Re: Interludium: Of Dwarves
One could quibble over terminology, but I think you guys have the right idea in general about Elvish magic/technology. Consider the nature of Feanor's language skills. Language is merely a map of reality/perception. The greater the skill, the better the understanding. Combine this with some sort of quantum interfacing with the artifact in question and one could conceivably do wonders.
This seems to fit with the way Sauron actually endued the Ring with his own Power, and why Feanor could never make another Silmaril.
Does this play into the "fading" of the elves?
As for the excavation of Moria, let's examine this mathematically. (I'm more comfortable with Dwarvish tech.)
The average coal miner in Appalachia was expected, by hand, to mine 16 tons of coal (according to Tennessee Ernie Ford). Let's for the sake of argument, say the dwarvish worker was expected to mine only 1 ton of solid stone each day.
If the stone has a specific gravity of 2 (twice that of water), then a ton of stone would occupy a volume of about 16 cubic feet (I think!).
To excavate a hall 100 ft by 40 ft by 10 ft (40,000 cubic feet) would take one dwarf 2,500 days or six years 308 days.
1000 dwarves would finish by lunch on the third day.
Of course, this mathematics breaks down when you consider that you can't get all 1000 dwarves to work at one time. You would have to start with only a couple, then four, eight, etc.
<pre> Day Dwarves FT^3 Total 1 1 16 16 2 2 32 48 3 4 64 112 4 8 128 240 5 16 256 496 6 32 512 1008 7 64 1024 2032 8 128 2048 4080 9 256 4096 8176 10 512 8192 16368 11 1024 16384 32752 </pre>
They would finish the hall on the morning of the 12th day.
If you had 1000 such halls, and a limit of 30,000 dwarves, as suggested above, then it could take on the order of 100 days. That assumes no fancy work, halls, corridors, just plain mining.
Add frills and carvings and clever architecture and you can take your time.
But many hands make work light, and industrious motivated dwarves can do much. They had unmolested centuries to work with.
I don't see a problem. Especially if you consider that they would have made use of natural caverns as extensively as possible.
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