Theirs because, since there probably isn't any existing enchantment to make railroads or whatever less loud and obvious to the Enemy, they'd be the ones inventing it.

Anything? If it's about what can be described, that sounds like the limit would just be simplicity.

Yeah but you'd be astonished at what kinds of things are complicated.

Probably. Is it complicated to make objects spin in circles?

If they can do that against resistance, it could be a lot more useful than it sounds.

Continuous motion's complicated, but not hopelessly so - it'd more be important to do exactly right, rather than hard to specify in the first place...

I'll bring it up when I let them pick my brain about technology. Maybe it'll turn out to be a good use of magic and machinery resources.

Yeah. There's probably a clever way to do it. Motion's hard, anything that changes over time is, but if you were clever about it...

How about making things not change when they otherwise would? I bet there's some mileage to get out of that.

That'd be easier. Easiest is ambient area-effects, if that helps, like 'glow' or 'be very lightweight'.

And then it...produces a set amount of light, or does it keep the area at a set level of brightness?

Produces a set amount of light, doing the latter'd require sensing things about the world and sensing things about the world is one of the things that turns out to be absurdly hard.

Nod. 

If it can produce heat, to water-boiling temperatures, we might be talking about fuelless engines. Especially if it can also cool things down.

Oh, yeah, heat's pretty easy.

But not so easy that the forges don't run on fire?

It'd melt itself.

I guess if there are limits on what it can be put on.

And now I really hope electric charge turns out to be as simple as light or weight.

Can't answer that for you but someone who does that kind of work could probably tell you without even designing an item.

We'll see. If not that, there'll be something else. Hopefully something that'll help in a sword-based war.

What are melee weapons like back home?

I don't know of anything deadlier than your swords, for that. It sort of stopped being a concern once the most effective weapons were ranged.

Guess that makes sense.  Makes the forcing-oaths-at-magicweapon-point scenario less likely, too!

If that's an actual risk, I could ask for an oath about giving us at least half of whatever Earth weapons they make. Maitimo was serious about wanting to make sure sharing strategically relevant information never hurts.

You can ask, yeah. What makes you think he was serious? That was the same sentence in which he claimed to have spies that we now think was actually a claim made to cover for some other method of spying they've got.

He swore. I'm not saying I'm sure he's serious about wanting it now.

Huh, okay. 

Anything else to do here, beyond find a time to come back and discreetly snare some of these guys?

No. Just looking like we're enjoying it and, separately, actually doing that.

Hopefully diplomatic visits to Elf kingdoms aren't traditionally too short for a chance to come up, but really how likely is that.