"I find death objectionable and gods objectionable and if there are already preexisting plans to do something about both those things then I'd be duplicating a lot of work if I didn't even check whether they'll work."

Nod. Leareth still looks, well, about as visibly surprised and pleased as he ever does. 

Vanyel glances between them. "Anyway. There's also Lineas. Leareth, the family-murdering blood magic dagger plan was bad for multiple reasons, but one of them is that Highjorune is over a Heartstone tied to a spell that's stabilizing an earthquake fault and using the power destabilizes it. We nearly found this out the hard way. I assume the dagger's already there, since we thought it dated to Ylyna's marriage, but it should stop being there." 

Leareth's eyes narrow. "Oh. I see. ...In actual fact, it is no longer there, because," he looks over at Bella, "once I found out there were other worlds of magic, achieving the plan at all via invading Valdemar no longer seemed like a good tradeoff, the only reason for the Lineas plot was to secure an alliance with a kingdom neighbouring yours, and Vedric Mavelan is not exactly a trustworthy ally so instructing him not to use it would be a lost cause." 

"...Wow. Glad that got taken care of." A somewhat awed look in Bella's direction. 

"I was neither aware of the Heartstone, nor of the fault-line. Both are very intriguing to know but not, I think, immediately relevant." 

"Okay. I guess the next thing to summarize is what happened in our world. Leareth arrived when doing an experimental Gate of some kind, landed on some squash farmers outside Tirion, heard from them that our succession dispute had escalated to sword-carrying and came to the palace to see if he could do anything. I told him that we'd hoped to deescalate, but failed, so far. I did not tell him that we'd tried a dozen things that should have worked and they'd all been fatally undermined in some impossible way, that it was like we were playing a rigged game, because in my experience complaints to this effect just reflect badly on the people making them. But, uh, he was reading my mind, and he said immediately that we had an evil god trying to drive us into a civil war and he might be able to help. He did protective amulets and confiscated everyone's swords and investigated an attempted arson Melkor had arranged to spark a fight and spoke to the Valar about the situation and then Gated us out. Melkor attacked while we were departing, and then we were ambushed on the other side. We managed to escape to a cave system nearby, where we arranged to transport the rest of the Noldor over and where Leareth began trying to reestablish communications with Velgarth so he could ask for Vanyel's help."

I don't know why I'm even bothering to be surprised that he was reading his mind. remarks Bella privately to Rúmil. I guess it's convenient that nobody took that as an irretrievably hostile first impression.

Most people aren't you. Though they should be.

And meanwhile: 

:Oh. I apologize for my alt reading your mind: Leareth is telling Maitimo privately. :I know why he would have: for one, that Leareth had never met Bella, :and it may, in fact, have been the difference between him succeeding and failing to address your problem, but nonetheless: 

He touches his amulet; without context it looks like an almost absentminded gesture. When given better options you take them. 

"Leareth was captured by Melkor when he Gated Vanyel and Yfandes in from Velgarth. We think in hindsight that Melkor was able to spy through some of the orcs taken prisoner during the war, and then get close enough he could detect and respond to the Gate. At that point we fled, first to Tumunzahar - a Dwarf city east of here - and then to Valinor. Melkor manipulated Leareth into doing some Gates for him. It sounds like from talking to orcs the aim was to figure out how to do them himself, but he didn't achieve that, or to piggyback on ours, but he didn't have a chance to succeed at that either."

"Ainur don't seem to have a strong advantage besides infinite mana and being harder to damage in a mishap at arcana either, except for cancelling it."

"It's really lucky they're so bad at things. Uh, Vanyel, do you want to explain about the Tower -"

"Sure. So - in about 806, after the Senior Circle found out about my conversations with Leareth, I ended up going on a long journey to try to find out more about his past from, um, a non-Leareth source." Apologetic glance at Bella's Leareth. 

"That is eminently reasonable of you." 

Vanyel blinks, nods. "Anyway, through what in hindsight was probably some divine coincidence, we ended up finding these magical tapestry records in Kata'shin'a'in, the trade city of the Shin'a'in people – they're a sister people to the Tayledras, they guard the Dhorisha Plains. And we were allowed in to see them, and learned more about the Mage Wars, and...then Dara, she ends up being King's Own much later and was travelling with me, got a Foresight vision that led us to the buried remains of Urtho's Tower. It turned out I could use Farsight to Gate in, for some reason the Star-Eyed gave us permission to do it, and we went in and found some of Urtho's old journals and translated them. Also found the fifteen other superweapons he had built and stored in his basement without telling anyone." 

Leareth's eyes widen slightly. "Urtho's writings survived? ...Honestly, building over a dozen superweapons just to see if they would work sounds very characteristic of him. I had no idea but perhaps I ought have guessed. It would explain why the Shin'a'in people were so adamant about guarding the Plains. The Goddess would not have wished for me to ever find those remains." 

"He wrote about you, in his journals. I have all of those entries with me, actually - well, back in Tol Eréssea. If you wanted to read them." 

"Yes. I would like that. Thank you." Leareth falls silent, evidently deep in thought. 

"Next up, humans. The orcs think that there are going to be some native to Arda soon. I don't know what Eru is thinking but I'm worried that if they wake up beside Cuivienen or something like we did they're going to have a bad time of it, they're more fragile. Does anyone have a good way to notice the sudden appearance of a new species at an unknown location anywhere on this planet. Ideally something we can check regularly."

"Oof. Without a better option I can try to develop something but my to-do list is pretty overloaded honestly."

"I have no idea when to expect it, it wasn't worth pressing the orcs under truth magic once we knew that the Enemy didn't have Maiar remaining. We can see if we can get anything else from them just by talking, but they're very hard for my people to work with at all."

"Humans might work better there."

"Definitely, there's less history, but most humans are either extremely busy or have a language barrier."

"I'm hoping I can be slightly less busy with Rúmil and Fëanáro around to divide spell development with more but getting more wizards than that will just make us all busier in the near term."