Yes. Though she's not taking any risks, is she? I doubt she could lie anyway, benevolent Maiar generally can't.

At all? Weird. I'll keep it in mind in case I ever need some inconclusive evidence on that.

The Valar and Maiar have this thing where - their goals and beliefs and actions are all the same, they can't weigh tradeoffs and they can't do something they don't want to be doing or don't endorse doing - it's very hard to explain because it is very alien to the Eldar. So if it's not in a Maia's nature to lie then they wouldn't, and there's a sense in which they couldn't.

And this tracks benevolence because, well I guess there's no reason it wouldn't.

The clusters are loosely 'as benevolent as a fundamentally alien entity gets', which is not exceptionally so, 'completely orthogonal to Elven values', and 'evil'. The benevolent cluster mostly cannot kill innocent people for any reason, including as a mercy or to save more lives or something, will at least nominally seek consent to mind-control you but often does it without realizing it, and will not threaten people or respond comprehensibly to threats. The orthogonal cluster mostly spend their time singing to one specific individual tree or making sure there are no purple corals in a coral reef or something, though Huan'll help us out if we ask because we're Tyelcormo's pack, sort of. The evil ones seem to know exactly what hurts incarnates most and desire to do that, and also want to overthrow the Valar and Eru.

So only the evil ones are well-informed? That goes beyond bizarre and into scary. I'd say it implies someone went and converted them, but if their goals and actions are the same then it might mean the clusters started with that criterion...

I think Melian is closer to the orthogonal cluster, just with a much broader focus. Her people matter because they're part of her domain. At least I was spinning everything as "...and then that helps us which means Doriath gets safer."

The evil ones spent more time interacting with us. It might be that at first they were just as bad at it, but they found us first - Melkor was convincingly not-evil for a hundred Years in Tirion while subtly manipulating the Noldor into the current mess...

A hundred Years. Are you rounding up or down?

Technically it was ninety-seven before the Darkening happened.

Good.

I was worrying, what if Ungoliant is a demon who pays attention to him and so are all the others, and the only reason Suleiman was so successful was because Melkor wasn't being openly evil—

Good to know this isn't as terrifying as it possibly could be. Timelines wouldn't match up.

Suleiman is the person who bound most of the demons?

Yeah. He'd go for the biggest baddest ones he could get, force them to submit, and send them after the next ones. At least that's what went down in history. If it's true it was stupidly dangerous, but he could have been just that good.

Is it possible Ungoliant is one he missed? If she was in our world, not yours...

I don't think anyone says he got all of them. And even the ones he did seal are still dangerous, especially if they've ever been summoned. If she's not a demon it's not because of him.

Before Melkor lived in Tirion he was in prison, so if anything I'd have expected anything he was affecting to get harder about a thousand years ago.

And he was imprisoned up through a bit after Suleiman's time. So the Enemy is not responsible for a significant fraction of the worst things that have ever happened to a world he isn't on.

Yep. He was imprisoned for, hmm, the ten thousand years before that? Approximately?

Recorded history doesn't go back that far; might as well have been forever as far as humans would be able to check.

All right. Well, I am glad things could possibly be worse. I'll talk with people about the possibility we need to fight Ungoliant in addition to Morgoth.

You probably don't. Not more than anyone else, if she hasn't been going out of her way to attack people before. I'll warn the other practitioners; if she does come by here they'll stand out to her.

Okay. I have a lot of experimental notes for my cousins - what grows here, though I suppose that's less urgent if you've got magic for it now, construction and decay related experiments, things in that vein...

You might be able to skip some of the construction experiments by hiring Dwarves. They think we're strange for building above ground, but they've been building outside Valinor for a while and might know how the experiments turn out.

How do they circulate air, or do they have absurd quantities of plants, or do they not need to at all - I suppose we should just ask them, shouldn't we. 

Probably. I didn't notice them not breathing; they've probably got some kind of a solution.

Envoy is collecting the supplies to head over there. There's a scouting team coming through the pass in a few minutes which can confirm the area's remained clear of orcs, and then I'll have them on their way. Care to stay for dinner, by the way? It felt impolite to ask back when you were trying to keep things from me.