"I don't know, but until I at least have a guess I should maybe not explain the really big explosions."

"I think they tried quite a lot, back in the First Age. But certainly err on the side of caution."

Nod. "Anyway. We spent twenty-five years flying to Valinor and settled there. I'm a Noldo but lived most of the time in Valimar once I grew up, studying the Valar and explaining things that they have trouble with. They captured Melkor, and his Maiar, who are imprisoned to this day with a virtual reality setup to keep them amused, except Thuringwethil, who made good at her trial."

"She is dead. Died during the wars of the First Age. Did Finwë's first wife die and decline to return -"

"- uh, yes, for a while, but shortly after the Oath Reform Act of 1400 she came back."

"1400 is when they paroled Melkor."

"Grand. So, Miriel died, was reembodied several times and kept killing herself until Mandos let her stay dead, Finwë remarried and had four more children after Fëanáro who has seven of his own..."

"I don't think Miriel was reembodied, she just told Mandos not to bother - the rest matches - did you know them -"

"...I still, uh, do know them, they're all fine. My you I don't know quite as well, she doesn't get along particularly well with Fëanáro and things get sort of partisan around him and even when I think he's being silly I'm very fond of him, I was around a lot while he was growing up. Mandos didn't run our Miriel disembodied to ask her questions..."

"My understanding was that our disembodied are conscious by default. - they're all dead. Everyone is dead, a hundred forty thousand of us crossed to Endorë when Melkor escaped, to try to help, and there are three survivors."

"- why would the dead be conscious by default?"

"I don't even think that's incompetence on the part of Mandos, I think it's that way even if you don't go to Mandos."

"There is a disconnect here - uh - my soul is or at least before I came to this world was continually sending copies of my mindstate to Mandos instantaneously, such that it doesn't even take twenty-five years to get there from Endorë, and if I die and my soul is intact a new body can be put around it and I can resume as though I blacked out for the interim and if my soul is destroyed Mandos can put my mindstate as it was at the last moment before my death on a fresh chip and embody the chip. There's nothing to be conscious while someone is dead - a disembodied soul doesn't do any processing without a brain - Mandos can run the mindstate on non-body architecture if he needs to ask the dead questions or something but he doesn't keep them like that unless they prefer to be conscious but disembodied for some reason -"

" - our understanding has been that the endurance of the soul beyond the death of the body preceded the intervention of the Valar, and that the soul cannot be destroyed at all by any means, even by the Enemy -"

"Melkor can't interrupt the backups - perhaps I should say our Melkor can't do that, it seems they are probably different - he can melt souls, but so can a sufficiently hot fire, and that doesn't interfere with Mandos writing to a new one."

"I don't think our souls can be interfered with physically at all."

"Is your soul some thing other than a bit of metal embedded in your spine."

" - uh, yes. That is not what our soul is at all."

"Oh. Ours are that. What are yours?"

"The - non-physical self, which temporarily holds a physical form in the world as a body -"

"...would you say this is loosely similar to how Maiar work?"

"Yes, although we can't shapeshift."

"Right. Okay. So you are... magic Elves. My kind of Elf is not magic."

"I think that might have avoided all the trouble all by itself."

"How so?"