"Twenty-four hour days and twelve-hour clocks," Cam explains. "Okay, how do you spot a Maia impersonating me even if osanwë's not spoofable, can they definitely not pull the conjuring stuff trick?"

"They could do illusions that'd look like the conjuring stuff trick but cannot actually conjure stuff. They also probably don't know you well enough to behave in character. The Enemy's been in Valinor for a thousand of Endore's years and knows us pretty well, which is how we could pull it."

"Okay, so make sure if you're not sure of me that you have me conjure something and then give it a good shove, I guess," Cam says. "Brithombar's very confused about why the Valar trusted the Enemy, is that known?"

"The official reason is sufficiently stupid it can't have been the true one. I suppose it could, I guess, but if so the Valar are even worse at this than I realized and I do not hold them in particularly high esteem. Anyway, he'd been sentenced to three Ages and the Ages were up and he came before them as a penitent and begged their leave to undo the wrongs he'd wrought -

- wonder if he offered them locations of the backups. Come to think of it."

"...that'd be a thing. But if he was still holding that information after three Ages that supposedly made him penitent, then trading him the opportunity to just go make more..."

"I am very tempted to go 'yes, the Valar are that incompetent' but it's plausible they aren't and there's a piece of the puzzle I'm missing. It is also plausible that the Valar, who have confusing concepts of morality, don't consider him having backups of more people to be more bad - for instance, running a thousand torture-simulations of one person versus one each of a thousand people - so they mightn't have considered the risk a risk..."

"It is very unfortunate that your species grew up under the shadow of variously horrifying god-aliens."

"You do not even know the half of it. Even before the Enemy attacked my father wanted to leave Valinor, wanted to see what the Quendi would be outside the influence of the Powers - can you do some excellent soundproof insulation for a second -"

"'For a second' not so much," Cam says.

"I'll write it down."

He does. 

Silmarils should let us divert the backups if we want to. 

Cam holds up his computer, writes, How? What would you need to do that?

My father is the only person who knows how. What we'd need would be the three originals. If they come out deficient when you make them, the ones you're making probably don't suffice, not for this. 

Yeah, the people on my planet noticed pretty quick it wasn't responsive the way they expected.

Our people know we swore to retrieve them and trust us enough to know that they must be important, but otherwise think they're just possibly-sapient really pretty jewelry. Most of the political division I'm fielding right now is people who go 'if they care that much about those, they must be important in a way I don't need to know' and people who go 'if they care that much about those, they have terrible priorities and shouldn't be leading a war' and people who go 'I want to know why they're so important'.

I'm the last thing, honestly.

And I am telling you, but I can't tell everyone, because the Enemy does not know their full capabilities and if he did he could figure out how to redirect the backups.

What do you mean by 'redirect' exactly, do you mean swipe them from the Valar...?

We could have the chips transmit to the Silmarils instead of to the Halls of the Dead in Valinor. You obviate this at least in part, though you don't keep the dead out of the Valar's hands and you can't do minds and we weren't really planning on you. Then Father thinks he'll someday be able to do resurrections.

The thing about living out of the shadow of the crazy evil gods is that even here everyone knows that if they die they have to meet Mandos' standards to come back to life. And Mandos has strict and obscure standards and will edit memories and so forth. An Eldarin society that isn't warped by the Valar would have to have its own way to do resurrections.

He edits memories too?

Oh, you know, if you have unacceptable sexual inclinations or heretical thoughts or something. He does not do it without permission but it's a condition of reembodiment.

What an enlightened fucking standard of permission.

The Silmarils were important already. But now getting them out of the Enemy's hands is even moreso. If he figures out how to do it-

Yeah. If this winds up with something supremely destructive getting thrown at him, are they irreplaceable outright...?

Yep. I think it's worth it but I'm not happy about it.

How were they made in the first place?