"...uh, define 'all right'? - Joy can you nip off to Vanda Nossëo and ask him if he wants to kill a Sauron?"

"Yep!" Pop.

"He can't currently muster a physical form, it's not urgent in the sense that people are being harmed while we delay."

"...could've led with that."

"We very nearly killed him three thousand years ago. We did destroy his body very very irrevocably. But he'd made a magic artifact that anchored him, made it impossible for him to actually die, and the artifact's been lost to time, so even though there are no signs of it yet we know to expect he'll return eventually."

"Okay. So explaining how all the Maedhroses are doing will probably make more sense if I give you, like, the really really executive summary of the multiverse?"

"Please."

She pulls up a map of the multiverse and highlights all the Ardas. "Ardas. This one doesn't have one because his dad is currently twelve -" It de-highlights. "This one is weird and does not go in the really really executive summary -" Shadow de-highlights. "These three are pretty normal and each have one," Elentári and Shine and Luster, "and this one is weird in the sense of being really high tech and it is also possible to duplicate Elves from it, they're like, a different kind of Elf. This one and this one," Elentári and Shine, "are last I heard convinced that they are not hallucinating, so that's good, and they are functional and friendly and it is generally quite possible to forget that they may not be okay for the duration of a conversation. This one's not sure yet though." Luster. "And here," Space, "uh, the duplicating thing people made Morgoth even worse than he usually is. Like, a lot. But the extant instances of Maedhros are all duplicated from pre-capture so they're okay. There's six of them, he decided six was a good number for some reason." She adds a new node to the map. "We are here. Also none of them got to the part where people were withholding Silmarils and became a disaster, so there's that. This timeline," Shine, "was derailed before the Silmarils were even invented and there's no oath about them."

"That's good. And Maglor?"

"Those are all fine as far as I know. One of 'em did a concert with Joy on my home planet the other month, it was awesome. Oh, and there's human versions of the entire family here in this non-Arda," Hex lights up, "if that counts; they're all fine, there wasn't some replacement for the war with Morgoth or anything."

"Okay. 

This is a little complicated emotionally; perhaps I'll explain when I get to it. The Ardas all progress along the same trajectory until intervention?"

"Except the weird one yes -" She rattles off the years for each Arda.

"Okay, so I can start explaining the history in roughly the year 400 of the First Age. The Noldorin front against the Enemy collapsed in 455, in the Dagor Bragollach - the Battle of Sudden Flame - so called because the Enemy had turned all of the mountains in the range surrounding Angband into volcanos, and they all erupted at once. There were almost no survivors from Dorthonion and Ladros, the northern-facing kingdoms, Himring stood through apparently sheer force of will but the rest of the east collapsed. The High King Fingolfin rode out and challenged Morgoth to single combat.

It was - closer than you've have expected, given, and he injured Morgoth seriously enough that Morgoth never ventured out of Angband again. But he lost. Manwë sent an Eagle to take his body to his family."

"Manwë has a thing for sending Eagles when they are still technically helpful but would really have been handiest earlier."

"Yes, he does. Anyhow, Fingon becomes the High King and he and Maedhros start working on uniting all the free people of Beleriand for a final offensive. It would have been a long shot but if they'd actually gotten everyone to participate I think it would have worked.

Among the human survivors of the fall of Ladros was Barahir, who had once saved the King Finrod of Nargothrond's life. The King Finrod had given him a ring to pass on to his descendants and sworn an oath of friendship and aid in every need, to him and all his line. Barahir led a guerrilla campaign to inconvenience the Enemy in ruling Dorthonion. They laid traps, set fires, sprung ambushes, and were so inconvenient the Enemy eventually sent Sauron personally to deal with them."

"Let me guess: time-unlimited oaths committing someone to future action prove to be a bad idea again."

"It could've gone better.

Sauron kills, horribly, all the insurgents save one, Barahir's son, who escapes over the mountains into the Valley of Dreadful Death, somehow survives it, and wanders into Doriath dazed and traumatized and not having spoken to another human being in six years. During those intervening years Sauron goes and topples Tol Sirion, incidentally, and Celegorm and Curufin, fleeing the fall of Himlad with their own people, happen to be in the area and help the population of Tol Sirion make it safely south to Nargothrond, which is a cave system and accordingly more defensible against the Enemy.

Barahir's son is named Beren, and when he wanders into Doriath he meets Lúthien, and they fall in love."

"Okay." Gem's Lúthien is clearly the best one so it is okay that somebody else got this one.

"They keep it a secret awhile but someone finds out, and Lúthien asks her father to swear he won't kill her lover, and then brings him before Thingol for an audience. Thingol says that Beren can marry his daughter when he fetches him a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown. Beren accepts. Lúthien is inclined to run away and break off ties with her parents, but Beren had pulled off a lot of improbable things in the war, and didn't want Lúthien to be forced to leave the safety of Doriath, so he persuades her to let him try. And he goes to Nargothrond, whose King had sworn to aid his family, and he asks for help stealing a Silmaril.

Celegorm and Curufin were in Nargothrond, and they were appalled that Beren would ask that of someone oath-bound to help him, and also that Finrod would choose to interpret an oath to aid someone as an oath to go Silmaril-questing with them rather than an oath to, say, shelter the newlyweds or try to talk Thingol down. When it becomes apparent Finrod is going to commit Nargothrond's forces to a futile Silmaril-mission they stage a coup."

"Naturally."

"Finrod goes off alone, with Beren and ten people loyal to him, and they go for Tol Sirion where Sauron's embedded himself, and Finrod challenges Sauron to a duel of songs. It's - again, closer than you'd expect but he loses. Sauron takes them all prisoner.

Melian learns that this has happened with her scrying magic, and Lúthien asks of her father, who started the mess, that he mobilize Doriath to go assail Tol Sirion and rescue them. He refuses, and gets worried she'll try it herself, and imprisons her in a treehouse so she won't die of it and can't get herself into danger."

"I wish I were disappointed."

"Lúthien cuts off all her hair, weaves it into an invisiblilty cloak, escapes the treehouse, escapes Doriath entirely, and heads for Nargothrond on the grounds their King is a prisoner too and they'll be likeliest to be willing to help her assail Tol Sirion."

"...okay."

"They are, of course, not willing to help her. Curufin and Celegorm tell her they'll think about it and then write Thingol a letter - an extraordinarily rudely worded letter - telling him that Lúthien's here, can expect the same treatment here she found at home - which is to say, they weren't going to let her leave - and that if Thingol wanted a Silmaril he should marry his daughter to someone with a right to one.

Thingol takes that as a threat to marry Lúthien against her will. I don't know if he was right to interpret it that way or not. He mobilizes Doriath to go to war with Nargothrond."