That the queen's a practitioner and how did he know to recommend that.

That the king is Elu so we can very likely expect Doriath to stop being an ally eventually but they might stay in contact for magic reasons. Might ask them about sending a palantir, though I did make sure not to mention those in Doriath in case the answer's no.

That we're going to start producing more food soon, but we're not using the elementals on their greenhouses—that one I'll want to run by the King first; maybe there's an oath-based solution. I swore we wouldn't use anything we get from these against Doriath and we can't guarantee the Feanorians won't.

Yeah. Can't see how they would, with Melian a practitioner now, but still.

If I have to say it wasn't used to hurt them but not for lack of trying, that's way too close.

I'm not happy about the Feanorians being dependent on us for food, but getting reliable oaths when only Maitimo knows they exist might be a hard problem.

I'm happy about the Feanorians being dependent on us for food, to be honest.

Better than the reverse, for sure. But it's like with the steam engines. Less weakness on our side in general would be good.

Yeah. But we can get them to trade us the output of their steam-engine-based development for food or something, maybe.

Maybe this would go better if Maitimo were a practitioner. After the ice, the fires, and now the steam, the spirits would think they owe us so much by now.

Maybe he realized that when he disclaimed any interest. I also imagine he stayed awake a few nights trying to figure out a way to get you to join them, and he's done nothing in that direction at all. Which suggests there isn't one, which is very reassuring.

You do also have the advantages of not having started a massacre or burned the boats.

Oh, it's not that I was expecting you to forget that those were important things for which side you'd want to be attached to, it's just - lots of people are in fact seduceable away from their own long-term goals by a whole lot less talent than Maitimo's got at it. And he hasn't even tried, which means his initial impression was 'nope, can't pull it off', which is a Feanorian sort of compliment.

When you put it like that, it's actually really strange. He barely tried convincing me the second host is just going to slow his down and I should work with the supergeniuses even if they're them, and that one might even have worked under some conceivable set of facts.
Maybe he's more glad of the multiple armies than he let on.

Yeah, that's weird. If he was glad of the multiple armies he could have, you know, not burned the boats and had multiple armies on friendly terms. Or not lied to us all about the burning the boats and had us, if equally pissed, less inclined to consider his word worth the parchment it's written on.

This one can't just be about me; having an ethical army doesn't hurt but he knows I'm wishing for help from the Valar and that I blame them even more than his side.

You could ask him his reasoning but it's not like the answer would be information.

And it'd make him more likely to actually try.

I mean, at this point it'd be very personally hurtful if you switched sides but we wouldn't die on the ice.

I'm not considering it, haven't and don't especially want to, plus it'd mean he's expending effort on helping one host at the expense of the other.

I sort of figure he's doing that to exactly the degree that suits him anyway.

Probably. I can at least not encourage more of it by asking why he hadn't tried to poach me.

Fair enough.

I wonder what they'll make of the Dwarves. Could be anything from "sounds useful, later" to "society powered entirely by money? Let's go invent all the everything and buy an army."

Yeah. Carnistir'd be excited, he likes economics, but he's also super racist so I don't know if he'd pounce on Dwarves or not. Maybe with one of his brothers to keep him in check.

Whatever they do is hardly likely to hurt, this time.

How do you even have economics if you don't use money? It'd be missing all the math.

It's considered one of those useless theoretical fields, like abstract math or molecular chemistry.

I don't know much economics myself, but I'm pretty sure it wound up being world-changingly important on Earth. Like abstract math and molecular chemistry. I bet the same applies to the Dwarves' economy. Carnistir better be able to swallow the racism.