"Which means that Dwarves do exist and are safe and have invented metalworking, so that's all great news! - and that the Thindar haven't invented economics which is just to be expected."

Dwarves sound interesting and maybe he'll meet them at some point but now doesn't seem like the time. 

Leareth can get them armour from his world, once he has a way to get anything back and forth from his world. In the meantime, his magic has no particular advantage with actual armour, but he's very close to the point of being able to make a shield-amulet that will last approximately forever even if it's repeatedly switched from its passive to emergency state. He can make those fairly fast. Not fast enough for it to be tractable to make them for hundreds of thousands of people, though, and it'll slow down his progress on other work.

He tells Maitimo that, while the most important project here is the one that will make him no longer a bottleneck, there may be more urgent tasks; it could take him months to reach Velgarth, and it'll be pointless if they lose the war in the meantime. So he can allocate whatever balance of time Maitimo thinks is necessary to short-term priorities, and invest the remainder in getting them help. 

He's thinking about how to get Nolofinwë's group across the ocean. Standalone Gates are not a tractable plan for a hundred thousand people. A permanent Gate-terminus would be a better idea, which means he needs to figure out how to redesign one to work from the Silmarils. 

Short-term priorities: figure out where the shadow-spider came from and where it is now and whether there's more where that came from. Figure out whether refugees here in Endorë ought to be fleeing south, east, or west, given that it's too soon to get them safely to another world or even to Valinor. 

Everything else they can do with their own resources, more or less; the continent is in disarray, but orcs seem barely more experienced with war than Quendi, and not any better equipped. Tyelcormo's working on cavalry and is abstractly curious if Leareth happens to know anything about that. Elwë thinks he can shield his kingdom but not everyone else and doesn't care to have everyone else rushing into his kingdom in the meantime, some of them bound to be Enemy spies. 

Leareth knows some things about cavalry because he's spent the last several decades gathering an army. He can pass them on to Tyelcormo.

Finding the spider's origin, and scoping out the continent overall: that's going to require some more efficient scrying. He can make a better artifact that takes more of the load off, and once he and Curufinwë master the stable link, he won't need to power it himself. He can do a version that specifically looks through mage-sight, not his ordinary eyes.

He can also start a wider network of passive wards, just to detect anything large and magical moving around. This will require making a lot of small, easy-to-conceal artifacts and either Gating them out himself or having people transport them.  

The caves do not have very much in the way of a food supply, can he Gate to grab some? How much costlier is it to Gate to the south of Valinor compared to the Noldorin host on the coast, taking food from Valinor would be preferable if it won't wipe him out too badly.

Size of the Gate, and time to maintain it, both matter a lot more than distance. He can Gate to the south of Valinor but he'll be less wiped out if they communicate first and arrange to have food ready, even if this requires two Gates at an interval of a day since they don't yet have a more efficient way of using his magic for it. Is there anyone who has the required range with osanwë, though? 

"I doubt it, if Nelyafinwë doesn't."

"I can't reach anyone anywhere in Valinor. It's not just a range thing; Elón and Meldë have twelve hundred miles and he can't reach her from here and she's fine, I checked. I think the Valar might be shielding it."

"Very rude of them." Leareth has been trying to speak out loud in Quenya whenever he can. "I can Gate then. Who should I try to," :find?: "and Gate to?" 

"His name is Nírahar." Complicated feelings that this is not the time for and that get mentally shooed. "I've visited his house, though it was a while ago; I could send you the memory?"

"That would be good. I can Gate, stay on this side unless emergency? Less tiring. If you step through, you can talk to him quickly?" 

"Yes, definitely."

Then Leareth can do that right now. Staying on the caves side lets him keep tapping the Silmarils to feed the Gate, without digging into his reserves. 

And he can step through and say we're in Endorë and at war with the Enemy, can you get as much food as you can in the next day and bring it here in a configuration we can easily carry through? and then step out again.

Gate down, that was barely tiring at all and hopefully held a minimal risk of being noticed, and Leareth can continue with his other work until the next Gate, unless he's needed for anything else. 

They don't need him until the next day for the next Gate, which opens on some storerooms packed with grain and fruits and vegetables and alcohol and the carcasses of some shockingly enormous flightless birds. 

This Gate will have to last longer or else do the scooping thing.

The scooping thing is honestly harder than just holding it longer from this side, so Leareth will do that and wait for them to carry the food through. He's impressed at how much Nírahar managed to collect in only a day. 

We probably just cleared out the whole city, so we can't do that again. But the camp by the ocean will be producing food at much better scale in not too long, if it turns out to be safe enough to have settlements here at all.

:That was very generous of them: Leareth thinks. :I am very close to having the stable artifact design worked out with Curufinwë. And passive wards are easy to make. I can at least give the camp some form of warning if anything is approaching them, and perhaps make a smaller number of the active ward-stones for a particular building. A day of work, I think, if you judge it worth spending the time on: 

I think so. - thank you. 

Two days later they have a design worked out. It only holds up for low-powered artifacts, but it'll do fine for both passive wards and for personal shield-talismans, and he can make them a set of active ward-stones with twelve hours worth of stored energy, just as a backup. Actually building them will take a day, and then he can get the memories of a place to Gate them and drop them off. 

Leareth also works on a new design for a long-range scrying focus, building as much cleverness into the permanent part of the spell as he can, so he can more tractably search an entire continent for where the spider came from. He muses on permanent Gate designs for fetching Nolofinwë's host across the ocean. 

His research toward reaching Velgarth is going slowly. The limitation is that he first needs to explore from the Void, find the way back to any of the planes of his home, and projecting his mind to the Void is exhausting. He can do it for an hour or so every eight, with a nap afterward, and then spend the rest of the time on other work.

They hear about the spider from their local allies before they have magic up to see it. The spider has apparently settled down in a forest (its inhabitants mostly had enough warning to flee). The area darkened by its proximity is growing at a rate of a foot or so a day.

Well away from here, at least.

That simplifies things. Leareth is curious if his magic could halt the darkening, but not curious enough to reveal more of his capabilities than he needs to. If their local allies are willing to help, though, he can make the components for a circle of passive wards around the area that will warn them if the spider moves, he'll just need people to carry them in. He doesn't want to risk Gates nearby. 

There are people willing to carry those in, at least up to the edge of the darkness.