"Ooh. There's the Dwarves, I assume you thought of that... What about that new city Nolofinwë wants to found? You should ask him what he needs. Or probably ask Findekáno, actually - he's easier to get ahold of, right?" 

"He is somewhat easier to get a hold of. They'll need a Gate threshold and probably emergency protections for the walls, just in case."

"Makes sense. We should go through the magics you know that I don't, Leareth. I was eventually able to replicate your weather-barrier from an artifact focus but it took me forever. What else is there?" 

Leareth thinks. "There are some designs that I was not very able to deploy in Velgarth because apparently the gods disliked them. Some kinds of simple weather magic can be made a set-spell in that way - to make rain come, for example. I had a prototype once for a sort of artifact that would harvest crops, which would be of much greater value here since it could be linked to an Arda artifact rather than requiring a mage to re-power it every day. There are the various kinds of preservation that can be done to make buildings last longer..." 

"That will be popular everywhere we don't have the Silmarils."

Leareth nods and makes some notes. "If you have the materials for it I can work on the permanent Gate components tomorrow." He's impatient to start but also realistically too tired to do any more magic today. "Vanyel ought to be there to check my work the first few times, I think." 

"Sure, of course, I can do that. And make sure you don't overdo it and give yourself backlash again." 

"I need to re-calibrate on how much magic is feasible in a day," Leareth agrees. "Also I think that my endurance is much less than it was because I am so out of form. I am sure it will come back with practice but - it is like physical exercise, right? I need to push it somewhat to regain my fitness." 

"Yes, but there's 'somewhat' and then there's 'you have a headache and can't sleep' and it seems preferable to avoid the second thing." 

"The artifact engineers are still working on giving mages more endurance, though it's lower priority than the memory stuff and some stabs at human immortality, right now."

Leareth's eyes widen. "How far along is the immortality research? ...If I have the option of not - needing to use my existing method for another iteration - I would very much like that." 

"Early stages. I think probably we'll have it inside a century, and we have that long, right, but - early stages. Not all projects at that stage even pan out at all. Relocating to Vinyamar should also buy you some time, if you want to do that, the Silmarils have been set to imitate Valinor including in delaying the aging process."

"Oh." Leareth lets out his breath. "I ought to consider doing that, probably. I should have had another century in this body, with my usual life-extension magics, but I was not doing them during the last ten subjective years and I am unsure how much of a difference that will make. But - six months or a year to decide will not make a massive difference, I do not think." 

"I wouldn't expect so."

Leareth nods, looks thoughtful, and then continues listing potential artifacts with Vanyel until the sun is properly down and it’s a reasonable time for bed. 

“I’d like my Vanyel back now,” Stef says cheerfully, tugging him into standing up. “You’ll have tomorrow and also the entire next decade to talk about neat magic.”

"I can ask Nolofinwë about what it is that they need, if you run out of project ideas." He stands up too. "Good night."

"Thank you." Leareth hugs him and then heads off to get ready for bed, smiling to himself. Maybe he's not quite ready to run a large-scale organization yet, but it feels very, very good to be orienting to the current priorities and accomplishing useful work again. 

He goes through to Vinyamar. 

Do you have thoughts on what your city will need -

Lots of them, starting with a location - can you be more specific? 

Leareth's looking for magic projects.

That's got to be a good sign. Uh, refrigeration, heating - can you make one object that does both in different directions, seems like something you ought to be able to do - mechanical looms?

Oooh, that's an idea. I'll pass it along. 

It might be good for the permanent Gate to the new city to be out of Tol Eressëa, not out of Vinyamar. Since I could imagine access to Vinyamar becoming - contested - and I don't expect that for Tol Eressëa. 

This has crossed my mind. I'll see what I can do.