Awww.

The emissary goes to Doriath. Kib gets the transcripts. It's beautiful. They are paranoid. The Maia Queen does not try anything. Her husband is vaguely suspicious of the Noldor, deeply grieved by Finwe's death, disinclined to participate in any offensives.

Well, can they have productive trade arrangements, servants for - what do they even have in Doriath?

They do a lot of dancing and singing and running through the trees. They'll take servants for defense. Maitimo asks if Kib'll be able to countermand those if he ends up not liking how they're being used.

Pets and golems yes, although the pets he'd have to countermand in person or through another person designated to the pet by Kib in advance, and the golems he can do through more of the same make using the same trick the storks have to communicate with each other. He can puppet-ify a shine and override its program, but only if he can catch it, and those suckers can go real fast. Automata, no.

"Then I think we offer them golems. The Dwarves I'd be happy to offer more than that."

"Because they're offering a better deal or sound like nicer people?"

"Both, do you disagree?"

"Not a bit; they sound lovely and could build a lot of their own chassis - possibly to the point where we should consider if it's worth risking me taking a trip instead of having to ship the things."

"If Doriath'll let you in. Or they'll tell us where their kingdom is and we can justify a trip all the way there, I guess."

"It's probably not worth it, it's just not obviously not worth it."

"I have some scouts headed farther east anyway, it's at least worth a look."

A week later the Enemy sends orcs to extend his offer of parley.

How are these orcs distinguished from regular orcs such that they can even get close enough to suggest it?

"Oh, we shot them, but they had a letter on them."

Nelyafinwe, King of the Noldor (congratulations!):

We understand your motive in undertaking this war to be protecting Endore's civilians from us. We bear them no particular animosity and much desire not to be at war with you; our grievance is with the Valar. We offer you the return of the human children in our custody and a year to evacuate the continent. You swear not to war against us again except should we act against you. Please name a location to discuss terms.

Do we even know for sure exactly how many human children we'd be expecting?

Nope. He could swear to it but that'd require somehow meeting face to face and being sure there weren't illusions going on.

Do we have a way to generate comparable illusions, see if golems see them? Does Tyelcormo know if animals do? Might be able to rig something up with shines for visual ones but not auditory...

Illusions shouldn't be complete enough they'd also fool, say, a bat, I'll ask Tyelcormo. Macalaure can do illusions, do you have seeing golems handy? 

Most of the models we've been churning out can see. He can make it look like something's attacking me and we can see if my war golem bites it.

All right. I'm not sure we take this even if we can verify it - he's got some reason he thinks it's a good idea for him...

Yeah. But if we can't verify it, doesn't even bear thinking about.

Yep. I'll get Macalaure to try to scare some golems. 

Turns out the golems are unimpressed.

So then can we send some to hear an oath, and confirm for us whether it was spoken exactly as requested?

I wish I had the talking one made already. I should speed up on that. Should be able to make a modified courier design that can do that limited task, though.