"Feanáro was not in fact in line for the throne; he'd just recently been sentenced to probation for holding my father at gunpoint over a political disagreement. He'd literally invented guns for the purpose. The Valar weren't amused. Maitimo maneuvered him into the throne anyway, taking advantage of the fact we all know we can't afford divisions and that they weren't going to back down. Also their oath is to never relent in attempting to kill anyone who withholds a Silmaril from them. We need my cousins to win this war and I am torn over whether any of this worth mentioning, but you could learn it from the Enemy so perhaps better to learn it now. And if you were under the impression that our internal divisions are all the result of drama-loving people who can't see past their petty personal grievances. 

Maitimo manages people. I'm not saying you shouldn't let him, but you deserve to know he's doing it."

"...uh, I didn't think it was all that," Cam says, "but thank you for the background."

"I am curious whether Maitimo fed you the line you used earlier or whether you came up with it independently."

"...it was off the cuff and I think I'm missing something. Again."

"If he implied it without explaining what it meant, then he did so expecting you'd say something in front of the wrong people, which would be an interesting thing for him to have done. If you came up with it on your own I'd like to know how so other people don't."

".......it has seemed like a painfully obvious background fact since about ninety seconds after I met you and I just didn't bring it up with anyone for any reason until just then."

"Ah. 

Thank you.

Medical did urgently want these."

"Okay. And I'm sorry and I'll keep my mouth shut about it."

"You seem better positioned than I was to notice what Maitimo's steering you into before you've killed ten thousand people for him. Take care." And he leaves.

... that seems like a weird thing to say. Why did he say that.

Anyway. Cam shakes out his itinerary and determines there is nothing else he needs to do here before giving Maitimo a ride to Brithombar. Where is Maitimo.

Maitimo is up and catching up on everything found about Angband overnight. "Hey. Ready to go?"

"Sure." His check-on-orcs alarm goes off. He looks at them. They are still asleep. Okay.

"Melkor doesn't seem to have given his lieutenants in Endore any warning of what he intended to do in Valinor. I am not sure if that means it was improvised or just that he doesn't trust them much, but in any event they were badly surprised when he arrived. Did you have a productive night?"

"No major milestones, no one-size-fits-all orc-oath-loophole, Medical wanted some drugs and has them now."

They head out. "My cousin thinks I have seduced you; he is overestimating my abilities and underestimating my priorities, but he's right that I should have warned you why specifically lots of things in Hell's libraries shall end up banned."

"...Oh that explains a lot," Cam says, "he was making no sense, why does he think that."

"You're my type. And the inference isn't one that someone raised in Valinor would ever make, so I don't think he believes you that you had no information to raise it to plausibility."

"So everyone else thought your brother was making an unsubstantiated impolite remark?"

"An unsubstantiated horrifically insulting one. He apologized for it; he doesn't do that lightly, but that really crossed a line. And insulted you, which is probably why he backed down on it."

"Wow. I can't even just model this as 'like a red state in the 1990s', this is twisted."

"The Valar can correct it. If that'd been available on your world, do you think that might have changed attitudes?"

"The Valar just keep getting more horrifying, don't they. Uh, for a while rhetoric did focus on 'it is an unchangeable characteristic' but that didn't last that long, eventually it was 'and it wouldn't matter if it weren't'."

"I can pull that off once we have an alternative for resurrections. In the meantime I'd get arrested, so please do be careful of the comments."

"Yeah, yeah, I will, I'm not going to sabotage a war by being precious about gay rights."

"One of the Dwarven kingdoms that had trading partnerships with the orcs got nervous about the orc account of how the war started and tried to stop trading. Angband's records are contradictory, even the internal ones, but it looks like a vigilante group acting with the authority of the orcish government carried out a massacre and would have gone further if they could find the kingdom in question. Might be a place to start on convincing Dwarves to evacuate."