"Standard has Mandos cluelessly judgmental about who and under what conditions he reembodies anyone and in the Flat Ardas the Halls virtually intolerable and packaged with mental inspection, Lórien performing ostensibly consensual psychic surgery on gay people, none of them understanding the concepts of incentives or timeliness or distinguished thought from action, issuing mind control curses on entire tribes as punishment, etcetera. Ulmo's usually the most sensible and Aulë the friendliest and that isn't saying much."

"Ours check for antisocial thoughts, beliefs, and tendencies and then modify everyone who has them, every Year, and somehow still failed to catch Melkor not meriting a pardon."

"They usually do parole him but that does sound worse than standard - are you okay -"

"It is not at the moment the most urgent of my world's problems. It is reassuring that it's worse than standard."

"The moment in question is probably paused - that may not work exactly the same way if you came in through the back and not the front door though."

"I was riding outside - with a dozen people, I don't know why I came through and they did not -"

"Bar's the person to ask about that sort of thing." She gestures at Bar.

"- pleased to meet you - do you know why that happened and whether time is paused in my world -"

Occasionally forests, caves, and bodies of water, especially those which have their own spatial inconsistencies, lead one or more people into the back yard of Milliways. The time pausing effect is much less reliable in that case but may be checked by opening your door if desired, or, less precisely, you may consult me to determine if a forthcoming publication has been released, as I can access published material extant from any world.

" - can we check with the door, please -"

"Yeah, we need time to pass there for reasons but we can spare you a minute to check."

Bounce bounce out of the way!

"All yours."

"- thanks. 

My you has been dead for a long time, I really missed him -"

Hug. 

Hug. 

And then he opens the door onto a large, graceful, very symmetric low-tech palace room, tosses a coin, closes it, opens it again -

And it falls the rest of the way from where it paused in midair.

He looks very deeply relieved. "Okay. You can have the door back, thank you. Is there - a summary of what's going on and where everyone's from, anything like that..."

"There really should be, especially if we're going to start exporting Valar-sanity-as-a-service to every Arda we can fork into. I don't think there is one right now unless it's some internal document for your template..."

"Not yet, sorry. We can make the chip Elves put it together, they've got attention-expanding technology -"

He gestures at his collar. "We have that too. Should I await it or does everyone just want to give a summary -"

"I'm from another recurring planet template called Earth and mine has summonable beings with supernatural powers that summoners become when they die, on top of the ones that spontaneously generate; I'm a demon and that means I can make material objects. My alts don't look like me. I got summoned into a chip-Arda early in the war. Shit happened. Is that the depth you had in mind -?"

" - I'm not actually clear on what a chip Arda is beyond that my confusion demonstrates mine isn't one -"

"There's a few kinds of Ardas. Some of them are on flat planets like yours where Valinor is a continent; some of them, like mine, are in galaxies with planets that, being spherical, don't need magical help to exist, and Valinor is a planet. In our kind Elves don't have magical telepathy; our osanwë only works with each other and it runs on chips in our brains that also save the contents of our minds to let us be reembodied without needing magical immaterial souls."

" - in what sense are they still Ardas, then -"