"It might be worth it to see if we can get them to swear to be tried and accept the outcome if the Enemy is defeated, though unless it turns out nobody else can practice my form of magic I don't know where we'd get the leverage. Same for your parents, actually, shooting refugees is pretty fucked up - has anyone on our side not committed atrocities against people on the same side?"

"...Dwarves're pretty okay? And I am mad at my father but he's a good king of our people and punishing him for Doriath not letting humans in wouldn't - help anything at all -"

"Would trying Curufin and his brothers help anything? Other than perhaps establishing a precedent so that the next time there's a big war people commit fewer atrocities? Because precedents like that work best when they're applied evenly and your father seems to deserve trial as certainly as they do."

"What should Doriath do - they can't actually let anyone who runs at the border cross it -"

"Stop them nonlethally, check that they're not servants of the Enemy - can everyone do oaths here?  If not, you can read their minds as a precondition, then let them in as long as there's space?"

"There's not space, humans can't do oaths, and it's possible to get good enough at blocking your thoughts that it's not obvious you're hiding anything."

"Forgive me if I'm skeptical about the lack of space. My world has seen a major refugee crisis in recent memory and "There's no space" was said a lot but as far as I can tell it was never actually true and the real reasons tended to be "There's no space for those kinds of people." "

"Yes, the kind who might be working for the Enemy and kill everyone. I'm glad Beren got through but - even if you were completely guaranteed to murder anyone who took any part in protecting the borders, after the war, and all of them knew you do it, that wouldn't change a thing because letting the Enemy into Doriath is so, so much worse than that."

"No way to effectively screen them is a problem, yes, one that I didn't anticipate given that all elves are telepaths. It is possible the choice was justified. Determining that is, in fact, one of the purposes of a trial."

"I guess."

"Did you think when I said I'd try the Fëanorians I would just...execute them?"

"I mean - I have no idea how your world does stuff?"

"People accused of crimes are generally brought before a judge or panel of judges, they plead their case, their accuser makes the case against them - usually both through professional proxies who know the law really well - then the judges decide whether the accused is guilty or not and what their punishment should be. People with enough political clout never get brought to trial unless their crimes are especially heinous or the evidence especially abundant because judges are corrupt and will dismiss charges out of hand if the right strings are pulled. People with enough magical power are rarely brought to trial because if they're in the habit of flouting laws any judge that finds them guilty would be afraid for their life. In Kalzir at least, magical power and political power went hand in hand, too, so there was really no way any powerful mage wound up in court. Sometimes people take justice into their own hands and murder people who got away with crimes due to political power - getting away with crimes due to magical power tends to also protect you from most would-be assassins, but occasionally other powerful people go after them and succeed. I did actually do a fair amount of that but if I can give people a fair and honest trial here I'd much rather do that.

Governments and rulers are basically never tried, especially for crimes committed during war, especially for crimes committed against foreigners, especially for crimes committed against foreigners from an enemy nation.

All in all it was a really shitty system that I don't want to replicate here. Consistent code of laws, equal application, as fair a trial as can be arranged, and if they're acquitted we respect that and leave them be. If Dwarves are pretty reasonable maybe they can be the judges, I haven't heard of any atrocities involving them so maybe they'll be unbiased."

"They won't do anything that doesn't make them money. They're kind of obsessed with it."

"I imagine if it somehow comes to that we can probably arrange to compensate dwarven judges, but if they're truly obsessed and that's not the baseless stereotype that it is in my world they might be a bit more bribeable than I'd like."

And they continue to discuss trial logistics for a time, because that is not depressing and still an excellent way to learn Sindarin and Malak does not particularly mind Alfirin and/or Nerikross knowing that Malak would love to bring them to trial if they could. After a while, Malak thinks they have their thoughts nicely partitioned into secret and public and asks Lúthien to check. These are public thoughts. (These are private thoughts.) These are public thoughts. (These are private thoughts.)...

"These are public thoughts these are public thoughts?"

Hug!

"It worked! Thank you, I'm going to try hiding all of my thoughts, see if you can sense me at all?"

"Oh good!!!" Hug. "...nope, can't sense you..."

"Oh, lovely. Now I just need to practice until I can do it and hold a spell and fight all at the same time and then we might actually have a chance. I'm really curious how this works with telepathy from my world," Probably not, not the sort of thing one usually teaches to prisoners, "Most creatures can't see in magical darkness, I can, so that's the metaphor I used, but some of the other creatures that do have telepathy too... I guess I could find a different metaphor to block them."

"Don't know how it works with magic from other worlds. It'll work here even with people who can see in magical darkness though."

"Oh, there are people who can? In my world pretty much everyone can see alright in the dark, but certain kinds of magical darkness will make them blind as a human. Fallen angels can see perfectly in any darkness, even magical, and about 1% of Tieflings have fallen angel blood or something because they can too. Sindarin doesn't seem to have a word for 'Tiefling' or 'Angel' so I'm guessing whatever you've got that can do that is different, we'll also have different kinds of magical darkness so that's something. Speaking of, do you have any different types of people around here besides humans, elves, and dwarves? And Maiar, I guess, though I'd put them in a different category from the rest."

"There're Ents, who are tree people, and Maiar and Valar can probably all see in magical darkness just fine, and eventually I think there are supposed to be more species?"

"Supposed to be? You've heard of them but not seen them? Uh, let's see, halflings, gnomes, oh, I forgot orcs, you have those, tengu, kobolds, goblins, fetchlings, changelings? You have words for halflings, fetchlings, changelings, but those all have an obvious construction rule so it's probably just that... My world has a lot more species but most of them are pretty rare, it's probably not worth listing every single one I can think of in case you've heard of them."

"No, they don't exist yet but they're in Eru's plan."

"Eru has a plan? All I've gathered is Eru made the world and sometimes opens up magical wards to let cute boys into otherwise inaccessible forests. How much do you know about this plan?"