Running a generator - I demurred on that one, seemed like the kind of thing you possibly could do? - heightened perception, heightened reaction times, enhanced strength - he really wants the one for better reaction times, it lets you think faster and would accordingly let him invent faster - those don't seem like things your magic could do, so I said that maybe we didn't want to teach the Nolofinweans those songs...food remains pressing, food preservation, the song that lets you go without sleep. Those are the main ones.

We could do generators, could maybe fake strength but it'd be ineffective.

So he did have a list, then.

He has lists of research applications of everything he even hears about, of course he'd do it for novel magic.

Not if he knew that particular novel magic didn't exist. I got a bit paranoid recently that even without telling anyone anything there might be enough clues for him to figure out it's a cover story.

I told him 'infohazard, cut it out' before I spread the fake explanation. I very much doubt he believes the fake explanation. But he trusts me enough to drop something if I say that, and skepticism wouldn't stop him from coming up with research applications - if anything, it'd be very suspicious if I explained some novel magic and my father didn't have a paper out within a week with a hundred research applications -

Good point. We can rely on the nebulously defined limitations I don't want to state details about for why some of them aren't happening.

The other thing is, um, you probably wouldn't have to tell anyone if you wanted those hundred applications for the real thing. Has anyone pieced together anything closer than "infohazard, stop"?

 I did and I am not actually the sharpest mind that got intrigued by the problem. From what you described about where the breakthrough point is, getting a sense of your capabilities while still believing that it's something intrinsic to humans and explainable as a variant on magic in this world wouldn't be enough, right? 

I don't think it would, no. I mean, "this is what spirits and Others are, humans can talk to them" would, but "humans can fly" shouldn't.

Who are you thinking might have figured out enough?

If anyone figured out anything resembling 'there are spirits and Others' they haven't told me about it, but I haven't had much time for casual conversation. If there's something making the stakes higher than previously communicated I can try to interact with everyone who plausibly might have, come back to you with better guesses...

They're the same, it's just that I realized I was incorrectly paranoid back when I was being paranoid...

Have you arranged for anyone to find out my real capabilities, and if not can you swear that as far as you know no one knows? I know it's an extreme thing to ask, it's just, I should have said it broader than just telling people the first time around–

Yeah, sure, somewhere soundproofed which this isn't, because that'd be a terribly ironic way for someone to learn. How's your Quenya - do I need to figure out how to phrase it in familiar vocabulary words -

I'll understand if you say it the way you did last time, that everything you said since I last spoke over osanwë is true.

They find another building which is comfortably soundproofed. 

(The envoys to Doriath have been told to ask Melian about the ritual of awakening, ask if she'll supervise their own because she's a powerful Maia and they wouldn't want to do it in Elwë's kingdom without his leave and her guidance. Well. He gave ten people letters to that effect and told them to read them only if the first large number they thought of turned out divisible by four, to act on them if it seemed wise in their judgment, and then not to tell Maitimo whether they had done so.)

To my knowledge no one in this camp knows your real capabilities. I have not encouraged any efforts to discover them, I haven't told them to anyone, and I haven't had any interactions with anyone or passed any information to anyone that made it likely they'd figure it out. 

"I swear that everything I said since you last spoke over osanwë is true."

That's in this camp as in in this faction, not just people who happen to not be on some errand right now, right?

If so... thanks. Sorry about asking that.

A slightly exasperated sigh. I also haven't given information about your capabilities to people unaffiliated with our faction, or people who've renounced an affiliation with our faction, or people affiliated with our faction but outside our camp, and I haven't had people mess with their declared affiliations so I could swear things about my faction more easily, and I don't intend to do any of those things.

"I swear that everything I said since you last spoke over osanwë is true."

I'm being even more obnoxious about this than is called for, aren't I.

If it helps, I haven't been doing that kind of thing with what I swore to keep secret either, and have occasionally deflected people when they seemed to get close.

I appreciate that. And you may be way out of line in terms of social protocols but it really makes a lot of sense, given who you're working with and what's at stake. The Enemy sunk a millenium into sowing distrust between our hosts, it must really matter, and anything at all we can do to counteract that...

Yeah. I'd prefer my world's set of expectations for this, where people make definitive statements whenever necessary, but that's not the set we've got.

Some better news, I think we might be able to get some leeway on what the Enemy could reverse engineer by making things that look like he could manage it but need magic to run...

Like most possible subject changes, it's a welcome one.

Yes. He bounces ideas to the engineers and gets suggestions back and sketches some out and takes very pretty notes to take home to Amber's host.

Can't guarantee it'll be the best use of magic resources, but some of these would definitely work. We could use trains and cars or even airplanes, and if they capture any let them scratch their heads at how it stays up.

No chance that'll cause them to guess about magic?

It'd be a pretty huge jump.

Would it help to add complicated-looking decoy enchantments on the parts that are going to run by magic, so it looks like a normal innovation?

Enchantments don't look like anything - well, not to my sight - but we could add them, yes.

If they don't, that's even better. It could be anything making that propeller turn.

Yep. A real project to pull something like that off would involve a lot of people, though, I might have to think about how to make it plausible that we came up with it with so few.