Whether it'd otherwise be a geographically sensible fallback position.

We'd still have to be able to get to it.

Should be doable. My issue with them is that it's all plains, indefensible without magic, not particularly hard to get to for us or the Enemy...

Also should be doable. With good teamwork between the people who own bits of it, we could even change the terrain eventually. It'd just take time away from other gradual improvements.

Then we should move fast, shouldn't we.

Definitely.

They don't have anywhere near enough practitioners to literally fill a city with regular-sized demesnes, but they can designate plots along the perimeter and fill in or expand out as more people awaken. Dropping into some forgotten spot in the plains and making it self-sufficient is going to be hard, and probably necessary since the potential use case is being besieged. The magic they're already using can be scaled up, at least, once the place is halfway defensible.

As for what to actually build, most of that is better left to the people with experience running kingdoms and opinions on mandatory beauty.

Yep, they have plans for that part. And the Fëanorians have lots and lots of engineering notes which will be put to use, if grudgingly.

It's much better than not using them.

And once this works, there'll be another safe place for if and when everyone gets kicked out of Doriath.

It's still not going to happen fast. Even rushed, they set out a plan that involves months of scouting and planning.

Months sounds fast for a human project on this scale, let alone an Elf one.

It does mean that before this gets anywhere they'll know whether or not the assassination worked.

And a few months later Angband becomes noticeable to practitioners.

It's a pretty unmistakeable kind of noticeable. They can compare the visual metaphors each person's Sight uses, but in each case the fortress has the same identifying attribute as how that person sees practitioners. It's reminiscent of recent descriptions of Doriath. 

Which means exactly one thing.

Figured it out. That's fast, for a Vala.

We knew he might. There's no way they could recite a ritual's worth of gibberish, but we knew there might be magic to help with that.

Enemy doesn't know anything about the rules.

Yup. When he's gratuitously torturing people that the spirits see as belonging to him, that won't help. But that's not everyone. Karma's got to be against him now.

Is there some way we can speed it along - get him to lie...

That'd cost him, power and karma, if there were a way to safely talk to him...

We've got ways to get at him now. Some safer than others.

Worth it. Same reason as this try was worth it.

More practitioners who lost children before Valinor. Selected from people who wouldn't find it too hard, emotionally, to emphasize that the orcs are or might be their descendants. Delegate to them whenever you can find an excuse. We already know everything the orcs do is more Melkor's action than theirs, it's safe. But if the orcs count as belonging to their ancestors...

This isn't how I wanted to win the war. But– if it works we never lose a winnable battle.

I was not really expecting us to get to choose between paths to victory.

It's not even a path. There's no endgame, it just helps with other paths. And it does it by having all our practitioners exploit the spirits' opinion that people are property.

Which we'll have thousands of years to correct afterwards.

Make sure it gets rejected and then forgotten.

It's not nearly as bad as the Enemy, but I've been thinking of it as one of the worse monsters out there for years and now we're making a deal with it.

It's not sentient, it can't exploit loopholes we didn't consider.