"Okay."

"There was at that time a kingdom in central Beleriand called Doriath, which had weathered the war quite well until a recent fight over the Silmaril with a neighboring Dwarven kingdom. Even after that, hundreds of thousands of people lived there, and Morgoth had never assailed it -- though plausibly because he knew what'd happen next. Doriath's king was practically a child. The Feanorian host sent ambassadors asking after the Silmaril. The ambassadors never came back. They attacked. The armies that had followed them through the last four centuries of war followed them there, too. I've asked them why, of course. Some of them thought that with the Silmaril the tides could be turned and the war won, some of them blamed Doriath for centuries of crimes and insults and so - failed to consider the harms to them to be of sufficient gravity, some thought that my uncles and my father would go anyway by necessity and mustn't be abandoned to go alone, most of them believed some combination of all of those things that they hadn't explicitly pinned down because if they did they'd have to consider how sure they were, and of which parts.

There is no one I could ask why my uncles or my father thought they were doing it but oaths like the ones they took affect your thinking eventually. They make it impossible to care about anything other than the oath, they make everything else fade away in your calculations, they turn into a compulsion. I don't know if they waited so long that that happened or if they deliberately attacked before that happened, thinking it'd be less ugly if it happened while they could still remember any secondary goals they had.

Most of the population of Doriath lived in a cave system. An invasion of a cave system is a very ugly thing. Anyone can attack you from any corner. A great many civilians died. The king and his young sons died. They were six. It's rumored they were left to freeze in the woods but I've never talked to anyone who heard that firsthand. They didn't get the Silmaril."

"The king's daughter escaped with it south. They set up a refugee camp at the mouth of a river. By then most of the continent had fallen, there were people there from all over. For twenty years they were left alone. I don't know if no one knew where the Silmaril was, or if they were finding ways to delay. They must have learned of it eventually. She wore it on a necklace. People believed it'd bring them safety and healing, that it'd ward off monsters, that it'd keep trouble away. Círdan asked them to let him destroy it -- destroying it still makes you a target, the way the oath was worded, but at least there'd have been no point bothering anyone else -- but it was important to them -- it may have actually had healing properties even though no one knew how to use it, I'm not sure, I could hardly have shown up and asked --

Eventually messengers arrived, demanding it. They were refused. 

About a year after that, they came. During this fight some of the host that had followed my father and uncles defected. That only made everything bloodier, though it's -- reassuring that they tried. Until then I'd wonder if some magic kept them bound to my uncles' side. I don't think there was any magic, it's just that it takes longer than it should to burn down thousands of years of loyalty. And they still thought they could win, if they could only get the Silmaril. 

I think that fight was almost entirely fought among the host of the sons of Fëanor, but tens of thousands of civilians died anyway. I don't know why they didn't defect sooner. Maybe they thought they were assailing another kingdom, maybe they didn't realize until they reached Sirion that it was just a bunch of families in tents and little wooden shelters. 

The princess leapt into the sea with the Silmaril around her neck. One of the Valar turned her into a bird."

"That last bit... sounds like something that would appear in a mythical story and not like something that would happen with real agents doing things for reasons."

"There were witnesses, and she and her husband made it to Valinor eventually -- with the Silmaril -- to plead the case for intervention in Beleriand. I assume that was Ulmo's intent in turning her into a bird, and that he had to disguise it because his peers would not have taken as kindly to being deliberately manipulated as they would to dealing with people poetically turned into birds. They still nearly voted to kill them when they arrived on the shores of Valinor, for coming without permission."

"I... see."

"We'd been trying to reach Valinor for a long time, by then -- or, more specifically, Círdan had, but I'd been living with him because there were very few other places to go. The boats never made it. We were looking into flying things, but there was no real reason to think that those would fare any better, or that the impossibility of reaching Valinor wasn't reflective of a disinterest in assisting us which would remain even if we technically found our way to the shores. But the princess with a Silmaril, and her husband, thinking their children dead, having both watched their respective kingdoms fall as children.... it was the best case we could possibly have made."

"The Valar didn't know what was going on because they kept murdering trespassers?"

"One assumes they knew? But if they did they hadn't gotten an apology, they hadn't had reason to consider intervening...and they hadn't gotten an apology because they kept sinking the boats that were sent, yes."

"They were waiting on intervening for an apology?"

"I don't know. They might've just been waiting until everyone on whose behalf they'd promised not to intervene was dead or in ruins, maybe it was just that the apology was well-timed. But I think it was likely a relevant factor."

"Uh-huh."

"Whatever their reasons, after some contemplation the Valar settled on a lesser punishment for the trespassers, and they came, and they fought Morgoth, and the continent crumbled into the sea, and they won and recovered the Silmarils.

And my remaining relatives -- alone, by then, with no followers anymore -- wrote to them requesting the Silmarils, and were refused, and they came in the night and fought their way through the victorious host of the Valar and took them, and then Eönwë, herald of Manwë, the leader of the Valar's forces in that war, said to let them go, so they left peacefully, and by most accounts both promptly committed suicide, though," he shrugs, "there were no witnesses. Some say that one of them wanders the shores to this day, singing, having thrown his Silmaril into the sea."

"Nothing about that makes sense."

"Which bits? The suicide makes sense to me, they wouldn't have been able to before the oath was fulfilled. The singing - also wouldn't be wildly out of character."

"More literally everything the Valar have ever done in their lives, though the clarification about the oath forbidding suicide does help."

"It seems reasonable to assume that this was for some reason the Valar's desired outcome though here there is a broad consensus that they should have been given the Silmarils and then executed, less collateral damage and more closure."

"That would have made more sense, yeah."

"Anyhow. That's the story."

"It's kind of a lot. About when did you break off and go live with that Círdan guy?"

"When the princess from Doriath set off on her quest to steal a Silmaril, there were efforts to stop her. They crossed some lines, and they seemed - they seemed like the math wasn't really very good and no one was noticing -- so I left. I figured she'd die, I didn't have any idea what was coming, if I had I'd - I don't know but I don't think I'd have left, it wouldn't have been enough. But I didn't know, and I left."

Nod.

"I'm sorry."

"Unlike, apparently, the Valar, I wasn't fishing for an apology."