Nod.

"Thingol was furious. He told Beren he could marry his daughter if he came back with a Silmaril in hand - meaning, one presumes, to get him killed - and Beren went off to do that, and got captured, and Lúthien ran off after him - Thingol tried to stop her - and she ran to the Fëanorians, and they objected to the mission and when she couldn't be deterred from it imprisoned her - and Thingol geared up to go to war with them -"

"I hope you don't take it personally that I don't think very much of your world."

"Yours sounds lovely."

"Thank you." Sigh. "I was giving you its history - Fëanáro invented a lot of things in the absence of magic to invent them with, such as the printing press and the automobile - had what seem like the same seven children though you didn't list them all - calmed down considerably about his stepmother and half-siblings once Miriel returned to life - oh, and before that our chips were changed to prevent unauthorized forking, that was 1370, you wouldn't have an equivalent I suppose - over time Eru became more active, or perhaps I should just say talkative, most of what he concretely did was award the Valar additional powers -"

"Which they were responsible with?"

"Yes, they were, and he was doing it at the expense of his own, and after some scattered hinting it eventually transpired that he engineered the entire universe to be an entertaining tragedy but with sufficient shrinking of his omniscience he could just read books like a normal person and now he lives on the moon and judges poetry contests."

"Ah."

"A plausible scenario for what I am doing here is that I am supposed to explain incarnates to this set of Valar until they interrogate this Eru until he fixes his somewhat more extended and elaborate disaster, because it would be unaesthetic if he just did it one day of his own accord."

"You think Eru brought you here deliberately?"

"He at least allowed it. I can't rule out that it's for some other purpose, but the way his perceptive characteristics were explained it is in fact the case that not a sparrow falls without him cooing over how sad it is that nobody noticed and the possibility that he might resurrect it via exceptional miracle only to then coo over how sad it is that no one notices that. Certainly no one appears via snake monster without his approval."

"That puts some things in a new light."

"Doesn't it just."

"I haven't even really gotten to the tragedy."

"Go on."

"Lúthien befriends Huan, sells him on the mission. Together they fight Sauron, rescue Beren, kill Thuringwethil, impersonate her in sneaking into Angband - Lúthien reveals herself, tells Melkor she's defecting, snuggles up to him, sings him to sleep - they flee with a Silmaril - they lose the Silmaril along the way but Thingol realizes he might have misjudged some people and accepts Beren after all -"

"Melkor bought that? He has one of the better native understandings of incarnates -"

"I think the contempt she expressed for her parents and the Noldor was entirely sincere. Melkor either did not guess in time or thought it'd be great if she absconded with a Silmaril."

"Fair enough."

"Anyway. There's an effort to rally everybody who's left to a last march on the enemy. Doriath doesn't participate, Lúthien doesn't participate, Huan got killed during the whole thing - some of the human tribes betray us for Melkor -"

"He'd, ah, gotten to them first, made it sound like we were at fault - he'd do things like send out unarmed villages full of orcs, and then if we let them be they'd grow, have babies, move closer, and then one day be ordered to kill us all - so by the time the humans met us, if orcs settled near you, you went down and killed them, you didn't have a choice -"

Nod.

"But you can see how in the telling  - 'the Elf gods torture orcs forever after they die, and the Elves are their foot soldiers, and kill orcs even unarmed, even little children, fight for us, of course they have stories about how terrible we are, everybody has stories about how terrible their enemies are, but watch what they do to orcs and you'll know the truth -"

"Yes, I see."