"Like, which person they look like?" 

"If there's someone you want to watch die then sure but mostly I was expecting to be told to avoid features that'd make 'em look like anyone you know."

Lissa glances over at Vanyel. "Probably not anyone blond. Or who looks much like any of us, I guess." 

Cam makes a basement dweller of a darker ethnic group.

It successfully doesn't look like any specific person Lissa's ever known, and also... "Ack. I see why you said the thing about not bothering guests. That's so creepy."

Leareth steps closer to examine the basement dweller. "How odd. Life-force, normal, but no mind at all. Even a human fetus has a detectable mind." 

"- really? From how early?"

“Usually by two months into the pregnancy. Note that there is no content to the mind at this point, certainly no thoughts or emotions, but it begins to register to a sensitive Thoughtsenser as something there at all, separate from the mother. The life-force can be sensed as distinct even sooner than that, by a skilled Healer.”

"Oh, okay, a maker-instantiated pregnancy develops normally if it's made before five to six weeks along, but not later, I was wondering if there was any overlap."

"It could be. Six weeks is at the earlier end for reports I have heard; it might be that it requires an unusually strong Thoughtsenser to pick out, and the sensitivity of that Gift has not been studied as extensively as mage-gift, so it is more difficult to calibrate." 

"Bit of a rabbithole though."

Leareth nods. "I will run the test, then. Fortunately, I do not actually need to spill blood in order for it to work. I imagine you would prefer less mess." 

He lifts his hands and - does something - and, shortly, the body on the ground is not alive anymore.

Leareth frowns. "Unfortunately, no, that did not work. Though I also did not observe the life-force dissipate in the usual pattern that would indicate energy release to the Void – even simple animals have this, in our world, I have not tested it for insects but usually that part would depend on weight and not intelligence. It would be interesting if blood-magic does not work in Milliways at all. Not that I am much inclined to run the obvious test." 

"If it's ever important to know in a hurry we can ask an Elf because I can fix those, or anybody who wants to let Nechar try putting them to rights, but it is not in fact urgent."

"No," Leareth agrees. "Shall we?" He gestures at the door back inside.

They shall. Cam torches the body on the way.

Leareth returns to his previous seat. "So, I received a somewhat fragmentary report from Vanyel on your Maiar. I would like to hear some more details about their nature and the details of their deaths. I do not mind reading this background if you would prefer that to explaining it." 

"I don't have a good reference ready to hand. Maiar are magical beings; they can operate bodies but don't have to and need to do all their biological processes manually. You can think of them as sort of like an area of space they control the contents of. They can move, though, it's not a fixed area. They have magical powers, and vary in exact sort and scope of those - one's queen of a country and has it enclosed in a force field, though it's possible that's a one-off technological thing, one is very good at illusions, one prefers to spend all his time acting exactly like a dog but does have the standard issue communicative telepathy that the Elves duplicate with machinery they grow in their heads in a feat of inexplicable biology. Uh, and they died because I destroyed the planet with a black hole, that being a lot of matter very close together sufficient to generate enough gravitational pull to collapse the planet. I... took video, not because I had any specific reason to expect that to ever be useful but because one can't go back and do it later if there turns out to be one. If you want to see."

Leareth blinks. "Can you clarify what you mean by 'took video'? I am not sure how the translation effect here works, but I suspect you are referring to a concept that we lack a term for." 

"Oh - yeah, sorry, the translation's easy to forget. Uh -" Cam pulls up a completely unrelated video of a cat jumping into a box, plays that on his computer.

Lissa leans in to watch as well, giggles. "That's adorable!"

"A captured moving-image of the past, then," Leareth says. "I am not sure what precisely I expect to learn either, but it could be useful to see your record of the event." 

Cam pulls it up. He doesn't watch.

In the video, a gorgeous blue-green-white sphere crumples into a dark point.

Leareth watches it in silence, and stays silent for a while after it ends. 

"Certainly anything made of matter would have been torn apart," he says levelly. "The Maiar, however, are not made of matter, correct? And this was a purely physical, not magical, process. Is it possible even in theory to entirely destroy a Maia by physically disrupting its area of control?" 

"I don't know. The deal I had going was that Melkor had to hold his end up if I followed through even if for some reason it didn't work, but he expected it to work. His principal target seemed to be the Valar, who I think work the same way."

"...Unfortunately, the obvious test would be asking a surviving Maia if you can attempt to murder them in this fashion, which I imagine you are not comfortable with. However, if the Maiar were intact, and simply trapped, then - perhaps they could be extracted?" A slow, deliberate shrug. "I imagine that Melkor's goals would equally have been served by permanently trapping them as by destroying them."