"Inconveniently, what she mostly wants is the right to control the vampire population's comings and goings as relate to a particular island, and I've already guaranteed her that. But she's not immune to interesting problems and may even have been off human blood long enough to ever be motivated by charitable impulses."

"demon-supplied blood wouldn't solve your ethical sourcing problems, then?"

"It'd solve the sourcing, all right, but drinking human blood - haven't tested with offworld sapients; hybrids don't smell like food and wolves really don't smell like food - has undesirable psychological effects, including making it harder to resist continuing to do it in unethically-sourced circumstances and making it harder for us to live in groups larger than like three or four."

"Sensory stuff is the kind of thing our magic can do pretty trivially - might be able to get something that makes any liquid taste like human blood, if none of the problems stem from the taste..."

"We're not sure what causes it. Worth a try, at least with someone who's already had human blood. We're working on synthetics but they taste pretty awful."

"Added to the list!"

"I'll make sure you get the writeups of what we have so far."

(Elspeth tricked Evil Maitimo into making synthetic blood instead of a nuke. It was fucking hilarious.)

"Do you mind if we just have a demon steal them? Or more generally, is there content you'd prefer we be careful not to have a demon conjure?"

He thoroughly enjoys Elspeth's memory. "You know, I almost want to give him a little bit of credit - when he realized he was going to have to give up Findekano to get the weapons to stop the Enemy, he was sad that it was going to be necessary to do that, he did not even think about whether it was worth it."

"We've all got eidetic memories. We usually don't write down a whole lot unless we happen to be communicating by text over long distances," Golden says. "What I meant was I will have someone write it down for you. I assume you're appropriately conscientious about people's personal notes and such; there are no confidential Imperial documents to worry about."

He did kind of try to weasel out of it but yeah.

"I'd have been very surprised if he didn't. Given."

Well, he got his nuke. Didn't really help but he got it. And then he pulled that ridiculous emotional blackmail stunt.

"I don't think the blackmail was primarily emotional, but yes."

Political blackmail, then. Poor Findekáno.

"I considered talking to him. I would need to do it to know whether it was a catastrophically bad idea or not."

Maybe the Space Findekáno who whisked him off somewhere would have a hint. It was Delight.

"It's - I am actually less concerned about him - I will know, pretty much as soon as we interact, exactly what my counterpart was trying to elicit, and if my counterpart turns out to have more in common with Thauron than general attitude towards ethics then I will probably have a breakdown and I get the sense that'd make him nervous."

"Do you want me to go talk to him while you stand within osanwë range or will it only work if it's you?"

"If you sent me all your past interactions that ought to be sufficient, actually."

Here they are at Elf-safe speed.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Yeah, it's kind of upsetting. ...She's right that he's probably not an Evil Findekáno under all the mistreatment, right? Are Findekános usually nicer than that?