Supplemental worldbuilding questions

[Kappa]

That's adorable.

[DanielH]

Agreed

Can Elspeth’s mama hear osanwe? Can she send using it? I would expect not, given Dwi, but it seems worth asking. In general, how well does she stack up against dwarves?

[atheistcanuck]

it is entirely possible we will find out in story if that story is included in the peal!

[Alicorn]

Golden by default *does not* osanwë but could flex to allow it, contingent as usual on her trusting the Elf.

[DanielH]

She can flex to allow Edward; it’s not surprising she could flex to allow osanwë.

Has she post-Radiance been able to flex to allow Elspeth again? Can she do that enough to get Arostuff? I think she wished Elspeth an exception in Effulgence, but that obviously is not an available option in other stories.

[Alicorn]

Yes, Golden can allow Elspeth, but has not received the entire payload and doesn't want it.

[DanielH]

Oh, I forgot that she only wanted it in Radiance when it was going to be strategically important. I thought she’d decided that the relevant privacy had been destroyed thoroughly enough that there was very little marginal harm to her getting it too.

Has Elspeth learned to send an “all but” payload instead of everything or a specific collection of things? That might let her send things which are just hers without the few minutes she spent receiving other people’s private stuff.

[Alicorn]

Elspeth can do personal episodic memory only just fine. She and Addy update each other that way a lot.

[DanielH]

So far most orders we have seen have been relatively simple actions, perhaps with complex qualifiers or conditions. For example, “stop” or “if you find a loophole, bite through your tongue and calculate cube roots in your head until somebody from the court finds you”. Presumably there is some leeway, like whether you can calculate cube roots using Promise’s method or Newton’s Algorithm (which is similar) or whatever, but it is at least an immediate action which can be performed immediately.

What happens for nonatomic actions which cannot be done immediately? For example, what would happen if a fairy ordered me to “go and get the Queen’s name, then tell it to me”. Would I need to head for Queenscourt right away even though that would likely make me fail, or could I use a plan that took longer? Would I need to use a plan I can think of on the spot (the most-likely-to-succeed being to get a fairy vassal, either from the master who gave me that order or on my own, tell them a bunch of names of government figures, and commandeer some mortal countries’ armies), or could I deliberately delay in order to think of a better plan? Could I use a plan other than the one that I thought had the highest chance of success? What if I could trade off some chance-of-success against other desirable characteristics?

Obviously you don’t always need to use the most straightforward method of doing something (Ruin comes to mind as an example, and the people who were ordered to go somewhere in a Worm box and somebody thought they might decide to walk cross-country), but I feel like I might not be able to start force-feeding random nearby fairies on an order to get the Queen’s name.

[Alicorn]

You would need to immediately take legitimate steps towards implementing an at least loosely reasonable plan. Steps include "come up with a plan". Phrased as you phrased it, you could use a plan with a lower chance of success, especially if a higher chance would conflict with a preceding order.