Bonesaw gets a worse night of sleep than normal that night, but she's oddly okay with that.

A few days later Bonesaw asks to play a part in a hallucination.

She is directed to an orc named Kamog who writes scripts for them sometimes! There is not already one in progress that needs her but he can write something.

Can there be a part for the orf too? Ideally one where they can play family together.

Sure, what parts in the family does she want them to have?

The orf can be the mommy and she can be the daughter.

Okay! He will have a draft script ready to pitch to her in a couple of days if that's all right?

She can be patient, so long as he isn't slow about it.

A couple of days later he comes by with his pitch! The orf and Bonesaw can be mother and daughter living in a cute treehouse in the woods who "found" the prisoner, "escaped" and unconscious with dehydration and general being in terrible shape. The one he has in mind won't do much, probably just lie in bed, but Bonesaw and the orf can nurse her back to health. Here's a brief on what a random Avari child of Bonesaw's approximate size might act like, but for this one he's going for a creeping ominousness - the orf has her own character notes on that but will be mostly improvising around anything Bonesaw says since this is Bonesaw's first time and he wants her to have fun with it. Here is a character sketch of what she will be pretending to look like, and one for the orf. Their names in the hallucination are to be Lalwen and Mell. Then, whenever Bonesaw's bored, she can start harvesting the prisoner's bones or whatever, though His Lordship would like to receive her back alive.

This sounds like it will be an extremely fun game of pretend!

Though how long is it going to be for? She's not going to stop tinkering for weeks no matter how fun it is.

He's designed it to be of flexible duration! She can break the immersion and harvest bones or whatever and wind down the simulation at any time.

"Huh! Won't it take a while to get to the creeping ominousness bit?"

"Yes, but this prisoner isn't in the middle of any complicated meta-emotional-arc, so it's all right if this one doesn't hit the exact tone I wrote for it."

"I wouldn't want to mess up your art! How long were you thinking it would ideally go for?"

"I think ideally the material I have would last for three to five weeks."

"Hm, okay - I think I'll only be able to do a few days but I have an idea for a drug that would mess with someone's perception of time that could definitely give them the experience of it being weeks."

"I'll trim out some excess detail to slim it down for your timeframe, since that'd affect the prisoner but not you, presumably, but that will mostly affect the orf's briefing; yours will be the same."

"Do I have to make my costume myself?"

"You don't need a costume at all, His Lordship provides the appropriate visuals for the prisoner. Actors are there to supply personality and body language that are more difficult for a single controller, even His Lordship, to manage with convincing diversity."

"Neat! I'm excited to collaborating with you!"

It takes her under an hour to whip up the time dilator injection - there's plenty extra for any other hallucinations that could benefit from it. So long as the prisoner gets one injection each day it should work fine, giving them the impression of many days passing of vaguely similar feeling events without altering their impression of time on a minute-to-minute scale. Higher doses are fine but she doesn't recommend they give more than a thousand times the amount she's using since when she did that her subject started assuming everything outside of themselves was fake and an illusion and she thinks that would drain all the fun out of Angband. She doubt's it will have that effect if they keep it under a few years of subjective time per real day.

She goes to bed early that night so in the morning she can be well rested for her first big day of being an actor!

Beka arrives to do a little workshopping in the morning! "Hi! Do you want to practice answering to 'Mell'? And having a conversation out loud while clarifying what we're doing over osanwë?"

"Sure!"

The orf starts miming serving something into bowls. "Mell, breakfast is ready!" It's berry compote.

"Oh, berries! My favorite."

"Mm-hm, eat up while they're hot. I'll go see if our guest wants any this morning." Mime mime. "Looks like a no today. Well, one day maybe she'll be ready to get her strength back up enough that she can go meet her son." Her son's our neighbor who doesn't want to see her till she's not visibly Angbandy.

"I bet he'll be so excited when that happens."