"Eight-oh-three, by the Valdemaran reckoning." 

"Gods. Does your Vanyel, er, know about the–" he stops. :Leareth, does Belrun know about the god plan. You hadn't told me yet, that year: 

"Belrun knows my plan, yes." Leareth gives the - other him - a sideways look. He looks kind of concerning, actually. :Vanyel, what is wrong with Telumë: 

Vanyel includes Belrun and Amshalan in his answer. :Currently being tortured by his evil husband, sorry, long story - have you seen him...?: He flashes a mental image of Maitimo. 

"His evil husband?"

All right, sure, they're having this conversation out loud. "He's, er, not permanently evil – he was captured by Sauron, who snuck across into our Velgarth when I was busy fighting Melkor in our Arda – anyway, Sauron captured him when Vkandis attacked Haven, and got a mage to compulsion him into an oath to serve him, so he's evil until we manage to win this war and kill Sauron at which point we're hoping to get the person he was before back." 

Belrun facepalms. "Yeah. I met him."

"Where is he now?" 

"Well, he... described the situation differently and said he did not want to be around when Telumë showed up and Elrond gave him an escort to another city and he left."

"Honestly I - cannot blame him - for that - but we need to find him - does this Arda have Sauron too? He would - look for him - first." He's going to be so much more capable of productively participating in a conversation when he's not in only moderately attenuated horrible pain. 

"Where in Arda are we, actually?" Vanyel glances around. "This looks like Valinor but I don't specifically recognize it." 

Leareth is mostly hanging back and trying to absorb all the sudden swerves in the conversation. 

"This place is Imladris, it's in Middle Earth. We're on bad terms with the Valar; Beleriand no longer exists; Sauron does exist, though we don't know where exactly and he commands no substantial forces to our knowledge. He cannot reach Imladris, not without the Ring, not with capabilities native to our world. - did you marry your husband while he was under a mind-altering oath to serve Sauron in every way or was he lying about that part."

"It wasn't one of his better decisions," Vanyel says. "Oath, and also lots of mind-control from our side to prevent him from murdering everyone." He gives Melody a sour look. "They were, er, already together before the second war started, though, we're not sure why the married part didn't happen at that point." 

"I would be extremely worried about what he's up to in your Arda given how much damage he caused in ours," Melody says, "except that he's been tortured continuously for a couple of days now. Er, he used to torture himself when he was in Valinor, it hits Telumë too through the marriage bond, but never all the time. I have a suspicion he's not doing it to himself, which makes me worry that he found this Arda's Sauron, who - decided to have some fun."

"Sauron can't keep prisoners alive against their will."

"Huh. Pretty sure our Sauron can, or he couldn't have gotten Maitimo in the first place. ...I guess he's oathed to love and serve Sauron now, so maybe it's not unwilling? It's a pretty stupid use of him but I can't actually get upset about it, hopefully it means he hasn't gotten up to too much in the time it took us to catch up." 

(Why is this happening, he had almost gotten used to the previous flavour of terrible and now there's some new and exciting terribleness, really at some point he wants things to stop being terrible.) 

"Probably," Leareth says heavily, "we should go sit down somewhere, and go through everything that he told us, and get your version." 

:I would consider asking for some sort of verification: he says to Belrun privately, :but I would be very surprised if Vanyel were lying about something like this. We could ask for it under Truth Spell if you are not sure, I suppose: 

:I believe Yfandes: Amshalan jumps in. :Companions can keep secrets from each other but it's pretty hard for us to lie directly to another Companion, and besides, I know 'Fandes, even if this is a different version: 

:Can I do a Truth Spell or do you have to be a full-on graduated Herald? - do they even work here, are there vrondi?:

:Apparently Gates work here! I don't know. Truth Spell is pretty new but I don't think you need to be a graduated Herald, it's really simple, there's this rhyme to say as a mnemonic but the important part is concentrating on summoning the vrondi...: Amshalan knows the instructions for it, which aren't complicated, and can walk Belrun through them. 

There are apparently vrondi here, or at least summonable to here. 

:I can apparently do Truth Spells if that comes up though I think it isn't necessary to request at least this early, we can do a quick 'confirm you haven't lied' later maybe. Would have been good to be able to do when I was talking to Russandol: she says to Leareth.