"That sounds like a very painful situation."

"It's pretty terrible," she agrees. "But Mathrael's good at it. About as good as a person can be, anyway."

"All right. How much do you know about the situation here on Endorë?"

"Not a lot. I know there's an evil Vala called Melkor who likes to hurt people, and the Noldor left Valinor to fight him."

"I want to give you some context, because I'm sure you must be wondering what situation could possibly take priority over stopping the Alteri from their mistreatment of other peoples."

"I would wonder that, yeah. Especially given that you don't seem to have visited that many planets, which seems like it would limit the scope of the war you're fighting?"

"There are fifteen Valar. They tell us they created the world, and we have no particular reason to disbelieve them. They did not create us - they say that Eru did that. I believe that it was a power beyond them, whatever we want to call it, because Melkor has set himself ever since the beginning of Creation to trying to cause as many horrors in it as possible and if people were the sort of thing he had the power to create, he would have done so. He didn't. Instead, he found early Elven settlements on Endorë, kidnapped Elves, and tried to breed his own race of monsters. He succeeded, eventually. Elven bodies take a form decided by our minds, at least in part, and if you torture an Elf child from the minute, in the womb, when they begin to feel the world around them, you can create a twisted race of peoples with some, but not all, of the abilities of Elves. They are called orcs. They are in pain all the time; they have to be; that's what makes them orcs. Melkor changed other things about them, too: he made them grow to adulthood quickly, he made them desperate to have as many children as possible, and he makes them all, in early childhood, bindingly swear him eternal loyalty. On Endorë we war with Melkor and with our own great-great-grandchildren, raised in pain to be monstrous slaves. Melkor does not need them. When it comes to it, he fights us just as effectively without them. War is more than a game of numbers when you are a god. They exist just because it is terrible that they exist. 

I do not think Melkor knows of the existence of other species. I expect that he would be delighted.

Elves, as we've mentioned, keep backups of our brains on the computers in our heads. If Melkor captures an Elf alive, or not dead enough, he takes those chips and creates a virtual environment in which he can torture the Elf. He is very creative, and he has arbitrary control over that environment, and he runs thousands of copies, and he has millions of prisoners, and he runs them very quickly. Years per second, maybe decades, several centuries while we've had this conversation. 

That part he probably could not do to other peoples, not by any means I know of. 

Most of the surface of his territory is full of computer farms, enabling this pastime of his."

"Oh." Pause. "OK, yeah, that sounds worse than the Alteri. I'm sorry."

She is not entirely sure what else to say about this, apart from affirming that it's terrible. People have been really good about affirming that things that have happened to her are terrible, and she would like to be the sort of person who can do that much for other people, too.

"Do you think the Alteri would find it concerning?"

"Prob... maybe? They would certainly be concerned about the possibility of Melkor harming them. I guess apart from that, I'd also expect them to object to the fact that it's inefficient? If Elves are going to suffer, then they'd want them to suffer in economically productive ways. They'd like to take over as much of the universe as they can, and it's no good if there's some superpowerful evil deity controlling an important part of it. I don't know if they'll object in particularly advantageous ways, they don't really go in for humanitarianism, but they should find it concerning, yes."

"They sound so charming. The Carthons?"

"Most of what I know about the Carthons is through the Alteri, who hate them. I don't think I'm a reliable source. They've been known to try helping people, though. I'd be less surprised about them wanting to help because it's the right thing to do."

"And you don't think the other stakeholders in this are in much of a position to help?"

She counts off on her fingers. "Free Liars would help if they had control of Alteri resources. Most of us would, anyway. Thieves and Sluggards are in the same place we are; they could help after a successful revolt, but not before. Sluggards mostly would, Thieves I'm not sure about. Earth'd help, and they have some resources, but no starships and nothing close to as powerful as Alteri or Carthon warships. And then whoever built the gate, assuming they're still alive and in any sort of position to still be contacted. Don't know anything about their willingness to help, but they clearly had ftl technology more advanced than anything the Alteri or the Carthons have."

"So one option, then, is to start an Alteri slave revolt, help the Carthons win the war and try to direct the resultant alliance at Melkor."

"Yeah. That's an option. We would help, if we had the choice, but the Alteri Confederacy is a huge power and it would take a long time to free everyone. Even if we had lightleapers." She bites her lip. "If it were millions of Liars being tortured for years every second, I'd go to the Alteri and Carthons first, see if either of them were willing and able to help, and then start the slave revolt either after they refused or after Melkor was defeated, honestly."

"That's what I'm thinking. Thank you."

She nods. "But you will help us after you figure out how to defeat Melkor?"

"I assume if there were something else even more pressing you would have mentioned it."

"It's the most pressing thing I know of, but I guess I don't know everything."

And she doesn't want to press that because it seems rude to doubt that someone will help you when they've implied that they will, but -

"People don't make commitments to help us. I'm going to want to help you whether you want to commit to helping us or not; it's the right thing to do, and you're still the best shot we have at improving our situation. And you don't have any particular reason to make any agreements with me, I guess, I'm not a head of state or a leader of any kind, really. But confirmation of intent would be... meaningful. If you felt that you could make it."

" - if you were an agent of the Enemy, which seems unlikely, it could conceivably be to your advantage to commit us in that way. I am perhaps too wary of that, but I am very afraid to make a commitment by which I could later be drawn into mistakes. The situation you describe is appalling and I want to help and I would expect that after we've defeated Melkor it is the very next thing we would do."

She considers. "OK. That's good enough for me. Did you need anything else?"

"I'd like you to look over the starcharts with Ettelië, but that's everything I wanted to cover right now."

"OK! We can do that."

"Thank you, Imrainai."