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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.
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purposeful_glory
But it's not something he chose. Doesn't enter into my filtration at all.
I had no right to confront you on your personal preferences anyway.
Perhaps before I shop for nice galactic vacation spots I can find nice galactic counselors from some culture familiar enough with various atrocities that they have narratives about how one should respond to them.
purposeful_glory
Yep, counselors exist. Asgard's not a good place for finding them, but they're a thing.
There are a couple Valar who do it. I have quite literally no idea what they would say to me.
purposeful_glory
Well, Ulmo proved decent enough to let the orc colony go be on an island, so I won't get anywhere speculating based on the model of 'the Valar basically always suck except in comparison to the Enemy'; maybe the counselor-Valar are the less judgmental ones, I'd expect that to be a job requirement.
They could make me forget it. But I've already forgotten so many things that that doesn't particularly appeal. I don't know what else about me they'd regard as in need of correcting, or whether that's even in their power to fix, or whether it wouldn't be for the best - all of this being an absurd hypothetical, since the last time we spoke they Doomed us to suffer, 'by weapon and torment and grief'.
They've finished their walk through the city; they're back at the palace. It's a very delicately beautiful-looking palace now.
They've finished their walk through the city; they're back at the palace. It's a very delicately beautiful-looking palace now.
purposeful_glory
You never did tell me if you wanted secondhand accounts of the gaps in your memory from Findekáno.
Don't trust you. Maybe someday.
Are you staying here tonight, or are you going to try to make it back? If the latter, you should probably leave now.
purposeful_glory
If it's convenient for me to stay here that's preferable. I can probably make it if it's inconvenient.
It's no trouble at all. I'll have someone set up a guest room and bring us dinner. I don't want to decorate my father's throne room with illusions; it seems like terrible symbolism.
I could make it very like the one in Valinor, or according to my own aesthetic sensibilities which are - at least currently, I'm not sure any of my sensibilities are stable - far more ascetic. Or I could leave it to him to do himself. I'm mildly worried that if he arrives and finds me puttering around a lovely throne room in a lovely palace in a city under my command he'll worry I'm pulling the world's softest coup. Which I am. But it'll be less useful if he worries about it.
purposeful_glory
My model of your father doesn't actually involve him spending much time on decorating or I'd suggest leaving it for him to furnish.
He'd spend five minutes on it, but it'd be five minutes that left a definite effect.
They walk through a dining room that could seat a hundred into a much smaller one. There's already food. Maitimo sits down. The workshop and forge I got perfect, that he'd spend time on and it'd be time he'd have preferred to spend working.
Tell me that after Thauron's attacked it. Or after we've gone enough years of safety that we can guess it's deterred him, I suppose. 'imposing' is easy. 'safe' is hard.
purposeful_glory
I was actually thinking along the lines of 'quickly assembled, enticing to potential residents'.
Also easy, given the resources I had to work with. But thank you.