Laughter. Well, they must have been shaken to learn they can die. That isn't supposed to be possible at all.

Wait, impossible? The Valar, the Enemy, other Maiar couldn't do it?

If they ever have, no word of it reached our legends.

Surely Moringotto tried it, if only to see if he could. Though that might not get back to us either way.

The Valar might have mentioned it, and didn't, but I'll grant that's a weak argument.

We should know by now. Could have just checked with the Sight.

Still, even if it didn't kill them they didn't previously know they could be exploded. I'd be pretty vulnerable to threats in their position.

We could try it. Do we have a means of finding them that won't turn up major ones, like parley and Melian?

We do need to see if we can hurt the major ones too. But no, I don't have much of a plan for finding them at all.

They're probably mostly in Angband, not wandering. Especially now that we can kill them.

We could also just ask Fëanáro for his language notes.

That still involves talking to the Feanorians.

Which I guess isn't literally worse than drawing out enemy Maiar, but that sounds like the kind of thing I would have said before Maitimo pulled his latest stunt.

Do you just really dislike them or do you think it's strategically dangerous?

Mostly just dislike, now. The strategic risk went away when their host jumped straight to the worst-case scenario.

Then I think it's worth asking for their language notes before we try to ambush and threaten a Power. They're probably all sworn to Melkor anyway...

Which might or might not mean we couldn't find anything out from trying.

If they ask for magic information I can counteroffer doing some magic for them instead, but we don't have much else to trade for the notes if it comes to that.

And they're probably done trading things for goodwill. Worth asking anyway. If they like the idea and want to try it themselves they can also steal the idea, I don't care, as long as we learn the results.

And I'd be surprised if they guessed why we want to know, but I should just tell them shouldn't I. If they don't make the connection then someone over there could end up in the same boat.

...probably, yeah.

Before we do anything we should check whether any of the practitioners did have children kidnapped to Utumno. It might still be possible to just limit it to people young enough that there's no danger.

(She has simultaneously described the risk to Séron, who is informed but not awakened.)

I'll ask everyone. 

(Séron will not become a practitioner, then. He asks why the orcs will count against him if they aren't awakened as well.)

They mostly won't. Mostly won't, slightly will. And there are a lot of orcs to aggregate. Also, uninformed humans can sometimes accrue small amounts of karma over a few Years, and the orcs have had more than that.

Two people potentially have this problem. One lost a child to the Enemy back in the day, the other was a prisoner back in the day and may have been forced to father children, can't say for sure or how many.

This is not exactly the easiest subject—sorry about your captivity and/or dead-or-worse kids, also our mistake may or may not have doomed you—but at least there's a next step to take. Amber heads over to talk to the Feanorians.

They're still making sure the electric lighting isn't visible from outside. There are more than ten practitioners, less than thirty. The guards wave at her cheerfully.

She less than cheerfully waves back.

Is Maitimo the one in charge of the practice or did he delegate that? I need to talk to whoever it is, before anyone else awakens.

Maitimo, I'll get him -