"That might be for the best," he says, making a slight face. "But some people won't want to go."

"You're the native expert and the Valar will listen to me; if you have recommendations I'd be eager to hear them."

"This is very much a game-changer, I'm still trying to gather information and weigh options," he says. "Thus far my plan was to wait until I had enough Genoshan-born Great Mages like Odette to hold a counter-coup, essentially. Not a very elegant plan, of course, but..."

"How many did you expect to be enough?"

"Depending on factors impossible to determine in advance, anywhere from two to ten, but likely at least four."

"Well. There are fourteen Valar, they may have dissimilar exact skill distributions but I'd be surprised if they couldn't match up one to one overall, and some Maiar may also count."

"I am glad to hear that."

"Is it likely to be necessary to kill these people or can they be stopped from using magic short of that?"

"...It's possible the Valar could do that, somehow. Otherwise--not one that I know of."

"What if any is the range limit of magic?"

"There's no hard limit, but farther is harder than closer. Three Great Mages can cover the planet trivially between them."

"How quickly can they do things? Would they have difficulty operating from as far away as the moon?"

"Very quickly. Conquest is almost always instantaneous or near enough in any case. Operating from the moon would be more difficult, but I don't know if it would be enough to qualify as having difficulty."

"The moon is only going to be a few seconds away; it would take minutes to get substantially farther..."

"...By Vala travel?"

"Yes, they can move at around the speed of light and bring things with them. Elves learned to do that ourselves more recently but used ships that Oromë made us to settle Valinor before that."

"Oh, that does sound useful."

"It would be nearly sufficient if magic were slower and more range limited!"

"With any luck, we shall have far longer after to be glad of its advantages than we have to be irritated with them now."

"I very much hope so. Is magic limited by the speed of light?"

"It obeys it by default; a Great Mage can break it, but not trivially."

"Well. That will have interesting implications once the dust settles."

"What are you thinking of in particular?"

"Depends. It's just usually a very difficult to bend law of physics."

"Magic does a lot of that."