Melkor’s first reign ended after the Elves, the eldest of the Children of Ilúvatar, awoke at the shores of Cuiviénen, and the Valar resolved to rescue them from his malice. The Valar waged devastating war on Melkor, and destroyed Utumno. Melkor was bound with a specially forged chain, Angainor, and brought to Valinor, where he was imprisoned in the Halls of Mandos for three ages.
In the account published in The Silmarillion, Melkor had captured a number of Elves before the Valar attacked him, and he tortured and corrupted them, breeding the first Orcs.[4][5] Other versions of the story (written both before and after the published text) describe Orcs as corruptions of Men, or alternatively as soulless beings animated solely by the will of their evil lord. This last version illustrates the idea of Morgoth dispersing himself into the world he marred.[6]
Upon his release, Melkor was paroled to Valinor, though a few of the Valar distrusted him.[7] He made a pretence of humility and virtue, but secretly plotted harm toward the Elves, whose awakening he blamed for his defeat. The Noldor, most skilled of the three kindreds of Elves that had come to Valinor, were most vulnerable to his plots, since he had much knowledge they eagerly sought, and while instructing them he also awoke unrest and discontent among them. When the Valar became aware of this they sent Tulkas to arrest him, but Melkor had already fled. With the aid of Ungoliant, a dark spirit in the form of a monstrous spider, he destroyed the Two Trees of Valinor, slew the King of the Noldor, Finwë, and stole the three Silmarils, jewels made by Finwë’s son Fëanor, which were filled with the light of the Trees. Fëanor thereupon named him Morgoth, "Black Foe of the World", and the Eldar knew him by this name alone afterwards.[8]