Nothing comes to mind.

All right. See you later.

She teleports down to a storage cave - she needs to pick up some skins to cast portals on, anyway, but also. It's not the most ethical thing she could maybe do, but, she can reach him with her mage-sense from here. And she got a look at him before the oath, when she was casting on his hand - has anything changed?

No particular changes.

Hmh.

Maybe she was wrong after all? It's not actually impossible.

Anyway, back to Findekáno's tent.

Hello. Can I help you with scouting a place for us?

Mmhmm. She settles next to him. What I'm planning to do is make portals to places like we talked about, showing a view from the sky, and you can have a look as I go and let me know if I should be looking for anything different or if anything seems especially promising. I should probably start with places with the most iron, since that's hardest to tell any way but making the spell do it.

Are you still thinking places in this world? Because they're mostly going to be occupied, that's a much more important constraint.

I am, but I can specify that the local area has to be clear of people as part of the spell. It is possible to look for places in other worlds, too - Maitimo thinks that's the better idea, by the way - except I don't have any way at all to check if they're safe.

They could hardly be worse, could they?

That's what they said. I'm not that convinced but, shrug, I'm not going to be the one taking the risk, I'm not going to stop you.

Not that convinced because you have a sample of worlds worse than this? Arda is a really bad place to be while the Enemy's still at large.

This is the only world besides my own I've been to. But they're very different - the magic doesn't seem to be the same at all - and I think we should be assuming that other worlds are as different from either of them as they are from each other. And you won't know the differences until you run into them, that's never good.

You can't specify for similarity or something?

Not like that. Similar enough to have trees and hills and rivers and things, the same kinds of rocks if that helps, light, heat, water, that kind of thing, but I can't check anything to do with magic, and there could be something like Valar that doesn't show up as 'people' - I'm not actually sure the Valar themselves do.

Okay. I suppose somewhere far from here on Arda, if not populated, should do.

Nod. All right. It might take me a couple minutes to get the first one - uninhabited, lots of plants growing there already, warm climate, and then as much iron as I can find, right? Do you want a lake or anything?

I really doubt you'll find anything even with those constraints. But if you do, sure.

I mean, I can look. If there isn't anything like that the spell just fails, and then we know. I expect the first several to fail anyway because I'm asking for too much iron - I should probably try it without a lake first and then see how much you'd have to compromise on the iron to get one - I can always give you portals to places to mine later, anyway.

Great. Thank you.

All right. She scoots over. Don't touch me while I'm casting; the capacity transmits that way, and it's dangerous to learn to use, especially with teleportation magic.

He has a dozen other projects to check in on anyway.

Aw. Well, okay. Spellcasting.

..nope.

...nope.

...nope.

Okay, what if she...

Ah-ha. Okay.

Got anything?

There isn't anything at all with no people. I have a few places without many, though. She passes him the relevant skins.

Well, maybe they'll be pleased to have a hundred thousand neighbors. He sighs. Any way to tell how far these are from the Enemy?