I don't know. I think it's usually installed with magic in my world but so are, like, bricks, half the time, I don't know if spells are actually necessary or not.

He frowns. You could have a fountain in your house, easily enough. Is that the same principle?

Maybe. I don't know anything about housebuilding, like I said. Um, do the fountains bring in fresh water and carry away or disappear used water, that's kind of the key thing...

They must, otherwise their waters would get dirty over time.

Then it's probably the same idea, and a fountain would be fine for drinking but not what I'm used to for the other things.

Well, if you describe what you want I'm sure we can figure out how to do it.

Who should I ask?

Ask what? You should decide exactly what you desire, and then you can ask designers if they can do it, or if not petition a Maia to set it up for you.

A Maia?

The lesser Powers of this land. The Valar are the greatest ones, and while they'll do us favors, with questions that everyone can be presumed to have - like house features - it's customary to ask Olórin or Arien before you ask the Valar directly.

And they're safe to just go talk to? I'm going to have a really hard time getting used to that, on my plane the very best thing to do with anything particularly powerful is hope it never notices you exist.

They're delighted we're here, and very eager to help us! Your world sounds very troubling. Why acquire power if it'll just make one resent the inconvenience of being able to change the lives of the powerless?

The problem is less about people who acquire power. It can be dangerous to go talk to a very advanced wizard or a high-ranking paladin or something, but they're still basically regular people and being polite and not barging in on them or making demands usually helps. Although they're not exactly normal people because you have to be willing to take a lot of risks to get to that point and very good at getting past those risks. The problem is stuff like gods and fairies and dragons and demons who've always been powerful and don't think of non-powerful people as mattering except when they're fun to play with.

Ah. The Maiar do not understand us at all, but they are trying very hard to make us feel welcome, and they certainly think we matter.

What don't they understand? Because that sounds like its own kind of danger.

What it's like to live in a physical body all the time - when we first met them they were unsafe to touch, because it didn't occur to them that we can't handle any possible temperature. They learned. They'd do very badly at guessing what we want or what makes us happy, but luckily they mostly just do precisely what we ask of them, and they do know enough to tell us if something we've asked will endanger someone or something.

Oh. That's... nice.

Their nature is to rejoice in creation and desire to share it.

And they're not so busy that it's important to be really careful to only go to them with important things to avoid wasting their time...?

There are hundreds of them, and they're extremely pleased to be helping, and we've only just arrived so everything is still new and delightful to them as to us.

Okay. Um, at home using subtle arts to talk this way is dangerous with some kinds of beings...

Subtle arts?

The way I'm talking to you without language? If I had a conversation like that with some species in my plane it'd fry my brain.

The Valar can be very overwhelming with osanwë if they're trying, but I don't think it's possible for osanwë to damage someone.

Does everyone here do osanwë? I guess the conversations are a little different from how I'd talk to another subtle artist or someone who wasn't at all but I've been too preoccupied to focus on it.