"She left for five days to get her head together, the day Leareth told me about his, er, plan, she was afraid of repudiating me by accident if she stayed. Which was awful timing, but she came back having - broken something, we think, but it meant she could think about things freely."

"In our world Amshalan Chose me on request having already gotten to know me some and this put her in sufficient internal tension that she broke the offending mind control almost immediately and then we walked our Yfandes through it."

"That sounds so much better than the way it went in our world, honestly," the older Vanyel says, looking down. 

"Sounds it, yeah. Did anyone else eventually manage it in your world or is Yfandes the only one?"

"I think Yfandes is the only one. Most of the other Heralds were - sort of bouncing off the questions I'd been considering that upset her, I think, or at least there wasn't enough of a mismatch there to set off the same level of problem, I think Savil might've mentioned Kellan being weird and cagey about it but Companions are like that about a lot of things. And they didn't seem to have any issues about the Arda gods. Then, um, almost everyone died so it became kind of moot." 

"Right."

"You know," the younger Vanyel says quietly, "I wonder if - I don't know, I mean, the ring does mind-control but so do other kinds of magic we have, right? I think the Ring would have to win against that if you picked it up, but if we just needed to be close and - not be tempted, or not give in - then I wonder if it can actually fight Mindhealing." 

"Or compulsions." 

"I guess if there were ever a good reason this would be it."

"I think having a Companion also helps, at least a little," the older Vanyel says. "Assuming the trend holds, that if we go through together our Companion won't get the pull. Anyway. My sense would be that we should test this, since I think we're pretty sure that Sauron is far enough away to have no way of even detecting a Gate there, let alone learning to cancel or imitate Velgarth magic from it." He glances at Elrond for confirmation. "I guess I should also ask Telumë when he, um, comes back." 

"Can we test it with people who don't have a good way to grab the Ring in an instant at that distance if they decide to?"

Older Vanyel looks around. "Well, all of us are Gifted. I guess Stef's Gifts don't give him a good way to grab it? Melody too, but she's busy. Or if you or another local were willing to have us try a compulsion or Mindhealing on you." 

"It might be able to affect me more because I have one of the other rings. You can have a different Elf volunteer if you'd like."

"Stef is, er, not the least likely person to be tempted by the Ring, so if you have any Elves who are lacking in ambition and desire for power, that would be a better idea." 

"I will ask for volunteers."

"Thank you." 

And he can find some Elves who are horrified people are doing experiments with the Ring but willing to be the subject of those experiments assuming this won't cause them to end up with the Ring, which would be terrible.

They're going to be ridiculously careful and nobody should end up with the Ring at all. 

First, they're going to do the Gate to two miles away, not one. Leareth will do it; he can't cast across it, but he can do the scoop-Gate thing and grab them back if they're not able to step back across. He'll do this if they even twitch at running toward the Ring, because that'll indicate the Ring can break Velgarth mind-control. 

The volunteers will get compulsions that they can't step more than a yard forward from the Gate, and can't run at all, and definitely can't pick it up. Leareth will do half of them with a standard action-compulsion, and half with the slightly upstream version, which will try to block them from wanting to move closer to the Ring or pick it up. (All of the compulsions are location-conditional and will only be in effect on the other side; Leareth is good at this.) 

Their instructions will be to step across, count exactly ten seconds, and come back to have the compulsions removed and report on their experience. Unless, of course, something goes wrong. They're welcome to come back sooner if it's horrible in some way; if they're not back after ten seconds, Leareth will first shout and then scoop-Gate them. 

They do this!

They step through, and stand there, and come back, and report that...nothing happened...which makes sense because they're not sure the Ring even works at two miles distance.

The obvious test is for one of the known-more-sensitive people to try it, but that's a terrible idea. Instead Leareth will try the Gate at one mile. 

The Elves are still fine.

Huh. Leareth isn't sure if the Ring is that much less interested in them as people (he feels faintly offended on their behalf, if so), or if it senses the compulsions and isn't even trying. 

Hmm. Step back and reassess. 

He will do a Gate at two miles ago, and send a person in without any compulsions. If they make a run for it, it'll take a while, and he can send some compulsioned Elves to grab them if the scoop-Gate fails. 

The person does not make a run for it! They do report that, uh, if they'd been trying to pick a direction to go in they'd have picked south?

Hmm. All right. Gate at one mile and same person again? 

The person is more confident that if they were going to go find the Ring of Power which they were not because that's a terrible idea that is the direction they'd head in to do so.