Good to know. The converted orc colony volunteers that they could take a few orcs who are sworn to the false Melkor and keep them out of trouble, since there's no way off the island. But not more than a few.

Loki will notify Brithombar of this offer, in case they wind up with live captives.

Círdan nods seriously, wishes her well, notes that Ulmo is troubled.

"Troubled?"

"Having a hard time seeing the future and worried that it contains even greater griefs than the ones in the works last time he could see it. I think."

"...I have free will and have been very busy, I think that might interfere with local varieties of future-seeing but I don't think it bodes ill."

"That'd do it," he says wearily. "May the stars light your way."

"Thanks." Home she goes.

They need more people at the desert facility, building the factories for this stuff is going to be absurdly hard. Can she help smuggle twenty thousand people over there over the course of six months?

She can turn them into birds and meet them there and turn them not into birds!

And now there's a massive desert uranium-enrichment program, still hidden under illusions.

Does being out twenty thousand people make Men any more economically useful?

It does! Now would be a great time to train a lot of Men in managing the food distribution and water systems.

Great. There are Men to be had. And other Men to babysit the kids.

The Elves look at children of Men with a strange mix of exasperation and envy.

There is some brief consideration of babysitting for the children of properly married couples before Maedhros issues a decree that people with any constraints on which children they're willing to babysit can't babysit because it makes logistics orders of magnitude more complicated and the children surely aren't contagious.

Good for you, Maedhros. Besides, it wouldn't do to have the children told that their friends' parents were depraved either.

"The House of Fëanor," one of her Elf assistants with Men complains to her that evening, "is just delighted with depravity. It's probably why they stole the boats and killed innocents and then burns the ships. Tyelcormo leaves parties with men, you know."

"No. But the next time they kill a bunch of innocent people, you shouldn't be surprised."

"Are you expecting Tep and Riaz to kill innocent people? Tep can't kill mosquitoes."

"Men are different," he says, "in lots of ways, probably also that one."

"All I have on that is your assertion."

"You think I'm lying about what the Valar say?"