He hums and nods. "I wouldn't be surprised by men doing such a thing - perhaps by the current Steward of Gondor leading it, since he abhors war, but Sauron seems to be changing that."

"Just... Something to keep an eye on, I guess. That people can go that far."

He inclines his head a bit, and, after some distracted pleasantries, wraps up the meeting.

Bellona's fine heading back to their apartment, after.

"He seems - I don't know. Mostly reasonable?"

"Yeah, as far as people go."

"So, on average pretty terrible," she says, jokingly.

"Heh."

Nudge. "We need to talk to people more, but... I think things can work out. Maybe give them mostly stuff that isn't anti-personnel, keep it under our own control... See if he keeps up with his promise to trade with everyone with the small stuff."

"Doing nothing isn't really an option..."

"Yeah. I'm - that Ellisaria seemed really sure their odds without us were really, really bad. Sauron sounds - maybe like the type of person who'd think Ishval was fun."

"So stopping him is important. Probably enough that stopping him quickly outweighs the other concerns."

"And even with concern for orcs - he can't be good for them, either."

Thinking about other people like this is a huge headache. She's glad at the moment she can't literally feel head pain...

"So even if some of them have to die..."

"Dunno. I - don't think death's the worst thing?" She sighs. "Being good's hard. I want a refund."

"Do we actually know why Sauron survived getting killed last time? Because it sounded like they killed him and then he un-killed himself."

"I don't think we do. Might want to ask someone about that."

"Question is who..."

"Start at the library, I guess."

"Always the best solution," she says, laughing.

To the library!

The library contains a great number of texts - though few of great antiquity. Durin's Bane, Smaug, and other calamities hardly gave them time to evacuate, though the scholars of the library halls risked - and in many cases gave - their lives to preserve their charges, and spent a great amount of their time in the intervening years preserving enough far flung copies that King Thorin was able to regather much knowledge after reclaiming the lost halls.

Still...

Sauron's history is long and bloody, and if any knew for sure the mechanics of Sauron's immortality, it would have been the elven smith Celebrimbor - long since tortured and slain by Sauron. (The annals reveal that Sauron came to the elven city of Ost-in-Edhil, capital of the land of Eregion and at the time a close ally of Khazad-dum, in the year 1200 of the Second Age. He wore a fair guise, naming himself Annatar, Lord of Gifts, and tricked the elven smiths of that city into working with him. Celebrimbor forged many rings of great and minor power - though only a handful earned the title Ring of Power. Nine for the kings of Men of the age, seven for the Lords of the Dwarves, three for the Elven rulers. Sauron, it is recorded, betrayed Celebrimbor then, forging a master ring that allowed him to subvert the Rings of Men and influence the Rings of the Dwarves. A great and bloody war followed, resulting in Sauron's temporary defeat - and the destruction of Eregion. Khazad-dum rescued many refugees, and then shut the Doors of Durin in the West, and those doors did not open again until shortly before King Thorin's return...)

The One Ring forged by Sauron increased his power dramatically. It was lost after the War of the Last Alliance, and none know its location. There's apparently a fierce scholarly debate over whether Sauron actually invested any power in the One Ring, such that he would be weakened from his baseline without it. One dwarven scholar who visited Rivendell recently is hotly and solely holding that Sauron invested so much of his power he'd be removed from consideration if the One Ring were destroyed. There's a lot of scholarly debate if this is even possible or true.

One leading idea is that Sauron is a spirit from before the dawn of time and as such probably literally cannot be permanently killed. This, however, is hotly contested - it's well known that the god Morgoth could not be slain, even by the greatest Powers of the West, and it's known that many of the lesser powers (like Sauron) can reform after being killed, but whether this is infinite is more disagreed upon. (The most persuasive argument is that it's not - magic is demonstrably a limited resource, one spent with every action taken by spirits and powers, and each can only access a small store of the total magic in the world. Many powers never embodied, the elves claim, for it is a huge expenditure of resources. Likely, if you simply repeatedly kill Sauron, he'll eventually maybe be able to give some people unpleasant thoughts, which is effectively like killing someone permanently.) (That argument assumes you trust anything the elves say, though, or anything the Powers of the West told them.)

"Well," El says when they come up for air. "That's interesting. It sounds like it wouldn't hurt at minimum if we destroyed this ring."

"Yeah. Sounds like talking to the elves - or someone from Rivendell - might also be useful."

"Dunno we'll be able to get away. Might have to ask someone else."

"Yeah. Keep our eyes open?"

"Always."