest of the galaxy," Cheri informed Nasu, "'crusade' means 'holy war'." And, unlike Azoth's 'empire', Nasu's culture's unique understanding of the world seemed small, bound entirely to Kryysta, a planet Cheri had never heard of before meeting him; it would likely never gain the cultural significance to ever supplant the traditional understanding of 'crusade' with its own meaning. Cheri wondered how the word came to be used on Kryysta, and how its meaning had changed as it had. Perhaps, originally, Kryysta had crusades in the traditional sense, and, in time, when they learnt to develop beyond their religion, they had retained their ethics and kept the 'crusade' and 'heretics' with appropriate changes. "Do not worry, Nasu. He has not lied to us; he is noble." Also, what was 'humanity'? Was that the human equivalent of tufflitude? Regardless, Cheri had to be careful. Nasu was capable of falling through all of religion's holes and tricking himself with false justifications like any religion, even though it was not a religion in the truest sense. It was more... Kantianism with violent crusader characteristics. No good and evil, at least none derived from morals; instead, Nasu was driven by ethics, certainly not an exact fit with Kant's ideals but conceptually similar. Cheri would have to test him with the 'murderer at the door' thought experiment later.

Ah, right, terraforming. Much cooler than that ancient science of teraphorming. "As I'd said, there are many means of terraforming, from many ranges, operating via many sciences, working through various degrees of effectiveness over various timescales. Seed is but one means of many, a bio-android that had been created to not only restore Plant to its former ecological glory and restore its lost plants but also combat the Vegetans and saiba that would get in the way." Cheri was not suggesting that Seed would be used in terraforming Sadala back into habitability. They probably could be used, but that was a decision to make after a good bit more scientific inquiry, and they wouldn't be the only terraforming agent applied. Much of it could be done without ever having actually set foot on the planet itself, perhaps from orbit, shooting in various engineered extremophile bacterias to sustain off of chemical reactions making the atmosphere easier to breathe in after all those volcanoes messed it all up. Smokecatcher drones could be utilised to catch large areas of smog and toxic gases in the air, condense it into solid form and bury it deep underground as a sort of reverse fossil fuel emission. Flooding was usually caused by tidal disturbances and exacerbated by increasing sea levels; the former problem could be altered by moving moons in place, which a squad of Arcosians should be able to handle easily enough, and the problem of sea level itself could be fixed by restoring the planet's cooler temperature with some atmospheric manipulation to lessen the greenhouse effect. And after that, the storms and cyclones were usually more a symptom than a cause, a matter of pressure; solving enough of the other problems would likely reduce the frequency and potency of the storms alongside everything else. Quite a few of these, Cheri reckoned, something like a few Seeds could assist with, at least in terms of restoring the planet's original flora to try to get the changes to stick. And, after that was done, you'd need to make sure that whatever caused so sudden a change did not happen again. It sounded like a massive job, and it was, but one should never underestimate the power of focused ingenuity.

"All is well, Azoth." Well, she had imagined that the arcosian would be with them for a bit longer but, alas, the day was short and an hour spent lost was very long indeed. "I do imagine there would be a 'to-go' option— at least, there was one on Plant." But perhaps that was just a cultural thing. She didn't imaging Earthlings had all that much in the way of pressing matters: they had no war to be concerned with, they did not have to collectively stay busy to stand a chance of survival; their work was easy, their food was cheap and their free-time was plentiful. Would a people like that have the cultural need for a 'to-go' option at all?

In not too long at all, provided Cheri was followed, the three would find themselves in a splendidly cosy gelato store. Cheri would enjoy a nice strawberry gelato in a cup instead of the default option of a cone (Why, by the kais, would you ever ruin a delicious gelato with this... weird, hard, cone-shaped rock bread?) with one those chocolate flake stick things because, well, why not? She didn't even like strawberry all that much but, hey, branding.

It would be a nice evening.