"Mithrim's in pretty bad shape. So's Ossiriand but I don't speak their language, and Cuivienen's tempting but probably less pressing."

"Tempting but less pressing why?"

"Tempting because it is the birthplace of our people and the ruins of buildings my grandfather made by hand before we had invented writing are there. Less pressing because it's on the far side of the continent and I don't think currently in the middle of a fight."

"Okay. Mithrim's Thindarin-speaking? I can have my computer crunch Ossiriand's language en route."

"Mithrim's Thindarin. We can leave in twenty minutes; I require that many to pick people."

"Anything specific I should do meanwhile or just catch up on more reading?"

"What're you reading? And that's as much as I had planned for here."

"Hopping around aimlessly between various information security hazard this-and-that looking for bursts of inspiration, pretty much."

"The system I've got for clearing our way through Angband's archives is that half the teams are sorted by era and half by person or administrative position. They read everything and escalate everything even of minor interest, to curators - one for every four readers - who read the same and send the most interesting fourth up again. The level before me sees about a hundred pages of content a day, and sends me - or sent me when I was down there, now they're sending it to Pityo - half that. Documents are titled 'Angband - level 1' and then a serial number for what I see down to 'Angband - level 9.' I've got people in parallel on each level whose job is summaries rather than specific document escalation. Theirs are titled 'overview - level 1' down to 'overview - level 9' and then a serial number. In case that's helpful."

"May as well have it on hand." Cam yanks a bunch of chips out of his computer, interpolates them into dust, and replaces them with more consolidated ones.

"Who wrote the parley note?"

"A Maia - is how I'm interpreting the fact that it wasn't Melkor and trying to conjure them got me nothing and trying to conjure their body got me this orc dude -" He displays pictures.

"Can you conjure that guy's complete writings?"

"Sure thing." Here we go.

Lots of content.  

"And aliens?" Maitimo says. "Are there aliens? I gave you a confidence and am now personally invested in the question."

"No aliens, I'm very disappointed. However, I can communicate with Hell - a bit slowly, no one is looking out particularly for letters from me - and might be able to get demons doing experiments on things if you can think of any experiments best offloaded to demons with the obvious communication bottleneck."

"I'll let you know if any come to mind. Any of the other experiments productive?"

"Some interesting failures on the FTL."

"That's something. Orcs are safe?"

"Yup. In a copy of their own house being introduced to the concept of video games."

"Nice. Do you think the Enemy didn't notice you orc-kidnapping or didn't care or couldn't have shot you down?"

"Any of the above is possible, though didn't care is least likely."

"Alright, I picked my people. A thousand. Can we go?"

"Sure."

Off to Mithrim, computer chugging along at the language they'll need at the next stop.

Mithrim's two major cities are both surrounded and besieged.