No one really knows how the parties get to yes

Hi! I'm so glad everyone made it across the ice safely, you're amazing. I work on one of the construction crews here first shift and guard towers second shift, and the first one's menial work and the second one boring, so the odds you'd ever interrupt me in the middle of something actually interesting are minimal and you shouldn't hesitate to bother me even with minor stuff. I might put it in the crown prince Nelyafinwe's daily memos instead of taking it straight to him if it's sufficiently minor, though.

Good to know. He did say he'd pick someone for being discreet, so it's not like I'd have to avoid mentioning the subjects of most of the stuff, but don't be too surprised if some of it is just a guess at urgency level? I'm not entirely sure why I'd be a first choice for unofficial ambassador, but may as well take it seriously.

Less bad blood, probably? The divisions between the hosts crystallized around eight Years ago and it's just gotten worse since. We're all just guessing at how to do priorities while attempting some combination of a war and an emigration to a lightless continent, it's not as if you're surrounded by people with superior experience there.

Judging by how fast this place is growing, your priorities are getting something right. You're doing much better than I would have guessed possible.

The King's a genius and so are all of the princes. And none of them sleep, it's - it's overwhelming sometimes, but it inspires the best in us.

Best as in putting in impossible amounts of work? You mentioned double shifts, I don't know what that comes out to.

It means we spend about ten times as much time working as not working.

...I was expecting impossible by human standards but not that impossible. Overwhelming is one thing, can Elves physically handle that?

The prince Canafinwe's got a song for skipping sleep. It hits you really fucking hard if you do it too many times in a row but this is - barely - enough rest that we can take it. Not indefinitely, but for another few months. I trust the prince Nelyafinwe not to break us; he cares about us.

I'm sure he's trying not to. He might not have any way of knowing what happens to the first person when, let alone who.

I'll probably just have to put this all down to species differences.

I mean, if no one has a breakdown then we're probably optimizing too strongly for that, wouldn't we be? There's a lot to be done. The King's job is to use us well, not nicely. But no one's had a breakdown yet. What'd happen to humans?

I'm pretty sure the answer is they can't. Continuously doing nothing but work, on things they don't want to be doing but too important to mess up on, they'd start making mistakes and having accidents and eventually just stop being able to force themselves. Or start sabotaging things or something, there are a lot of different ways things can go wrong.

Or they could unexpectedly die, but I think that takes years.

You can swear yourself to it if you're having trouble with motivation. I haven't needed to yet, building walls isn't that awful and guard duty's practically restful.

That's an awful and clever solution both.

There's unwillingness and then there's actual inability; how much effect do oaths have on the second thing? I kind of doubt it'd get that bad in a month, but obviously haven't tried.

Oaths can't help with that, but we're not at that point. If someone swears to do something and still cannot make themself do it I expect the prince Canafinwe'll come over and sing them through the rest of the shift and then that'll be the King's cue to give us all a day off.

Extreme, but working conditions are nowhere near the biggest problem here.

And I don't know what an emergency schedule looks like in human militaries, so I can't even make a precise analogy.

I very deeply regret burning the ships and am tremendously glad they're all safe, but - with the whole host we wouldn't be able to pull that off. We work these hours because we trust our King absolutely and as long as the Enemy lives we are happy to be instruments of his war effort. But I don't think we could work these hours with the other host right there, not taking orders from the King and not working anything like we do. Strategically speaking we were better off with them safely back in Valinor.

I meant the Enemy, but that too.

Does the same thing apply with the other host out of Valinor but not right here?

It helps. I do sort of expect they'll back off the pace of work so that people don't defect, and that will mean that we are less prepared against the Enemy, but that's prince Nelyafinwe's headache, I just build where I'm told. And if they didn't want to remain in Valinor they had the right to depart, even if it makes the war harder.

Having more allies against a common Enemy really shouldn't be a net negative. If nothing else there are two hosts. But yeah, it could slow down either or both.

Twice as many people but plausibly less than half the pace. Most Elves would hear 'we swear oaths to make it through double shifts and sing to skip sleeping' and start muttering about a war crimes trial. What they're asking of us is unprecedented.

But it's working. The continent is safe, we've got a livable city here for all our people and all the locals who want to join us.

Do you know if you're typical, in thinking it's worth it? This is not considered a war crime where I'm from, but you did mention defectors so it sounds like there's some difference of opinion on the tradeoffs.

I'm sure the prince Nelyafinwe has percentages, less sure he'd share them. There have been, what, two dozen defectors? And that mostly because they had people in the other camp. There are a hundred thousand of us. I think I am pretty typical.

And I'm very impressed with the securing the continent part. Hard to imagine that not being worth it, since it was possible at all.