We don't have anyone not distracting him or launching. Does the answer change our next move?

It affects precisely how desperate we are... so probably not.

Then let's endure our curiosity and keep right on hitting him.

That makes sense, but also means they're watching their large but finite supply of missiles dwindle away and do apparently nothing.

We could switch to regular rocks, and just hope the magically reinforced part was only the outer wall.

Once we're out, yes.

If it is set up like that, we probably already broke through. Might want to save some rods for if something comes up where we know what we're shooting at. And not let him know whether we're out.

Fair enough. A mix for the next few minutes, maybe, and then eventually just rocks.

So eventually Angband is hopefully wrecked and probably buried and they still don't know either of those for sure.

Well, now they can spare some people for divination.

It's vague and a bit ambiguous, as usual. Definitely a destruction theme going on– the augurs say it probably means a fair amount of it and almost definitely is talking about Angband being the one destroyed. Naturally it'd be just like augury to mess with either of those.

Also, army incoming. Unclear when, but soon.

Fantastic. They lost a lot of people when they lost the library. They should clear out. Spread out, if there's nothing else they can do about having the drop-rocks tactic return against them.

That or retreat. For the front lines it's pretty much just spread out. Or if the Enemy is literally only dropping rocks instead of accelerating them on the way, airborne scouts with good reaction times and lots of gravity elementals might be able to intercept them.

They can send some up just in case. 

...or the Enemy could just send hordes of orcs. That is also a thing. I - don't understand - they're not even practitioners, unless you can disguise that -

I've never heard of that being possible, and it'd be shocking if he found a way from a standing start.

We just fired on Angband, he has to know we could, could mow them down trivially– even if they are practitioners I don't think they could stop that–

...could be another illusion, make us waste projectiles? Or attention?

Attention, maybe. We could try and capture someone? If it's an illusion an interrogation would take just as much of his attention.

Sure, let's.

We don't know what the non-practitioners know. Don't want to give them a close-up of our magic powers, for multiple reasons.

The obvious option is dropping rocks until the horde breaks ranks. Like what they'd do before the army gets to them anyway, but less about killing the orcs than making sure they aren't in position to resist a few people being mundanely captured.

Most of the orcs will still die, but that's fine. They scatter. 

...some of them are holding kids.

What. And they couldn't have seen that before turning the siege weapons on them?

Whether the possibly-illusory captives are the ones with kids or not, any orc who knows what instructions they had should be able to say what is up with that.

Their instructions were to go build settlements outside Angband, which Melkor advised them to do and wished them fortune in doing safely because the rest of the world was now safer than Angband due to the crimes of the Elves. 

...

Safer sounds supremely implausible. There's an army of Elves between Angband and the rest of the world.

Can the orcs swear that they have no instructions other than that? Sidelining them out of the war sounds...actually not that bad, if that's really all they have to do.

Except he can give them different instructions any time.

I was more worried about the oaths they take as kids, had half an idea that might help with that–

But we can't stop him from walking out and talking to them any more than Doriath, can we.

Wouldn't need to walk out, even, if any of them are within range of him and can get orders to pass it on.