Dunno.

Okay. I'd rather let you guys figure out how you want this to work than decide for you; maybe the next thing I should do is talk to the pregnant people and see if they have any ideas about it.

Okay.

Do you know where they are?

Uh, I don't know any of them. I could tell people to mention that you want to meet them. Or the Eldar know. Also some people aren't sure.

Okay, I'll ask the Eldar. (Tyelkormo, can you do that please.) And I can probably figure it out for people who aren't sure, especially if you have some of the right kind of people who are sure they aren't and would let me look at them with my magic.

And he asks for and receives a list of pregnant and maybe-pregnant people, several thousand people long.

...yikes. Hopefully that's mostly maybe-pregnant people? I can check those in pretty big batches once I know what I'm looking for; you might be able to help, by now, too, if you want.

Yeah, sure. I think that's mostly maybies, but I'll ask -

he does -

about half and half. They're pretty sure the overwhelming majority of the women will have this happen to them within a year.

Grief. Okay. Humans definitely get pregnant easier than kobolds. Triage, then.

I can do the maybes in big batches - couple hundred an hour if we're really organized about it, maybe. That's probably important for morale, but not for much else; we should encourage them to try to figure out how to tell on their own, that should be pretty easy if they're paying attention.

The ones who're having the hardest pregnancies should be asked if they want to try the plants I know about. This is risky and they need to know that, but they're already at risk and this might help, too.

We'll need healers. Kobolds do sometimes die from something going wrong in a pregnancy; I bet humans can too, and other than a few very basic things, I don't know what to do about that. If there aren't any Eldar who can handle it we can try going to my world and finding the Speaker who knows about that stuff - I'm not sure how much it'll help, but it has to be better than nothing. And for the babies, too - I bet human babies are going to be a lot more fragile than Eldar ones. Some of them will probably die, too, people're going to need to be ready to handle that and not freak out too badly.

They'll need to be taught about taking care of babies. I haven't actually personally done that; I should probably check over whatever they're going to be taught to make sure there isn't anything specific to Eldar in there, but I don't think I should be doing the actual teaching, it's not a good use of my time. And - I really don't feel like Eldar should be talking to them about sex at all, and I definitely don't want to, but they do need to know what does and doesn't run the risk, at very least.

This's going to be pretty labor-intensive, I should probably ask the Ñolofinwëans for help. Are the people here going to be able to be polite about that, or do we need to be careful to keep people away from each other?

Well, all of that is utterly fucking awful. Do you want to tell them that some of them are going to die of the babies they don't even want and didn't know could possibly happen to them because I do not want to tell them that. What a fucking evil species design.

Sigh. I literally can't, but we can find someone else to do it - we need to find healers for them anyway, they're probably the best bet for being prepared for that.

We'll tell all our healers to be ready, but that doesn't happen with the Eldar either so they can't necessarily do too much.

Yeah. Worth trying for that Speaker; I'm not sure they'll talk to us, but we should at least go see.

Food and the sex talk are the very first things that need to happen - even a little bit of malnutrition makes pregnancies more dangerous and if we can avoid some of them that's important. I can go hunting for them soon, probably tomorrow, maybe this afternoon, and start going on a regular basis again, if that'll help.

He checks. They are making sure all the pregnant people get the foods they want, that's not a problem. And they've already told them not to have sex.

Yeah, I'm not sure that's going to work. Wouldn't for kobolds.

Even if it literally might kill you and will very likely result in bringing an unwanted person you're not prepared to care for into the world?

Yup. Hopefully not having a heat cycle helps with that, but we don't actually need to take the risk, we can just give them more detailed information than 'no sex at all'.

You mean tell them to all try being gay? Guess we should do that.

The face she makes at this is probably tremendously entertaining.

Hopefully we won't have to be that explicit; I was thinking more 'only this specific act is risky like that, keep it to other stuff'.

Oh, that I'm pretty sure they said, lemme check -

 - yep - 

- it's the same one that results in marriage for the Eldar, though you're not supposed to otherwise fool around lest you get carried away.

I would be pretty surprised if that varied, yeah. Some people aren't interested enough in people who're the same type for that advice to do more than slow them down, but slowing them down might be all we need, here; worth a try. Also some people're more flexible romantically and can make it work that way, might be worth mentioning.

I would be delighted to make an announcement.

Hey, so you know, he tells all the humans, it's a man and a woman that has this problem; if the men fuck men and the women fuck women you're all set. So you know.

The kobold covers her nose with her hand and closes her eyes for a moment. You are delightfully straightforward, Tyelkormo, she says tonelessly.

The Valar already told us we're evil, I don't see why not to be, at this point.