"I see," Keltham says rather shakily.  "Well, no gods or afterlives in dath ilan, so we - try to understand enough Law that - we're governed by the same sort of Law that governs gods directly?  Which dath ilani short of high-ranked Keepers can't actually do, but even at levels short of that, there's a shadow of the Law whose connection to us shatters a little more each time it's betrayed, not just for us, but all across everywhere governed by math, which is understood by society to be a serious affair.  When people write novels about aliens attacking dath ilan and trying to kill all humans everywhere, the most common trope for why they'd do that is that they want our resources and don't otherwise care who's using them, but, if you want the aliens to have a sympathetic reason, the most common reason is that they're worried a human might break an oath again at some point."

"I see," Keltham says rather shakily.  "Well, no gods or afterlives in dath ilan, so we - try to understand enough Law that - we're governed by the same sort of Law that governs gods directly?  Which dath ilani short of high-ranked Keepers can't actually do, but even at levels short of that, there's a shadow of the Law whose connection to us shatters a little more each time it's betrayed, not just for us, but all across everywhere governed by math, which is understood by society to be a serious affair.  When people write novels about aliens attacking dath ilan and trying to kill all humans everywhere, the most common trope for why they'd do that is that they want our resources and don't otherwise care who's using them, but, if you want the aliens to have a sympathetic reason, the most common reason is that they're worried a human might break an oath again at some point, or spawn the kind of society that betrays the alien hypercivilization in the future."

"I see," Keltham says rather shakily.  "Well, no gods or afterlives in dath ilan, so we - try to understand enough Law that - we're governed by the same sort of Law that governs gods directly?  Which dath ilani short of high-ranked Keepers can't actually do, but even at levels short of that, there's a shadow of the Law whose connection to us shatters a little more each time it's betrayed, not just for us, but all across everywhere governed by math, which is understood by society to be a serious affair.  When people write novels about aliens attacking dath ilan and trying to kill all humans everywhere, the most common rationale for why they'd do that is that they want our resources and don't otherwise care who's using them, but, if you want the aliens to have a sympathetic reason, the most common reason is that they're worried a human might break an oath again at some point, or spawn the kind of society that betrays the alien hypercivilization in the future."