"Any particular evidence that you expect would convince you that operation kill Melkor is a good idea?"

" - I mean, honestly I'm not expecting our opinions to matter here? Alex is best buddies with Drusilla now, and she does mind control, and we can't even buy some time pretending we're trying because they're all telepaths. If I'm wrong about that - I dunno. I'll think about it."

"OK. I'll, uh, see you around I guess."

She leaves.

So Ryan objects to the part of this plan where it results in killing Melkor.

...well, that's a way to be.

It is admittedly not what I expected the sticking point to be. He's worried that you're going to wipe out all the orcs when they don't have a hellgod on their side. Also sort of concerned that you're going to prevent humans from ever getting to, like, exist very much.

I don't know if we would get in the way of humans. There are lots of Quendi still around at the end of the war, they just mostly leave for Valinor eventually, but - I don't know if that would still happen if we hadn't lost so much. 

The orc thing will be a mess for a while but once they're not oathed we don't need to kill them.

Any idea how the mess'll look?

So no one knows about the oath thing yet, unless I told them this week, since we didn't learn that until later in the war. Without that it seems a lot more reasonable to assume they'd keep attacking us with Melkor gone, or that his apparent disappearance was a feint of some kind. And there are lots of Quendi settlements random places that have been harassed by orcs which we're not in contact with which definitely won't stop trying to kill the orcs just because Melkor's dead, and presumably the orcs when not sworn to hate Quendi will still quite often hate us because that's how wars tend to go. And orcs are designed to reproduce really really fast and have overpopulation problems constantly, and I don't know how anyone'll handle that - actually, worrying they'll get in the way of humans having a shot might make more sense than worrying we will, we reproduce really really slowly. 

It's - there'll be lots of problems, they're just better problems than Melkor. Almost anything's a better problem than Melkor. We could fix orc chronic pain, maybe, and then in a couple generations their grandkids would be back to growing up slower and wanting four kids instead of forty.

I guess you guys are gonna have a lot of bridges to cross when you get there, then.

Anyway. Ryan is currently opposed but he's expecting you to get Dru to mind-control rape him anyway. He's - kind of also in a really really terrible situation here.

Yeah. I'm sorry. I'll ask Nelyo to talk to him though Nelyo's - not well right now - so I dunno if that'll be as helpful as it usually would.

OK.

Man, I love how every individual step of this plan is, like, awful.

Yeah, it's really something. Are you doing okay?

Coping. Ask me again if someone convinces Ryan that killing Melkor is a good idea.

If you can't stand him that's also a reason to wait and look for other humans, we could find two who liked each other. Or if there's enough of them find one whose baby is too sick for us to help.

There are not really circumstances under which this is going to be OK for me.

But we'd only have to - let hundreds of thousands of other people die. I guess.

Do orcs come back?

In theory they have the same process as us, in practice they aren't really welcome in Valinor and so one way or another they didn't during the time I was there. It might be easier to bring them back when Melkor's dead. 

Ah. 

How many humans were there, the first time you ran into them?

They migrated west across the mountains. Tribes of a couple thousand. That was three hundred fifty years from now but they had some collective memory of ancient events, I'm pretty sure they exist by a hundred fifty years from now.

That's kind of a while to wait.

Yeah. I'm just not a very good person so I'm fine with that if it means you're okay.

Yeah. I'm - not sure a very good person would be doing this at all but I don't think I want to be the flavor of terrible that waits around doing nothing for her entire life, not because it's good or right but because doing anything to help other people would hurt. If that makes any sense.

Maybe there aren't any paths from here where I'm OK anymore.

Well. We'll talk to Ryan. Not with Drusilla. - I guess it's kind of dumb to say that killing babies is fine but we draw the line at mind-control but, like, it sounds like he has reasons and maybe it'd just be possible to answer them.

Yeah, sounds like.

- it's - kind of a dumb place to draw a moral line but there are some things I'm - not a hundred percent sure I could do even if I decided to.

We're not going to make someone have children.

OK.

I guess it would probably piss off Wishbone.