"I mean, the Cataclysm is coming back around."

"If you don't alienate them by murdering hundreds of thousands of people the gods of my world are very useful for that kind of thing, I could've talked them into helping. And - five hundred years is a long time, long enough to figure out how to use the Silmarils for that instead of for murder, long enough to evacuate if you absolutely have to -"

"He wasn't sure we had five hundred years but perhaps the argument holds as well for two or three hundred."

"I think that there are viable alternatives in my world - plausibly not ones apparent in yours, before interworld contact - which are not being explored because 'kill everyone in the countries at war with us' is a more appealing plan to many of the people involved in planning."

"Can you explain what plan this is that involves killing hundreds of thousands of people."

"Oh, it involves killing lots more than that. Telumë wants to build a god that's on his side. He thinks it'll take ten million deaths."

"There's potential substitutes but they're all controlled by or directly are hostile deities."

"The Valar aren't hostile. ...they are not very good at working with people but if you're patient with them they'll try."

"Humans in this world will be unable to petition the Valar; after the invasion from Númenor Valinor was sealed to all of them."

"My Valar have diplomatic relations with Valdemar and Karse. Telumë is kicked out but just him, they didn't even extend it to his allies."

"I don't know if the Valar control any resources that could be substituted. The Star-Eyed does, enough Heartstones would do it, or in theory one could cannibalize Vkandis for parts if we knew how and he wouldn't fight back but we don't and he would."

"Again this is outside my area of expertise but I think there was technical research ongoing, by the time I defected, on using energy differentials between planes. It was still a hard problem but - if you can get the Valar to just handle the Cataclysm then you don't have a time limit for figuring out the rest of it."

"Except in the sense that people die even if nobody murders them, yes."

"I don't think the risk and the cost are justified under his framework if there are better options on the horizon and no catastrophes coming. I have never been able to persuade him of this, which might mean I'm wrong or might mean he has gotten too accustomed to the mass slaughter of civilians to properly account for its costs."

"I don't think mine's accustomed like that. At all desensitized but -" She makes a vague gesture.

Nod.

"This is what you - defected - over?"

"It's complicated, there were a lot of elements - we were doing awful awful things and I felt like most of my effort and energy was spent - not even on successfully executing them, I could have lived with that, but on making sure we internalized as few of the costs as possible, and that was obviously just driving us further down that road - and my father is impossible to get to ever apologize or change course or admit a mistake - and it seemed pretty likely that if Telumë even noticed I was thinking about leaving he'd just - so once I had the thought I had to either leave right away or decide right away I never would, or it wouldn't be in my hands anymore -"

"I think I'm getting confused about the timeline here, can I get all the events in order -" She readies a pen.

"Yeah. The war started in 807, Velgarth time. The war opened with Melkor assassinating my grandfather. Leareth Gated our forces to Beleriand and we started setting ourselves up to assail Angband. Killed all the orcs on the continent. Leareth concluded that he didn't have a good way to kill Melkor and sent his people back in Velgarth looking for Vanyel, who was out of Valdemar at the time, in Jkatha - Valdemar's leadership had taken it badly when the talks with Leareth came out - about a year later, Leareth's people made contact with Vanyel and Leareth brought him over. Shortly after that, Leareth was captured by Melkor. 

Vanyel got to work in Valinor working on adapting - uh, the magic thing that he made the decision not to tell Leareth about and I think he was right to and am not going to tell you. The war in Beleriand ended up at an ugly mostly stalemate along both the western and eastern fronts. It had exacerbated a lot of existing political divisions - for example, we were trying to maintain alliances with both the Sindar and the Dwarves, but the Sindar had only recently stopped hunting Dwarves for sport.

After he'd been in Angband for ..I think a year...Leareth started doing some magic for Melkor. Not very much of it, and not very strategically oriented. We figured he was only partially compromised, we wouldn't have stood a chance if he'd been uncomplicatedly working for Melkor. The Valar reacted by banning Gates into and out of Valinor, after he Gated some orcs in for Melkor. 

Vanyel figured out the thing he'd been working to figure out. He deployed it, and it worked.  Melkor was destroyed. We got Leareth back, after he'd been in Angband four, five years. I guess that would make it 812 in Velgarth. There was still a bunch of stupid fighting - a lot of orcs weren't dead yet, the Sindar and the Dwarves still hated each other and now we'd sold the Dwarves tons of magic weapons and there were lots of skirmishes though it hadn't descended to outright declarations of war  - Vanyel nearly started a war with Doriath when they attacked his lifebonded, the Avari tried to kill me and Leareth and the delegations from Valdemar and so then we were threatening them - My father was getting close to - being able to use the Silmarils for mass killings, and he and I argued over it."

"Vanyel's... lifebonded?"

" - I guess he wouldn't know yet, right. He gets another lifebonded. Named Stefen. You should not introduce them yet because Stefen was sixteen when he and Vanyel got together in our timeline and that was awkward enough. Lovely kid. Bardic gifted. I - it didn't seem horribly unhealthy to me but I might have low standards."

"Is he a reincarnation or a random additional person?"

"I have no idea. Is there reason to think he'd be a reincar - I guess the timeline matches up all right - uh he does not particularly in personality resemble what little I have been told of Tylendel but honestly most of what I was told about Tylendel was that seventeen year olds should not have the option of suicide fireballs, Van never really liked to talk about it. - I was also told that it was kind of Leareth's fault, I guess. He felt badly about it, in his own unapologetic way."

"It kind of was but in a 'the gods were here' kind of way."