I don't want to.

But if I teach at least a couple of you, and we have a reasonable amount of luck, it could cut casualties by a lot. Maybe all the way to zero. I don't think I can consistently object to my magic's ethical priorities and justify not doing this.

Thank you. ...are there things we can do, once we have magic, that'd reflect well on you? We owe you that much, at least, and we're pretty disciplined, even if there's arbitrary rules we can abide by them.

It's possible to go out of your way to accrue good karma. Making important promises and keeping them is the big option. But it's usually a bad idea, because there's always the risk that you fail, and it works out to a net negative. Better to just keep it in mind and conform when possible, it'll build up slowly that way. I'll go over the rules in detail with anyone I awaken.

The other problem is the existing doom. If the spirits heard that and decided to pay attention, you might all already have loads of bad karma. Which would increase the odds of getting stranded in the middle of the Ice, or any other possible disaster.

We really can't let the cousins anywhere near this. They'd take the making important promises approach and it'd be a disaster for everyone. They already kind of have, and it already kind of is. The Doom is a problem. This'd make it worse?

Maybe. Depends on how it interacts. My guess is that it wouldn't. When Fëanáro and company were fighting valaraukar nothing looked at all magical. That's one of the things a practitioner can do, is see magic. So if the spirits consider enchanted weapons to be nonmagical weapons that just happen to be more effective, maybe they also consider a Doom from the Valar to be separate from karma.

How does a Doom work, is it a prediction or a cause or what? If it, say, made everything in the world decide it dislikes you, then that might include the spirits. Then it would definitely count and awakening could make you twice as doomed.

We don't know. No one had ever committed murder before so no one had ever been Doomed before. Parts of it were definitely a cause, like one part was 'the Valar will fence Valinor against you' and they've now proceeded to make the mountains taller, but the other parts, harder to say.

Inconvenient, but much better than if there were a long history of Dooms to compare.

That sounds more like a prediction than a cause, and barely even that, but regardless it doesn't sound relevant. Karma—good or bad—doesn't guarantee specific outcomes. So it's probably safe, but maybe the first volunteers should be people who don't have or plan to have children. Just in case.

For sure. If we're ourselves family, does that complicate things?

Only if one is directly descended from another. Then all the karma would go to the ancestor, and if they die later the descendant would inherit it. Good or bad; if the Doom doesn't affect karma it won't start out so negative it can't be worked off.
If family means siblings or cousins or something, that would just count as separate bloodlines.

I was thinking that Findekáno and I should both do it, but then if our father later wants to there might be complications.

Not a lot more so than if one of you did and then he wanted to. He'd just wind up with two existing karma balances being absorbed into the family's instead of one, and would have to designate an heir at some point.

All right. If there's a chance it can save everyone on the Ice I think it's worth the risks.

Thought you might say that.

It'll take at least two people, we could maybe do it with one but there'd be no margin for error. And whoever does it is going to be permanently giving up the chance for a major power source common to a lot of practitioners. But it's one that no one would be using until after getting across the Ice anyway.

The immediate hurdle is the ingredients that might not even exist in this world. If I run off a list can you tell me what you'd be able to find?

Go ahead.

I'm going to have to look this up.

Looking it up apparently entails using a device with about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen four inches square. It looks insanely complicated but starts displaying writing.

Crystal, myrrh, oil, spice, iron, dagger, hourglass, dreamcatcher, silver skull, coin, rose, food, alcohol, candles, incense.

No idea what an hourglass or a dreamcatcher is, we don't have silver skulls but we have silver and skulls, what's a coin? Everything else is no problem. Uh, food in small quantities.

Irissë gets some osanwë depictions of hourglasses and dreamcatchers and money, along with what they're needed for. The relevant part of the ritual involves what is essentially word associations, so it might be problematic if the first thing it represents to them is "what is that supposed to be."

You can get a rose? I thought that one would be impossible here.

Food is supposed to be more specific—molasses, milk, honey, some kind of vegetable, meat—but we don't have to follow the steps exactly and that's probably the easiest to substitute. It will disappear during the ritual, but there's no minimum quantity.

I'm sure someone kept some flowers. They're probably dead, but - people were pretty sentimental. We don't have the means to blow glass here, and it'd take a long time to set up.

Fudging the ritual is allowed. Any timekeeping devices at all?

...the stars?

Can't really put those in a diagram on the ground.

You said you had candles, maybe we could improvise something with those. Some people on my world used to keep time by how fast candles burned.

Sure, we could do that. Or songs that usually last the length of a festival? Can't put those on the ground either.

It does have to be an object. If you have recordings or sheet music, that could do it. Especially if that's what the songs are primarily for.

We have songs that are for that, but we don't write music or have, ah, recordings. Hmmm. 

We can just mark some candles. Equate a length of candle to the time to the length of part of a song and you've got a timekeeping device. 

And if that doesn't actually work, well, the ritual didn't specify an accurate hourglass.