Mhalir is startled. And scared. And...isn't sure what to do, at all. 

For a long moment he doesn't say anything. The ship is on stealth mode already, after all; staying put is the best way to remain unobserved. 

<...Carissa. What do you think.> 

....we could just go home.

<Yes, but...> 

He's not even sure what. 

That...it would feel like giving up on something precious, maybe, to keep running away because they're too scared and paranoid to explore the upsides or try to help or just talk... 

Carissa does not particularly associate keeping your head down with giving up. It is the opposite of that, making sure that the one thing you need to keep going - yourself - is intact and not dead.

"Found what Melkor did," someone says.

"- What? Tell me." 

"He uploaded a bunch of them and ran - sped up simulations? In significant part just to torture them though probably there was some other stuff in there too? They don't have very good information because when they try to rescue those timeslices they uniformly want to die."

(Carissa finds that not believable.)

(...Wait, what part of it does Carissa find not believable...?) 

"Where is this information from?" Mhalir says, sharply. "How credible are their sources?" 

"This is from the testimony in the decision to parole him. They've got the same people walking around now, but - not ones with continuity from when they got captured."

Carissa does not believe that you can torture people until they uniformly want to die. Hell featured a lot of torture and sometimes people wanted to die about it but you wouldn't get all of them. Some people are into that kind of thing.

...Mhalir is also confused about that. At the very least, he - finds it hard to imagine that any amount of torture could make him want to die. Not existing is awful. But, well, they've already noted Elves aren't psychologically quite like humans - they seem more uniform, for one, less variation than the Earth humans or Golarion humans he's observed, and...maybe their odd innocence and credulity makes them worse-affected by torture? They - don't seem very usable-by-Asmodeus, not that he has a great sense of that but based on his vague sense at least. 

And Asmodeus wasn't maximizing for torture. He just - wanted to get people into a usable form, for His aims. A god who for some reason wanted to break people even more thoroughly than that -  Mhalir can't really conceive of why, but presupposing it - could probably find something that even the people who were 'into that kind of thing' would be broken by.

<We need to know more. If Melkor did this and then the other gods let him go, then...> Fear, resignation, hardening resolve. <Then we have to do something.> 

"He admits to it in the trial. Apologizes, says he was very misguided and didn't understand and won't do it again."

The fact he admits to it in the trial is barely any evidence about whether he did it but if he did that is the most ridiculously implausible change of heart ever.

"Do they have other evidence of it - did they interview orcs, do they have recordings of the - tortured simulations, anything other than his confession...?" 

Mhalir absolutely doesn't believe the change of heart either. 

They have - transcripts of some peoples' conversation with the tortured simulations but they're - years of conversations each, usually, I don't get the sense these people do anything in a hurry. They had statements from orcs at the parole hearing but they're mostly in Melkor's favor.

Years of transcripts with the tortured simulations doesn't sound like fun at all but Mhalir still wants to get some of his staff to skim them, find any snippets they think he'd want to see.

And he wants to read the orc statements. Even if they're in favour of Melkor, that...still might be informative. 

Orcs think that the creation of the orcs was a good thing. If it caused harm to Elves they regret that harm but they are concerned that the Elf gods consider it tragic that orcs exist, and orcs don't think so. They want Melkor to be free because they want there to be a god who doesn't consider it tragic that orcs exist. During the war they occasionally killed Elves and brought their souls to Melkor but Elves killed them and brought their souls to Mandos, the Elf god, so it's really all kind of even if you think about it. Also they heard that the Elf gods torture people too, and tinker with them trying to make them Elves not orcs. 

The transcripts are confusing to read. It seems that Melkor frequently simulated waking up in a rescue simulation in the distant future, so most timeslices of rescued tortured prisoners do not believe themselves to have been rescued; accordingly they are very reluctant to say anything about the situation, lest it go back to being much worse than another pretend rescue. Sometimes preferences can be elicited with questions like "if this were real, what would you want to happen". At that point some of them want confirmation that versions of themselves are present for their loved ones, and once that has been confirmed they uniformly want to stop existing. Some refuse to answer that question but if given the option to drink something that causes them to sleep soundly with no dreams, they will do this all the time. Some refuse to participate even that far but will starve if not forcibly fed.

That's kind of impressively horrifying. And seems - he's not sure if it seems generally hard to fake but it seems hard for the Elves to fake; even the politically savvy ones they met absolutely wouldn't come up with something that creative or complicated to attack their enemies with. 

"Does the internet have any body of writing or communications from the Valar?" Mhalir asks his staff. "I want to see how they come across, generally." 

Obnoxious, the answer turns out to be. They speak entirely over osanwë and it is imperfectly translated to language at all but they come across as vague and portentous and confusing and confused. They have teachings on matters like marriage which do not shed much light. (Elves can marry only Elves of the other sex, because it is their intrinsic nature, and cannot divorce or take a second spouse after the death of the first because it is their intrinsic nature, but not the kind of intrinsic nature where they don't sometimes want to do other things and need gentle correction...)

They're so oddly deferential, for gods. Like they're - still considering themselves the instruments of a greater will. Which they are, I guess, but - it's weird to think about gods being that.

<It is odd. It...makes it seem less likely to me that They would have - tried to fake information about Melkor in order to cause a certain political outcome? I am not sure of that, I suppose it is possible all of their communications are part of some ploy, but... I doubt it.> 

Yeah. 

But if it's not a ploy, then Melkor really did that and They just....believed Him that He's going to stop now...

<They seem - naive. The same way the Elves do. I cannot think why the creator god would have made them that way, but...> 

Maybe it's the way you naturally turn out to be if everyone around you is like that and expecting betrayal never turns out to have been worthwhile.