So she returns to the host and reports the lack of result.

Not surprised. Will they be able to figure it out on their own?

Probably eventually. I made sure not to comment on his guess that it wasn't in my specialty, and a complicated-looking decoy device that explodes if captured would have been a good idea anyway, but it's not the most permanent secret. Should take him longer than he thought, at least.

If they're going to get it eventually, do we benefit from having it be later rather than sooner?

Might. With enough time, any secret is probably going to get figured out. And if it somehow fails noticeably, we stop deploying it against the Enemy and it really can last indefinitely.

Sigh. Thanks. I'll tell the King.

Once everyone's up to date, they can start deploying it. They test the range first; back on Earth no one uses this except in the occasional emergency when you really don't want to be contacting someone as far away as possible. It reaches farther than osanwë, so they'll have plenty of space to call from a lot of directions and run if attacked.

The gadgets use unnecessarily complicated elemental bindings so the function can't be guessed by looking at them. Most of the participants have not been told how unnecessary it is. Amber teaches the volunteers to say they're summoning Melkor in English. They know what it means and will in fact be summoning him, but any eavesdroppers won't get much from it. And of course all discussion of the plan is over osanwë. See if Maitimo can get through that.

Maitimo's busy - plants grow okay under a few variants on electrical lighting, but not under a few others, and making sure none of the effects of electricity are visible is a hassle. They've sent an emissary to the Dwarves all the way out in Tumunzahar and are excited by the potential for trade there; they've been selling the Dwarves the same forge-heating options they have installed at home, and collecting elementals for those. They've worked their way through the books on elementals. 

They're learning English. The books are translated, and they're curious how closely translated, and the palantiri are good enough, when combined with Elven eyesight, to have gotten occasional glimpses of the sources, and it's the language Amber thinks in by default though it's hard to learn a language from osanwë. When they hear the volunteers speaking English they redouble efforts on that front. They also try saying the same thing aloud, of course, and saying it with different words in place of 'Melkor', but with no results. 

So, English. Fëanor thinks he could do it if he could see four full pages of the books, maybe from only two. They have a translation, after all; it's the easiest possible circumstance under which to learn a language. But someone would have to open a book within sight of the sky, and until that happens, exploration down that particular avenue is probably not the best return on their time.

They'll also have to cancel the early attempts toward flight. If it's magically assisted, the Enemy can see that now. (The books were electronic copies, for portability. Magically keeping the battery from dying was enough of a hassle that probably no one's going to consult the original English very often.)

It's not very long before they try the first actual attempt at operation Is Your Refrigerator Running. They position themselves just barely within range, the devices between them and Angband, and start chanting. "Melkor, I summon you." "Melkor, I summon you." "Melkor." It's very repetitive and boring. But each person doing it represents most of one human attentional capacity the Enemy isn't spending on Enemy things.

It takes Angband about two weeks to react, via a wave of poison gas rolling across the plains.

They don't have a whole lot of wind or air spirits. Can't just casually purify it. But few isn't none; is it susceptible to a wind blowing against it? If so they could maybe maintain a pocket where the atmosphere is breathable.

A wind'll do something, but by the time it's blanketed the area they're going to have a pretty narrow breathable area and no visibility.

They could probably avoid the gas just by taking to the air. Which would leave them above a poison cloud, so there's no reason not to also circle around to a different side of Angband. Let the Enemy waste his however he did that.

The cloud drifts off towards the Fëanorians rather than dissipating, but the practitioners are well clear of it.

They can order some air spirits to turn the air back into air. It'll take a long time to reduce the poison to nothing even if the Enemy isn't actively resisting, but the opportunity cost is only that the people using those to fly have to hitch a ride with someone else.

The poison cloud blankets quite a radius but not everywhere they could possibly be.

One person peels off to warn the Fëanorians, in case they haven't seen it yet. The rest resume their shift prank calling the Dark Lord.

Is there anywhere in particular it's covering or not covering? Amber asks the ranking person who's off shift. That circle on the plains probably isn't significant in some way. Probably.

Not that we know of, no. Might be worth perturbing it in places to see if it's cover for something -

It'll slow down getting rid of it, but that's already slow.

Anything uncovered if winds start blowing from points the officer picks at random?

Nope.

Just a perfectly ordinary cloud of poison gas? Good. It can sit there and dwindle. Slowly.

Very slowly.

Which is fine. It's not threatening anyone right now, and they can go back to interfering with the Enemy.

And they even have a sort of confirmation that it does bother the Enemy.

And that he spent resources on stopping it. They couldn't have set that cloud up in two weeks; if he couldn't then he's at a worse absolute position as well as relative.