Is any war fully defensive? [He sighed. Those are dark times to remember.] We swore to get them back at all costs or face damnation and in doing so brought damnation on ourselves. It was... as much for revenge as for the silmarils in the very beginning. So, no, not entirely defensive so much as retaliatory.

[He shakes his head. For so long, that had been his life and he can never be free of it. Not even here. If she can read spirits from a distance, she will see a weariness and hopelessness born of centuries of guilt and a desperate fight for an end to both that guilt and the oath that drove him to further guilt.] We never approached him before but after... It was madness.