We have supplies for wilderness camping in Valinor - a  thousand bedrolls, blankets, a thousand wax cloths you can put above a bedroll for protection from the rain, clothes for warm weather, clothes for cold weather. We have forty pounds of meat per person and sixty loaves of bread, and wagons to transport them in. We have six hundred twelve lightstones. We have twelve hundred horses. We have some feed for them but we're not going to bring them through if they can't graze in the Outer Lands, the logistics are otherwise insurmountable. We have parchment, writing supplies, pearls and precious stones and fabric for trade, swords, spears and hunting bows for everyone and armor for twenty, musical instruments, tapestries and such for once we build houses, farming equipment sufficient to support a population four times ours, precision tools for metalworking and glass blowing, and eighty wagons of charcoal.

:A very reasonable list. The only things I might add would be durable items of which you need one per camp or one per few hundred people – portable iron stoves for heat or cooking if you have such things here, for example, or large tents that can be unfolded for people to gather and eat inside. And the second is materials to repair your existing supplies, before you have the full capacity for producing them afresh. Weapons and farming equipment, and clothing, would be the priorities here, I think, but the wagons could also break. Likely your tools for metalworking will do for the first two. Do you have carpenters and stonemasons here? If so, I am not sure what tools they use to do their work, but if they are difficult to make then it might be of value to bring some of their tools, if not raw materials – stone can be found in almost all places, and a replacement for wood hopefully exists, even if the trees themselves are different. Speaking of personnel, I am guessing you have put thought into included skilled craftspeople in various areas?: 

Almost everyone can do carpentry and stonemasonry and metalworking and farming and tailoring, of course, but we'll have some people who've specialized more in it, and in particular in expanding the craft or adapting it in new regions of Valinor, and we're taking more care with things like artifact making that not everyone knows how to do. Large tents were on the to-do list, I don't know if they'll be ready in time. More food is on the to-do list too, and is unlikely to be ready in time at this point - hopefully we can subsist off fish for a while if needed.

Leareth nods. :That does give me a better idea of what magic might be of use, particularly in artifact form. The difficulty here is that artifacts in my world generally need to be powered by a mage every so often, and the form that does not is much harder to make and might be impossible in your world. This means it would be better to focus on a smaller number of individually stronger spells, or else I will spend all day every day adding power to them: 

He gets out his list. 

:I can make a talisman that provides something comparable to armour for a person wearing it; I could make this for a few people, not more than ten or twenty given that they need to be re-powered once every few days if worn at all times, and sooner if they take the brunt of an attack. But if you wish to protect certain particularly key people leading the expedition – your father and yourself ought probably wear them, for example. I can provide wards that will detect wild animals or other threats approaching; this is also a spell I can cast anew as needed, but it will be less time-consuming in the long run if I make a set of ward-stones. I can do something called a weather-barrier, which blocks out rain and maintains warmth inside even when the ambient temperature is cold, and also heat-generating stones that can be carried about in a pocket. Oh, and lights. It might make sense to create a small number of very bright light-spells, so that I need re-power fewer of them. They will not be as bright as the Silmarils, I am sure, but enough to light a campsite well: 

Leareth shrugs. :All of these are spells I can cast as needed, without making durable artifacts for them. However, I am likely to be utterly exhausted after holding a Gate large enough and of long enough duration for a thousand people to cross, and so anything you will have urgent want of in the first day ought probably not depend on me: 

All of those sound useful! Would they make sense for you to do before we leave, or should we plan to add them to what we're doing at some point after we've arrived?

Leareth adds up hours and days in his head. :I can certainly make a number of them before we leave, if your world has adequate materials – generally a crystal such as quartz will work fine as a base. I would lean toward making a small number of talismans for shielding: the first one for himself, he wasn't wearing one for physical armour when he Gated, since he expected to arrive in a secure area, :and they are individually fairly quick, and then depending on what Tyelcormo's party thinks is likely to be the greatest immediate threat, weather or animals, I might do either the wards or the weather-barrier stones: 

He sits back. :I am not sure how much free time I ought expect to have before. So far I have done the wards for guarding your weapons, and taught several cohorts of students basic sword work from my world. Are we still planning to go meet Aulë at some point?: 

Ideally, yes. I'd like to know how your senses interact with the Valar.

:So would I, though I cannot say I am looking forward to it: 

Is it unpleasant to be around intense magic sources?

:Sometimes, yes. Also I am - not particularly comfortable with gods. Though yours sound friendly enough: Aside from Melkor, anyway. 

Aulë has been very good to my family. But that makes sense. They can be overwhelming, and their mistakes tend to be very costly.

:I am glad to hear that. What in particular has Aulë done?: Maybe hearing some specifics will help his hindbrain believe it. Leareth is sure he can control any external reaction, he's had a lot of practice, but it'll be easier to think and pay attention to the right things if he feels less trepidation about it. 

He's the one who taught the Noldor mining and metalworking! He set his domain not too far from here so that it'd be easier for people to come and go and bring their creations to the city. My mother's family settled there, and he helped them do the earliest research into the properties of metals. When my father ran away from home he ended up there, too, and learned with them. And he made the Dwarves. When the Valar had retreated to Valinor and the Quendi didn't yet exist, he got impatient with waiting for Eru to make people, so he made his own people. They're squat and hairy and live underground and love rock and stone and metal, and have their own way to make magic artifacts. Eru was so charmed that he imbued them with sentience, and they're out there somewhere in the Outer Lands. We'll meet them soon, hopefully.

:Fascinating. Has this happened with any other god creating their own people? My world has at least six sapient species. Some were created by gods, or even directly by human mages: 

His wife - Yavanna, whose domain was plants was annoyed that the Dwarves would be a menace to the trees and made tree-people so that the trees could be defended against them. 

:Ha. That is more...creative than anything I am aware of in my world – we have lizard-people and bird-people and deer-people and wolf-people, but nothing from the domain of plants. Also - the gods marry? What does that mean, in their context?: 

I don't know how they marry, mechanically, but it binds souls the same way as a Quendi marriage does.

:...What? Quendi marriage binds souls? Every marriage?: 

- yes? Or, uh, if somehow it didn't, then they wouldn't be married, and they'd presumably try again...

Leareth does not say what he's thinking, which is 'that sounds terrible.' It probably kind of shows in his face, though. :Do the gods have to approve for a marriage to work?: 

....no? ...most people are really happy about getting married, it's very rare to regret it, I wonder if we're somehow miscommunicating -

:I would say that a majority of people in my world who marry are happy about it, but it does not generally involve binding souls – there is something that does that, which we call a lifebond, but as far as I know it happens only as a result of intervention by the gods, and the people involved do not choose who it is with. And they are not automatically married!: 

He thinks over examples. :...In fact, I am not sure if any of the lifebonded couples I know of in the country nearest where I live are married. The King is lifebonded but he married someone else, it was rather controversial: 

Marriages don't preclude another such bond but it's not permitted except under exceptional circumstances.

:Permitted by who? Do you have a church or some such entity that officiates marriages?: 

No? But the Valar told us what to do and everyone tries their best to do that.