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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.
No one contradicts her about anything, but they do share a lot of stories about heroic deeds of the Valar in the first war with Melkor, and about things the Valar did for them growing up.
purposeful_glory
That's fine. If the Men turn into huge Valar partisans based on entirely true information that's their prerogative.
Has there been any opportunity yet to get to a point where it's not massively creepy to figure out from some Man what their preinstalled knowledge on reproduction and related activities is?
Has there been any opportunity yet to get to a point where it's not massively creepy to figure out from some Man what their preinstalled knowledge on reproduction and related activities is?
The Elves are probably not the people to go to, having collectively apparently decided that Men will behave if given good enough examples. There are Men she's perfectly friendly with, after a few weeks, and their society does not yet seem to have any taboos except against demons.
purposeful_glory
Okay. She makes it clear to her friendly Men that she is substantially guessing based on comparable species, because there haven't been Men long enough to be sure about them in particular, but based on this guess if they have been certain sorts of friendly with one another some of them may already be incubating very small Men.
purposeful_glory
...well, Midgardians tell like so; has anybody been bleeding from the crotch mysteriously? If so, that may be a signal Men can use too. Failing that you might have to wait until you're visibly bulgy. New Men are like whoever friendlied it up to make them, but not exactly, there's lots of room for them to be totally different; and they start very small and completely helpless and will need to learn to talk and walk and do everything. Breastfeeding: exists. The abdomen expands to accommodate the kiddos.
Now they're a little horrified. The Elves seem torn between feeling bad they left this job to Loki and being appalled by the accidental-children thing. Several of them are preaching that Men should just be separated by gender so accidental children can't happen.
Well, if they want to get married, that could be arranged. Or they could just not have children! They're five weeks old! It's horrifying!
purposeful_glory
Well, yes, there's a reason Loki isn't sleeping with any of them (she doesn't say that part), but they are all five week old adults don't be such cryptogenocidal prudes. If they wait until they're twenty and they age like Midgardians they'll be old enough to have serious fertility problems! And none of them have known each other for more than five weeks and it would be an awfully hasty marriage, especially if they weren't allowed to associate across gender barriers.
Obviously the Elves would teach them about the one year engagement period before getting married to make sure one didn't end up having children with a badly suited partner!
The Elves start telling Men stories - which are, Loki could piece together pretty quickly were she paying attention - about how by Cuivienen the Elves woke next to their designated mates but definitely waited fifty years before touching because it's more meaningful that way.
This doesn't have much effect.
She'd be more annoyed with them if they weren't tremendously helpful on crops, music, building, manual chores, literacy, poetry.
This doesn't have much effect.
She'd be more annoyed with them if they weren't tremendously helpful on crops, music, building, manual chores, literacy, poetry.
purposeful_glory
...Well, she isn't sure poetry is a huge priority but as long as it doesn't cut into the other stuff. The Men will figure something out. As long as they are clear that sex makes babies. ...Oh and rape is RIGHT OUT definitely none of that.
Men are definitely more violently inclined than Elves. There are fights over prey or over insults or over, apparently, spare energy for fighting. The Elves tend to cluck their tongues a bit but be quick to break these up.
Wrestling is a popular sport. They're inventing other ones, too - swimming, kicking inflated pig bladders around -
purposeful_glory
Sure, whatever floats their boat. Just no depriving each other of teeth, please, she has other things to do than heal everybody all day every day, if you can't settle it by talking have a nice rules-protected match of somethingorother.
How are the wolves reintegrating whence they came? What can be learned about how the heck they work?
How are the wolves reintegrating whence they came? What can be learned about how the heck they work?
No one can figure out when the werewolves turn into werewolves. Some of them have voluntary control, some don't, some have triggering conditions, Elves reading off the experience of voluntary transformation to other werewolves who can't voluntarily transform helps some but not all of them.
The dominant theories are that it's either expectation-controlled or that Thauron was experimenting.
Werewolves in human form are healthier, faster, and stronger. There aren't any other differences noticeable yet.
The dominant theories are that it's either expectation-controlled or that Thauron was experimenting.
Werewolves in human form are healthier, faster, and stronger. There aren't any other differences noticeable yet.
purposeful_glory
Do there seem to be strains - are werewolves who were bitten by particular progenitors "families"? Did those people who were bitten then healed by her spell that night turn into werewolves?
The people who were bitten and healed by her are not werewolves. No one can keep track of who bit who, though they're happy to go test it for Loki if she'll let them make more werewolves.
purposeful_glory
Do the ones who were made directly by Thauron and not bitten remember anything about the process?
Yes, he came and talked with them and then demons came from over the water and he called on the heavens to send the demons away and they vanished, and then he offered to help them protect themselves from the demons, and brought them away one at a time and had them lie still while he did magic. Not everyone he took away came back, he said the others had been sent east to protect other Men and spread the news.
purposeful_glory
The water demons, Loki increasingly suspects, were illusions of his; she still hasn't spotted any. Okay, what's the distribution of werewolf traits in the original batch?
The ones made by Thauron are most of them; eight who shift voluntarily, three who shift somewhat voluntarily with occasional unwanted shifts, nine who shift at night, seven who shift when they're hungry, two who are wolves most of the time but sometimes wake up as Men.