She will take her leave, and return tomorrow, then.

He'll see her then.

And in the meantime, she will go see the changes wrought upon Khazad-dum in more detail.

The changes are a bit different in different places - wealthier areas, and market areas selling to foreigners, have the heaviest showings of the new technologies. There's clearly been some impact on delicacies - a number of restaurants and the like advertise having cold drinks and food available, especially those catering to the wealthy or in hotter areas of the cities near the forges. There's hints of changes to come - discussions of business ventures to farther flung regions, to import things like fish that spoil readily when not preserved, and one tavern has a few dwarves talking with human ranchers who live nearby about increasing their dairy herds, since milk can now be preserved better.

There's some other interesting changes - most places have seen a marked increase in public fountains, some for drinking but most apparently intended for washing hands and tools. Signs promoting soaps guaranteed to stop certain diseases, and encouraging people to wash their hands before eating, even if they don't seem soiled.

There's more paper apparent, too, soft books being passed between fascinated adolescents, as well as large pamphlets with apparently recent news being sold at a few points.

None of it seems obviously magical, which counter-indicates gnomish involvement. The girls were tall for it, anyway.

Even so, for these changes to be so rapid implies a broad base of knowledge drawn on for its most efficient particles. More than was present in this world before. Whatever the larger outcome of the talks, turning those girls to her side would be a definite win.

She shows up on time for the meeting the next day.

There's quite a lot of dwarves present, arranged around the much larger Council Chamber.

As well as a suit of armor - though no sign of her sister - sitting in the Chamber's guest area.

One is better than none. She takes position near the armor.

Since the meeting hasn't been called to order yet, and Bellona's pretty sure it's gonna be boring anyways, she turns to the other non-dwarf, tilting her helmet a bit. "Hello. You're that messenger people were talking about? With news from Gondor?"

"Yes, I am. And you are one of the two who has been... revolutionizing the dwarf world."

"Yeah! It's been interesting."

"I imagine so."

She hums, and then turns her attention to the meeting as Thorin calls the Council to order.

Undoubtedly she'll be to answer some questions at some point.

The Council seems to have questions for Ellisaria first, mostly about her information, Gondor's forces, Mordor's forces, how sure is she Sauron is involved...

All of which she is happy to answer (leaving out the orc's involvement).

They seem mostly satisfied with that, and all agree someone should definitely do something about Mordor, though there's some implications of 'someone else'. Another question of debate is how to go to war; the four Eastern representatives are hesitant to commit their people to a cause on the opposite side of a huge continent. The representative for Erebor and the Iron Hills - and therefore Durin's Folk - is more staunchly anti-Sauron, but notes their forces are depleted and they need to protect their own people and borders. Still, they're the most eager to help the war effort - the two representatives of the Blue Mountains dwarves effectively can't commit anything other than maybe craftsmen. The Ministers of Khazad-dum have more reservations - it seems likely Khazad-dum will bear the brunt of the dwarven war effort, and while their economy is strong, it's new, and might not be able to weather a possibly long war...

Thorin calls on Bellona Elric, inventor, at that point, to ask if she has insight.

"There's a lot technology can do for war," she says with a shrug. "Mordor's mostly got mountains with some walls and gates and towers and stuff in the passes for defenses, right?" There's a murmur of assent from the Minister of External Security.

"Making a weapon that can demolish pretty arbitrary walls - or just fire over them - is pretty easy, though like most siege weapons getting them there could be a pain if it wasn't constructed on-site. We could also make anti-personnel weapons that could punch through most armors, and explosives that could be dropped on an army - though bombing fortifications out of existence is a lot harder, but I guess if you don't need like intact Mordor farmland at the end you could use bigger bombs... And less directly, the trains we've been talking about building - I know those're a huge political project before anything else, but they'd make moving troops and food and stuff a lot easier. Cars do that too, and don't super need specialized roads, but fueling them might be an issue without infrastructure. And a big problem with armies is disease, right? And we've been helping with that. And radios would make communicating between forces way easier."

She pauses, thinking. "Not much we can do for the bottleneck problem with the mountains..."

There's some astonished murmuring! A few Ministers object to the general air of excitement with words of caution - the Minister of the Treasury is worried about the expenses of such a certainly large scale project - but the general consensus is that if the Elric sisters can prove their weapons will do what they say, the dwarves will likely go to war - including the Eastern Kingdoms, who seem far more excited at the idea of getting their own engineers around weapons that can change the face of the battlefield than they did about throwing bodies at Mordor's gates.

Thorin does bring the meeting to a close, soon enough, saying that they'll need calculations and field tests before they can commit to anything further.

Excellent. She is pleased with the direction things are going.

"I would like to speak to you and your sister at some point," she says to the armor. "When would be convenient?"

"Eh, El was a bit busy when I left but should be free to talk by the time I get back. She'll wanna hear about the meeting, anyways."

"After you, then."

She leads the way to the rather extremely nice area where they're living (they purchased basically an apartment building in the upper, brighter levels better designed for humans and turned a significant chunk of it into library or workshops or cat-and-plant housing) and calls out, cheerfully, "El! I'm home!" once they're through the front door.

"How was the meeting?" comes the answering call from further in.

"Eh, kinda boring! They don't like Mordor, but most of 'em don't wanna, like, throw soldiers at that. They asked me what war technologies there are, though, and like the idea of bombs and stuff a lot better."