do you recall when the war was just a game?

The dancers finish up and pack away their ring toss stuff. Somebody sets up a street stall for doing henna paintings on people's hands. A six-year-old girl is trying to balance on a streetsweeping golem as it whisks itself along the road. A theaterful of audience members spill out onto the street as their movie concludes, chattering about the amazing twist and the stellar performance by Miriam Flag.

Well. They do seem rich and happy. He finds Tarwë.

Tarwë is waiting right where Feris left him, delivering an impromptu concert to a swaying bunch of teenagers.

He'll join them in enjoying the music while he tries to catch Tarwë's eye, no need to interrupt before he can wind down.

Tarwë concludes the verse and falls silent. The teenagers groan.

"I am confident that I'm missing something, want to talk about what it is or have you got better ideas for places I could see?"

"Do you have - anything for me to go on for what might make another place a better idea?" Tarwë asks.

"I'm tempted to ask to see your prisons but it seems hard to get anything useful out of that and probably unpleasant for everyone."

"You can see one if you want."

"Ideally I'd rather try something less cruel that doesn't require so much tact but if you don't have ideas and I don't have ideas..." Feris shrugs and sighs.

"- cruel?" asks Tarwë. "I think usually námor in prison would prefer more visits, not fewer, though I admit I don't know anyone in prison personally."

"I am so confused, but if it's not going to humiliate them or be horribly stressful then there's not much reason not to at least try."

Tarwë looks up a prison that takes random visitors and Nelen hops them there. Hop, hop, hop.

The planet is frigid, rugged emptiness with barely enough air to breathe, except around a big park they've landed beside; it's surrounded by a shimmery dome that they can walk right through. Inside it's warm and beautiful, like a luxury hotel, full of potted plants and staffed with robots. A bunch of people, some humans and some Amentans and one orc and a vampire, are all hanging out in front of a big TV screen, watching a cooking show and heckling the contestants.

And this is the first suggestion, too, so it's the face they want to put on their justice system. This is what Vanda Nossëo does instead of making examples of people. That just doesn't make any sense - the only impact this has is keeping them from doing anything important - okay, that does make sense, actually, that's exactly what Vanda Nossëo would do.

He was not expecting them to be busy with anything they wouldn't want interrupted but in fact they seem busy. He wanders over to where he can see the screen to try to get some idea what is going on. It's sort of like a sporting event, but it isn't, because they're not actually in the audience, and because it doesn't seem to be an actual sport...

Anyone care to interrupt him before he invents a social protocol from first principles?

"Hey!" says one of the humans who isn't that interested in the cooking show. "I don't recognize you guys."

"I'm showing Feris here an example of a Vanda Nossëo prison."

"Oh, did you pick this one 'cause you're an Elf?"

Tarwë nods, and explains to Feris, "Elves have a very low crime rate, but just in case some prisons have to be set up to safely hold us if it comes up; we can't be confined in small spaces for long without dying, but there's virtually nothing on this planet in spite of it having a breathable atmosphere, so there are hundreds of miles it's possible to wander from the prison even though in practice this wouldn't be very desirable. If you want to see one that isn't Elf-safe Nelen can take you there, but it would bother me."

It's so gratuitously terrible of them to show him a place that makes him wish he could move in.

"Hm." He has questions but he will ask his questions later when they won't bother people who have no choice but to say whatever their captors tell them. "I don't see much reason to prefer one or another. It's... very interesting here." Seems extremely rude to say it's very nice, so he doesn't.

"Are you considering robbing a convenience store, because like, it's not worth it, if you want to do the communal living thing you can pick your own roommates and also be allowed to go to concerts," says the prisoner.

"I don't know what a communal living thing is and I'm not that sure about convenience stores, either, I'm here because my newly contacted planet treats criminals very differently and is very different in general and I'm trying to figure out what all of the differences are."

"Oh. Well, this is our living room, do you wanna see my quarters or what?"

Is this person allowed to refuse him if he says yes? Is it worth it anyway? "It might be interesting, I suppose. The thing that'd really be interesting would be to get to know how you see yourself but I'm not asking and you shouldn't answer."

"- why?" asks the prisoner.

"Because I have no way to tell whether you're being forced to say specific things that your captors think you ought to say, so either you'd have to lie, which many people would find stressful, or you'd tell me something personal and honest and I'd doubt you, which many people would also find stressful, or I suppose you could lie on your own recognizance but I wouldn't mind that."

"They don't tell me to say shit," says the prisoner.

"...You see why saying that doesn't help, right?"