"One thing we need somewhat urgently is a picture of how their planets are interconnected - if most of them are only connected to a few others then scooping up one at a time is promising, but if central members of the network are connected to hundreds of others then we can't do much without the capacity to stabilize a hundred at once."

"Yes, you're right. It doesn't sound like the sort of thing she'd know but it sounded like we could get one ship without it being a big deal - make it look like an accident."

"All right, let's take that to the Valar and go from there."

Mirelótë nods.

The Valar convene on Taniquetil to meet them; they're all present, or at least a significant share of their attention is.

And Mirelótë explains that there are tremendous quantities of aliens, many of whom are enslaving many others, who die easily and permanently and some of whom may do it on purpose out of spite if it becomes known to them that they might have to stop with the enslaving. "They are slower than lightleapers, so there is some hope that we could creep along their network learning more before news got to any subsequent targets, but we need a solid plan - and maybe more powers than you currently possess."

"It rather sounds it. Do you have a specific sense of what would be needed -"

"Resurrection!"

"Tabling that line of discussion for a moment, do these seem like peoples we're currently equipped to do right by if we can only extract them safely, or do we also need to be learning the things we learned about Elves..."

"The latter - and some of them may be uncooperative; it might take a long time to find someone willing to explain themselves to us. I think the situation is fairly urgent, given that we currently don't have resurrection and there are ongoing atrocities and a war, but at the moment I'd expect we'd wrong anyone who came into our custody in a quantity we couldn't handle on at least a one to one basis. We are likely to want Dwarf and orc personnel supplementing, and maybe to fork some people, and even then if we can possibly train sympathetic people from the other world and convert them into more manpower that's a priority both for numerical and for cultural sensitivity reasons."

"Is the other side of the war likely to require similar intervention?"

"Our informant is not very well informed, unfortunately. If I had to put money on it I'd bet that they won't be an emergency with the other side of the war looked after properly, but as it is I'd have to bet lives on it."

"Let's come up with a set of resources that we think would let us handle one planet, assuming no assistance."

"Enough people to have someone assigned to every single native inhabitant, preferably from a variety of backgrounds. The means to disable the computer chips that some natives use to kill other natives - the means to stop them from constantly having children - medical attention - some kind of administrative setup to replace the war-and-slavery-based one..."

"Habitats and supplies for the various species, one of which breathes methane, although if we're taking a planet it can be presumed to have some to commandeer. A way to prevent them from blowing each other up or committing uninformed suicide because they think we're there to do something we aren't. A coordination plan for all the variety of backgrounds of our personnel. A way to disable or spoof outgoing messages to other planets."

"What kind of restrictions on them are necessary to prevent them from choosing to suicide?"

"Well, the top priority is preventing them from doing it in some way that affects bystanders - mixing the atmospheres, say, or explosions. I do think it's defensible to at least make them sit through an explanation before they do it in some other way, so that also implies being able to keep them from sharp objects - they don't, I think, have our control of their bodies; preventing injury would do enough. Oh, and disease, I suppose, if they have pathogen labs or something and could let samples out intentionally."

"I - tentatively agree that we should make them sit through an explanation if stopping them doesn't require wresting control of their bodies from them, but that's generalizing from Dwarves and from you all, I'm noting it as the kind of thing I could be wrong about for the wrong kind of alien. We should, once we've seen a few of them, be able to prevent injuries and disease."

"Yes, I could be wrong. If we wind up with cooperative advisors representing a species who tell us that we must let them kill themselves immediately at any time even under grave misapprehensions we should discuss that with them and take it strongly into account, though given that they don't have chips it is worth being conservative."

"Agreed. All right. We don't have a way to place someone with every inhabitant of a planet right now. I could do it for a hundred-mile radius, maybe a little less if they were densely packed - all together we could maybe do most things smaller than a planet."

"I was thinking of starting with a ship, possibly the specific one our visitor came from so she'll be able to vouch for us with at least some people. Of course, it may no longer be where it was when she came here, though if I were them I'd be interested in the disappearance itself."

"We're already at the site, our visitor having expressed concern she'd be followed by warships. We could shield a lightleaper, go through and take a look."

"From observation as well as attack?"

"I'm confident in my ability to shield it against methods of detection used by the societies known to us."

"There's no way to be sure that's everything they have, but it might be most of it, or what they use when they're not expecting cloaked strangers..." She nods.