When you abandon markets as a way of solving problems you run into all kinds of trouble, and when you have powerful governing councils, powerful enough to coerce everyone into paying for large public works projects - well, she mentioned that she didn't like the Elf King, didn't she.

Yes. There's other cases, though, like her mama having to enforce laws like 'don't eat people' and fund projects like 'make everyone immortal'.

Fair enough, but Dwarves err very strongly on the 'no powerful governments' side. And private investment can solve immortality if there's a demand for it.

Anyway, funny they should mention her not liking the Elf king because she didn't like him and yet she does contain potentially war-ending information.

She must really dislike him because the Elves would pay spectacularly well for war-ending information.

Her concern is not remuneration, it's thinking this is not a guy who should be able to blow things up that effectively.

Fair enough. Men might constitute a market for ending the war? They make up most of the foot soldiers in it.

Elves could get the information from them pretty easily, is her impression, and: not a guy who should be able to blow things up that effectively.

Okay! They're interested in blowing things up for excavation and mining purposes, there'll probably be buyers here.

...okay, she can tell them about dynamite, but that's not really Angband-leveling stuff.

Her interlocutor does not anticipate a market for Angband-levelling stuff.

She'd give it away if she thought she could give it to somebody who'd level Angband and not be evil.

She can probably find someone who will level Angband in exchange for Angband-levelling stuff and the knowledge of how to build it, if the trade's that straightforward.

Level Angband and not share the knowledge around at any price, that's the sticking point.

Also probably doable, though that won't stop anyone from reverse-engineering it, if that's possible.

Not once it's exploded!

In that case it is his tentative expectation that she could find someone interested in building a Angband-levelling weapon and not telling anyone how to do it.

Like who?

She should probably put out an advertisement.

...okay, she'll do that then.

She gets lots of people interested in building Angband-levelling weapons.

...and not telling anybody how? That's important.

Yeah, definitely, they are all happy to be the only person who knows how to build them. A monopoly!

Selling the things would also be a problem.

...so just drop the one on Angband and then promise never to build them again? That is a much less appealing contract.