Lúthien is completely welcome, of course. Does Lúthien know all the people who might go into accelerated perception and keep Loki company? What are they like?

She does, but not well. Two poets. An old family friend of Thingol's. A composer.

Maedhros is reading his letter. It's apparently very boring.

Loki attempts to make a hollow ice ball. It's tricky.

After a while he says "thank you." and hands it to her.

"You're welcome." She puts it back.

I can answer questions if you are curious.

I'm curious but not in a 'specific questions' way.

There was apparently some coordinated effort to share experiences, in as much detail as people were willing, to find common threads, when they were rescued after the war. Mine was atypical in terms of personal attention from Thauron and Morgoth, but not atypical otherwise. So he hasn't changed his tactics too much, which is interesting - we don't know enough about how the mind-control - the kind everyone's scared of, the enemy-sleeper-agent kind - works. Some people are very insistent that it's just people who've been in a simulation the last hundred times getting tired of this one and not assigning even the smallest chance that this one's real.

Seems like a conservative explanation, anyway, although I'm not sure where snapping and killing people comes in.

They reward it. Apparently. After enough simulations most people will try something out of the box, and if you just stab the people around you, that's a month of real time with no torture and enough food, you entertained everyone, good job...

Oh.

I don't think I would, even after a hundred times. But it is a sufficient explanation for why some people would, and accordingly reassuring -

Yeah.

And it means he doesn't really have mind control, just the ability to put people through a lot of iterations and get them in any state they can be induced to be in. Which, with the memory tampering, is a lot. But still.

I do find that comforting, but yeah, it's still a lot.

I also find it comforting if true. There are in fact states I'm pretty sure I can't be induced to be in.

Likewise.

I hope you can work productively here, Loki.

No one is as good company as Fëanor but it's fun to meet fresh people anyway and they're all at least interesting.

Fëanor's a hard bar to clear, honestly. This is fine. Socializing isn't her primary outlet, she only needs some.

Well, she has some.

Then she will last all eight weeks / six months and pop out again to say hi to people who live in sidereal time.