"Can you - back up, and explain who 'we' are, what a computer is, what information security is, what a demon is -"

"Oh, sorry - Gem wrote up what you told her but I wasn't sure what she told you. Uh, 'we' is alts of me and our friends and our multiversal network of running around helpfully meddling in stuff. A computer is - it's not going to help if I say it's a 'science crystal ball' is it - a computer is a technological device that lets you interact with information that's stored on it or sent to it in a compressed, searchable format and you can fit an enormous library in your pocket that way. A crystal ball is a magical version of the same thing, except they're spherical and a bit too large to go in a pocket, the pocket version is a magic mirror and I don't have any of those made. Information security is making sure that people who you don't want reading your stuff can't read your stuff, and this is especially important because demons exist and have the power to conjure arbitrary material objects, and if they learn that you exist and they think you might be interesting, 'arbitrary material objects' include 'complete works of you personally', say. There's a way to scramble information so that you can read it but demons can't, but it requires a special kind of computer which is operated through a chip installed in the user's brain. By a demon. One of my alts is one."

"Okay. Those sound useful if they are safe. I think I might benefit from generally a lot more information about what resources exist, there are clearly going to be things I wouldn't even think to ask for -"

"Yeah, that makes sense. The computers are safe and have been tested on Flat Elves - uh, there's two kinds of Elves, the kind from Space Arda are Space Elves and the Ardas which are instead flat single planets all the things specific to them are 'flat' things. You're probably not in a position to need space travel... but you might want Loki's spell set, which at the moment consists of comprehensive touch-range instant healing, grace you probably don't need, turning into a bird and back, visual and audio illusions that are kind of hard for anyone but her to get fancy with, and teleportation. While some of those spells we'd like to go ahead and distribute universally they all depend on a magical alphabet and we're not certain that it couldn't be reverse-engineered and turned into more spells, so it's a moderately high-trust proposition. Uh, the spellbinders in Hex have a waiting list for making people indestructible, among other things. Stork exports 'servants', which are any of animals that obey verbal instructions, little patches of light or shadow that obey written instructions, semiautonomous statue thingies that can be specialized for a variety of tasks, and things that move in specified ways and keep doing that forever and are useful for mass production or doing your laundry or whatever.

Space Arda and Warp and Edda all have a bunch of technological conveniences which would be a little much to summarize. If you want to perform any kind of risky experiment and you happen to be able to move everything it requires all the way across the map to Aurum, there's a precog who works for my alt there who can be borrowed to foresee the outcome. In addition to demons there are two more kinds of 'daeva', angels and fairies, who respectively change and move things; it is less likely that you have any immediate application for them and we're trying to keep the information that there's arbitrary interdimensional transit away from all three kinds of daeva. The Flat Elves on Vanda Nossëo are churning out lots of cool Flat-Arda-magical-engineering stuff including eidetic memory necklaces which you need if you want Loki's spells to work for you. I'm a wizard, and there are some more wizards, and while the world to which wizardry is native is terrible wizardry itself is pretty great and likely to be a good bet for anything important that you need a way to do on medium-short notice - very short notice the spellbinders are a better bet but they can't do that all the time because their flashiest stuff requires dozens of people to cast so they burn social capital if they have to assemble people for it constantly. Elspeth, who'll be dropping by in the next day or two to reasonableize your Valar, is a good source of explanations and context for anything that's still confusing then; she has communication magic. And I'm a subtle artist which means assorted mental powers and incidentally a therapy license."

"I think we could probably use a lot of therapists. 

...okay, seems like from a engineering perspective the thing to do is to get in touch with Celebrimbor - I have no idea if he's still in Mandos or not - see how much support he needs to get functional and whether he's willing to work with alts of his family, and teach Vanda Nossëo how to make safe non-mind-controlly rings of power and everything else Celebrimbor developed in the millenium after the end of the First Age - he collaborated very closely with some famous Dwarven geniuses, I don't suppose there's a way he can be put back in touch with them?"

"Flat Dwarves have a well-designed afterlife, which is literally just another planet and could be teleported to, so that should be pretty trivial. If he's out of Mandos the earwires will work."

"Alright. And from a non-engineering perspective the thing to do is probably to decide among the Elves remaining outside Valinor whether we want to try to revitalize an Elven population here or go to Valinor now that we're not needed in the fight against Sauron - we're going to fade eventually, do you have a solution to that..."

"Standard-issue Flat Silmarils fix it with I think pretty brief exposure."

"Yeah but. Those were all lost - or do you mean importing ones from other worlds -"

"I mean, we could also probably find the ones here if we need this set for some reason, but the Elentári set and the Luster set are both the right kind and just sort of around? They're slightly proprietary but they could probably be brought by every few millennia for a visit, and that's if we don't think of anything better and it turns out you can't wish it."

"So then maybe it's worth having persistent Elven kingdoms outside Valinor. The Valar don't let anyone leave, do you have any suggestions about how we could approach that?"

"Sic Elspeth on them? I suppose it's possible her results won't be as good at this stage in the timeline. But a big chunk of the problem with Valar is that they do not understand incarnates and Elspeth is very, very good at explaining things."

"That would be lovely but another big chunk of the problem at this stage is that the Valar regard it as the natural course of history that Elves fade from Middle-earth."

"If they don't budge on that even after Elspeth talks to them we can just extract people who want to leave from Valinor."

"That would probably make it impossible for them to return to Valinor, but I suppose if they could stay in touch with people there some of them might find it worth it. Especially now that the world's safe outside Valinor and there's the prospect of more rings."

"What do you actually use the rings to do, in practice?"

"I summarized them to Gem as 'makes you functionally a Vala, locally'. We've had to be restrained in use because it was a secret that we had them, but - no one can find this place who I don't want finding it, if they try following someone in the landscape itself will render that impossible, nothing decays if I don't want it to, species that age age slower and find themselves stronger and healthier, there are bits that are set up like Lórien, if you've heard of it, and I can use them for healing."

"...it sounds like it was a good thing that the place isn't hidden enough to have thrown Joy off targeting her teleport. Unless Lúthiens were whitelisted or something? Anyway, yes, I've spent time in a Lórien, it's nice."

"It's open to visitors by default at the moment, it's peacetime. Only orcs and Nazgûl not permitted."

"Nazgûl?"

"Ringwraiths. The mind-controlling rings? He gave the ones designed for humans to great Kings of Men, and they became his slaves, and they faded out of the world entirely and became - " he sends some memories, the way they move, the way they scream - "Nazgûl."

"Well that's horrifying I will drop Gem a note to do something about that." She fiddles with her computer.

"The Rings are gone. I don't know what happened to them now - they may have just dissolved, they may be very traumatized Men somewhere."

Nod.

"If it's the latter you can bring them here."