It'd also be easier to see each other without it being a notable amount of travel.

This, too, has crossed my mind.

In the morning he passes along the mechanical loom idea and the suggestion that the base Gate be in Tol Eressëa.

:Oh - is Vanyel's permanent Gate setup one where they are linked directly in pairs? I can set it up so it is possible to go between any two Gates in the network, if the user has the right keys. Though if you prefer it not to be possible to go directly between two given locations without an intermediate step, which I suppose you might for the Dwarves or others we sell Gates to, then I can arrange that as well: 

Oh! I like the idea in principle of it being possible to go between any Gates but - is that leaving us vulnerable to the thing that happened in your world -

Leareth blinks, confused. :Which thing?:

Bad magic event at one Gate, propagated everywhere through the network -

:Oh. Perhaps. Though that risk would also be there if they were merely linked in a linear way - for example, if our Gate-threshold here went both to Vinyamar and the new city. We would have to build a second terminus here and have each of them be linked to only one place in order to avoid the connectedness risk, which I suppose we could do but does duplicate effort a great deal. Though I do think it would be worth considering to avoid connecting the entire network - for example, two networks of ten Gates instead of a single network of twenty would halve the total damage that could be caused by a catastrophic magical event at one of them: 

How much duplicated effort are we talking about - it's peacetime, we can afford lots of duplicated effort for resiliency we might need later -

:That is true. I am not sure how long it takes Vanyel to build a single terminus but I could do it in a week of focused work once I am back in shape and using Fëanáro's artifact for it, now that the design exists. I suppose a week now is actually rather cheap. For the best protection against the network effect, we would want the thresholds to be shielded from each other, but that would be less than a week per, perhaps two or three days: 

Okay. I think that sounds worth it to me. It's less elegant but I think we should expect there are more potential problems out there somewhere.

:That makes sense. I had already been thinking that the Velgarth inter-world Gate ought not link to anything else within Arda; it is much easier to guard a single point of contact, there: 

He frowns, thoughtful. :It is possible I can build in precautions where the Gate will shut down in response to a local overload of magic, rather than propagating it across. It would be harder to do this in Velgarth given how the power sources need to work, but it is definitely worth research effort on whether it can be done here - there is a much cleaner interface between the Gate set-spell itself and the Arda-type artifact that feeds it, which ought to make it easier to disconnect quickly in an emergency: 

Oooh. That sounds useful.

:I will see what I can do: 

Leareth heads off to find Vanyel, and they spend the morning in Vanyel's workshop where he does artifacts, looking over the various raw materials and discussing what modifications need to be made up-front in order to set it up, and to what extent the current Gates would need to be dismantled and rebuilt. 

Jisa has a very busy morning, but she and Stef convene in her room over her lunch break. "So?" she says hopefully. 

Sigh. "I tried to drop the bait but I think Maitimo just went to Vinyamar by himself and talked to Findekáno and brought back some suggestions. I'll keep looking for when I can make helpful suggestions about it, though." 

"Leareth probably has to go over at some point just to look at the existing artifact work in Vinyamar, no? Maybe you could suggest he and Van go survey it so Leareth can make suggestions for what to do differently in setting up the new city." 

"Hmm. The trouble is I don't know how much that's actually necessary and I'm not sure it'd make sense for Maitimo to go along, but I'll try to plot something like that." 

Maitimo spends about half his time in Vinyamar, these days; it is the primary city of the kingdom he is supposed to be running, after all. He mostly times this for when Leareth is sleeping or working. There is a lot to do; there's planning the new city, and integrating the populations from a bunch of separate Beleriand communities destroyed by orcs during the war, and figuring out what to do about remaining orcs, and figuring out what to do about the new humans. 

"Did you still want to go check them for Gifts at some point?"

"Right, I was going to do that. I ought to check with Vanyel whether it makes sense to plan some artifact setup on the same trip. Where are the humans located relative to Vinyamar?" 

"Way east. Eru dropped them in land no Elves or orcs occupied, which was probably meant to be considerate but some had already died of starvation and wolves and so on by the time we found them."

Ouch. "...Do these humans end up going to Mandos when they die? Or are they - just gone?" 

"Mandos doesn't have them. The Valar think Eru has some kind of plan but we don't know anything about what it is."

Sigh. “I do not particularly trust Eru to have a plan that is non-horrible according to my values.”

"I had the same thought. The Valar trust him, though, so they are refusing to extend all the mortal's lifespans for us."

Damned gods. Leareth doesn't say this out loud but his face conveys it pretty clearly. "In that case, I think I feel more strongly that I would wish to gift them some artifacts, so at least fewer of them will die in stupid ways before we can solve this problem. I will speak with Vanyel about it."