"If they attacked here you'd presumably have more numbers. Or if not, they could wait until they know your army is split and then attack here. And this is still the obvious betrayals that we know are options."

"A lot of the things I think you consider non-obvious betrayals are scenarios where he does let us evacuate the continent. That saves a lot of lives, and he doesn't really mind it."

"He's offering a year and a Silmaril, presumably he's not going to give you the Silmaril, there won't even be much of a pretense of a treaty."

"You're human?"

"Yes."

"And if you had the command here you'd ignore him entirely and prepare for them to come here?"

"I'd ignore this offer.

Evacuate the continent anyway and hope he doesn't interfere, maybe, since that's exactly what you'd be doing if you get a favorable result."

"Can't really be done without a Silmaril. Not unless I want to spend all of my time bringing people around three at a time, and I'm unpersuaded that's the best use of it, though I'll try just in case it goes faster than expected."

Oh, so the Silmarils aren't just jewels with an oath about them. Might have to ask on the other side of the ice about how they'd enable evacuation.

"So in the version of this where you get the year to evacuate because it helps him somehow, are you expecting that he'll also give up a Silmaril?"

"Keep in mind I have never met him, he was smart enough to avoid that. I think he'll give us the Silmaril and then attack the evacuees to try to get it back, at a guess." And here we find ourselves at something genuinely classified. Want to help me figure out a way I can share it, or shall I skip it?

I don't see how I'd be much help without already knowing what it is. Maybe unless you can tell me the constraints on why it's classified?

"I think I missed a step in your guess there. Why is the Silmaril with the evacuees instead of with you, and why would he prefer this to just not giving it up?"

 Stop talking aloud. The Silmaril could be used to establish a perfectly impenetrable kingdom on the south continent to relocate people to, without which we'll have a hard time convincing them to trust us and uproot themselves. Before we got to 'perfectly impenetrable', he could interfere. He doesn't know how to use them and he doesn't know how much we know about how to use them. I think he might be willing to temporarily let one out of his hands, if he's sufficiently sure of recovering it, for more information on that, assuming he knows enough to -correctly - guess that we couldn't take him on with it.

Oh, wow. That would be a good outcome.

What do you think are the odds he knows it wouldn't endanger him but not that it can't irrevocably inconvenience him some other way, and doesn't think of the latter? This does rely on him not knowing the Silmaril is that necessary to the evacuation, in which case he'd be planning to take it back from an army instead of refugees. Which sounds harder and correspondingly less likely that he'd be sure enough of recovering it.

He'd also have to value knowledge of what you'd do with a tool you wouldn't otherwise have really highly.

You have good strategic sensibilities. I don't think it's very likely. Likely enough to stake twenty lives on, maybe. I think he values knowledge of how to use the SIlmarils very highly and knowledge of how we'd use them is the closest he is going to get.

Thank you. That means a lot, from a person who's actually in command.

Twenty lives, one of them yours. In the much more likely case where you don't walk out alive and with a Silmaril, what's to stop him making the same offer to the survivors? The fact that they know it's a trick?

We aren't stupid. We might be able to try this once, might in fact if he's taking the right chances come out ahead on it. We won't try it again. And if he makes the offer to my cousins they'll refuse.

If he expects you to show up, he knows he can offer this once. Which means he's using his metaphorical get into jail free card, and you're gambling on it being a trap that you'd rather be in than out of. And the good ending only even happens if he voluntarily hands over powerful magic to see what you'll do with it.

Say you do have the math worked out right and it's worth sending people on a suicide mission. Why you? I talked with your cousins before coming here, and they consider it a much more urgent problem since you're the one going. Not that you're the only indispensable person, but you're the most relevantly indispensable for politics reasons.

I am actually unsure what you mean by that. 

'I do not want my cousins to be stupider,' one of them said. If you don't come back then that interferes with plans like getting to where sharing information doesn't hurt, however you were planning on pulling that off, that being just the one plan you've mentioned.

Your cousins might be overestimating politics here since they're the ones it affects, but you see how that has more riding on it. How much of a setback do you think it would be if you died?

My estimation is honestly that there'd be better prospects for cooperation if I died, they're probably intractable angry with me. I could fix it if we talked but I'm guessing they won't let me talk. And you're aiding them and you have mysterious shareable capabilities which if they are trusting you this much I bet you shared, and I couldn't effectively run a unified command without knowing what my right hand is doing. No. We should probably just give Nolofinwe the kingship except I'm not optimistic he'd use us any better than I currently feel I could use them. Anyway, if I die violently Findekáno would demonstrate his deeply admirable capacity for finding the real enemy and get things sorted. I wouldn't risk my life lightly but I don't think it's of unique political value.

...that ran the gamut from unsettlingly well informed to probably wrong to possibly a lie to really unsettlingly well informed. If he somehow guessed magic is shareable, there goes the chance of passing it off as just a normal human thing. Does he already know too much?

They think you're irreplaceable. Which seems like the kind of thing that would be self-fulfilling. If your father or someone else not you is in command, that makes them more likely to just avoid your side as much as they can.

I'd be against the parley plan regardless of who's going. But it being you does raise the stakes.

I'm going to take your advice on this, mostly to get information on the interesting and suddenly relevant question of whether the Doom has attached to you and decisions stemming from you. We'll stay home. The other things I wanted to discuss with you were information sharing and how to get my cousins across the Ice safely, which of those should we start with?

I hadn't even realized this might be a Doom thing.

When I talked about the Doom with your cousins, it was mostly about how "follow" is ambiguous. It shouldn't apply to me and might not apply to them, so non-Doomed people shouldn't be in short supply once they get here.

Let's say information sharing, to start with. I don't think your stated goal is very achievable but that doesn't mean we can't get closer to it.

I have very good sources of information in their host, so I am willing to have quite a unilateral agreement. We'll communicate anything of strategic relevance to them. They are asked to send my spies home nicely, if they find them. Does that seem like a better basis to work from?

I should probably say, I don't represent them. Can't agree to things on their behalf. That deal sounds to me like it'd be favorable, but that shouldn't actually be worth that much here.