If we come up with one that requires the Eonir? There's a strong chance that that's project over, library closed, back to isolationism apart from whatever payment they owe the dwarves.
Not guaranteed, but I don't want to be stuck relying on elves to be forthcoming and outgoing. It's bad enough that we're nigh certain to end up needing the dwarves.
Stumbled across this while randomly pulling up some posts to read, and I wanted to reply to this since it's come up from a number of people. Please don't take all of this as necessarily pointed at you personally - or at anyone personally, really - as such.
I've addressed this before, but it was buried in another giant post. So to reiterate I think this concern is
wildly misplaced. The Eonir have been extremely clear that they regard their historical isolationism as a path to creeping extinction by either beastmen or Nordland or a combination of both, and they regard building ties with the Empire as their salvation. The idea that they'd gratuitously screw us over for no apparent motive or reason beyond "lol fuck u we're elves bitches" is nonsensical to me. Especially as they've been extremely clear that they DON'T want to be withholding and isolationist like the Asur:
We've no intention of being the mirror to our cousins of Ulthuan, who always seek to control and only ever grant the meagrest of morsels. We want to build a lasting partnership, and a lasting peace, with the institutions of the Empire, so we can live in peace in our forest.
Further, let's imagine that you don't trust or believe any of that for some reason (I've yet to see anybody suggest an actual reason for the Eonir to do this or to be disbelieved in general beyond "but they're ELVES"). Let's look at it from even just a purely practical perspective. If a solution that required
only the Eonir was viable, the Eonir would already have it and wouldn't need to even start this project. So it can reasonably be concluded that any solution that required the Eonir would require the Eonir + somebody else, probably the dwarves. Which means that, even if for reasons unknown to anyone (apparently including even the people suggesting they'd do this) they wanted to, the Eonir
couldn't shut down the project without colluding with whatever other partner is necessary to their success.
I'm just going to copy/paste some of what I said before now. Do you think the dwarves would collude with the Eonir to cut Mathilde and the Empire out? Really? Really, though? Even if you somehow think the Eonir would have a motive for that (they actually have the opposite of a motive for that, as previously discussed), you think the dwarves are going to backstab the Empire and Mathilde Weber? Respectively, their greatest ally for two thousand years and the force they directly credit with arresting the decline of the Karaz Ankor and changing the Time of Woes to the Silver Age, and the greatest living dwarf-friend in the entire world who is personally credited with recovering not one but two lost Holds? On behalf of
elves? In exchange for, uh, nothing, AFAICT? At least, nobody I've seen has had so much as a suggestion of something that could even theoretically induce the dwarves - literally the
dwarves, the "we'd literally rather kill ourselves than betray our oaths or our friends" people - to do this.
To say I'm dubious that this is a valid concern would be like saying the Pacific Ocean is a bit watery.
