What clever and delightful magic items these are!

They can design more to order as he thinks of other things that'd interact well, but it's a very slow process.

So he's heard. He will be sure to let them know if he thinks of anything.

That's all from this end. Miles is getting a whirlwind tour of all the King's projects, isn't he.

Yes, yes he is, and it's great.

Is there another one on the list?

Couple more! Next one's Suns and Moons: how do they work, what environmental effects should the Elves be planning for or around, is the temperature going to be consistent, what sort of things could the Enemy try to block their light...

Here is an impromptu astrophysics lecture. Miles is pretty solid on astrophysics. He's also pretty sure that the conditions he's familiar with don't necessarily apply, because this planet is not spherical and as far as he can tell it doesn't orbit its sun. But the day length is the same as Earth's almost down to the second, and as much as he's seen of the lunar cycle seems Earthlike too... anyway, these sections of the Survey Handbook regarding the effects of natural light on climate, what a seasonal cycle is and how it works, that sort of thing, should apply pretty straightforwardly since they don't depend on the mechanism by which the lights in the sky are moved around, just on their brightness and schedule and spectrum profiles. Seasonal cycles: they're a thing! The temperature may not be consistent but should be more or less regular in how it varies over the course of a year!

As for blocking the light, anything that kicks up a lot of dust can do it, but you'd need a really excessively big explosion or volcanic eruption or meteor impact or something else in that genre to fill the sky with enough particulate matter to stop light reaching large swathes of the continent for a significant amount of time... the Enemy could also just alter the weather so it's always foggy or cloudy, if that's something he's capable of...

He hasn't done it yet, but it's not impossible in principle. They should probably have a contingency plan for that. Miles presumably knows things about growing plants without a nice Sun or some Trees around? Seasons are good to know about, now they'll be able to plan for those.

Hydroponics and other sunless gardening solutions are very popular in some parts of the galaxy! The Survey Handbook doesn't go into a lot of detail on them, but it mentions several useful notions which Miles is happy to extract and pass along! He's getting really good at searching his reader for useful data to contribute to a conversation. In case of hard winters or Enemy-related sky-tampering it would probably be useful for them to set up a few magically or electronically lit gardens/greenhouses/etc to make really sure of their food supply.

Might take more than a few if they want to feed all the civilian populations on the continent too.

They'll have to start with a few, but once they've got it working they can explain to everyone else how to build their own. Hydroponics for everyone!

That's actually something worth discussing in its own right! The locals are nomadic and illiterate and unlikely to have the knowledge to build hydroponics; they also don't much trust the Noldor yet, though progress is being made on that front. What would it be more valuable to teach them?

Yeah, Miles can see how teaching illiterate nomads how to build hydroponic gardens would get difficult. He wishes his mother were here. She's one of the major driving forces behind recent educational reforms on his planet, particularly in the realm of bringing literacy and electronic libraries to places that do not yet have those things. Her expertise would be really useful right about now.

His interlocutor nods sympathetically. "My mother died at Alqualonde."

"I'm sorry for your loss," says Miles. "Mine isn't dead, just very, very far away... anyway. If you find any locals who are interested in learning these things, I bet I can put together a sensible curriculum that starts at 'illiterate' and gets all the way to 'hydroponics garden' with reasonable elegance and effectiveness, I've picked up enough of the relevant principles from Mother. Deciding what people need to learn is much harder than figuring out how to teach it to them, because it depends so much on specific circumstances and inclinations."

"I am sure they have interest and I'll try to feel out what they need. Thanks."

"Happy to help!"

And that's all the names on Maitimo's list.

Well, then, he can check on the sound recorder project and mention to Ténië how many people there are who would benefit from talking to Arda's best electrical engineer and then stop by the library to see how Maitimo is doing and whether or not he has more things for Miles to do yet!

Military training might in fact be the most useful application of Miles at this point. Elves do not have any practice at it and it's hard to learn from first principles. Osanwe probably changes a lot of considerations but still, Miles is the expert. Maitimo would like an army of around a hundred thousand. 

"I can do that," says Miles. "Not all at once, but I can do that. I should start out training a few hundred people and then pick the best of those to help me with the next bunch, scale up in cycles."

And in his private-but-not-from-Maitimo thoughts: He wants Tyelcormo and Irissë in the first batch, but not if they have better things to do or would wreck the project. He doesn't think they'd wreck the project. Theirs does not seem to be an army-disintegrating hostility.

I expect they'd be good for it, and it for them. 

I agree. So give me Tyelcormo and Irissë and two or three hundred other people, and a couple of days to design my curriculum, and I'll start building your army.

It is so satisfying to have a King he can work with like this.

It is pretty satisfying to have an otherworldly stranger who can give you things like armies.  He picks three hundred people.

"Thanks!" says Miles cheerfully. "See you in two days! Feel free to interrupt me if anything comes up!"

And he goes to his shuttle and spends two days writing down and organizing everything he remembers about his two armies' worth of military education. A lot of it is useless or redundant or depends on details yet to be established, but he has enough to get the job done and two days is sufficient time to get it to a reasonable starting point.