I mean, if I'm not underestimating Melian relative to Moringotto there'll definitely be some point where Angband is impenetrable and Doriath isn't.

When she has a demesne and good karma and he doesn't?

And he has an army and Maiar and a conventional fortress and is a Vala. The saying is one step below a god, he is a god and has a lot of the same benefits from the local spirits answering to him even without naming Angband his demesne.

I think if there's a way to get the Silmaril before the ritual finishes we should take it.

Sure. I can't think of one.

Me neither.

We can play for time. If people challenge her, and name the Silmaril as prize if they win... we at least find out what she picks as a part of the challenge. And get time to come up with a plan.

There's that spider thing to worry about too -

Oh no.

Um, demesne rituals can take days. For something this size it probably would. Hopefully Ungoliant doesn't come, but if she decides to it's not likely to be after the first few days anyway? I think?

Do we make it better or worse by challenging ourselves -

Ungoliant wouldn't get notified of that, so neither. Unless she's sitting around undecided about whether to come, and makes up her mind in the extra delay. Then worse.

I think we do have to do at least some challenges. If Melian uses the same way of winning each time, we'll know what we've got to beat.

I'll tell people.

He does.

Amber and Findekáno have an unpleasantly plural number of injuries and aren't in the best state for taking on a demigod super-practitioner. If Maitimo brought practitioners he hasn't mentioned them.

Fortunately there's no shortage of Nolofinwëan challengers. They get the first say in an element of the challenge, if someone says Silmaril does Melian contradict them or just pick a safe contest?

Melian thinks she can keep them all out.

Which she can.

This is good. Really.

If there are a lot of challengers and she's not accepting them, we can say it wasn't a real demesne ritual. Even the fact that she announced it without following the formula can help.

This doesn't count as accepting them?

If the contest were "try to get in here" this would count as winning. If it were chess, it wouldn't. She's not even negotiating what the challenge is.

This'd be good if we just wanted her to fail. But that's not right. Ideally she'd lose once, forfeit the Silmaril, and finish the ritual from there. For that we need her to accept challenges.

Which she's not doing.

Right. So, we tell her she doesn't get a demesne without meeting all willing challengers in fair contest of mutual agreement— that gets us access. We still have to win. Somehow.

I'll have someone tell her that. As a friendly warning -

Heh. Probably doesn't matter much if she sees through the friendliness, but I wonder if she will.

Either way she starts offering terms. If they can get the Silmaril they can have it, are the terms.

Good, that sounds like it's not going to vary between contests.

And if they propose additional terms? One challenger suggesting a ban on a type of magic they don't know and Melian has never heard of, that'd sound like no downside at all. Another proposing that the Silmaril be placed somewhere where its light is more visible, or less. Melian could say yes, or make counterproposals, or even a flat no, but these don't affect the odds much. The real goal is to find out how many degrees of freedom they have.

She agrees to bans on types of magic. She counters other proposed terms by suggesting prizes other than the Silmaril.

Which she knows is the real goal here.

I was hoping we could take advantage of her not knowing how we did the distraction earlier. Get something that would allow outside help without it looking suspicious.

How about bans on all magic except for specific types, which can be used without restriction? It's skirting the rules but would arguably be close enough to agreement.

Sure.

Good. Then they can try that where the type of magic is enchantment, or that plus elementalism. Just as soon as they're satisfied they're not going to come up with a better way to throw away their one shot.