Did he never learn? That's all the orcs and it's been thousands of years.

I think the events of the war made the Valar more insular. It sounds like you're on better terms with yours.

Huh.

He turns to look more closely at the other humans and looks ridiculously confused. 

Belrun waves.

"These are some of the counterparts from the other Velgarth," Vanyel explains, tiredly. "It's earlier than the one I left. Leareth over there is lifebonded to Belrun." :Also extremely appalled and confused about Telumë and the entire marriage situation. I think some explanations were demanded, not sure what the result was: 

"We should explain about the Ring," the other Leareth says. He's noticeably a bit younger than the Leareth from Arda before his death. "Did you cover that at all, Elrond?" 

"I did not."

"The Sauron here made a terrifying magical artifact which - grants its bearer enormous power, and also mind-controls and corrupts them. It also has mind-control effects from a distance, to tempt people into picking it up. Sauron does not have it at this point, I am unclear on why. Maitimo had been offering advice to Sauron on how to retrieve it with Velgarth magic, so Sauron was attempting to spy on Imladris. We scryed for him and saw him in two locations, so - we scouted the secondary one, after rescuing Maitimo, assuming he was possessing a creature or otherwise doing reconnaissance. We...did not make the connection that the Ring was a major focus of Sauron's magic. Fortunately we Gated in a mile away, and...were able to walk away from it. Barely." 

"- I see. So there are - two Saurons who need killing, one magic Sauron artifact that - also needs killing? Another Velgarth - where Leareth is already married to someone different, is that the only notable divergence? How long have you been married to someone different?"

"Not long at all. A month?" 

"Lifebonds are not the same thing as being married."

Have we explained our plan to win the war, he asks his Vanyel. Because I think having a more-intact Leareth in on it makes me significantly less worried we can pull it off.

:It's been discussed. Maitimo brought it up in, er, the worst possible way - to Belrun, she landed here alone at the same time as him, her Leareth caught up a week later and we arrived with Telumë shortly after that. And then sent back Belrun to get the other Vanyel and Savil, and tiny Stef for additional painblocking since Maitimo swearing himself into a contradictory oath meant it was sort of necessary to have both for Telumë to participate in a conversation. I don't think we came to a conclusion yet but - I suspect the, um, intact Leareth has been considering offering to come take over: 

"I apologize," he says to Belrun.  "What...are people trying to achieve right now?"

"We have just confirmed that we can do Velgarth magic safely here without Sauron observing it, and are nearly certain that until he has observed some, he will not be able to counter it. So we had better not intend to show it to him more than once, but we just returned from the Ring expedition and have not yet formulated a plan. I think this Sauron will be easier to kill than yours, though. We are unsure what to do with the Ring, since most of us should not go anywhere near it and we are not clear on whether manipulating it with magic counts. We have considered Gating it to a volcano that we think would destroy it, or an uninhabited plane, or... Hmm. I was once experimenting with a technique for dumping things into the Elemental Plane of Fire, which would likely destroy it just as thoroughly as a volcano. At least one of the Vanyels have probably proposed Final Striking it but he should not do that." 

"No, he shouldn't," he agrees. "We have another of the weapon we used to defeat Melkor, now, assuming the Star-Eyed will let us take it again, but we might want to save that for if we fail to stop Sauron from retrieving Melkor from the Void.

- do we have a Maitimo who is not sworn to Sauron."

"Dead. And notorious for murdering hundreds of thousands of people, though it wasn't - due to moral convictions that evil is good, or anything."

Sigh. "Then I guess we probably cannot get him to be Telumë's emotional support prisoner."

"I doubt it."

"Did the way this happened teach us anything we can use to find more worlds?"

"Belrun was eaten by a large magical snake and landed here. The same happened with Maitimo. It is curious that they ended up here at almost exactly the same time, and - were both people who were close with instances of me, but the conclusions I can draw from this about the multiverse are vague and do not give us obvious pointers. I have tried to use Velgarth magic to find or summon more of the snake and did not succeed." 

"I'm not sure we should hope to find more any time soon if we're still remotely hoping to save Maitimo because he seems to consider this Sauron an acceptable substitute for his and if there are a million of them..."

"I would expect the oath to attach to the original but I guess we don't know for sure. If Maitimo is actively being tortured by a contradictory oath that might do more damage to his mind than even Mandos can manage -"

"He's unconscious right now, I don't know if that helps? We could theoretically keep him under until the oath time period ends, if we get him to the other Velgarth, which doesn't have a Sauron and does have another Melody and I assume another Nayoki." 

"Yeah, we have a Nayoki."