"Twice?"

"Neither time by the enemy! I should back up - it's still bad but with context it's - contextualizable -"

"Yes, of course."

"In 1400 the world is flat and Melkor so so deeply regrets the things he did and the orcs are sworn to him but he can release them, and he begs the Valar to permit him to do so, and they do and he does and he leverages it into a supervised parole and he's very obedient and very regretful and for six hundred years doesn't put a toe out of line - 

- and then the lies - he figured out who to tell to set Nolofinwë and Fëanáro at each other's throats, they weren't stupid but they both had that blind spot, and he spent three hundred years digging rifts and sowing rumors and letting people witness things that didn't actually happen and eventually Fëanáro started forging weapons because of course he did -"

"Oh no -"

"And everyone else started too, once he'd started it, there were people trying to calm them all down but there were lies undoing every calming measure they took, whenever they placed a bet it'd come up against them, he was good at what he was doing and he'd had the head start - and eventually Fëanáro threatened Nolofinwë with his sword and then Finwë pieced together what was going on and told everyone it had been Melkor and to please just calm down - but the Valar got word and were so upset - someone threatening someone in Valinor - and exiled Fëanáro for 12 Years -"

"That of course went over well. Finwë resigned. Half the city followed the two of them north into exile. Nolofinwë tried to talk the Valar down, got nowhere, ruled the other half. Once they knew it was Melkor doing it they were able to undo it pretty well- got all the weapons put away and the lies unravelled -"

"Until...?"

"The Valar decided to hold a festival of reconciliation and require Fëanáro's attendance."

"That must have gone over splendidly - even in my world Tirion is on the other side of the planet from Taniquetil because some people find it annoying to meet the Valar wallking down the street asking if there's anything they can do for you -"

"Well, Fëanáro wasn't going to disobey them, so he showed, but he showed in a ponytail and forge clothes and refused to talk to anybody. It was a festive little party even before Melkor put out the trees, sacked the city his family had built in exile, killed Finwë, burned down his library, stole all his inventions, and ran off to Endorë."

"- oh no."

"Yep. He fell apart, and the kids - the kids decided they couldn't defeat Melkor without him so whatever he needed - and the Valar had just tried to demand the Silmarils from him to restore Valinor, and then it turned out Melkor had stolen them, and so what he decided he needed from them was an oath to war with anyone who withheld them from him -"

"What the fuck."

"You don't say."

"So he drags all seven kids into an ill-considered oath. Then what."

"The Noldor schism. On whether this disqualifies them from leadership or not - of course it bloody should have done, they couldn't have done nearly as much damage if it'd only been them - but there wasn't really any question about who Finwë considered his successor - it was about two thirds for Nolofinwë and a third for them and of course that infuriated Fëanáro even more -"

"Fëanáro doesn't even want the bloody crown, Maitimo's going to get it direct from Finwë once he's raised his children!"

"Well, he got it soon enough. There's no way out of Valinor. There's a land bridge, to the north, but it's freezing and long and dangerous and at the time of course continuously dark, and we spent the better part of a year trying to find away across and there simply wasn't one, and eventually he wheels about and goes to Alqualondë and - 

- Olwë observed correctly that he was manic and had temporarily appallingly bad judgment and said he should go home and calm down and he'd realize he didn't want to do this - refused him any help - and Fëanáro tried to steal boats from them, and the owners of the boats tried to defend them, and they had those horrible swords he'd forged -"

"How many swords are we talking about."

" - thousands -"

"Tens of thousands of people died. The Valar were furious. They Doomed Fëanáro and everyone who followed him to fail and die or wish they had."

"...Doomed them?"