"I do not want to try storming Angband again until we're very sure of a victory. I think Maitimo feels similarly. Could still somehow be a useful combination."

"What I'm not sure how to do is make sure that a captured golem's instructions can't be read."

"Does it have to be in any particular language?"

"No. ...It doesn't even have to be all in one language."

"And can it be ciphered?"

"That I don't know, but I can test with something simple."

"I can get you a procedure that gets instructions unreadable and maybe one that they'd be able to interpret but most possible interpretations of which are wrong and maybe one that they could get right at the cost of a ridiculous amount of engineer time, at which point we can send golems with unimportant instructions in that type at them and hope to waste some." 

"I can try minimal golems in all the ciphers in case only some of them still work," nods Kib.

"I doubt they'd be stupid enough to awaken anything they can't read to see what it does but if they are that stupid, something that does impressive projectile weapons when awakened and given a specific set of instructions within the first minute, and explodes killing everything in its vicinity otherwise?"

"I'm not actually sure how to make a golem that explodes. Not exactly a points-of-articulation question."

"Internal gunpowder - you're going to need it anyway, for the projectile-weaponing - all the golem'd have to do is light a spark and be made of shrapnel. Several members of my family find designing horrifically deadly things to be soothing under the circumstances. And the Dwarves had gunpowder and have been happy to trade for automata."

"I can do one that lights a spark. One that does so on awakening only given specific orders is tricky - ones that understand spoken orders generally do so pretty generally - it'd be easier to do with some other trigger, but either way it's possible."

He waves a hand. "Details are yours, the languages and then something that can hurt greater Maiar are obviously more of mine. The Enemy has yet to do anything really interesting with servantmaking; it is a known shortcoming of the Valar, not being very adaptable..."

"Yeah, I noticed that, wasn't sure if I should assume it was a stable state."

"I expect it'll change, but it's been under two Years. The Valar proper just thought to copy your world's lighting. It might not change for a while yet."

Kib nods, and writes down the projects, and says, "Well. Good skill."

"Yep." He looks very tired.

Kib's pretty tired too, and has presumably been sleeping more. Sigh.

The Enemy tries something with servantmaking. Little grinding automata that aren't very impressive except for being indestructible. 

Well, if their instructions can be popped out they can be stopped (reused, even), and if they can't they can maybe just be turned around by golems armed with sticks.

They can turn them around! If they can grab one to figure out how the Enemy's doing indestructibility, it might help on the 'hurt Thauron' project. 

The next batch fly. Slowly and excruciatingly clumsily, though.

This is sufficiently unimpressive that Kib wonders if they're being lulled into a false sense of security. The Enemy could have grabbed a stork or a courier while he was fucking around with the human world, copied the chassis, gotten something that flew well.

"Yep. Not sure what 'avoiding being lulled into a false sense of security' looks like, though. We're not going out on any more hunts for the newly arrived species..."

Kib shivers. "Yeah."

"How long would it take the Enemy to animate a mountain, once the idea occurs to him - and he has my memories, so it has occurred to him -"