He will need to be unconscious before he notices anything is wrong or he can kill himself.

:...How does that actually work? I mean, I can knock him out if I'm close enough to touch him, and I can set-command him not to kill himself from slightly further away, but - if I'm not fast enough, how reversible is it? We could have a Healer on the other end: 

- the methods that I would naively try would probably be reversible with a Healer on hand but I would imagine Maitimo has given this more thought than I, at this point.

:Is there. Um. Do you think there's any way someone would volunteer for me to test it? If I were sure the set-command worked I'd go with that, I can get it out very fast in Mindspeech, but if it didn't work then it'd just warn him. But also that's kind of a horrible thing to ask someone to volunteer for, since if it doesn't work then they're dead and your death god is currently in another world: Shrug. :I guess the thing about that scenario is that - at least Sauron wouldn't have him anymore, right?: 

The likeliest outcome here is that Maitimo dies and that seems worth achieving in its own right. 

I don't know if you'd have a volunteer. Maybe. I'd ask - Maitimo's people. 

Jisa grits her teeth. This is important enough that 'horrible social awkwardness' is not actually a reason not to ask. :I'll do that. And we need to plan all the other elements. Disguises, contacts from Telumë, our route in: 

The location for the Gate in K'Treva. Is that also where you'd go if the operation is successful or - 

- actually maybe the plan should be Moondance even if the operation is entirely successful, so Sauron thinks Maitimo's dead and maybe doesn't immediately rearrange everything he touched.

:...I hadn't decided, there's an argument to go straight north to Leareth's people but that'd be awkward because I haven't been, so I'd have to Gate in to k'Treva beforehand and travel from there and that adds preparation time. There'll already be a lot of travel time if we're going in overland in disguise: She closes her eyes. :And - yes, I agree. Moondance would be willing to do it anyway: 

You should test whether the Quendi song for faster reflexes works for getting a Gate up faster. And whether Stef can intensify it or help Macalaurë identify tweaks to it. Since so much depends on getting everyone through fast enough.

:Yes. And then we should drill that part fifty times, probably. There are some tricks, like - if I can get threshold-less Gates down really well, it doesn't have to be on a doorway, in fact it doesn't have to be vertical and it could be a circle under us, we'd fall through and then Moondance would just have to sort of dive at the doorway from the other side in order to come out with enough momentum. And I'd better drill taking it down again fast as well, I don't want to find out what happens if the other end of your Gate gets Final Strike'd at short range: 

:You should Gate to k'Treva first: Treven points out. :Get Van. One, we probably don't want him there at the same time as Maitimo, just in case, and two, he can go to Lórien and get healed and then you have a mage here in Arda: 

And we should tell Leareth - to be ready to smuggle two people in six weeks? Do we tell him more than that?

Treven frowns for a while before answering. :Probably not? Just in case. It's not like he'll be able to offer any more help once we're in Valdemar anyway. There's no point calling in reinforcements if it goes badly - either it works or we scrub the plan entirely and hope they can at least get out safely: 

And if we end up bringing him Maitimo it's not like there are a lot of specialized preparations he would want to be making?

:I don't think so? We'll have to have figured out how to keep him alive as a prisoner ourselves, for this to work at all, and that's the only really time-sensitive part: 

That sounds good.

Six weeks might be enough time for me to make you a specialized artifact for the job if we think those are safe to smuggle into Haven.

:It'd be helpful to have, but they're detectable with mage-sight and that seems very risky. I don't know if there's a way to, hmm, shut an artifact off until I need it?: 

- hmmm. I could send you with one that was one block away from being finished. And teach you how to add the last character.

:That might work. I get the impression your artifacts just sort of - aren't magic at all, until they're complete? So the only question is how long I'd need uninterrupted to complete it and whether that process itself is conspicuous: 

Doing a character takes only a second. I've never made an artifact where the last block was a single character but I think it ought to be possible. And - you osanwë the character to the metal, I can show you. I bet you could do it with Mindspeech.

:Probably. If I can do a practice run somehow, that'd be good. A second ought to be fine. Which part would the artifact help with - just reflexes for the Gate, or something sooner than that?: 

I could maybe extend your range or your precision on the outer edges of your range.

:If you could do that for Mindhealing specifically that'd be really useful, actually, that's the part I'm most worried about. I might not be able to get closer to him than ten or twenty yards, for the first bit, and that's long-range for that Gift. Although I can improve by practicing it, it's not like I've had much cause to Mindheal people from three rooms over before: 

I can get to work on that; it seems like the kind of thing artifacts are often very good at.

Nod. :Oh, and we should think about how to muddy the waters a bit so it's not so obvious we got Maitimo through the Gate first– Hmm. Maybe that's fine. There aren't likely to be any survivors who were close enough to see it happen. If we really get it right, they won't have the faintest idea what happened, except 'mage Gated in and blew up the place':