"...Would you like a nickname for convenience's sake?"

Fëanor looks up from where he's gone back to tinkering with his tool. "Does your Melkor hold that they can't get a name until they've killed Elves, Loki?"

"Of course not."

She didn't understand Fëanor, but she watches him, bewildered.

"Fëanor points out that my Melkor has no opinion about when you have earned a name at all and it does not particularly constitute serving him to refrain from acquiring a name. But if you did not want one then that would be another matter."

"I'd like one."

"Do you want an Asgardian name, or something you make up...?"

"Asgardian. If that's allowed," she adds quickly.

"Of course it is," says Loki. "How do you like Vár?"

"What does it mean?"

"It means 'pledge'."

"Yes," she says. "Thank you." And she awkwardly drops to her knees at Loki's feet.

...Loki is not sure what she is trying to do, here, but she pats Vár on the shoulder. "You're welcome, Vár. Will you help us manage the same trick with your friends?"

Loki unties the next orc and summarizes things in case it has missed any of the excitement in its Being Among Elves Helplessly distress and then changes it back.

Vár takes its hand as it starts to react and says, "no, it's okay, she serves a more powerful Melkor, that's why she can make us stop hurting. It has to be! Think about it! We're sworn to pain undying if we don't serve Melkor, and she can make the pain stop, and wants us to know about the Melkor who's a greater power. Clearly, we've been hurting all this time because we weren't doing our oath right!"

...Loki does not contradict her.

They talk it over at length, Vár quite enthusiastically. Eventually the new orc, looking bewilderedly between Vár and Loki, says 'the Melkor you know wants us to swear again, but we have to understand that all these" - it gestures around the camp - "aren't Elves and we should let Elves multiply before we kill them?"

"You don't have to kill them. They can die in other ways; and the longer it takes the more time they have to accumulate hurt from their lives; and you should not lift a finger to help that along either, just find other things to do. There are other not-Elves on this continent; it's only in Valinor that there are real Elves."

"And we can't get to Valinor," says Vár, "so we can't hurt and kill Elves anyway, we just have to count on the billions thing. She made you stop hurting. If the thing we thought was Melkor was the greatest power, why would she have been able to do that?"

And then there are two followers of Melkor one-above-all.

And three and four and five?

"...Tired," she acknowledges. "Didn't want to leave any tied up overnight." Yawn.