lintamande | don't touch me

Confirmation reaches them in the spring that Elwing of Sirion has the Silmaril.

It takes as long as the spring only because they weren't looking. They can stretch the oath that far, they can be disinterested in knowing - but now they know, and so there it is. Elwing of Sirion is twenty-three. Half-man, so fully grown. Sirion is a city of refugees. Elves and Men and, since there are Men, children. Elwing herself has infant children.

They debate whether to send messengers. Debating is allowed, even protracted debating. The Oath, these days, is loud in their minds, and louder when they're pushing it like this, but they drag out the debate for a few months. Messengers will probably be shot on sight. The last time Elwing of Sirion received news of the House of Fëanor it would have been the news that her brothers, twins, aged seven, had not survived the sack of Menegroth.

They send messengers anyway. The messengers are shot on sight. They have good armor, Fëanorian armor, and return home injured but not lethally. Maglor's songs no longer stitch them together. War makes you worse at healing. Maglor's songs are more powerful than ever - he can knock back a wave of approaching enemies, he can make a blade's next touch deadly, he can make them faster and more impervious to danger, but he can no longer do healing.

Maedhros, when he thinks about this, thinks that perhaps there needs to be part of you that is not broken for healing spells to draw on. Or perhaps the Enemy is amused to strip that away first. Perhaps the Enemy finds it suited to the theme as the Oath tugs and yanks and twists them into violence against the lands they once defended and the peoples they once sheltered.

They send messengers to Sirion again. The messengers deliver a plea for the Silmaril, an offer of anything at all in exchange. The messengers do not return at all.

The Enemy is many many hundreds of miles from here but at night Maedhros can hear him in his head. Is it so implausible that I really let you go? the Enemy likes saying. You serve me better free than you ever would have willingly.

The Oath allows them to work slowly. They begin planning the sack of the refugee camp even more slowly than the Oath allows, so slowly that its currents are constantly tugging at them. Any slower and the currents would erode all the things they care about which are not the Oath, and it would be a disaster to go to Sirion once they've been stripped of their capacity to care about anything that is not the Silmaril. So they do not hold out forever. But they work as slowly as they can.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

lintamande

It shows everything that happens at every moment in all of Arda's history. I can intervene to change any thing at any moment; I exist outside time. Your orders seem to only prescribe future actions, but perhaps that's because you didn't know I can also change past actions? I told you I was doing that with the swanships. They were the sort of thing that can only be made once, and I needed to remake them, so I changed the aspect of their original making that made them impossible to ever make again.

From:

imeanforever

What would have happened if you'd been under orders not to lie to me when you told me they were the sort of thing that was impossible to make again?

From:

lintamande

I wasn't lying. They were that sort of thing. I changed them to never have been that sort of thing.

From:

imeanforever

...but then they never had been that sort of thing.

From:

lintamande

I should probably have version control for this universe.

From:

imeanforever

...what's that?

From:

lintamande

A way of restoring it to previous states without undoing things. It would make it easier to describe to you exactly what I did when I changed the swanships. Not easy, but easier.

From:

imeanforever

I don't get it.

From:

lintamande

A sigh. It would probably take four hours for me to explain it to you in a way that provided more understanding than the first explanation I gave.

From:

imeanforever

Does that seem like a good use of the next four hours?

From:

lintamande

If you are going to be meddling with timelines, yes, probably. I highly recommend not meddling with timelines.

From:

imeanforever

Are there things that I am likely to care about more than the ships that involve messing with timelines?

From:

lintamande

Do you have preferences about suffering that occurred in the past? If so, you might be tempted to change the universe so orcs were never in pain, for example. I think this is deeply unwise.

From:

imeanforever

Why is that deeply unwise?

From:

lintamande

It would affect a lot of other things. Plausibly enough of them that it doesn't make sense for this conversation to be happening.

From:

imeanforever

That does sound pretty unwise. I am unhappy that the orcs spent that long suffering all the time but not enough to try messing with - time travel.

From:

lintamande

I think this is the best course of action.

From:

imeanforever

Why'd you design the universe the way it is?

From:

lintamande

It is a beautiful story.

From:

imeanforever

From:

lintamande

I have other worlds that are happier. Should I just - fill the universe with copies of those?

From:

imeanforever

Well, Promise says, I think you should strongly consider options that don't involve anyone being set on fire or raped, but maybe if you did that there would be black holes or something.