"So Túrin had a - very intimate friendship - with one of the guard captains who'd fought alongside him to protect the mortal kingdoms neighboring Doriath, and when Thingol announced he was pardoning Túrin it was this man, Beleg, who went to seek him out and tell him the news. He sought him in vain for years - the bandits were good at hiding, and Túrin avoided Thingol's people - but eventually he was taking prisoner by them and, recognizing him, Túrin called the bandits off and greeted his old friend and persuaded Beleg to stay and fight with him rather than return to Doriath. They call the realm they built together the Land of Bow and Helm, for Túrin had a dwarf-made helm he'd inherited from his father and Beleg was the most gifted archer of the Eldar.

And for a few years they kept their part of the south safe, but they didn't have the strength to go and rescue Túrin's people. And eventually they were betrayed and orcs took Túrin prisoner and dragged him towards Angband. And Beleg followed, alone and in desperation, and waited for a moment when he'd have an opening to sneak in among the orcs and save his friend."

...Gem raises her eyebrow at "very intimate friendship" but doesn't comment.

"And Beleg finds alone and starving in the woods an escapee of Angband, and gives him food and aid and asks his help in rescuing Túrin, and a few nights later there's a thunderstorm and they get an opening and he sneaks into the camp and cuts Túrin loose - and Túrin wakes in the dark to someone near him with a sword, and grabs the sword and stabs him, and then there is a flash of lightning and he recognizes Beleg, dying on the sword he'd just used to cut Túrin loose, and he becomes insensate with horror and grief. The escapee of Angband has to carry him out."

Oh dear that is very sad.

"Ready for the tragic part of the story?" he says bitterly.

"...yes."

"The escapee of Angband used to be from Nargothrond, and his fiancée is still there. He takes Túrin there. Túrin - pulls himself together, a bit. He goes to Nargothrond and meets the fianceé - her name is Finduilas - and starts lobbying Nargothrond's populace to do more to protect the surrounding population. 

Finduilas can't - can't make it work, her fiancée - isn't the same person and isn't ever going to be okay and - she develops a crush on Túrin. Her fiancé tells her she should be happy. Túrin - in all innocence, I think - is happy she's so interested in working with him because it means more influence for his campaign to get Nargothrond to build a bridge  -- it was a cave system, tiny entrance - so they can deploy forces and oppose the Enemy in the south.

He gets what he wants. Nargothrond becomes involved. And the Enemy decides it's time to get rid of it. He sends Glaurung, a giant dragon, and a whole host. They cross the bridge Túrin made. They kill a lot of people and take a lot of prisoners. Túrin manages to escape. Tries a rescue. It, uh, succeeds in the sense the orcs kill all the prisoners. And Túrin wanders hopelessly through the woods until he comes across a naked and terrified young woman."

"So Túrin had been, you'll recall, sent away from home at age ten because he was the son of the previous chieftain. His mother was pregnant when he left - managed to conceal from the slavers that the child was her husband's - and when the girl, Nienor, was old enough to travel, went with her to Doriath in search of Túrin, only to hear that no one had heard of him since he'd left. So she disguised herself as a man and went out looking for him. And at some point she runs across the same dragon, Glaurung, who finds it amusing to erase all her memories and throw her in Túrin's path.

He helps teach her language again. He builds a house for them to live in. They fall in love. They get married. She gets pregnant."

Aha.

"Glaurung comes back and starts chewing his way through the remaining scattered human settlements. Túrin goes out to fight him, and wins, though everyone who goes with him is killed and he's badly injured. Nienor hears the fighting end and races out to the site of it to see a dying dragon and what she thinks is a dead Túrin. Glaurung gives her all her memories back. She leaps off the nearest cliff. 

Túrin wakes up. He goes into the nearest human settlement demanding to know what happens, and they - try to avoid telling him - and when they do tell him he murders the teller in disbelief and horror and then kills himself. 

At this point Morgoth sees fit to release their father, who was one of his prisoners ever since the battle of Tears Unnumbered."

"Of course he does."

"Túrin's father is named Húrin, that was the style of the age...he wanders around reconstructing his children's lives as far as he can, and when he reaches Nargothrond he finds one survivor, an embittered petty-dwarf who is the last of his race - petty-dwarves were a dwarf subspecies annihilated during the war - and who tells him what happened. Húrin picks through the wreckage of Nargothrond and finds some invaluable Dwarf-made royal presents and takes them with him to Doriath and throws them at Thingol's feet and calls him rather a lot of names."

"I didn't know Dwarves had subspecies."

"Because the one was all-but-extinct by the time the Noldor even arrived in Beleriand. Anyway, Húrin then wanders some more and at the grave of his children, slowly starving to death, he finds his wife, and he stays by her until she dies and then throws himself into the sea."

Nod.

"And Thingol takes the salvaged necklace and asks some Dwarves to embed the Silmaril in it for him - as a sort of memorial, maybe, I have no idea, and there's a dispute over the price and he says something insulting about Dwarves and a Dwarf stabs him and he dies and his people kill every Dwarf in Menegroth in retaliation."

"And the Dwarves march on Menegroth in retaliation for that, and sack the city, and Beren hears part of this story and comes up to destroy the Dwarven kingdom that did it, and does so, and acquires the Silmaril, and at this point Beren and Lúthien are getting on in mortal years and hold onto it until they die. And then their son takes the Silmaril and attempts to rebuild his grandfather's shattered kingdom."

...Gem slowly facepalms.

"Dior was in his late twenties and had three children. Twins, who were six, and my mother, who was three. I think he thought it would just be the sons of Fëanor themselves, because who not bound by their oath would obey them in executing it - he'd never met Maedhros, if he had I think he would have guessed better - 

-  my mother survived the sack of the city, none of the rest of them did, I never had the nerve to ask Maedhros or Maglor - most of their brothers died in the fighting then -

 - my mother and the other survivors fled to the southern banks of the Sirion, where it meets the sea. She had the Silmaril with her, she'd smuggled it out. She grew up. People looked to her, she was Lúthien's granddaughter. She married. She had children. Twins. And - when the Fëanorians sent letters she said it would delight her if they came so she could have the chance to kill them. 

And they came. We were five."

"- five aging like humans or -"

"Half-elves age like humans, yes. I don't - I didn't actually witness much of it, I didn't learn the truth until much later. I thought they'd killed my mother. They didn't. She jumped off the cliffs into the sea rather than let them get the Silmaril. They did kill the servants who were protecting us. They took us with them. I don't think it was kindness,  Círdan's people were an hour away, but it wasn't - they were very broken people, by then, I'm not sure there's a way to make sense of it.

They raised us. They loved us. They taught us everything a Noldo born to Valinor would have learned, in their lessons, and everything we'd need to know for the world we'd been born to also. They taught us how to fight. I - Imladris is built with a music hall Maglor'd like, though he's never seen it, there are eight-pointed-stars in the walls, they were monsters and they were my fathers - 

And when the host of the West arrived we said that we were going off to fight with them and we said goodbye and - 

- the war lasted sixty years, it was a nightmare, 'an opening to stop Morgoth without collateral damage' only in the sense that orcs didn't count and everyone else in the continent was dead and couldn't be collateral damage, by the end of it I understood them - at the end of it the Valar recovered the other two Silmarils from Morgoth's crown, and they declared that the Fëanorians had forfeited their claim to the Silmarils through their evil deeds and the Silmarils were now the property of the Valar."

"Poor orcs. There's an orc planet, a bunch of hops away from here, somebody will take all your orcs there and then one of my alts will give them free will and they'll be okay. ...stupid fucking Valar."

"Maedhros and Maglor fought their way into the camp of the victorious host of the west, and they seized the chest holding Silmarils, and they prepared to die, there, fighting, back-to-back, and the herald of Manwë said 'no, let them go', and they left. 

The Silmarils burn evil things. They took the Silmarils and they burned them right to the bone and the oath was over and Maedhros took his and leapt into a chasm that had opened as Beleriand crumbled, and Maglor threw his into the sea, and hasn't been seen since, I don't know if he's dead or if he's - singing -

The Valar pardoned everyone else. For being descended from the Exiles."