Yeah...maybe I can rig some--oh, hell, I haven't explained cannons yet.

Do tell.

She explains cannons.

Those sound very useful.

Yes. And not difficult to operate a number of them by magic.

Get some cannons on your walls.

Planning on it.

Ours, too, if it's convenient.

Absolutely. Do you know where to get--she rattles off a list of ingredients for gunpowder. I can get Odette to make the stuff if you don't but it's more convenient for everyone if you can make the stuff yourselves.

We can probably trade for it or mine for it.

Okay. I can probably get started on that now.

Thank you. As always let us know if you need anything.

Metal to work with, obviously.

I think I can scrounge some up.

Mining. Mining should probably go on the list of things I should work on doing or helping with by magic.

We have pretty established operations but yes, if that's something you could speed up it'd be useful. Or obviate by just creating more metal.

Wouldn't surprise me if magic could make it more efficient. I personally--well, I probably could make metal out of nothing, but it would be a profoundly inefficient use of my time and energy. I'll talk to Odette about it.

Or make more of it from an existing pile, or recycle scrap better, or extract it from lower-grade ores...there are a lot of potential places for magic applications.

Recycling scrap and extracting it from poorer ores are things it might well be worthwhile for me to do.

All right. Have you looked at a map of mining and shipping near Nevrast?

Mining, a bit, not in a lot of detail. Shipping no.

We import a lot from the Dwarves, when it's safe. Those routes are probably all inaccessible now. Here - and he gets some more books.

She will happily read more books salient to her situation. Why are the routes currently inaccessible, is it just because of the volcanoes?

The volcanoes and the spiders and Doriath collectively make the whole center of the continent a bad place to try to get through from one place to another.

Well, the spiders at least are less of an issue now. Although Doriath hasn't been nearly unhelpful enough to suggest encasing them in a transparent dome, even aside from all the other reasons that would be a terrible idea.