Something like that, and keep working on the plan to teleport them to an empty world until we come up with something better. Getting spell forms over osanwë makes someone a mage, though, so we'll need to wait until some decisions have been made about how that's going to be decided before we can do much of it.

How what's gonna be decided?

Who gets to learn magic. Findekáno seemed like a pretty obvious choice, but not everyone is going to be so straightforward.

Seems like pretty much everyone's safer if they can do magic, but you mentioned it's risky, so - everyone who wants to take the risk - or is it also time-consuming, then maybe it should be a specialty like metalworking...

Being a mage doesn't actually protect you much at all from other mages; having the ability to teleport to three or four different places is almost as good and still not very good. Plus we have to worry about what happens if the Enemy captures a mage with any kind of useful spell form.

So a specialty. Do mages benefit from working together, can they learn and practice new things and improve more quickly with other mages around...

Spell design would benefit from that, and it's a pretty big deal. The other parts of being a mage don't really. And talking to non-mages can help with spell design, too, just not as well since they won't really know how the magic works.

So maybe teams of five or so mages? So people don't lose too much time - there's so much to do - but they can help each other with spell design?

Sure. But then how do you decide who gets to be a mage in the first place, that's the real problem.

What skills do you need to be a good mage?

Depends on how you're going to be using the magic; I get a lot out of having a really good memory, but if I didn't I could work around that petty easily. Creativity, being good at thinking up new solutions to problems, being good at noticing patterns? That's not the main thing I'd worry about, though; being a mage with a dangerous spell form - and most of them are dangerous - is like walking around with a weapon all the time; I'm sure there're people you'd rather not let do that.

We tried to leave the people we wouldn't trust with a weapon in Valinor, and it ended up making everything worse than if we'd just brought them along.

She sighs. And I'm not sure giving everyone who wants it magic doesn't just make things worse again.

I dunno. I should probably stay out of it. Let's go get those spells cast?

Staying out of politics is how I stay sane. Yeah, let's.

And off they go.

I don't actually mind politics, I'm just used to it being a lot smaller. Kobolds live in tiny little tribes, compared to Eldar, and don't really interact with outsiders much.

Sounds nice.

I liked it, yeah. I don't really know what I'm comparing it to here, though.

I didn't live in the city, I mostly travelled with Huan, made friends along the way. Not with people, I find them complicated. 

Her ears flick back at the mention of Huan, and then she looks confused. Oh?

I can communicate with animals. So I usually do that. This is the longest I've spent being around people, because they need me.

That must be interesting, being able to do that.

I like it. I don't think most people'd want to.

I don't think I'd've made very good use of it, but I can think of three or four people back in my old tribe who would've been thrilled.

What's it like?

You just kind of - instead of sending words, like I'm doing now, send experiences you expect to have in common, get a feel for how they structure their thoughts and experiences. Takes a lot of listening.

A little like being a Speaker, then, she smiles.