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Loki is not technically banished. This is just - giving her mother space. To think. About what to do with her wayward child. She will be called back in a few years for a more permanent decision. Midgard's nice enough, anyway, and Sigyn's coming along.
The Bifrost lights up in all its colors and -
- this might be Midgard, but it is not a part of Midgard she ever saw and not the place she was expecting to be dropped, and there is no Sigyn with her.
She holds Lævateinn ready as a glaive. Maybe her mother feared her sorcery and thought she'd best be sent somewhere deadly under the impression she was meant to survive the trip -
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purposeful_glory
The problem is that my father doesn't do anything insincerely. You'll never get a grudging or formal or political apology from him. And a personal apology you'll get only when it's prompted by personal respect, and when Nolofinwë claimed the title of King of his host the possibility of that rather dissolved. He is flying in tight circles. In addition, there's a significant population in their host who outright just want us dead, and who wanted us dead long before the ships burned.
purposeful_glory
Loki threads the circle of his flight, swoops up before she touches the ground. I'd been tending to interpret it in terms of loss of face, but that makes sense too.
A grim, tired chuckle. That too. If we make concessions they will likely be used as leverage to demand more concessions, and I don't think anyone is certain what happens at the point where we've made enough concessions that we would no longer stand a chance of imposing any significant costs on them if they then just decided to kill us.
purposeful_glory
I'd retire to a tower in the mountains and invent things in exasperation.
I think he might have done so eventually. But in favor of one of us, as King, not in favor of Nolofinwë.
purposeful_glory
I think the Nolofinwëans might tolerate you if they knew you hadn't set the boats on fire.
Shame that I'm crazy and might be unknowingly controlled by Moringotto, then.
purposeful_glory
Yes, that. Pardon me while I entertain a highly inappropriate fantasy of learning to teleport, acquiring a small squad of galactic mercenaries with weapons I'd sooner not even begin to describe the mechanism of, killing the Enemy, and then putting everyone who doesn't get along on their own uninhabited planet.
That is probably the right thing to do. I think quite a few people would miss each other, but -
purposeful_glory
Well, that and historically forcibly removing people from their homes doesn't go very well.
Oh, right, you have a history of wars and know which things end up having unintended consequences. This is the first war in our history as a people, and we have no such knowledge.
purposeful_glory
Right. So, making people move if they don't want to move: usually a bad plan. Sometimes a better plan than letting people continue to live near each other, but people get attached to their homes.
I could get my people to move.
The cousins I am most worried about were very determined to found their own kingdoms in Middle-earth and bring enlightenment and better stewardship to the locals, so I am not inclined to fear they'll settle near my family and keep building friction. I have reservations about their plans, but am utterly powerless to do anything about that.
The cousins I am most worried about were very determined to found their own kingdoms in Middle-earth and bring enlightenment and better stewardship to the locals, so I am not inclined to fear they'll settle near my family and keep building friction. I have reservations about their plans, but am utterly powerless to do anything about that.
purposeful_glory
It might be easier to move your people, or your cousins, because they've only recently moved in themselves. Maybe even by the time I learn to teleport Quendi reckoning will call it 'recent', especially if they don't have any children, who know the place as home from day one. ...Trying to move in and rule over locals without knowing in exquisite detail exactly what you're doing: also historically a bad move.
I suspected that even without any history to draw on. You'll have to deter them; I certainly can't.
purposeful_glory
I'll make a note. And she does. Do you know which of them are planning to strike out and try it?
Artanis and her brother Findaráto.
purposeful_glory
They're planning to visit Doriath at their great-uncle's invitation, probably in a few months.
Well, maybe Elwë will deter them. Or tell them how to do it well. Findaráto is very very likable and diplomatic. Artanis is not, but she's not yet a hundred fifty, she'll grow into it.
purposeful_glory
She has a certain bluntness, which I'd appreciate very much if I were fonder of the opinions she's blunt about.
I expect that being the youngest daughter of the King's youngest son leaves one with many frustrated ambitions. What opinions offended you, besides that Arda would be significantly improved by scrubbing my family from it?
purposeful_glory
Mostly that. The particular hypothetical I was entertaining was 'what if Thor had landed on the ice instead of me', and the answer is she would have thought they were very nice and badly wronged and would have been easy to direct into a complete massacre against your family and then she probably would have tried to solo Angband, which Lúthien thinks would not have worked but which Artanis thought sounded great.
Might work. Might at least set him back a few thousand years, the Valar are slow to build their bodies. He's not much in hand-to-hand combat - well, we'd be crushed, but he's a hundred times stronger than us, not ten thousand, and possible to injure with the kind of magic weapons we are capable of crafting.
Artanis watched her family cut down on the streets of her hometown and it is very understandable to desire that the guilty parties experience the same thing. I expect if it had actually occurred she would regret it, later. But yes, this is related to why we hesitate to make concessions.
Artanis watched her family cut down on the streets of her hometown and it is very understandable to desire that the guilty parties experience the same thing. I expect if it had actually occurred she would regret it, later. But yes, this is related to why we hesitate to make concessions.
purposeful_glory
It's like a game theory problem on an exam with a sadist for a tutor. 'In one to five thousand words, solve the problems of this entire continent and its well-justified rifts in the underlying social fabric with only illusion magic, healing spells, and the ability to turn people into birds'.
Your people call it game theory, and let people stand exams in it? Anyhow, if I were alive and could trust that this were real, I would go to Nolofinwë and abase myself and plead forgiveness and delight him by denouncing my family in whatever terms necessary. Then I would persuade him to settle his civilian population somewhere safe and very far from the front lines of the war, under the leadership of all of my cousins who won't ever forgive me and who I can't work with - I'd need to know more about the political landscape to judge how to convince them, but Findekáno and I together could do it, and make sure that Findekáno had the command of the Nolofinwean detachment actually involved in the war effort. Then I would find a way to secretly contact Macalaurë - who is the only one who would probably still entertain a message from me - and persuade him that collaboration on the war effort is both necessary and now possible, and talk the two of them through their differences until my brother is willing to give my cousin a palantir and agree to coordinate troop movements.
If that worked, I'd just have to convince my father that I'd just conducted an internal coup for him and gotten the entire militarily useful part of the Nolofinweans back under his command and that Findekáno ruled there in name only, and then take down Angband and hope that everyone's favorable impression of the balance of power is either cemented by my success or spurred to improvement by my death.
If that worked, I'd just have to convince my father that I'd just conducted an internal coup for him and gotten the entire militarily useful part of the Nolofinweans back under his command and that Findekáno ruled there in name only, and then take down Angband and hope that everyone's favorable impression of the balance of power is either cemented by my success or spurred to improvement by my death.