I can see how the mission might have been presented in an innocuous light if he were disposed to frame it that way. Also it was not the entire continent.

It was pretty impressive. Anyway, he makes generous deals and sometimes I take them. If you know how to play the game you can definitely come out ahead.

He's got an informational advantage I don't like in my hostile negotiating partners and the last time I was playing along with a possible deal it turned out he'd kidnapped my friend and then went on to torture her for years. What does he bribe you with?

Yeah, if you don't know how to play the game it can really fuck you over. I have some places and some people I care about, he leaves them and me alone and in exchange occasionally he can call in a not-particularly-evil favor. If there's enough at stake maybe an evil favor.

So I should be parsing you as a largely amoral bribeable independent, here.

I literally told you that the minute we met.

Well, before I met you the Maiar I encountered were, one, Melian, two, shapeshifted Balrogs infiltrating groups I had interests in not having infiltrated, three, Thauron, four, the one who I helped chase Thauron back into Angband. I didn't have a good category for you and you were invisible, probably reading a bunch of orcs' minds, and in context definitely working for Thauron, of whom I have a distinctly negative opinion.

He goes by Sauron, you know. It's just the one stupid group of Elves who call him Thauron and he doesn't like it. I'm not saying you should have had everything figured out, you're clearly pulling ridiculous leverage on the resources you have and if that means sometimes being an asshole, well. She leans back. I'm not currently working for him, except insofar as he made it super widely known that anyone who kills you will suffer for it.

I call him that because that's what the person I first talked about him with calls him; it may be entirely to piss him off, which I can hardly fault someone he tortured that much for doing. Is not wanting people to kill me because he wants to kill me himself or something or does he just want me alive?

Ooh, is that what happens if he tries? That's funny.

You fucked him up good. I was curious if that'd happen to me, but doesn't seem to. She stretches out her wings. The Elves don't know their fate, not with any detail, but we do. The war is about as gloriously painful and terrible as if Sauron'd written it himself. Most people'd be happy just to bring that about. But no, he wants to win.

I hit him harder than I hit you. And that wasn't the beginning or the end of the engagement. What do you want?

I mean, I thought the fated version was fucking hilarious. I didn't really think I had a choice about it, though. Now I'm not really sure. At the time it seemed reasonable to just - not give a shit - if nothing I did changed anything anyway. But here were are, here it does, and it'd be convenient to remember what I wanted back before I learned what's fated.

Not having free will sounds like a raw deal.

How does having a slated death date even work? Like, in what way could you not decide to go dive into a more lively volcano or whatever if you were not satisfied with this schedule and wanted to flip it off, I'm not suggesting it I just don't understand how this affects your object-level decisionmaking.

Some of the Maiar did that. Now they're dead and as far as we remember the plan, that was the plan.

Okay, but you remember the plan having you dead in four hundred fifty two years. Do you have spooky time-travel effects on the plan when you do things or something?

I don't think so. If I were the kind of person to kill myself to fuck the plan, my plan would have been killing myself to fuck the plan. Since I'm not, my plan is to keep hanging out here doing what I do and then at the right moment Sauron will call in a favor and the circumstances will be such that I don't refuse, or I do refuse and that's what triggers it - we don't have all the details about our own choices -

But if the plan is that somebody kills themselves to fuck the plan, then them killing themselves does not in fact fuck the plan!

Why do you think Melkor flipped out and decided to literally torture everything? Because there's no way to fuck the plan! That's what he wanted and he tried all sorts of shit and then more of the plan would be revealed to us and that was in it, and he went farther and farther batshit and the plan rolled out and there it was, and eventually he settled for just being as awful as he conceivably could.

I mean, that does sound really frustrating, but at some point didn't you guys have advance notice on the Men, if not me?

It takes a lot to drag a fate as great as Melkor's off the tracks. Sauron might have stood a chance, and he threw everything he had at it.