Then the other question is whether you want to keep fate as it is. (Finally, an excuse to ask.) Since this only works at all if it goes against fate.

It would be - not in the nature of the Valar - to rebel against the will of the Creator and the music.

Would this be a rebellion? If it works at all then fate is changeable by humans, and if the Creator made a fate that can be changed he must have expected it to happen sometimes.

It is not clear to me whether your arrival here is indeed Eru's doing. He has not been forthcoming.

And I never so much as heard of him before coming here. In that case I won't ask you to participate in finding out if the rule applies to Men.

May Eru's will guide you, Amber first of Men.

Or in light of recent revelations maybe the opposite of that.

Before you leave, I had a couple questions about the Enemy's capabilities that you might be well placed to answer. I've heard it said that Valar can focus on hundreds of times as many things as Incarnates. Do you know how many hundreds it is for him? If there even is a well-defined answer.

It is probably not a well-defined answer. The kind of things matters a great deal as well.

If one of them is speeding up time in his domain, does that multiply how much he can do and allow him to speed it up yet faster? Or does changing time cost as much as it gains?

That would be a permanent effect, not a continually effortful one.

Nod. That's very bad news, but at least it's an answer.

We've been considering leveling his fortress. Would that destroy the domain if we succeed, or how much destruction does it take?

I would not expect reducing his domain to rubble to negatively affect him, except insofar as he could then be attacked directly instead of being behind impassable walls and he would no longer have his orc servants.

Would flattening the mountain range, if we could do it? Utumno is in ruins, there must be some amount of damage that would matter...

I couldn't say.

Yes, I suppose you haven't seen Angband. Could you send me what Utumno was like, before and after, for an example of a scale that worked?

We did not stop Melkor in the first war by destroying Utumno.

So that might be more than it takes, or less, and we wouldn't necessarily know. Got it.

That just leaves his physical body. The Elves believe that their swords could eventually cut off his projection in the material world, if he stood by and let them. Are they underestimating him?

I do not know.

Oh well. Thank you for your help, Lord Ulmo. I'm very grateful for access to the house from Earth.

Use it wisely. 

And he sinks back into the ocean.

Wisely. Ha.

The house got dropped in a forgotten spot in the Crissaegrim, and the Noldor are pretty much right between here and there. So the first leg of the trip can be back to base.

How did it go?

Well, the good news is he brought the books to this world. He took the house around them, too, and it may or may not contain a confused and angry and scared diabolist.

Um.

Yeah. And that part wasn't the bad news.