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Tumunzahar makes Menegroth look like a contract project. Which, the Dwarves assure her, it was. The stonework is astonishingly careful and beautiful, silky to the touch up close while from a distance it gives the impression of stretching on forever above, a sky of stone with crystals for stars. Vast natural cave systems are connected by dozens of perfectly smooth, gently sloped broad stone pathways from which the fall, if she fell, would be several miles down. There are handrails. "We use those to move materials carts," someone explains to her, "we're not going to be reckless."
There's an amphitheater, a place where a hundred of the stone walkways twine around to create space for a hundred thousand people to sit in close proximity, and someone is giving a lecture or a demonstration at the base of it, the seats closest to him filled with eager, tiny, bearded Dwarf-children.
And they spiral down, and down, and down, past waterfalls and egg-sized gemstones left half in the rock and halls of crystal. Everything grows gradually more ornate and more perfectly maintained and the clang of hammers fades behind them. "People say," her guide says, "that we only have a council instead of a single King because there were nine winners of the competition to design the throne so we couldn't just select one person to sit it." And they push open the doors to reveal, indeed, nine thrones so elaborate it would be hard to choose between them, and nine squat bearded people sitting them.
purposeful_glory
She gets a lot done.
If nothing happens in the morning either she will head back to the Fëanorians to apologize to Macalaurë.
If nothing happens in the morning either she will head back to the Fëanorians to apologize to Macalaurë.
purposeful_glory
Zoom, then. Her and nineteen decoys.
Land outside the gate, walk in, look up last conversation and open with that osawnëing Macalaurë in particular followed by Are you busy? I need to apologize.
Land outside the gate, walk in, look up last conversation and open with that osawnëing Macalaurë in particular followed by Are you busy? I need to apologize.
purposeful_glory
I didn't realize that songs were a particularly proprietary sort of thing and reviewing the conversation through that lens it looks very much as it would if I'd been purposefully withholding the intention to distribute copies as largesse. Your cousins explained it to me. If you want me to I can dismiss their copies from here, it'd be awkward but I'd do it, they've got five each on jewelry kept in a soundproof box, I don't think that idea is proprietary and you may feel free to steal it. If you don't want me to make any more besides the one I'm carrying I can do that too. I have some from them that are under various sorts of license, I can share some of those.
... thank you. That is how I'd interpreted your intentions. I don't think my cousins would have taken them if they hadn't thought they were getting one up on us, and they're very useful spells, and there is a war on, so you need not dismiss them. What kind of sharing agreements are conventional?
purposeful_glory
The one I'm expecting to be most broadly popular when I can't talk people into turning them over for use at my discretion is copies for copies - I enchant whatever random objects they like with the song and I can make that many copies elsewhere. I've got one that I can use but not copy again.
That sounds reasonable. The jewelry-box approach is a wise one but we are sadly bereft of jewelry; our possessions were mostly destroyed in the sack of Formenos, and he went for everything my father had created or inherited in particular. Perhaps we'll just do it with polished rocks from the lake.
Another song I have that seems of use to you is one that checks someone's impression of reality against the version they're describing and highlights discrepancies - accusing people of lying is a very serious insult, but of biasing a telling, intentionally or no, and it will catch lying, and it can do so in a way that's not visible to the speaker.
And lately I've been working on treating wood so it doesn't rot quickly, which is a bit more mundane but probably useful to everyone.
Another song I have that seems of use to you is one that checks someone's impression of reality against the version they're describing and highlights discrepancies - accusing people of lying is a very serious insult, but of biasing a telling, intentionally or no, and it will catch lying, and it can do so in a way that's not visible to the speaker.
And lately I've been working on treating wood so it doesn't rot quickly, which is a bit more mundane but probably useful to everyone.
purposeful_glory
They wanted the lying one for interviewing Sarpalarë; I don't think they'd need their own copy for that if you wanted to let me have one but not copies. Would the wood thing work on paper or is the going plan still to reverse engineer my notebook page?
The paper gets brittle and less useful as paper. The spell just tells it to hold its form longer, I wouldn't have expected that problem.
I'm currently working on moving large volumes of stone. It'll make construction faster. I have a fantasy of someday composing a symphony that lets me assemble a castle in a day just by standing at its center and singing.
I'm currently working on moving large volumes of stone. It'll make construction faster. I have a fantasy of someday composing a symphony that lets me assemble a castle in a day just by standing at its center and singing.
purposeful_glory
Findekáno wanted a project and asked what songs would be most useful to me. Are ideas for songs also proprietary?
No, of course not. Everyone knows what I can do, and I don't mind if they hum it under their breath either. It's reproducing someone else's artwork in full without their consent - if, in Asgard, I had a duplicator, and someone finished a painting or something and I took it, put it in the duplicator, and then started selling it on the street, would I have committed an offense?
purposeful_glory
Yes, but the offense would be couched entirely in terms of money and credit, maybe control of the artistic experience. No money was in play, I'd tell anyone who asked who composed the song, and there's no artistic value to the short versions, either, I squish them as far as they go before they stop working - so I didn't think it through.
I'm not annoyed. My reference class for people much more powerful than I who can do as they please contains entirely people far, far worse than you, and that was true an hour ago as well. I am happy and surprised my cousins had qualms. I'll happily share future song ideas.
purposeful_glory
I was actually wondering if you'd have more luck with the idea I gave Findekáno than he's likely to. If I had a retroactive eidetic memory I would be much less limited in what sorts of information I can dispense and I can probably just explain the concepts behind how to build something with which to level Angband.
Well.
I don't think so but I'll try. That's actually one to run by my father - music skips the computation but is subject to the same constraints on how much information you can actually get the song of Creation to cough up, and he might blink and say 'impossible' instantly even if he'd take forever to explain to me why. Or he'll say 'technically that doesn't violate any tenets of information theory but there's absolutely no precedent' which means 'I'll be disappointed if you don't have it in a month" and I'll have to drop everything else. He sighs.
I don't think so but I'll try. That's actually one to run by my father - music skips the computation but is subject to the same constraints on how much information you can actually get the song of Creation to cough up, and he might blink and say 'impossible' instantly even if he'd take forever to explain to me why. Or he'll say 'technically that doesn't violate any tenets of information theory but there's absolutely no precedent' which means 'I'll be disappointed if you don't have it in a month" and I'll have to drop everything else. He sighs.
purposeful_glory
Oh dear. Complicating factor: based on Melian's explanation of the nature of the universe I am probably from another dimension separated by something a bit less trivial than merely quintillions of miles or something like that. If it is necessary to consult the reality that contributed to my memories, it may be far away, not run on music, etcetera.
Hmm.
Way harder and less exciting than making stone flow into a castle around me, but you did say 'level Angband' so I will pursue every avenue that seems available.
Way harder and less exciting than making stone flow into a castle around me, but you did say 'level Angband' so I will pursue every avenue that seems available.
purposeful_glory
Findekáno says that the sorts of metal that radiate poisonousness don't do that thing around Silmarils, which might interfere with some of the things I'm thinking of, but probably not all of them.
purposeful_glory
Ah, that explains it. I don't remember how essential that property is to the functioning of the explosion, but I am sure I have ever looked at a book saying one way or the other.
It'd also be reasonably useful to be able to level Angband even if Morgoth came out of it still standing. At that point perhaps we could just fight him. I mean, casualties would be horrifying, but - if we get the ability to end the sources of orcs, it'd be very hard to wait another century for the ability to take him personally.