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is there anything you wouldn't do
Aurum peals
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It's hours later when Loki and Cam bring Bella, Elspeth, and Jake to Vanda Nossëo and make it known to whom it may concern that they're here, news is available about the newest Arda and its adjacent world-with-a-Bell-in-it, and someone needs to relay Elspeth the spell symbols because Golden can't let mind-affecting powers including osanwë through her shield unless she trusts whoever is using them. And Elspeth wants to know if the non-evil Maitimo who was so upset is okay now.

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He isn't. But he's an excellent liar. He pops over to greet them. 

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"I'm sorry I sprung that on you, I should have tapped one of the others," Loki says.

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"Unfortunately there's other bad news too!" Namely the thing where the Enemy there was just chased out and not actually dead because of the mishap with finding deadman's switches.

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"Well. I guess if we kill them instantly we risk a deadman's switch and if we don't we risk an escape. And it could take a long time to find him worldleaping. Ugh." And to Loki, "Don't apologize, I am just glad it was discovered quickly. I nearly murdered him and then I suppose it might have been a problem but I successfully refrained! For a decade. Once it's not going to be politically disruptive I still strongly favor causing him to stop existing."

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"Which prompts the question of what to do with the dead Elves from that world, because it seems likely to be a systemic cultural or even inherent - thing - rather than a one-off. An evil you is one thing, an evil one of your dad, say... The orcs I just asked the Elentári orcs if they wanted some dubious neighbors and they were happy to give it a try, so I shuffled them all onto the orc planet to Aetherize 'em, but..."

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"An evil one of my dad seems likely to be a lot less strategic and responsive to incentives than an evil me, yeah. Murdering all of them seems a bit much.

 

You also can't, just, put a version of my father on a low-tech planet and trust he'll never find a way to get out anyway... do we have any ideas?"

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"Elspeth reasonable-ized the Valar, so it's possible we could just solicit information on possible problem cases from Mandos. Sketchy, but, he already has it..."

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(Elspeth would like to reasonable-ize more Valar. It seems like a worthwhile use of her time.)

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"Reasonable Valar sound lovely. Maybe we can find an Arda from before the whole mess started, reasonablize them, Melkor never gets paroled..."

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"Optimistically that might not even require reasonable-izing them, since we have information about what happens when he does get paroled, but Elspeth relaying the facts certainly wouldn't hurt."

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"I don't mean to sidetrack the conversation but if you have Loki's spellsymbol concepts and could bounce them to Elspeth I could get on reading the spells."

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"My pleasure." He does that. 

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"Thank you," Bella says, and she starts paging rapidly through the book Loki illusioned for her.

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"Do we have alts in the shadow vampire world, has anyone checked?"

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"Out of Tesseract jurisdiction, but nobody recognizes the faces and Cam didn't turn up any local writing by any of you."

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"The shadow vampire world? Are there other vampires we are being distinguished from?"

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"Thuringwethil's technically a vampire? Dunno if she really counts. She's not as pretty as you or I'd have had a harder time keeping Loki off her."

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"That was not a meaningful consideration!"

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"You didn't tell me this story!"

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"Thuringwethils are Maiar who are apparently technically vampires. And incompetently hit on us given the chance."

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"And Loki spent decades in Arda - subjectively I think it was over a century - among Elves, who are I understand it not quite as hypermonogamous as vampires but enough so that they were lonely decades."

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"Loki may actually be off-model in how bothersome that was. Not that Bella isn't unusual the other direction."

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"Yes, yes. I even have an explanation for that."

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"Oh?"

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"It was socially acceptable. It was the only thing I had innate interest in that was also that. None of the others were suffering from a lack of this intersection."

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"I think I'd have much less interest in sex if it were socially acceptable. We'll have to wait and see if we find alts of me in more permissive worlds."

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"Well, alts do keep turning up. I wish there were a systematic way to see if people have alts besides checking manually for specific individuals, we could see if it correlated with anything."

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"It seems to obviously correlate with interestingness, unless we're thinking there are lots of people out there who are boring as are all their alts."

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"Well, if there were, we wouldn't know. There could be a dozen of some terribly dull personality we will never run into and therefore never seek more of."

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"Actually, my Earth matches Cam's in many respects so closely that I suspect it must have a lot of duplicate boring people just to make everything line up neatly."

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"These Noldor have a few hundred citizens who have alts on space Arda, all of them exact duplicates rather than the 'same personality, different background' situation Bells have. I have a few dozen who have alts in Marlatia. I haven't checked the evil planet yet because I do not think I'm emotionally equipped for that and I am certainly not equipped to run through mental impressions of everyone we respectively know with. Him."

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"Cam and I might as well have been exact duplicates as far as we were concerned in all respects not directly connected to gender - ignorant as we were of our respective supernaturals - up until we were seventeen," Bella says. "At which point the old mansion outside of Forks contained books on summoning for him and a family of vampires for me. It's the same house."

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"That's weird."

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"Yep. But my family of vampires - and everyone else Cam looked up - have no alts in Revelation, Limbo or a daeva world, so they somehow managed not to have been born in Revelation without their presence or absence affecting anything in the life of a middle class American between the years of 1987 and 2004."

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"I'm missing all the childhood stuff, and it's not just not being from an Earth, in translation Iobel's birthplace has a suspiciously similar name to the town Cam and Bella are from."

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"So you seem to come in various genders, backstories, and families, and we seem to come in 'space' and 'not'. And 'rapist'."

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"...similarly to not wanting to meet an evil Fëanor I do not want to meet an evil Bell."

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"That was among the first things to cross my mind, yeah."

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"We'll check new alts over a bit before going full speed ahead."

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"Oh, is that what you were doing."

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"Hey, you thought I might be maliciously impersonating you with witchcraft."

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"Yes, yes."

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"If the Valar hadn't happened to mention it I think the evil version of me could have leveraged the trust the non-evil versions earned a long way - certainly into getting free will and getting his father back - and if he pieced together at that point that we weren't all like him he might have been able to manage it a while longer."

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"I don't think it crossed his mind that you might not be."

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"I don't care if this makes me a little bit more like him, when the country's safe he dies."

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"What if his Findekáno objects even with time to decompress?"

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He buries his head in his hands. "I could persuade his Findekáno not to object but I suppose that's a very very bad idea."

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The Findekáno in question may have been persuaded of too many things.

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"Yeah. I - just - do not want to live in a multiverse with him in it, it's as bad as knowing there are still Thaurons about."

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"You know what would be really trippy, would be a good Thauron."

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"According to Thuringwethil he used to be nice enough but I'm not sure her opinion is worth the paper I didn't bother printing it on."

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"Problem with checking whether the Enemy's still evil is that apparently, given warning, he can run away."

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"I might be able to hold him given the knowledge that I knew I had to be doing that - in Edda-adjacent worlds, anyway - but I'm not positive - may depend on how exactly it is they moved and I don't know if even a reasonable-ized Vala would want me to perform the experiment -"

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"If they were inclined to help with that I'd start worrying Elspeth did mind-control. Maybe Aule."

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"Yeah, maybe a reasonable-ized Aulë."

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"I don't do mind control unless I'm pretty much hitting somebody hard enough to kill them."

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"If I thought you did I'd be having much more trouble pretending to be sociable right now."

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"I take a pretty dim view of mind control. There's a couple witches who manipulate emotions left alive - one of them can't turn it off but she's got a pretty sharp range limit, other one uses it to wrangle newborn vampires because they're pretty out of control and dangerous."

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"It was a favored tactic of the Enemy. He can't directly control minds but he can coerce oaths or he can tamper with memories at will and then run you through scenarios until he gets a result he likes, and it often came out to nearly the same."

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"Yes, I've received the summary of who this template is and why we do not approve of him. Witches occasionally can directly control minds. Chelsea at least is dead."

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(Helpful mental footnotes.)

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"...good."

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"Yeah, I hope she's not a recurring theme."

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"Cam checked?"

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"Yeah. None in worlds extant."

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"Loki, can your magic do invulnerability to mind control? If we're going to be wading unsuspectingly into dimensions where some people have it casually - it would be a disaster if something got you - I've asked my father also, obviously -"

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"I could rig something up - spellbinders will have something faster if they can have anything at all, though."

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"I can extend my shield. It's not effortlessly sustainable, but it's doable for scouting intervals with people I like."

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"I think my father's pretty close to unbounded working memory for the Marlatians, so perhaps that can be a stopgap until they're omnipotent six times a day."

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"If only the Tesseract would cheer up it could assess people for potential to get along with the Mind Stone but I have no idea how long it's going to take it to get over the existence of locations it can't reach."

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"We can always try it with space Elves on distant asteroids."

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"This does still have failure modes."

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"Such as?"

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"It's the Mind Stone. It could easily choose an expression of displeasure that was not destroying the rock its handler stood on. I'm not even positive it couldn't backpropagate effects to other forks of the same person."

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"So we find a space Arda that's out of neighborhood, or send forks out of neighborhood."

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"Yeah, maybe. But it could be very hard to detect some classes of failure if it felt like being subtle. The Mind Stone is, itself, entirely capable of mind control."

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"I wasn't volunteering. But if we ever urgently have need of it it seems useful to have a method for finding a handler in advance."

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"Fair enough. The same method would work for finding someone who could handle any of the others, though, and except Soul they'd probably all go for nonsubtle destruction, and some of them can work a little sideways - the Aether is not really designed for free-will-related applications."

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"Didn't think so. Maybe I'll ask my Space counterpart to assemble some people who the stones might like, whose forks can be temporarily put in Revelation or something, and who we'd trust wielding one if it happened to be a good match."

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"We also still don't know if they beat daeva indestructibility. Should really get around to testing that."

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"Are we expecting that if the Tesseract can't pull your wings off then the mind stone can't tamper with your head?"

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"No, but we are expecting that if the Tesseract can pull my wings off then the mind stone can tamper with my head."

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"I will eagerly await the outcome of that experiment, then.

...if summoners from a non-adjacent world die in a world adjacent to the daeva realms, do they get your afterlife, has anyone checked?"

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"I think that old guy from Hex is still hanging on."

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"Ah, well. It'd be a bit of a difficult decision."

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"What would?"

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"...whether to head over there, draw a circle, and kill myself immediately?"

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"...ah."

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"Elentári is by known routes three steps from the daeva worlds, and Hex two. Possible we should have more experiments set up."

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"Yeah, if it fails to work I don't fancy explaining myself even to an Elspethed version of Mandos."

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"Do we even know yet if Elf souls get to their respective Mandoses from adjacent worlds?"

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"They don't have a way automatically, but they also don't stop existing. It was one of the first things I checked. After a lot of communication with Valinor Mandos agreed to make a way for them.....it'd be lovely if Cam could do the body and a soul could grab it and start functioning, but I don't think that'd work. Two-adjacent and you're currently just stranded, though I am not sure my soul wouldn't have my indelible teleport."

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"If people want basement-dwellers of themselves lying around in case of emergency science, I can do that."

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"I don't know about space Elves but our kind shouldn't be able to exist very long as a body without a soul. People who die of grief abandon theirs and the body crumbles to dust. I can try getting in touch with you next time someone dies, if they don't want to deal with Mandos."

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"Space Elves can actually basement-dwell for a while."

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"That's interesting. They still die of grief or imprisonment, so it's not that - 

 - speaking of which, do evil Arda's Elves not die of imprisonment, how did my alt manage -"

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"He was let out sometimes, just there were oaths involved."

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"...one really shouldn't ask questions around Elspeth if one doesn't want the answers."

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"I wanted the answer, it was just appalling even having adjusted my expectations. I - I actually expect I could get away with most of what he did, if I were evil and had decided to set myself to that. But coercing people into oaths, no. There are people who'd probably go massacre a village of civilians on my command - who did, during the war - who would kill me if I tried ordering someone to give me a mind-affecting oath."

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"I'm not actually sure that part was widely known, at least until I went around spraying it everywhere, but even then people were mostly just vaguely uncomfortable around me..."

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"Thank you. For doing what you could about it."

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"You're welcome." Also she punched evil Maitimo in the face, perhaps nonevil Maitimo will find this vicariously satisfying.

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Very much so. His actual real first instinct was to teleport him all the way to Revelation and leave him in bits across its cosmos, see if there's a non-Tesseract way to get instances of him to stop existing that way, but then he remembered to be responsible. Still. Good on Elspeth. He sends all of this.

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Evil Maitimo also finds it continually frustrating that Elspeth doesn't like him!

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"I understand why - you're very likable, and he obviously considered it a very minor flaw that people could do him the courtesy of looking past..."

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"It's interesting missing half this conversation. Well, not quite half, I can sort of read a gist..."

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"She does this with Edward too, and Addy sometimes, Elspeth gets along very well with mindreaders - she's sort of both parental powers backwards."

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"She punched him in the face! It's not quite as good as erasing him from the multiverse but it's something."

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"She mentioned that. Came home right when we expected her - I have a witch on staff whose power is knowing the right time for things, and he apparently has more interworld stretch than Alice's prophecies because he was able to finagle a return date. Or I don't know what Jake would have done."

"Yes you do," says Jake, who hasn't taken his eyes off Elspeth since they arrived.

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"I assume Loki and Cam already got to all the useful magic-sharing from Ardas? Loki's got most of our songs, sounds like you've got the memory and plausibly the senses..."

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"Vampires can't see infrared, but we do see ultraviolet and based on what Elspeth picked up the acuity's comparable, maybe less distance but better peripheral. Hearing's a little better, smell's a lot better, processing of all of the above is better. I actually want to try turning spellbinders unless a working memory solution is right around the corner and it doesn't appeal to any of them on its merits. And yes, there's now illusions singing to the blood berry bushes where previously I had to have actual people doing that all the time - Elspeth came home with a bunch of songs, Loki supplied a couple more, it'll be more useful once I've read through all her spells and can do my own illusions of them."

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"Lovely. You might want to try on Cam's mindless bodies whether turning works on Elves, though I'm not sure it'd appeal, the main draw on Marlatia will be the immortality. Or - Cam, if you make a vampire body around a chip -"

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"I'd want to try that only under more controlled circumstances. I am told that basement dwellers can move around some, vampires are very good at moving around, and, well, the desire to bite people is much more instinct than reasoned intellectual process."

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"Fair enough. If Elves can be vampires I wonder if our command of our bodies helps at all with the drawbacks. I don't think any of me'd try it but I know some people who'd be interested if it's established to work."

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"It might! I would prefer to try it on an interested Space fork first, and that only after testing on basement dwellers, but personally I like being a vampire even with the drawbacks. Oh - Elspeth mentioned to the Macalaurë in, what are we calling it, Evil Arda, that we could use a painkiller song. Currently that's a huge bottleneck on turning. Presumably we cannot expect to prevail on Evil Arda for favors like that, but..."

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"Luthien's got sleep, does that not work?"

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"We kind of really can't sleep."

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"Can't be made unconscious by magic? Huh. I will add it to the list of projects - if you don't mind my asking, how many people affected by getting it to you a week sooner, it affects our prioritization..."

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"The waiting list isn't astronomical, but we could relax some of the requirements for even getting on the waiting list if our anaesthesia options weren't 'do without, scream for three days' or 'exactly one witch, or Addy can take a shift but that exact one witch still has to be available in case the wrong person brushes against her'. Whereas vampires are quite competent singers and there are lots of vampires. It is still more like hundreds than like millions, for the week sooner question, though."

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"Thank you! It's been added."

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"Thanks!"

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"You should probably give the song a go just in case, too. It works on Valar, and they don't sleep either."

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"Sure. It wasn't among the songs Elspeth brought home, but some people miss sleeping." She doesn't seem to be one of these people.

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It would be nice if that worked. Turning is no fun.

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He looks at her.  Raises an eyebrow, seems to be on the verge of saying something, decides not to say it.

 

 

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If he, like, really wants to make the comparison, they could do that, but it doesn't seem productive. Suffice it to say that turning is sufficiently not fun that people should not have to do it unanaesthetized just to be vampires.

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"As I said, it's on the list."

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"Apart from reasonableizing Valar and mind-shielding, it's possible a couple things from my world, which I have decided to call Aurum, might be useful and nonredundant. Nathan, the timer witch, seems able to time things across worlds at a range that at least equals demon informational conjuration, and while his power is very narrow it can be leveraged quite incredibly if you know how. Alice can't see things outside Aurum, even when she tried leaving it, but she can see people who are not from Aurum, therein, and dangerous experiments that could be located there she'll be able to look ahead at the results. Siobhan's witchcraft is making plans which work; she doesn't actually work for me, but might be convinced on her own recognizance to participate in occasional this-and-that. I have a communicative telepath with unlimited spatial range, who's willing to be stationed outside Aurum if that's ever useful. Eleazar detects witches and can get extremely grainy information on out of universe magic too. Pera's power hasn't been tested out of Aurum yet, but she can shunt people and objects into a sort of background reality - it's complicated, Elspeth can explain it -"

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Elspeth explains it.

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"- and there's my husband's power, which I'm circumspect about it but it's one-mile surface thought reading that doesn't respect a privacy distinction like yours does. And there's one of my bodyguards, a half-vampire whose power is to seem really unimportant; you'll be able to pay attention to me talking about her because you haven't seen her doing that, but if you ever meet her you'll only be able to consider her important enough to think about when she happens not to be using the power and it's on by default. Loki and Cam were fortunate enough to show up on her day off."

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"All of those are useful to keep in mind. Most of what we're doing is very boring things like industrial production of Elven goodies to sell the galaxy to pay xenomedical teams to treat diseases on planets that aren't at that tech level yet, and occasional coups which I don't think we could relocate and terraforming places with the Valian ecosystem. Do you know if only humans are witches, do you know if humans on other worlds could be witches, do you know if someone's alt will be a witch given that they are..."

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"All the sapients native to Aurum can be witches. Hybrids and wolves have to be born with it, humans are sometimes witches while human but turning can bring out a witchcraft that was not present before. I was a witch as a human, so clearly alts are not guaranteed identical witchcraft, but it might be that if Iobel turned she'd match; I can have Alice check."

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"And are there plausible avenues to bribe Siobhan for help planning complicated things?"

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"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."

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

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"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."

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"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..."

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"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."

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"Added to the list!"

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

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

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"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."

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"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."

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

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

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

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

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Political blackmail, then. Poor Findekáno.

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

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

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"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."

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

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

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Here they are at Elf-safe speed.

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"Thanks."

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"You're welcome."

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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?

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"Not evil, no. If he were that strategy wouldn't have worked - most of them are less nice, but in the sense of 'being used to having avenues to get things they want other than having it amuse me to grant them'."

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Oh.

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"Did no one notice that was what was going on."

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Aredhel was the one who told Elspeth. She knew it was fucked up. Most people knew that the king's consort was not being kept in consort-standard conditions - Findekáno went around with short hair, hard to miss - but there was some amount of possibly willful ignorance about how much.

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"He cut. his. hair."

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"I put it back."

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"Thank you."

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"You're welcome."

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The hair thing is weird. Elspeth wears hers long and braided by complete coincidence. The Elves were alarmed when she had to cut it.

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"I think to humans and probably vampires it does not feel the same. I'll send a memory if you're actually curious. I - cutting someone's hair without their permission is just a particularly sexual way of mutilating them. And for no reason, I don't even find short hair exceptionally appealing."

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Well, she is sort of curious but it seems likely to be the sort of memory that is personal and insert standard disclaimers about putting things in Elspeth's brain if you don't want them scattered hither and yon.

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"The Enemy already had all my memories, it makes me incautious about sharing them now." He sends something. It's selected to just be some fully-dressed, no-time-for-more hairpetting.

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"Yeah, that's different. Vampires have really amped-up tactile senses in general but nothing scalp-specific."

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"I assumed it had to be different for everyone else as soon as I met anybody else. You can tell versions of your mother that touching an Elf's hair is like kissing the back of their neck."

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...Elspeth has some practice aggressively NOT REMEMBERING her parents' honeymoon.

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(Golden has some practice holding perfectly unbreathingly still and not doing anything that would dredge up more of this memory when Elspeth makes that face.)

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(Loki just snickers.)

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Poor Elspeth. "If you actually want the memories removed, the Valar do that."

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"That might be nice."

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"Can they be very. Very. Selective?"

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"The Enemy once made me forget the names of everyone I knew, just the names. Not trusting them is reasonable but it's definitely in their abilities to be exceptionally selective."

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Wow. ...okay, so maybe next time she reasonable-izes some Valar she will mention this.

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"I assume if Mandos can save people you blast he'll do it by wiping all the memories they were blasted with and then trying to feed them back their own lives."

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"Do the Flat Arda ones keep running backups like that?"

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"Not backups, no. He doesn't have anything until a soul enters his custody. But he can read all your memories including erased or tampered ones. I would have considered asking his aid after the war if my father didn't have the retroactive eidetic memory necklaces. The majority of the survivors of Angband prefer not to remember it - if that weren't true I wouldn't have told space Arda they'd better not even think about rescue sims..."

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"I do hope he can fix them. Especially the mercy-kill."

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"I am going to kill my alt."

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Yes, he's said that, and then she said the Findekáno might object and then he said he could persuade him but this might not be a good idea, remember?

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"One-track mind, I guess. Though I'm leaning toward it being a good idea to talk to him, after someone else mentions to him incidentally that I have so much sexual trauma if hit on I will have a panic attack."

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"I'll warn him for you if you like."

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"More because I want him to know it's off the table and that's not because I find a fault in him than because it'd actually be a problem; I have wholly internal panic attacks."

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...that still seems kind of problem-ish to Elspeth but she can also convey this clarification if he likes.

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"But it's my problem, and I shouldn't like to make it his. Thank you."

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"You're welcome. Where are they?"

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He sends it.

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Elspeth bounces it to Loki, who shuffles her along since not even the vampire has read the entire teleportation spell yet.

Hi Findekános?

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They got him a nice room and an eidetic memory necklace and Delight is teaching him how to use a computer.

"Hello, Elspeth," Findekano says.

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"Hi!" Elentári Maitimo is not evil (she likes him! he is nice) and would like to talk but Evil Arda Findekáno definitely definitely shouldn't hit on him for reasons.

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"...okay." He is not sure what else Elentári Maitimo wants with him, and sends this.

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Well, she's not sure exactly, but presumably he thinks the interaction would benefit Findekáno in some way at least more than going and murdering his alt would.

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"Is he considering doing that?"

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He's thinking about it pretty intensely! He is upset about the evilness of Evil Maitimo. He does not plan on doing it in at least the next ten years though.

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"Please have him come and talk to me." Though he doesn't have any idea how to talk Maitimo down from murder without - maybe the new Maitimo just means that he prefers to initiate - 

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Well, he certainly didn't intimate that via Elspeth, who thinks he probably is eliding over a list of hangups a mile long that even alts of his husband are not going to be equipped to navigate. She goes and bounces the content of this interaction to Elentári Maitimo.

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"Thank you."

 

And he pops out. "Delight, can you give us a minute -"

"No."

"Okay," he says, "fair enough." Findekáno?

Yes?

I asked Elspeth to bounce me all her memories of you so I could figure out what's going on, and I think I've got it, and I want to run my understanding by you. So, you have gotten ridiculously good at the skill of 'effecting your goals in the world through Maitimo'. And not much else. And so even though it'd be deeply unhealthy for you to date any of us, it's also probably not particularly helpful for you to hear 'we won't give you any avenue to do things that anyone else couldn't do just as well'. And even though that was the opposite of anybody's intent it probably leaves you feeling powerless. Is that pretty much the picture?

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Yes, he says warily. Why do you think it would be unhealthy for us to date?

...um, me particularly because it took my husband and I a decade to get to the point where we could and going through that with someone who didn't love me sounds terrible. Versions of me in general because if you didn't feel like it one night would you say no.

I asked Maitimo to leave me be, sometimes.

Maitimo does not flinch at all. And if they wanted your hair short -

- I'd try to figure out how badly they wanted that and how to get something I wanted.

What sort of things did you usually want?

More compassionate policy, better laws, more personal freedoms - 

Maitimo nods slowly. So here, where we mostly agree with you about policy and will not refuse you any personal freedoms -

He wouldn't have leverage to get me to cut my hair. Unless it occurred to him to become eviller for more bargaining power with me, is that what you're worried about?

No. None of us would do that. I just am having trouble envisioning a relationship where you and your boyfriend had the same power and same goals in the first place.

You're right. I'm specialized for my Maitimo and should just go back to him.

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If that happens everyone is going to decide that he can't be permitted to live without hurting other people and then we'll kill him.

 

Well, Findekáno says, in that case I know what I want to use my leverage for. 


You want to win over one of us to the cause of keeping your rapist happy? By trading us sexual favors? You do realize that trading us sexual favors will not make us more charitably inclined toward your rapist?

 

I'm not you, can't find the best angle on people the minute I meet them, but I bet I could figure it out.

 

The way my Findekáno helps me is by bailing me out when I'm occasionally stupid and loving me unconditionally and not being seduceable into mistakes by his love for me.

 

I don't think I'm seduceable into mistakes and I will definitely rescue you from being stupid and I would need to have oaths back but -

 

-that is very much not an acceptable outcome, no.

 

What is an acceptable outcome.

 

You stay here and I use you for projects, since that's what you're used to, and introduce you to non-me pretty boys if you're sexually frustrated, and you know that I'll protect you just as fiercely as my evil alt would have, and you avoid distressing anyone by speaking the way he apparently likes you to speak -

 

-you don't like it?

 

If it were a voluntary kink thing in the right context - my husband, for my birthday, biting his lip to refrain from bursting into laughter the whole time - I would be fantastically aroused. From you it is disturbing. 

 

So it's not that you're different, it's that -

 

We are definitely different!

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Sorry, he says softly, cowed.

 

It's completely different! I want you to see the difference!

 

Look, sometimes Maitimo tied me down and I told him he was a monster and he fucked me anyway. But sometimes he brought me presents and we talked policy until I realized I could get ahead by talking him into bed, and those aren't the same thing, and it wasn't clear to me if you'd enjoy the second kind just because you're all upset by the first kind.

 

Yes. Someone would very much enjoy playing inappropriate power games with you. But when you played them, you didn't have the option of refusing him, that matters a lot.

 

To you.

 

Doesn't matter to you?

 

Knowing I could leave is the main thing that matters. Now that there are lots of Maitimos I could more meaningfully leave.

 

Maitimo buries his face in his hands. The Space ones spent several decades apart and were just fine! I am sure there's a 'verse that has one but not the other of us and I bet we're fine there, too!

 

Yes. But as you observed, the thing I am really good at is you. When Maitimo shows no signs of doing anything other than having his face in his hands, your plan sounds good. But I'd be just as happy with it if you said you might want me in bed sometimes. 

 

Okay. I won't.

 

He tries not to feel hurt. It wouldn't escape Maitimo.

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I do want you to be around my husband and I a fair bit, to see what a functional relationship between us looks like.

 

Okay.

 

I am not going to be comfortable in your presence until I've told you I want things and you've said no a few times.


You should want less reasonable things, then.

 

Come over here.

 

Findekáno springs gratefully to his feet and walks over.

 

Oh, for fuck's sake, Maitimo says miserably.

 

That wasn't unreasonable!

 

Stand on your head.

 

He grins. No.

 

Okay. I think I'm going to call that a day's work and go cry into my husband's shoulder. See you later.

 

He looks unhappy. Maitimo'll figure out why.

 

Oh, get competent with computers, get an Allspeak installation, and sit through all of Loki's spells. Please.

 

Thank you, he says, relieved. 

 

That would have been another good candidate for a 'no' -

 

- but it was reasonable...

 

Maitimo pops out.

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Elspeth goes and talks to the Elentári Valar. Do they want to know more or less the same things as the Evil Arda ones did?

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They do! Less 'why did the civil war' more 'why did the Noldor depart', but the same general idea.

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She is happy to help when she has the story to the point where she can interpret it.

And then she goes to Space Arda and visits their Valar! Same deal?

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Plus, you know, Cam fed Valinor to a black hole, how could that have been averted. Because it was awful and traumatizing.

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It sounds it! He wasn't happy about it either. The thing he got for it was very important. The Enemy should not have had that thing to bargain with, that is probably the best way they could have improved on the situation.

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If they'd gotten into a fight for Endore the whole planet would have been destroyed.

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Well, yes. It was, in fact, planet-destroying levels of important. Ideally they could have gotten it out of the way before the Dwarves and Men showed up. Were they under the impression the Enemy was going to stop of his own accord or something.

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in five hundred years everyone'd be pretty much dead anyway and then they'd have intervened.

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Is this the part where Elspeth explains that torture hurts.

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They knew the Enemy was doing that and that it was really bad but it wasn't really clear what could be done about it without killing hundreds of millions of people and they categorically can't do things that'll kill hundreds of millions of people. If they were the sort of thing that could do that while also being Valar there wouldn't be any people in this dimension.

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Really? Why not?

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Valar are the set of things they're capable of doing.

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...okay, but at what point would they have exercised the capability to wipe out all life in the dimension?

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If killing hundreds of millions of people were the thing they were, then of course they would have done that, that is what it would mean to be capable of it.

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...well, presumably at some times they take novel actions, right?

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No? They only take actions that are inherent to the kind of thing they are. 

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But, like, they are reacting to Elspeth. They are capable of reacting to Elspeth. That was probably not written in. She is from three hops away.

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Sure, but 'talking to people' is the sort of thing that's in their nature. As is 'wanting to understand incarnates better'. 'killing hundreds of millions of people' isn't.

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What would happen if something really unexpected showed up?

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They would act according to their natures? If she's more specific she'll get a more specific answer. But there are literally no conditions under which they'd kill hundreds of millions of people. They would be completely different if they were the sort of thing that could ever be induced to do that.

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Huh.

Well, incarnates are different! (Elspeth explains.)

And then she goes to visit Hex, Jake trailing after her.

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They have been told about her, and are pleased to meet her, she must be a little tired of Elves. Mitros likes Elves but there are now a lot of them in Marlatia to give birth and Elves can wear on one. 

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"Oh, I like Elves. They can all read minds and it's very Elspeth-friendly! Except not the Space kind and I think that's what you have here?"

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"Yes, and I'd have had some reservations about inviting them over if they could all read minds."

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"They don't have to do it, we could insist they promise not to. If any of the non-Space Elves want to come have spellbinder children."

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"Yeah, but do the kids read minds, too?"

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"Probably. Do they have to stay here until they're old enough to bind the familiar?"

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"Don't think we know that yet, actually, has anybody with a spirit animal left?"

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"Not that I knew of - maybe should first send someone who's not planning to bind theirs, just in case the answer's somehow that you lose it."

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"Yeah, sounds like a plan. Pity we don't have a way to - extricate the ones that go to people who don't want to bind them."

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"Well, another experiment worth doing is turning somebody from here into a vampire to see if that does the trick for working memory, although I don't know if that'd let you extricate a spirit animal in particular or if that's a hard system limit."

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"That'd be lovely. My father's counterpart also promises unbounded working memory 'soon', but he's an Elf so he might mean 'five years'. Good thing he's still my father or it might mean fifty."

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"I brought pamphlets!" Here they are. They are about turning into a vampire. "They're intended for Aurum cultural context though."

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"We will see to it they get distributed here, and maybe edited to relevant context if it's needed - like, are you planning to try this on someone who's not a spellbinder, do you know what happens to familiars in the process..."

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"It's never been tried on someone who isn't a native of Aurum at all, but my aunt can see the future, so she can check whatever results would be obvious right away - it's long term stuff that she wouldn't be able to catch. Worth noting is that animals usually hate how vampires smell, so we should probably introduce Mama and Cricket or something and see if that extends to familiars."

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"That would be a problem, yes." He winces apologetically when Cricket's mentioned. "I got only a very confused account of the whole adventure, want to explain?"

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"Sure, but fair warning, your newest alt is evil."

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"My Elf alts all made some really terrible choices during the war, is that what you mean?"

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"No, I mean he's a rapist and he tortured people and stuff."

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"...the fuck."

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"Well. Fuck. I assume that now he has been all stopped and everything?"

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"Yeah. Delight took his Findekáno and put him somewhere else."

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"...he..."

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"I'm pretty sure he didn't go around raping anyone else."

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Iobel squeezes Mitros's hand.

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He squeezes it back.

 

 

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"Anyway, I landed in this enchanted forest -"

Even with people who cannot read her mind of their own accord Elspeth is a very vivid storyteller, complete with pictures.

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"...that entire world sounds like a disaster and I am really glad they found it. Wow. What a mess. Is there going to be a trial?"

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"There's going to be a decade of him putting his country in order so it doesn't need him so badly and then Maedhros kept talking about killing him but probably by then someone will have thought of something else."

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"...did he just rig the country to collapse if anything happened to him so no one'd try it, because 'ten years to have the place in a functional state to avoid a succession crisis' is extraordinarily bad even for Elves."

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"That's how long Delight gave him, I don't know if he actually needs that long."

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"You should suggest a trial just in case it didn't occur to them because they're Elves and don't have a crime rate to speak of."

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"I can, but I'm not sure what that would actually add. The events aren't in question."

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"Some semblance of procedure for wrongdoing? If I personally arbitrated every criminal case here I'd be better at it than the courts but the country'd still be worse off, because there'd be so much more uncertainty about which factors would be weighed, which tactics they could expect to be precluded against them, which punishments civilized society regards as acceptable...it's not good to have a system that demands tremendous personal trust in the people running it and makes no substantive effort to make them predictable to the people subject to it."

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"...it couldn't have been predictable that he'd be subject to it. Everybody proposing subjecting him to anything is an alien from another world."

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"Right, but now you're giving him ten years to sit around and think about it. Rape is a crime. Torture is a crime. I don't see why you'd complicate it by doing a solution-by-committee. He's not special. All the Iobels and all the mes do not get together to try to figure out how to redeem your rank-and-file rapist or torturer. They have a trial."

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"Isn't it kind of complicated to try monarchs even without interdimensional shenanigans? We don't have a war crimes treaty or anything."

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"Perhaps we should design one and, when we arrive, drop it and say 'if you sign it and confess all wrongdoings in this area so we can immediately correct them you get amnesty on past mistakes'. I just - can't imagine the mindset of an evil me anyway, but saying 'work on this for ten years while we consider what to do with you' seems likely to get interestingly desperate results."

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"Yeah, 'interestingly desperate' does seem like the kind of thing he'd do."

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"Just be careful."

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"Of what?"

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"Leaving an evil me unsupervised for a decade with a threat hanging over his head and no cooperative-with-you avenue open to him to make things work out?"

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"Fair enough. You could go check up on him yourself, you know."

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"And say what? 'I favor executing you but I was at least going to be procedurally clear about it, instead of just letting you loose to wonder?"

 

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"Or not. I do think they're planning to spy on him some."

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"Oh, well, in that case I'm sure they'd catch anything he tried."

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"Do you have a productive suggestion for how he could be supervised, Mitros."

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"Yes, I think that if there is a possible behavior that will make us inclined to let him go or do something else which is tolerable to him, we should tell him what it is, and if there isn't then we should make it the case that he gets less of what he wants if he instead spends this decade giving both sides in the civil war that'll ensue when he's deposed nukes or something, and if there is no way to give him less of what he wants because we're set on killing him and he's purely selfish, then I think there should be another one of him at his side the whole decade."

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"I'll pass that along. I think the thing he actually wants is his Findekáno being returned to him though."

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He mumbles some inventive curse words he learned from Cricket. 

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"He asked if there was a way to make him forget him."

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"Is that an Elf thing because it sounds extreme even for an Elf thing. But. If he actually wants that which is tremendously fucked up I could probably do it. Especially if Elf Dad comes through on working memory."

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"I don't know if it's an Elf thing. ...It's possible it was a sounding-really-dramatic-so-we'd-feel-sorry-for-him thing though."

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"Did it work?"

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"On Mama a little bit maybe but she'll know it shouldn't have."

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"I feel weird about developing a memory-altering spell just to call his bluff but I will at least consider it."

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"He could go to a Vala about it, I'm probably going to go to one to get something I don't want removed, but the Valar do not like him as much as they like me so it probably isn't an appealing prospect."

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"Probably not."

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"Explaining incarnates to Valar is kinda fun."

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"What are you getting removed?"

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"I have all the memories the guy Mama usurped ever copied, and he took them from a lot of people. One of them was my dad."

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"...ah."

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"I would love to hear more about the vampire revolution."

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Elspeth will tell the story of the vampire revolution! It is very exciting and parts of it are horrible!

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He will be a good audience and be excited at the exciting parts and horrified at the horrifying ones!

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Iobel is also these things! She is particularly appalled about Chelsea!

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He clutches her hand and is equally appalled about Chelsea.

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And eventually it is Elspeth's bedtime and she teleports home four hops to go to bed.

"I want one," remarks Iobel.

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"...ooooh. Do you think it's - however this absurd thing works - will you get one regardless, first child of a Bell, or do you need the father to be an alternate of her father, or is it even possible..."

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"I have absolutely no idea, and I don't fancy guessing six times till we figure it out," Iobel says. "But if we do ever observationally form a solid model of however this absurd thing works and I can have one of those I want one, she's great. - Well, I'd probably ask her first. And would probably want to know that her template doesn't come inextricably attached to the story of her life, because there are parts of that I'd sooner skip."

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"We seem to exist without the horrifying tragedy that afflicted all of our alts so far. I occasionally worry that just means it's in the future, but. Seems unlikely."

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"Yeah, it's just there's only the one of her so far. Your family seems to be obligatory and mine's not; maybe her story is obligatory."

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"Apparently people sometimes come in 'evil', too."

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"Yeah." Handsqueeze.

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"I kind of would like to imagine I'd be more creatively evil. If there's an evil you that is not what she'd do with it."

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"I emphatically hope that there is not an evil me, or an evil your dad - I think those are the worst case scenarios."

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"Yep. Don't suppose there's any way to check."

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"Not an obvious one. They'll have to figure out whether whatever's wrong with Evil Arda affected the alt of your dad there, though..."

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"That's the other reason I want a trial, they're going to have to figure out what to do with everyone on that planet, and it sounds like most of them are awful...though, you know, maybe given the wrong conditions most people just are..."

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"I'd believe that," she sighs, "most people are normal, if you tip the balance on what's normal most of them still are..."

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"My alt does not get to use that excuse."

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"Wasn't saying he did."

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"I know you weren't. Sorry. I am probably irrationally upset. Finankar is going to laugh at me -"

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"I don't see what's funny about any of it."

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"It is not funny at all, it is horrible. He will anyway, because it is not very useful for me to be in a mood about it."

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"Suppose." Sigh.

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"Let's talk about our future delightful daughter who is an Elspeth alt, that's a much nicer topic."

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"I wonder what contrivance will compel us to name her something that matches whatever pattern her name is supposed to abide by."

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"I find that bit very disturbing. Like, imagine we find a world where Ruafar hasn't had his son yet, I know Ruafar, he's going to be determined to name the child something other than whatever the established naming pattern for him is. Will he be actually unable to do that?"

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"I have no idea. It's so weird! Maybe he'd fit the pattern on a technicality like Loki does, or something."

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"Or end up tragically switched at birth. I am not sure how interventionist the forces we're messing with are."

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"No idea. The name my parents assert they would have given me if I were a boy doesn't have a 'bel' in it..."

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"So perhaps that made you inherently a girl?" He pouts briefly at the thought of a boy Iobel again. "My mother confessed that they tried to develop a spell for baby gender after five boys, see if they could get a daughter. Just got twins."

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"Maybe their templates don't have gender variation. Or maybe all seven of you would have to be girls at once or something."

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"Also congratulations on the vampire shadow government empress, I am genuinely impressed and delighted that your alt pulled that one off."

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"I'm so proud of her!"

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"Tempted to be a vampire, if it's safe for spellbinders?"

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"The thing where I'd want to eat everybody I met sounds inconvenient, honestly. If they sort that out yes."

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"Mate thing freaks me out."

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"Yeah, there's that. I'd want to know who it was going to be like Bella did."

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"I assume Cam checked for an alt of Bella's husband in this world? Maybe the witch with foresight could figure it out..."

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"No alts of any of Bella's people anywhere, no."

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"Once we get the promised working memory we may be able to duplicate the speed and strength thing without the 'drinking blood' one."

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"I am so looking forward to our sudden leap in interdimensional relevance."

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"Me too!!! It's been wounding my pride just slightly, how many of our alts already wield unspeakable power."

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"I find it validating in the sense that I know I'd have managed the same in their position, but yes."

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"There's that.

 

I haven't been sending my Elf dad letters pointing out that 'very soon now' was two years ago, but I have definitely written a couple of them. And I have all these plans for letting everyone else on Hex vote themselves our citizens all drawn up."

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"Ooh, do we get to upgrade our titles to accommodate ruling most of the planet, do you suppose."

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"I certainly think that we ought to! Your alt's an empress, do you want to be an empress."

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"Yes I do."

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"The only problem I see is that it doesn't leave us with much space for title escalation once we rule several planets."

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"Hmm, true. I suppose we could make things up but they wouldn't have automatic gravitas."

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"I might be able to settle for 'galactic emperor'. It's a shame the length of a day on one's current planet doesn't affect spell refresh, we could ask Cam for something that spins like a top."

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"Would that be comfortable to stand on?"

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"I have no idea, but one could teleport there, have a local day, teleport back..."

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Snort. "Like one of those fairground rides."

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"Shame it doesn't work that way. I didn't quite have the nerve to suggest our planet be made to spin faster."

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"That does indeed sound like a bad idea, however tempting."

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"Look at us, being all responsible. Do you think you can get an Elspeth with a spell or will that have to wait until more alts have been found, and the whole situation is understood better..."

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"I think not understanding alts would interfere with spell composition even if I had enough working memory to hold a few universes in."

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"Then we'll wait. No one can whine at us about heirs when we're immortal, now can they."

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"No rush."

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"Every other world the Bell wasn't native, got dropped on us. This is the only one where we actually found each other."

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"Is this the part where I reveal that I'm actually a changeling from the universe next door?"

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"It crossed my mind! But clearly there are some differences -" he shudders. "And we're not an Arda, perhaps yous just don't come native to Ardas."

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"I feel like an Elf me would be - very awkward, somehow... I suppose there are humans in Ardas, and those Dwarves everyone is so enthused about..."

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"It's the 'no free will' thing. You might be incompatible with not having free will. You'd probably be a lovely Dwarf."

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"I wonder how they do at the collectivist sort of thing Bells are falling into. Seems uncapitalist."

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"Is there a Dwarven post-scarcity society yet? It'd be interesting."

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"Probably the Space ones unless they turn into awfully miserly demons."

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"I haven't asked."

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Once she wakes up, Elspeth goes to Vanda Nossëo, since it seems to be something of a hub for interdimensional shenanigans, and thinks loudly about the whole procedures-and-trials-and-such bit of the conversation with Mitros, to whom it may concern.

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They grudgingly agree it might be a good idea to have procedures in place especially if it's true that literally the whole planet is evil. Can't execute them all. Maybe should just dump Maedhros' memories of forty years in Enemy hands on his evil alt, see if this makes him not quite so murderable.

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Do they have a way to do that? Elspeth exports, not imports, and osanwë seems too low-bandwidth.

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They don't. It wouldn't be surprising if they eventually did, though. Maedhros' father has just finished working memory necklaces for the Marlatians and this should make them able to develop a spell like that.

...he also might not want to give it to Elspeth, given how she gives things out to everyone. He might ask them for something that does export and import.

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It is completely reasonable not to want to store things in Elspeth. She understands.

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I really like the way you project. It's very reassuring. If I'd met you when I was in doubt about reality I'd have found you quite inimitable. But - yeah. Not for that, probably. Do we know if the whole planet's evil or just Irisse's husband and me and maybe my family?

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The whole planet seems eviler, in sort of a background radiation way, compared to what Elspeth has picked up. It is not inconceivable that this is a small number of disproportionate influences, but some of them are, like, probably the Valar. (She has decided not to try to get a Vala to remove her parents' honeymoon. It would complicate her and Addy keeping each other updated.)

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That is very worrying. What are we going to do with all of them  - what are we going to do with an evil version of my father, particularly if he hasn't actually done anything evil...

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Well, they're making up an interdimensional criminal code anyway, being evil could be illegal all by itself or something, although then they have to rigorously define it instead of tossing it around as a descriptor in lieu of a nickname. As for what to do if the Fëanáro is evil Elspeth does not know.

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Kill him one way or another, oath or Tesseract...

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Death by oath is optionally reversible if they have another idea later, via Aether-imposed free will.

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My version of my father'd refuse, though, no question. Offer him death or a mind-altering oath and he'd say 'tell my children I love them and make it fast enough you can pat yourself on the back later for how humane you were'.

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Well, this doesn't actually seem like an unreasonable policy when dealing with hostile parties who are prepared to kill you, but it is sort of discouraging from the hostile party perspective.

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Yeah. I couldn't persuade him. Doubt my evil alt could, either.

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Do they even have a good evilness-evaluation plan for the live alts-of-relevant people? Like, she met Tyelcormo only briefly, he was not overtly evil at the time if one is slightly charitable about bloodthirstiness towards those who had harmed his (non-evil) friend, how would they go about checking in more detail.

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I'm good at people. I sort of think I'll know. But it makes me queasy to go around sizing people up for whether we execute them for being, well, normal, in a world where normal was pretty awful.

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It could just be a condition of travel outside of the world. Quarantine the place. Doesn't work for anyone who will react to that by inventing interdimensional transit, but...

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No one except my father will do that.

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So they have to special case his dad's template, but otherwise there is not necessarily any call to run the entire world through a sieve.

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Maybe people who want to go off-dimension can petition.

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And have to be vetted by a Maitimo or Maggie-or-Dad or oathed into being well-behaved tourists or just accompanied.

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That works. And my alt can't leave.

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If Maedhros thinks Evil Maitimo could pass the vetting they might need to snug the vetting.

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Well, he's not currently doing anything evil, regrets evil things he did, and would happily swear anything. I can imagine vetting that'd be quite reasonable but would let him out.

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If he happily swore some adequate something... still no?

(Addy isn't going anywhere but that is because Addy can copy magic and might be able to copy something from offworld that wrecked the delicate balance keeping her in line. And she can't swear oaths.)

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The thing is that even if he swears his whole mind over to be exactly mine, something could give him free will - and I am not actually sure it'll take additional exertion on his part for his Findekano to come back to him - his Findekano would genuinely feel happier and more secure if I'd take him to bed, he'll happily agree that his Maitimo's evil but he also thinks his Maitimo's the only person to whom he is not interchangeable -

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He's not interchangeable to Elspeth either!

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That's good of you. If you have projects he's uniquely suited to that'd help a lot.

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Unfortunately she is not dispositionally a projects person most of the time. Reasonableizing the Valar was a project but it is over now. They are all reasonable. Also she could not have meaningfully benefited from help with that.

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Yeah. I've been giving him work on our projects, and it's all valuable and meaningful work that'll enhance galactic standards of living, but he's not uniquely suited to it and not going to be, and I think for a while I can obviate that by having him save more people here than he could back home - but he'd rather be back home, and he's made it quite clear how I'd change his preference to go home, and -

 

- I loathe my alt.

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It wasn't actually obvious in context back in that world how warped Findekáno was because he was still making use of the maneuver-via-Maitimo skillset, just from a stronger bargaining position...

...he's uniquely or at least shortlistfully suited to being a native expert on Evil Arda without himself being evil? They will probably want that occasionally while they fumble with the problem. It does kind of put him in an awkward position w.r.t. Evil Maitimo but they can probably work around that.

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"Yeah. I'll suggest that. Thank you."

 

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"You're welcome."

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"And thank you for getting him out. He did say that it made him absurdly happy, when Maitimo had to let him go, and that he'd felt so much safer ever since."

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Oh that's good! She did think she was improving things but it was hard to know how much.

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"Apparently my alt switched seamlessly into 'helplessly adoring and deeply regretful boyfriend' and considering what a mess he is this was the exact thing that could make him happiest."

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Is he going to stay unhappy? Elspeth is not sure how aggressively she wishes to crusade against creepy unhealthy relationships if the alternatives make both parties unhappy.

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"I...bet he will become less unhappy? He might find and latch onto one of us who's free, eventually, but maybe it'll be a non-abusive one!"

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...Elspeth is not of course privy to all the details but is Evil Maitimo even, like, currently abusive, or rather would he be if his Findekáno were not in another universe.

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"Not in any conventional sense. Taking advantage of low expectations, maybe. Findekáno told me glowingly that once as a test he told Maitimo he'd lost interest and Maitimo didn't rape him, even though, as Findekáno explained to me, he had no real reason not to."

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...those are some low expectations all right. Maybe a nice long break and being around healthy relationship models will help. ...were there no healthy relationship models in Evil Arda? She can't actually think of any off the top of her head but she wasn't exactly attending potlucks and meeting random couples who weren't Aredhel And Her Rapist, Findekáno And His Rapist, and Elu And His Whatever The Fuck.

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"Even my society's basically the same as his in terms of a dearth of healthy models of homosexuality and a whole lot of charmingly horrifying cultural assumptions. My Findekáno didn't need any help disentangling himself, but then I was not evil and deliberately fucking with him."

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Which would tend to help. (Elspeth's mind flits through Earth culture on the subject - various fading prejudices, religious prohibitions, the fact that vampires can't fuss about it because in a contest between Literally Anything and Some Vampire's Mate the mate will win - probably none of this is useful unless Findekáno wants to watch adorable romcoms or something -)

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"I am inclined to characterize his problem more as 'he felt safer in the situation he'd gotten so used to but without anyone holding power over him than he feels in a completely strange situation where everyone's horrified by all his coping skills for the former one'. He'll happily agree that Maitimo's terrible and exasperating and so on right until he gets a sense the rest of us actually want him punished for it, and then he gets defensive."

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...out of personal affection or because then his skills are less useful or because he does not feel understood by anyone who wasn't there or what?

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"Personal affection - some sort of very distant personal affection, but it's there - inability to hold a grievance - mine's like that too, mine's just still perfectly capable of cutting someone off if they're harming him - sense that my evil alt's the only person in the multiverse who actually wants him..."

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...wants him in what sense? 'Cause Elves, like vampires, are kinda really pretty compared to most people and unlike vampires do not require decades of extremely hazardous practice to take advantage of that.

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"I do not think being found physically attractive would cut it, but I can try pointing him at some nice galactic gay bars."

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Or something. Although Elves may be a little excessively monogamous compared to most nonvampires.

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"We're not actually hypermonogamous, we just take centuries to get over people. In the short term I suppose it looks pretty similar."

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Well, leaving Findekáno like this for centuries seems suboptimal...

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"And handing him back to my evil alt seems suboptimal. And we still are planning to do something about my evil alt, right, we are not just going to let him keep ruling..."

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Remains to be seen. Elspeth is public relations, not policy, and the policy is yet unmade.

...The Golden Empire had to amnesty a lot of people just to not have to slaughter 99% of the vampire population. Evil Arda might be like that.

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"I might be modelling my alt as 'pretty much actually Thauron' when I've only exchanged three lines with him and don't really have a basis."

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Entirely too many people are actually Thauron but not quite that many.

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"Well, we'll teach evil Arda's Findekáno the teleport and he can go where he likes with it."

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Including right back where he came from?

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"There's no way to quarantine the world with our current capabilities."

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Is he likely to teach anybody from there to teleport.

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"We can just not give him any necklaces; he couldn't teach anyone, he couldn't both remember the spell and have the learner remember it."

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Will that in fact stop him or could he be induced to get ahold of one or reverse-engineer it or something.

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"They took my father twenty-five years, I don't think they could be reverse-engineered much faster. Maybe with a demon for notes, though if you had a demon and something to offer them you could just ask for a worldleaper -"

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And they don't know all of its adjacencies besides that they include Edda and Aurum and wherever their Enemy went...

...quarantine might be hard. Unless the Valar help or something.

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"Might be worth asking them."

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She can go ask them about that at the same time as she is investigating the dead Fëanáro. What should she be asking about the dead Fëanáro.

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"I think if my father were evil he'd be - as he is but vindictive, instead of just wanting nothing to do with people who aren't loyal enough or who waste his time he'd want them hurt. He might still be okay if everyone around him had complete freedom of movement."

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How much confidence does he have in if-he-were-evil-it-would-be-like-so predictions?

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"I mean, he even when non-evil wants to be uninterfered with by the rulers of the galaxy and wants them to be people he installed and who are loyal to him. I can't see him having the faintest interest in sex slaves."

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...is Evil Maitimo such a straightforward pivot?

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"...possibly? 'efficiently ruthlessly authoritarian' is totally predictable, I wouldn't have predicted what he did to Findekáno but - yes, there's a sense in which the only thing you'd have to change about me to make me find that appealing would be 'amoral'...."

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Now Elspeth is wondering what an Evil Elspeth would be like. There is probably some way to turn a centrally defining character trait of open honesty and turn it bad.

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"Demanding it of everyone else, maybe? I'm not sure. Some people it's harder to imagine an evil version of - I can't think what an evil Findekáno'd be like, for example -"

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Elspeth can't come up with an evil Grandpa Carlisle!

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"Some people have goodness very fundamental to their personalities! Can you imagine an evil your mom, that's the thing the multiverse is currently worried over..."

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It would be pretty bad! She does have traits which are not about being nonevil. It is not unimaginable.

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"Well, at least the good ones will outnumber the bad. I'll ask people about procedures for handling the evil planet, if you want to go question Mandos."

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"Sure."

And off she goes to ask Mandos things about the Evil Arda Fëanor.

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The Evil Arda Fëanor would definitely mind-control entire populations into not annoying him with stupid political games, if he could, and he probably could given time.

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Well, that's concerning. Is he dangerous when not being annoyed with political games?

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Not particularly! If people don't annoy him he will just invent impressive things. If they do annoy him he'll have them executed.

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How badly will he react to not having the option to execute people.

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Can he still make them go away?

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One could stipulate that he can!

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Then that sounds very nice.

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Do they have useful statistical sorts of information about the evilness levels of people-in-general?

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The Valar miserably tell her that there were dozens of violent crimes in Valinor ever year despite them trying really hard, and they thought it was just incarnate nature or something.

 

Maitimo's kingdom has a lower violent crime rate than Valinor did.

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...this is still actually better than the violent crime rates of some populations of incarnates but it is really worrying for Elves.

(Yes, yes, and the trains run on time.)

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The Valar agree! They don't know what's wrong! They bet it's Melkor. Everything's his fault, usually.

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The other Ardas had those too.

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Well! The Valar would love to fix it but they do not know how.

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Elspeth either. They are probably going to mostly quarantine this world until they figure out what's wrong with it. Fëanáro might have to be a special case because leaving him dead forever is mean but he cannot be relied upon to stay put. Is there any way to let people talk directly to him while he is dead?

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Not how Mandos works, sadly.

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In what way? There's a lot of magic to throw around, maybe some of it could bridge the gap.

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Elven spirits without bodies cannot even do osanwe, except with Maiar and Valar, because their osanwe works differently.

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Well, Elspeth works differently. The communicative telepath back in Aurum works differently.

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Well, they're welcome to come down to this random place that looks like a flat grey space and see if in so doing she can communicate with Fëanáro.

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Inconveniently Elspeth will not be able to hear replies; will Mandos inform her if her message is received?

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Fëanáro doesn't like Mandos reading his mind and keeps telling him to fuck off, so Mandos won't know either.

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Well, it's very nice of Mandos to fuck off when told, at least. Elspeth will go get Dwi.

She goes and gets Dwi and Dwi says, [Testing.]

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There's a response in an unfamiliar language. It sounds confused.

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When Dwi reports this result to Elspeth (it means "who or what is this?"), Elspeth takes over the sending half of things. Hello. I'm Elspeth. I can only send, not receive, so Dwi who just spoke to you is the only way to confirm if I'm getting through. He doesn't speak Quenya but I do and he can reproduce whatever you say to him.

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[What is he speaking? Who are you?]

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I don't actually know what language he used, he just needed to say something to establish contact. I'm from a neighboring universe; we have different magic there, personalized powers that only some people get, and mine is "telling the truth" but it's expanded from there.

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[What's this about?] He sounds wary and absurdly happy, all at once.

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There's a bunch of worlds, and this one is part of a pattern that has recurred several times but it's different from the others; specifically most people seem more antisocial than the other worlds' versions of them. We're thinking of mostly quarantining it, but you'd be hard to quarantine so it's separately important to see if you're antisocial enough to be unsafe.

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[Can you get me out of Mandos?]

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I can't personally but people who listen to me can.

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[If I can get out of here I'll fix whatever's wrong with the world.]

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We don't even know what that is.

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[That just means it'll take me a little longer.]

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I can pass on the offer but I'm not sure everyone will believe that this is the most significant thing you'd do if reembodied on your say-so.

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[Are there more significant things to be doing?]

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That seems like it would depend on how you rank them. Also it might happen that you found it expedient to do something antisocial in the course of working on the problem.

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['antisocial' is pretty vague. I'm sure I'll do something you don't approve of, not being a puppet of yours.]

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I can go see if one of your alts is available or at least someone who knows them is available, they might have a better idea of what to look for.

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[You are still being annoyingly vague. What do you want fixed and what are your conditions?]

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I'm not here with a complete offer, I'm here to establish that we can talk and apprise you of the general situation. I'd like to be less vague but if I communicate this way too quickly it can be damaging.

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[Having had no interactions at all for several hundred years is also damaging.]

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I can stay here and talk to you while waiting for someone to fetch one of your alts if you like.

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[Explain what you mean by 'antisocial' and what specifically you want fixed.]

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So Elspeth writes a note to Cam and explains the manifest differences between this Arda and the others while they wait.

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[Is there research on what sort of factors affect crime rate generally?]

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Among other species, yes. Not for Elves that I'm aware of.

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[Well, what is it among other species?]

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Elspeth has some data on this! It's probably mostly inapplicable because Evil Arda's problems are really unlikely to stem from drinking human blood or lead poisoning or anything.

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[Yes. That doesn't seem likely. I can't investigate Elven equivalents of those problems while dead, though.]

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It could also just be the Valar being different and that having a lot of downstream effects, but they can't be studied in a naive state anymore because I explained incarnates to them.

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[Yes, there are a lot of possibilities, but in Mandos I can't do anything but generate them.]

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I told you, I can't get you out myself. I'd have to get someone else to do it.

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[Well, if they're upset about this phenomenon, they can get me out so I can fix it.]

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I've sent a message. Someone will be along any minute.

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[Thank you. How are my children?]

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I haven't met all of them. Maitimo is one of the most obvious hallmarks of this world having an evilness problem, though, his boyfriend's alt took him away to recover and now Maitimo is upset about that. Tyelcormo and Macalaurë I met briefly and neither did anything obviously evil that I know about except for the general not-doing-anything-about-how-Maitimo-treated-his-boyfriend thing that pretty much everyone was complicit in.

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[I know the Valar believe that one shouldn't have boyfriends but my children can do as they please.]

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That's not the problem. In the other worlds they're generally adorable and not abusive at all. In this world it was horrible.

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[Who's Maitimo's boyfriend?]

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Findekáno. We're pretty sure he's not evil, for some reason.

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[I am glad you split them up.]

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That wasn't me, I only got as far as obliging Maitimo to let him go, Findekáno didn't actually leave until one of his alts came along.

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[If I were alive I would have made Maitimo cut it out.]

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I can't help but notice you only said that after I told you who it was.

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[....obviously? I do not object to my son having a boyfriend in general, but he should have a better one.]

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Findekáno's lovely. And he's the only person verified to be definitely not any more evil than he's supposed to be.

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[He is boring, worthless, and a waste of time. Maitimo can do better.]

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I don't really want to leave you here with nobody to talk to but you're kind of unpleasant.

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[Findekáno's father had me murdered. Perhaps you can find me someone to talk to who can empathize with that.]

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Most of the people I know don't speak Quenya.

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[I'll learn their language, that's not a problem.]

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I guess Dwi could teach you a language. How do you want to do that?

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[He can just talk in it, I'll ask questions as I piece things together.]

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Okay.

Elspeth relays this to Dwi, who proceeds to ramble about miscellanea in Indonesian.

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And after a while Feanáro is piecing things together and asking for more vocabulary words and would be delighted to now meet someone who isn't going to bristle on behalf of his murderer's son.

 

By then one of his counterparts has arrived.

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Elspeth relays the conversation so far - "Dwi can only do speech, so if you might need to communicate anything complicated I can stick around."

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"Unsure." And to Dwi, "tell him 'everyone's loosely worried you'll try to develop a way to stop us all from interfering in your business, which they're going to do an annoying amount of; I'm personally of the temperament 'if people try to get in my way I will go somewhere where they can't' but it seems possible you're more the 'kill them' type."

And when this is conveyed, [Running away from everyone who will try to control you sounds like a recipe to be continually on the run and never able to build anything.]

"Yes, but - you managed to avoid picking a fight with your Valar, right? Same thing here. Everyone's going to make veiled threats and everyone's going to make it clear that they'll use their power against you if you do things they disagree with. The rest of us manage because we want the same things as they do, but if that were untrue even slightly I know I'd be continually viciously miserable and it is untrue for you. We are as a kind of person very bad at being in peoples' power, and there are powerful people who are going to want to supervise you and are going to be hard to satisfy that they don't need to."

[I endured Valinor.]

"Yeah. And were you planning on leaving, or overthrowing them?'

[Overthrowing them.]

"So, everyone here's going to be unwilling to take the risk you'll try that when you don't like us."

[You seem very certain I won't like you.]

"You'll like me fine, you're going to loathe all the Bells."

[I can swear that if I have the power to protect myself and make them leave me alone by any means other than harming them, I'll do that.]

"They're also going to worry about what you'll do to other people."

[Happy to generalize it. If I have the power to protect myself and make people in general leave me alone by means other than harming them.]

"That might fix it, I'll ask."

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That'll probably satisfy Mama and the others in spirit, but they'll want to check it over for loopholes.

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"And we'll need to give him a non-lethal means of making people leave him alone, lest anyone annoy him before he has one."

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The teleport would probably do that if there's not some other reason not to let him have it, and if he'll settle for it instead of something that makes other people go away.

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"We have a teleport, does that solve this problem?"

[Not really, people can still destroy everything I care about and as I said it is not very appealing to keep running away from them. I would like a territory in which no one can enter without my leave and the means to evict people from it at will. And a teleport.]

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We don't have a way to set that up at this time.

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[Well, a teleport while I figure out how to set that up, and these people I apparently won't get on with can agree not to bother me?]

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They will want somebody keeping an eye on you but I don't think they'll object if it's more Fëanáros.

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[Yes, I don't mind working with more of me, I've been dead three hundred fifty years and they've probably invented so many things.]

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You think this'll do the trick? Elspeth asks just the live Fëanáro.

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I think he's likely to spend several centuries just catching up on everything and working on projects that we all have in our queues. Assuming everyone can resist the temptation to say to him that they'll kill him if he doesn't.

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And after several centuries?

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We will hopefully have a better solution, and possibly understand why this Arda's evil in the first place.

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Fixing it might not fix everyone from it.

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Yep. In a couple centuries at this rate we're going to be functionally omnipotent, I'm not too worried.

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So the idea is we'll just outnumber him if it comes down to it?

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He'll have access to far more interesting things to do if he gets along with us. But if necessary, yes.

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Well, that's probably good enough as a prognosis to get him out of Mandos, at least.

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Thank you, he says earnestly. Mandos is horrible.

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I'm just predicting, I'm not the decisionmaker. It'd be awkward if any decisions depending on secret information came up.

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Who is the decisionmaker on this one?

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Consensus of Bells, I guess? I suppose you could try talking Mandos into it without them.

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We might if we disagree with them, he shrugs. Or rather, Maitimo would try it.

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Which Maitimo?

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Don't know, and I doubt he'll disagree with Loki anyway.

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Nod. Dwi's nonessential personnel in Aurum, but he doesn't have the teleport himself so I shouldn't strand him here. If you want to keep your alt company while waiting on Bell consensus can you give him a lift home when you're done?

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Sure!

And he sets to eagerly explaining computers to his alt.

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And Elspeth writes up a report attn: Cam and goes elsewhere.

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And Cam tells Loki and Loki tells Maedhros.

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"He's going to confront Maitimo about it and Maitimo's going to say 'oh, don't worry, it's not as if we were lovers', which will calm my father's alt down, and I will only be able to resist the temptation to ask Cam to feed the place into a black hole because, well, firstly because Cam wouldn't do it and secondly because that is also what I was prepared to say -

 

Sorry. Bet it's safe. If we can have him off-planet and heavily supervised and quarantine the place otherwise -"

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Sigh. "Maybe start him not on Vanda Nossëo proper?"

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"The space ones can have him. There's enough of them to keep him occupied, too.

 

I'm sorry. I know I'm not really being very reasonable about the whole thing."

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"My first inclinations wouldn't be reasonable if it were me either."

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"I asked Findekáno to go land on some planet where we have an embassy and have been being lobbied to step in on one side or the other of the local civil war, be careful and figure out what to do, and he asked me how, since he had free will now, I meant to make sure he did as I wished."

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"My alt would have him swear to take all the King's ends as his own until he returned home and chained himself to the wall again. When I got over being very upset I was mostly annoyed at my alt for being so lazy, it's not as if it's hard to delegate your goals without any mind-control -"

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"Presumably he did it other ways with other people?"

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"One assumes. The kingdom's adequately run, it's not the sort whose king I'd be tempted to assassinate if I didn't know."

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Nod. "Well. I suppose I can go pick up Evil Fëanor now if we're not waiting on anything in particular there. Do we have any inklings on a procedure for the other dead Evil Elves, or...?"

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"If we don't give anyone on the planet interdimensional travel flat Ardas are not all that close to developing it with our native magic, I asked my father once in curiosity and he thought it'd have taken him a hundred Years - then they're probably better off alive than in Mandos and can't make things much worse for anyone else. I am worried about how my alt intends to maintain his handle on power when the people he assassinated to arrive at it are back, but maybe the Valar will for once be justified in saying the reembodied have to stay in Valinor..."

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"What a mess," mutters Loki.

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"I know I shouldn't even joke about the merits of the black hole solution."

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"At least not in front of Cam."

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He flinches. "Wouldn't dream of it. When we met - he looked - reminded me of the time you came to ask me if I'd hand myself back over -"

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He hugs her. "It's one of the things I admire most about you. It's - I used to think it was literally just my family, actually, who'd get handed an awful tradeoff and make it -"

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Hug. "Nope. We can do it too. It's tremendous fun, isn't it?"

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"More worlds. More magic systems. Someday we will be close enough to omnipotent that it will never ever be necessary again." And then he might not want to keep existing, but.

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Nod.

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"Want to drop my evil father off among his space alts?"

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"Yeah. Sure." Sigh.

She pops off to Evil Arda to see if Mandos requires much convincing to cough him up.

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Mandos is worried that he'll react badly to anyone disagreeing with any of his behavior, particularly if they try to actually punish him for it.

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"I think he'll get along with his alts well enough, and they get along with the rest of us well enough."

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All right. And here is a live Feanáro, blinking.

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Loki teleports him the two hops to Space Arda without further ado.

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Space Feanors have been apprised of this and are happy to sit him down at a computer, hand him a stacked perception spell so he can catch up faster, and start talking at him.

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And off Loki goes back to Vanda Nossëo.

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Maedhros smiles weakly at her. "Thanks. Hopefully we don't regret it."

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"Hopefully," she sighs.

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"I thought the violent crime was a consequence of my alt being evil but apparently it was even higher in Valinor."

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"Crime rate is not the only thing I'd worry about, but - yeah. Something is wrong with that world."

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"Should we be keeping people away on the chance it's contagious over enough time?"

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"...possible. It is the only place we have to hop through on the way to Aurum... and it doesn't seem to have done Elspeth any harm, at least not harm of that nature... but it doesn't have much to recommend it as a tourist destination, to be sure."

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"Didn't do Findekáno any harm either, at least not directly. I think some people might not be evil alt-able. There are a dozen besides Findekáno who come to mind and when I can be civil to my alt I'll go ask him if they exist and then go see whether I'm right about them."

 

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"A dozen? Who?"

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"Not people I'd expect you'd know - well, you might have slept with one of them - no one in my family," he says with a laugh. "Filtering by 'I wouldn't even recognize an evil version of them as the same person', which might be the wrong criteria, we'll see."

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"Erdellë," guesses Loki. "She was a sweetheart."

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"I'm genuinely impressed, I don't think I could have been sure off an hour's acquaintance. Well, not an hour's distracted acquaintance. Anyway, if his world even has the same people in it, I'll be curious if I'm right that they're not all evil, and if not that it's off personality somehow."

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"Two and a half," says Loki. "I will be curious to hear your results."

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"Maybe Findekáno - I asked him to pick a nickname, he asked what I liked - will have a lovely time deciding if we should intervene in Shaagar's civil war and then I'll be in a good enough mood to talk to my alt about it."

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"Here's hoping."

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"He doesn't seem to actually have impaired judgment except for preferring to interact with people more powerful than him as if they secretly want his very demonstrative submission. It's very confusing."

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"It's generalized to powerful people, not just your template?"

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"It's toned way down, but yes. Might just be because he assumes powerful not-me people are friends with me or persuadable by me. I wondered if it'd happen around Cam, as local powerful person who doesn't like me, but Cam's a little on edge around Finno's whole template, and also too sarcastic. It's not worth putting Findekáno in charge of the 'identifying situations where timely deposit of material goods saves lots of people' errands."

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"What about Elspeth? She likes you but it'd be pretty obvious if that were a factor in anything she did and therefore obvious when it isn't."

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"Probably healthy for him to interact with her, yeah. I'm not sure it's unhealthy for him to interact with me or I wouldn't be doing it. It might be that he's perfectly happy and I'm the only one being emotionally damaged by the mess."

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"I can mention it to her, then. - Should you be taking point on this, would a Space one or Mitros hold up better...?"

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"They'd probably be less inclined to tantrums about it but there's significantly less in common and Marlatia's really not pretty enough and I'm a little worried Findekáno'd combust around six of me. Several of whom don't have boyfriends, not that I'm even remotely worried they'd make a move, but to the extent I've gotten anywhere with him it's been by 'I have my husband, you are useful because I can send you on errands I'd otherwise send my husband on and trust you'll do them as well as he would'."

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Sigh. "Right. Ugh. Alts everywhere and somehow the best one for the job is also the most freaked out about it."

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"Once upon a time, if it were, you know, consensual and not a survival thing -" he shakes his head.

 

"If I asked him to do anything he considered actually wrong - or, well, actually a wrong to a person other than him - he'd refuse. It's a way of buying himself latitude to steer me away from being evil, and that's upsetting on so many levels..."

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Nod, nod.

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"And if I tell him to cut it out he just hears 'no, you do not have any angle to influence me, better hope I'm a saint keeping in mind that you wouldn't know otherwise until I wanted you to'. So he does that, and I'm flustered, and he feels safe, and then I go cry on my husband's shoulder."

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"...that sounds exasperating in addition to distressing. And it sounds slightly implausible that he doesn't know it - could be a roundabout way of provoking you to see if you are not in fact a saint -"

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"Very possibly. Though he can't lie to me, I can read all Finno's alts like an open book, so even if he were trying to conceal his expectation that I'm going to randomly abuse him I'd still notice it. So maybe more like - he's sure I can eventually be provoked into it, and he'd rather do it on his terms for whatever reason."

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"Bleah."

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"Yup! I don't even think he's happier than he was before we intervened! It's delightful.

 

If you have ideas I'd be appreciative, I keep - defaulting to imagining what I'd do, if someone handed me to an alt of Thauron who was perfectly-behaved..."

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"...leave? He can do that, right? If he wanted to just move to a random planet, two hops away so I couldn't find him..."

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"Until very recently he did not have the teleport because we were trying to figure out how to quarantine his home world, which contains his sister and brothers and will once they're reembodied contain his parents. Maybe he's just being compliant until he can sneak them all two hops away, that hadn't occurred to me. It is plausibly what I'd do."

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"Any idea whether his immediate family is immune to the aura of the place - Elspeth likes the Irissë there but doesn't seem to be operating off comprehensive information -"

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"That world's Nolofinwe had my father assassinated but that doesn't necessarily make him evil, ours came fairly close and they were only dealing with a standard-issue Fëanor. None of his immediate family members strike me as the kind of person who would be hard to imagine as evil."

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"Well. We're only quarantining the world, not the planet, if he wants to smuggle his family outside your alt's sphere... cylinder... of influence, Cam'll be happy to make them a planetoid or something. But that's still within a hop of Edda, so if he thinks I'll be your accomplice in nefarious deeds..."

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"More importantly it's findable, I could show up there if I liked. I don't know if that's what he's thinking. I can ask him, I suppose." He sighs. "Not that he'd be truthful but I'd know if he was lying."

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"Is it just me or does this entire approach not feel as much like a celebration of his freedom and agency and whatnot as it ought to?"

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"Starting to get a sense of why I keep having breakdowns over it?"

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Sigh. "Yep."

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"I'm vaguely inclined to let him run, if that's what he does, his family if evil is probably not more evil than your average human in a feudal society and they're not particularly likely to take over any planets. But, bad precedent, and what if they want their families -"

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"Or if Irissë wants her friend Tyelcormo..."

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"Yup.

 

Want to hop down to a planet that's maybe having a civil war and talk with Findekáno."

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"Both of us or just me?"

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He buries his head in his hands. "I'm really not sure."

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Sigh. "Maybe I should introduce him to Sigyn."

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"Oh?"

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"I've mentioned to you, he's got - history - could probably empathize without endorsing fucked-up coping mechanisms."

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"And he's not a familiar face or a particular friend of mine. Worth a try."

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Nod. "I could go get him now."

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"It's not exactly time-sensitive but there's no reason to wait, either."

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So Loki goes off and talks to Sigyn.

And then goes looking for the relevant Findekáno.

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There's a little embassy set up on more than half the inhabited planets in the galaxy now. Everyone knows that if you go to the embassy with a problem that affects lots of people, it'll get fixed.

 

It's not enough. It's the best they can do, there's just so many worlds.

 

He's been talking to people on both sides of the war and collecting ideas and writing notes for Maedhros. He tenses slightly when he sees Loki.

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"Hello. Is this a bad time?"

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"Not at all. How can I help you?"

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"I was wondering if you'd like to be introduced to a friend of mine. He's not an alt of anybody you know. His name's Sigyn. I think you might get along. ...Please don't read horrifyingly into that."

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"I'd be happy to meet your friend. Does Maedhros want me back in Vanda Nosseo or can your friend come here?"

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"Sigyn can come here. I'll go get him."

She goes and gets him.

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"Hello," says Sigyn. "I'm told we might find each other's experiences relatable."

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(Loki shows herself out.)

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"Nice to meet you."

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"Likewise."

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"Did they tell you why they think that."

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"Loki mentioned a, hm, seriously troubled relationship," he says. "I've had one or two of those myself, over the years."

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"There was a civil war between, loosely, people who wanted my father as King and people who wanted his half-brother. My half-uncle's oldest son and I had been. Involved. Before everything went to hell. My father had his assassinated and then he killed both my parents, seized the throne, settled the war. 

And kept me. I honestly wouldn't have anticipated it, I didn't know he cared anymore. But they woke me up with the news and had me dragged to his rooms. ...do your people have oaths, or are you like Men that way?"

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"Asgardians are like Men that way," says Sigyn. "If oaths worked for us the way they do for you I think I'd kill myself preemptively. I've been as close as I'd ever like to get to that sort of thing."

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"What good would killing yourself do, or is that another species difference?"

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"Yeah. We die permanently."

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"I actually don't think there was any point where I wanted to die. Thought I would, maybe, at the beginning - you can't imprison Elves. After a week we start losing our grip on reality and after a month we're dead. Not permanently. A couple weeks had gone by and I was barely lucid and wondering what the point had been, why not just kill me outright - and then he took me outside, somewhere where I was hardly in a state to run away but there weren't any walls, and I pulled my head back together, and he said that if I swore to tell him anything he'd want to know about my activities, and to come back to him at night, I could go where I pleased. So I did. Went to see my little sister and brothers, went to see my parents' graves. Talked to people. Tried to learn about our plans for the war - I was surprised, no one stopped me - 

 

 - once we got to Beleriand he drew the oaths more carefully. Everything I swore was time-limited, if I came back and chained myself to his wall it ended. You can use oaths to overwrite people, make them swear to take your goals and wants and passions as their own. He could have talked me into it. He was playing so casually with peoples' lives and if he'd sworn to stop-

- I don't think that's what he wanted anyway -

- we kept it up three hundred fifty years. I was very, very good at it. Admittedly I wouldn't have gotten much done if it hadn't occasionally amused him to let me have things, but I knew how to make sure it amused him to let me have things. Most things I wanted I got. And - I'd cared about him, once, I wanted him to be less of a monster, for his own sake as well as for the people around him. I nudged him into being a good King. He was happy. He likes games and here I was, obediently playing them, exactly how he wanted because it served my ends, too..."

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"Yeah," murmurs Sigyn. "I had a very different setup, but - the thing where you learn how best to manipulate the person who has total control of your life, because that's the only avenue through which you might affect what happens to you..."

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"I felt safe, once I understood him well enough. I felt like I was steering at a couple degrees' remove but I was steering a whole country - and he was obsessed with me, he adored me, I created that because it made me happier - and I understood him. I understood him so intimately. I told him all the time that I hated him, but it wasn't really true - it would have gotten in the way of understanding him, it was terrifying how much sense he made, how sympathetic it all seemed when I slipped deep enough into his head - he was running an endless horrible war against an Enemy who loved psychological warfare, he'd decided he couldn't run it while knowing that, in order to get to the battlefield, he'd burned forever one of the most important bridges in his life - he needed me to stay sane and the world needed him -

- I'm sure it was partially self-serving, but only partially. He's not a good person even very deep down but he knows how to be and knew he wasn't strong enough, and had vague aspirations to, after the war, figure it out..."

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"Must have been nice, in a way," he says. "When I had my time as a prisoner it was less complicated. No wars or kingdoms in the balance. Just a woman who wanted me to be someone I wasn't. It would be lovely if I could tell you the secret to finding your own way afterward, but I think I came out of it with a different set of problems - I hadn't ever lived without her before, and I hadn't the first clue how it was supposed to work. Spent a few centuries wandering Asgard, disguised as a girl as often as not, decoding normal social interaction by brute force."

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"I"m capable of other things. Just - specialized for Maitimo, specialized for saving the world from him and him from himself, and really, really good at it - he let me go. Someone made it a condition of their help winning the war. I left, and I thought 'do I want to curl up licking my wounds in exile somewhere' and it didn't really appeal - I cam back - I told him I'd probably never touch him again and he said rather brokenly that he just wanted me around. And then I compromised on the never touching him again because it wasn't as if it mattered to me, and it mattered so much to him, and I could achieve everything I'd always told myself I'd achieve with a chance to rein him in - it was the same game, but I wasn't powerless, it was so exhilarating -" 

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Sigyn smiles. "Yes, I can see how it would be."

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"I figured I'd fix everything I could and then - maybe I'd walk away, maybe it'd turn out that he was one of the things I could fix, maybe I'd find something even better than ruling a country while he brought me extravagant presents and did not get rewarded for them and looked at me like I was the only thing he wanted in the world. Would have been hard to beat, though. Having it work out like that meant I didn't feel like I'd wasted the intervening centuries learning Maitimo. It didn't even feel like they'd damaged me. They'd been practice, and now I was very good, and got everything I wanted play after play after play - It was easily the happiest decade of my life.

 

And then everyone showed up, and was horrified, and decided that I just hadn't walked away because I lacked better options, and have been shuffling me around trying to find something that counts as a better option, and here I've been, doing that, but the rest of them all pity me and as far as the other Maitimos are concerned I am untouchable because mine broke me and they try but they don't have anything for me to do and I am certainly not valuable to them. I could try to - regress it all away - and figure out what three hundred sixty years ago I would have wanted, but that seems to - miss the point - what I want is for them not to have swept in with their extremely powerful magic at all, what I want is to be back home ruling the empire with its emperor desperately  in love with me and me free to play another round with him, if I want, or tell him to go away if I want that -"

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"Well," says Sigyn. "Is what you want within your reach? Could you go back and reclaim your emperor?"

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"Yes? But maybe I shouldn't, since, you know, everything, and also the Maitimo who told me to come here wants mine executed and probably has a lot of sway, it might be that I need to calm him down before I go back so he doesn't overreact if I do, but I don't know how to calm him down, he notices if I'm doing anything that ought to work and then gets upset..."

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"Upset meaning it doesn't work, or upset meaning it does work but he notices and corrects for it because he prefers not to be calmed, or...?"

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"Mostly the latter. There are things that outright wouldn't work but I am sensible enough not to try..."

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"Oh?"

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"He said up front that if I hit on him he'll be very angry. He'll be upset if I try to explain that I'm not very traumatized or that it wasn't that bad; he gets upset every time he gets a hint of what I'm used to but I can't keep that from him, he's still a Maitimo. He'd be most reassured if I was like 'thank goodness I'm out of that awful situation, I think I'll spend a few centuries wandering the galaxy discovering myself' but he'd know if I were lying - it's not fair, he still prizes loyalty and devotion and service from people in general as much as mine does, he just doesn't seem maneuverable into wanting it from me..."

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"If you were one of me I could just say 'go reclaim your emperor, and if anyone questions your choices direct them to me and I'll straighten them out,' but you aren't and I don't know if all the same reasons hold true for you. And I haven't the first clue how to calm down a Maitimo."

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"Usually you make it his problem and then make yourself conspicuously vulnerable to him and convey your absolute trust in his ability to solve it. But they're all really upset that they have a rapist alt and they really really don't want me to go back to him - what would be the reasons it'd be the right decision, if it were you -"

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"One of the truest things about me is that I can put myself back together after anything. That's part of the reason I couldn't tolerate being the sort of thing that could make unbreakable oaths, particularly not mind-altering ones. A form of harm it's not possible to outlast puts an infinitely tall mountain on the landscape of risk. Loki being able to hand out free will cuts it back down to size, of course. So, the first reason is that even if going back turned out to be the wrong decision, there's no chance I'd be permanently damaged finding that out. The second reason is... I have an unusual approach to risk and harm and wanting things in general. If I say that what I want is to go seduce my rapist and have a comfortable life together, that really is what I want, I'm not fooling myself or letting bad habits get the better of me; I might be mistaken but I'm making a valid choice. If that's not something you're sure of about yourself, then deciding what to do next is more complicated than 'this is what I want, now how do I get it'."

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"I don't think I'm fooling myself but I am not as sure about it as you sound about yourself. Being - being the sort of person who'd come back to Maitimo is part of being good at manipulating Maitimo. And it's not as if I've given this a very fair try; I dislike running away from things, and I dislike the company of Maitimos who are horrified at my existence, and I might be perfectly happy mucking around on this planet trying to stop them from having a pointless civil war but I'd be better at it if I could actually bring my primary skillset to bear -

 

- I might have left him anyway, but it would have been because I felt like doing that -

- being very sure of what you want sounds nice."

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"I'd teach you the trick if I knew how. The company of people who are horrified at your existence does sound like it would be very wearing. What would a fair try look like, then?"

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"They want me to give it a century."

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"What would you spend that century doing? Preventing civil wars, horrifying the Maitimos with your existence?"

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"I think that's the idea, yeah. When I got upset at the local Maitimo about this he offered to take me to a galactic gay bar, which is really not the point..."

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"What is the point?"

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"A century of doing chores I'm not particularly well-suited to because everyone feels sorry for me and wants to keep me busy is not made more appealing by the prospect of occasional hookups with people who I shouldn't tell that I'm waiting out the century to see if 'fix, and then subsequently forgive, Maitimo' is still what I'll want at the end... also, it's very deeply ingrained habit, being exactly what Maitimo wants..."

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"Then it sounds the century as described wouldn't be a fair try of the concept of life without Maitimo," Sigyn observes. "If I were faced with this set of options I'd pick 'find a farther-off world to wander, learn a new skillset somewhere outside even the faintest shadow of any of these people', but that might not suit you either."

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"Crossed my mind. I - have family back home. The best thing to do is probably to make it clear that I won't get any communications about what happens to them, then Maitimo won't have reason to try anything, but wandering off to have no effect on the world I've spent my life trying to protect seems. A little hard."

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"There is that. Though it doesn't seem like the society of powerful meddlers - is there a name for the whole collection of Loki and her alts and all their powerful meddlesome friends, I haven't heard one - anyway, it doesn't seem like they're much inclined to let you go have effects on your world anytime soon."

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"They are not. For my own good, you know.

 

And they call themselves the 'peal', apparently there's a language in which it's a pun."

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"Well. So it's a century of having no effect on your world from within their orbit and having to deal with all the horrified Maitimos and so forth, or a century of having no effect on your world from outside their orbit and being far away from all this nonsense, or convincing them that going home to your Maitimo really is exactly what you want and you don't need their meddlesome rescues, or some clever fourth option we haven't thought of. Which of these seem more and less appealing?"

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"Far away. I guess. If I could be sure I wouldn't come home to 'oh, yes, we had him executed - I don't want that -"

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"Well, I can put in my recommendation that they not do that. Can't say how much weight it'll carry. Plenty with Loki, she did after all specifically bring me in as an expert - although I think she was imagining I'd do a little more commiserating and a little less seriously considering whether or not you'd be best served by going back..."

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"I realize it's awful that I want to. Might want to."

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"It doesn't strike me that way," says Sigyn. "It is what it is. If you go have your century and learn new skills and make your own way and then come back and say you really do want to go back to your Maitimo, I'll argue for it with the peal and I won't be horrified and I won't feel like I'm doing you a disservice. In fact I think the real disservice would be meeting that request with 'oh, clearly you weren't out there for long enough, go live your life some more and come back when you want the right things'."

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"Do you know a good place to go? Somewhere far from here - though I guess Loki can find us instantly - "

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"Not if we put a few worlds behind us on the way out. I don't have the means to do that, but I could ask Loki and I wouldn't expect her to refuse. I'll scout you somewhere nice if you like. What sort of place do you want?"

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"Don't know. One with problems we can actually help with? And flight, maybe, and dinosaurs, I miss those..."

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"Flight, dinosaurs, solvable problems. I'll see what I can do."

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"Thank you." 

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"Anytime."

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He waits warily. "Is there anything else?"

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"From me? No. I came here because Loki thought I could help; I helped; now I'm off to scout you a world, that being the next step in helping. Enjoy your civil war prevention."

And he teleports away.

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And he gets back to work on that, because there really would be something evil about him if he'd abandon this civil war to go home and possibly contribute to one.