"Probably, didn't try it yet."

"I was sort of imagining you'd want to have a confrontation in which you demand to know why we didn't tell you we were mass murderers, are you just not particularly interested in that?"

"Why, do you have an explanation prepped, I'm happy to listen to one."

"For how it happened or why I didn't tell you, I have both."

"Go on then."

"I mentioned that the leap-ships are the only way out and we didn't have enough. We didn't have any. Leaving Valinor is - well, forcefully frowned upon, to put it mildly, and has never been done. And when we announced our intent to do so, the Valar told us we were being foolish little children who should go back home. We thought about doing it the long way in the slower-than-light ships. We were projecting fifteen, twenty percent casualties just getting out of this system, it's - well defended, by the Valar, and those ships aren't meant for leaving it. And then those of us who made it would arrive in two and a half Years and by then I think most of Endore's population of probably-billions will be dead. Our years are ten times as long as yours, you said? Twenty five of yours, that's how long the trip is.

We went to Alqualonde. We asked for the ships. No. We asked for help building them. No. We asked for a lesson on lightspeed travel. Nope. They'd locked down their archives. 

My father decided to steal them.

There are no weapons in Valinor and there'd never been any violence and we thought we could just take the things and go but it turns out you can do as much damage with high-powered construction equipment with the safeties ripped off as with any weapon designed for the purpose, and they tried to stop us, and we fought back, and then the Maia of Alqualonde noticed what was going on and swatted fully loaded ships out of the air - killing everyone on board - and we made it out with horrifying losses and were sentenced in absentia to thirty thousand counts of murder. That is how it happened."

"Okay. There've been worse-motivated altercations. Everybody's backed up?"

"Yes. Everyone we killed should be back within a few weeks, I think. Our people won't be, because convicted of murder."

Dammit why couldn't everyone be conveniently resurrectable. "And you didn't bring this up because?"

"The Valar's sentence. My family is exiled from Valinor, as is everyone who follows us instead of turning back to repent. We will meet our deaths in Endore, and we will wait for reembodiment until long after everyone we wronged has forgiven us. Every project we begin will turn to evil ends; we will be houseless and nameless forever. Vala sentences - carry weight, they can actually bring about the things they prophecy. I have no idea if you fall under it, but you are likelier to if you choose to take up our cause knowing what we've done in the service of it."

"I see."

"And also obviously I wanted the ships because there are potentially billions of lives at stake. But you knowing might make things worse, and I'd have avoided it for that reason alone."

"Or, you know, I eventually go back to Hell, and all my projects will turn to evil ends, and I get summoned for high-energy physics work on Earth and I fuck it up and Earth is sucked into a black hole and fourteen billion people die and don't have any backups and most of them go to Limbo which have I mentioned it's unpleasant there and I can't take any extra precautions because nobody told me."

"I did tell you about the Doom. I just didn't tell you anything that'd make it likelier for it to apply to you."

"My complaint is that you did not tell me it might apply to me at all."

"I apologize. I should have done that and I'm very lucky it didn't turn out to be a costlier mistake. It did not even occur to me I could be endangering the people of your world."

"I take summonses all the time. Only occasions I get to do anything meaningful."

"If you leave now I'm reasonably confident the doom won't attach to you. "on all those who follow them', it said, not 'all those who aid them'."

"How much does exact wording matter?"

"Uh, going ahead of us, or us announcing we follow you, won't save us. But it does matter that it's 'follow' not 'aid' or 'defend' or something."

"So if I make it clear that I am an independent agent, do not answer to your government, etcetera...?"

"You could ask the Valar yourself. I'm not sure if that'd be enough. It would probably help."

"Not to put too fine a point on it they sound like assholes."

"The kids are Doomed. They didn't fight."

"This angle crossed my mind. You can't ship the kids back planetside -?"