"I hope they do, but I haven't heard of the Valar before tonight. Have they done this kind of thing before?"

"No. But no one's killed anyone in Valinor before. Ever."

"Ever? Wow. How many people are there? Or, for that matter, here? Humans have dozens or hundreds of killings every year, in cities of millions."

"A million probably in the whole land. We're around a hundred thousand here. And the Valar kept it safe. You had dozens of killings a year? That's absurd."

"I agree completely. Used to be even worse; the last few centuries have gotten a lot less bad.

But you said your Enemy likes murder; if you're only just leaving the place where no one had ever killed anyone how do you know that?"

"Before we lived there, we lived on the continent we're travelling to now. There - we probably lost hundreds a year, and our population was much smaller. If you went out alone or got lost you'd never be seen again. The Enemy's creatures stalked the whole land. He'd take our people, take them prisoner, torture them, breed his servants from them. Eventually the Valar warred with him, and took him prisoner, and invited us to come to Valinor because his monsters still walked everywhere and it wasn't safe."

"That's horrifying." Unfortunately not unprecedented, but that doesn't make it less horrifying.

"And the Valar not only tried to sentence you to go back there, but decreed that you'd lose. As if they forgot they were supposed to be against this.
How did they capture the Enemy and how did he escape? If we're lucky there might be a clue to how to beat him."

"There was a war. It lasted a century. Continents crumbled." She winces. "We're a little overmatched."

"That doesn't add up. If he can crumble continents, what does he get out of having smaller-scale servants? And you are expecting there to be people to save, so it's not as if he's deploying that level of firepower in combat. If it's true that he can do that at all, it sounds like there's a catch to it."

"Time. The abilities of the Valar take centuries, sometimes millenia."

"And your strategy is to buy time? If he's going to become unstoppable eventually, that sounds like it calls for either a quick win or an evacuation while there's still a continent to evacuate from."

"We, too, gain capabilities over time. We don't have the means to fight him directly yet - or we're assuming we don't, we are planning to try at once - but if we can build a coalition while we're there, train, invent new weapons - "

"I might be able to help with that one. I have no idea how most of the technology my people use actually works, but there is a lot of it and maybe I can point you toward the things we replaced bladed weapons with."

"Great. Uh, the ice is more pressing as a problem."

"The technological solution to ice involves enormous metal boats that can crash their way through. On foot, the answer is to not do it."

"Well, we're not just staying here forever."

"I just mean I don't know what devices humans would use for this. If it's snow, people have had some success with sleds pulled by dogs, but then you have to get dogs from somewhere and feed them somehow, and I think it doesn't work as well on ice anyway."

"We've been scouting. We have ice picks and can fish and have rope we can use to get across the cliffs and haul supplies. And we're pretty tough. We'll make it, but people are going to die. That's why I was curious if you had other suggestions."

One, but that works just as well without ruining secrecy.

"I don't know any usefully replicable technology for this."

"No worries. You're welcome to come with us, if you'd like, but if you want to go on to Valinor I doubt they'd be mad at you."

"To be honest, I have more of a "stay very far away" reaction to people with prophecies of doom and broad opinions of guilt by association than to the ice. Even if it's practically impassible. That's not a fully considered opinion, though, not yet.

Do you really expect to be able to fish enough to feed a hundred thousand people?"

"Enough for us to not go hungry? No. Enough that we can stay alive? Maybe. We didn't have much chance to test our limits in Valinor. In theory we can endure indefinitely on very, very little."

"Indefinitely? Humans can't do that. 

I shouldn't try to cross the ice with you. That's probably not going to be the only obstacle where your people are relying on just being tough enough.

Are there ships that might take passengers who haven't been involved in any disasters?""

"If there were any ships at all we wouldn't be trying this," she says. "You could petition the Valar but that I'm nearly certain they'd refuse you."

"And that would also involve talking to the Valar.

Is that inevitable, on this side, or are the vengeful deities easily avoided?"