"But I presumably continue being good at people when evil."

"And King and therefore possessed of lots of leverage. Yes."

"The latter you can fix."

"He wasn't optimizing the place to hold together neatly if someone decided that he abruptly needed to be gone. He's been given ten years to sort that out, but we're a little short on incentives for it besides 'not outright stating that he can't have his Findekáno back'."

"I assume one of me has already predicted that that's not really going to be sufficient?"

"Mitros has, yes, but like Kib derived it's confusing and not amenable to brute force."

"I mean, among the forms of brute force available to us is a golem for every single person on the planet who can follow them around and restrain them from interpersonal violence."

"The country is actually not that badly run on an institutional level. The crime rate is high for Elves but that's for Elves, and it was higher in Evil Valinor."

"I didn't think it was badly run, I think it's designed to give my alt a couple hundred thousand Elven shields by falling apart without him, and we can prevent that."

"By turning it into a surveillance state?"

"The golems don't have to report to anyone - what, are you just planning on leaving him in power if after a decade he goes 'regrettably, I wasn't able to do anything about the inevitable civil war if I'm deposed, except for giving all sides more weapons, which I did very efficiently..."

"We haven't firmly decided on anything yet. I just don't think 'everybody is followed around by a golem all the time whether they like it or not' is a no-downside strategy."

"I had one for decades, it's not really that annoying. But if Maedhros has something better in mind that's fine."

"I encourage you to talk it over with him, he's certainly beat his head against it for a while now."

"How badly off is the Findekáno?"

"...reacts disturbingly to powerful people in general and Maitimos in particular. You would probably count as powerful by affiliation alone."

"I assume his alts have had a go-"

"Delight, mostly - that's one of the Space ones. Uh, Pterodactyl-and-Kib could be an interesting combination, I don't know that it'd do anything in particular but it might."

"...because I'm fucked in the head and Pterodactyl isn't and I probably project that around him?"

"Yep."

He stares at the wall and reminds himself none of this is real anyway.

"Should I have been more aggressively secret-keeping?"

Kib shakes his head.

"I appreciate having more information; we might think of something to do with it."

Nod. "Lemme know if me and Pterodactyl should go - visit, or something..."