"This is up to how long ago now?"

"This is the year of the sun 590."

"And the next several thousand years are full of wars with Sauron."

"There were only three major wars with Sauron, they were just - even worse than you are imagining."

"...If you'd rather tell this story to one of my alts with more of a personal grudge against Sauron I can get one."

"Would they like to hear it? I am not sure how many tellings I'm up for, but I am very confident in my ability to have my audience hating Sauron by the end of any given telling."

"I'm taking notes and I'm going to write it all up for distribution, so they'll get the content and you only have to tell it once."

"Then I can go ahead. 

Some of the survivors of the war - not that there were many - declined to graciously accept the pardon of the Valar; they moved to Eriador and built a kingdom there. About two hundred fifty thousand Noldor crossed the sea to start the war, I think? There were ten thousand in Eriador, and many of them were assimilated Sindar. Probably three thousand of the original population. Círdan's surviving people moved south too, settled in Mithlond. 

And then there was the question of what to do about the Men. Lots of them had been liberated from slavery or had been living among Círdan's people and had subsequently fought in the host of the Valar. The Valar decided to reward them. They made them an island. Star-shaped, abundantly fertile, in the ocean between Valinor and Ennor but closer to Valinor. 

And the half-Elven they decided to give a choice. Whether to have the fate of Elves or that of Men, I mean. I - I was an Elf at heart, I knew it. Elros - 

- Elros had seen what it was like to desperately desire to die and know that you would instead endure as long as Arda."

Nod.

"He was a King of Men. A great King of Men, surprising no one who knew his fathers and therefore surprising everyone because no one alive knew his fathers. And he. Got old. And he died."

"Six wishes and we can grab back anybody we want," she assures him.

"Thank you. 

And his kingdom thrived, and our kingdoms thrived, and - 

Curufin had a son. Named Curufinwë Tyelperinquar, in the Quenya; he preferred no one use his fathername. For. Understandable reasons.

Celebrimbor, in the Sindarin. In the year 1200 a Maia showed up, charming, bit reserved, had studied under Aulë but realized Middle-earth needed him more. He went by Annatar. He asked the King of the Noldor if he could be of assistance. We turned him down. Something seemed off. 

He went to Celebrimbor. In Eregion, the Noldorin kingdom on the continent of Eriador. They collaborated. They invented astonishing things, marvelous things, things to surpass Fëanor, magic rings - I have one - that all but make you a Vala. People started thinking that perhaps the greatest achievements of our people were not already behind us. But Celebrimbor got suspicious, eventually, and he smuggled the rings out and to safety, and when Sauron unmasked himself - because it was Sauron, of course - it almost wasn't too late..."

Wow, surpassing Fëanor. The Fëanors might not like that.

"There was a war. He'd been building up forces in the far south in secret, we were horrifically underprepared. The Dwarves fought with us and we still weren't able to hold on very long - I was so angry with Maedhros then, if he'd just - just found it in him to keep existing in unendurable agony for a thousand years for our convenience -" he sighs - 

"Eregion fell. Sauron captured and tortured Celebrimbor for the location of the rings. Didn't get it from him, by all accounts, and when he got it by a different means he kept it up for fun - when we saw the orc armies marching towards us with Celebrimbor's head as their banner -

Eventually the humans from Númenor, my brother's kingdom, mobilized and came to our aid. They won, but by then Eregion was lost, almost everyone was dead - I founded Imladris in that time period, it was a refuge for the survivors -"

Nod.

"Sauron was very nearly destroyed, his armies were, he escaped south. And we - clung to the coast and stopped being ambitious, mostly, it was a shock, losing so much, losing so badly...

I should give some more context about the humans. They'd built up an impressive and impressively advanced society in Númenor, and started colonizing to the east. Sometimes in a - friendly way, sometimes in a less friendly way - they were a very sophisticated society, they had book-printing and shuttled goods around on rails with steam power, the rest of the world was miles behind them. And they started resenting that mortals were barred from visiting Valinor. And they started resenting that mortals were, well, mortal. Cults sprung up around mummification, around reincarnation, around all these ways to evade or defy or postpone death. The Valar told them it was disrespectful of the Valar and of Eru to desire a fate they were never intended for. 

They became vehemently anti-Valar. One of their kings named himself 'Lord of the West', which is Manwë's title. People who were faithful to the Valar and Eru were on some occasions persecuted. The society had the usual secularism road bumps. Meanwhile the treatment of the colonies was - very worrying - but with the contempt for the Valar came contempt for the Elves and they ignored everything we said to them about it.

Sauron rebuilt his army and started making trouble in the far south. They landed a massive fleet and marched against him. Mordor - Sauron's kingdom - folded like a deck of cards, the Númenoreans had gunpowder weaponry and an army of a million - mostly conscripts from their colonies.

And Sauron surrendered and the King of the Númenoreans took him prisoner. And he was taken in chains back to Númenor and he told them that in Valinor they'd age ten times as slowly, they'd have time to find the cure to death the Valar were withholding. He taught them vaccination. He taught them how to make steel ships. He taught them rocketry.

And he led them into an invasion of Valinor."

"The ten times slower thing is even true. I assume the Valar did not take this very well?"

"The Valar asked Eru for aid.

Númenor had a population of fifty million. 

Eru sank it."

"We will get them back and we will put them somewhere else."

"The tidal wave destroyed most of the coastline, too. And the soldiers who'd landed in Valinor proper, Eru made immortal, just as they'd wanted - can't be killed by anything - and then crushed them under a mile of rock. They are still there. It's been three thousand years."

"Oh my fucking god we knew Erus were assholes but that's really overdoing it!"

"I told you it was uglier than you were expecting!"

Gem inhales through her teeth. "Okay. If they're still alive we don't even need wishes, Joy'll be able to teleport them all neatly out when she gets back - not sure what's keeping her, maybe he was in a meeting or something - I can teleport but she's better at things where she doesn't know where everything is -"

"They're still alive, that's the whole point."

"Yes, and by tomorrow they will be alive in a world that is not run by a fucking Eru."