"Well, he can't hurt anyone else."

"...I'm probably overextrapolating. Only one branch to work with, less subjective time. Maybe that's what he was thinking."

"Hmm?"

"Some people chose to ask Mandos to run the backups he had of their Utumno versions. The embodied ones are all rolled back, but some of them thought they could - make it so the subjective threads of experience that went through Utumno ended in rescue. But Melkor had so many degrees of freedom when torturing them that literally no one has found anything that they wanted to try to salvage after investigating, let alone anything that would have been able to conduct a coherent campaign of war and make sophisticated suicide-related decisions for sound reasons."

"He was the unhappiest person I have ever known but he remained good at his - at the things he's good at. I don't know what his reasons were at the end."

Nod.

"It gets worse from there, do you want - a break -"

"Go on."

"Maia shows up in the place where the remaining Noldor live. Heard everything, left Valinor, wants to help us. Name of Annatar. I didn't like it but the world needed help and he was very very good with magic and Celebrimbor latched right onto him. They developed together Rings of Power, tools that would make us as powerful as the Valar ourselves. Celebrimbor realized too late that his assistant was Sauron, and the rings being exploited to use for mass mind control and mass conquest. He smuggled a few rings out before Sauron tortured him to death and conquered half the world and was pushed back by the new improved humans the Valar had given their own continent. The new improved humans got mad about, ah, mortality, complained to the Valar, the Valar gave 'em a condescending lecture and cut off diplomatic relations. The new improved humans started conquering and colonizing and enslaving the normal, inferior humans. Sauron made friends with them and offered to help them invade Valinor."

"...ah-huh. Is Celebrimbor the Thindarin of Tyelperinquar -"

"How ever did you guess." She shows a ring on her hand. "We figured out how to use the ones he got out safely. This place is like Valinor, no decay, and it's safer - not perfectly safe but the Enemy couldn't just walk in and if he tried I could fight him -"

"Well. That's something."

"It doesn't make us a Vala but - I could do what Melian was doing, if I saw fit - I mostly don't, it had its flaws."

"What was she doing?"

"No one could get into Doriath. Refugees died at the edge."

"There's an argument it was the right policy - easy for the Enemy to plant people among anyone we let in."

"Like the villages of orcs. Of course."

"It's his whole game, giving you choices like that."

Nod.

"We haven't had to do that here but if Sauron wins the war we almost certainly will."

"Who is here?"

"Sorry?"

"Who is living in your protected area," she clarifies.

"Mostly locals who've been here since we left for Valinor. About sixty thousand."