"That is in fact a while."

"Even for Elves."

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen hundred years."

"Dang."

"Elves live as long as the world, unless evil or accident find us."

"Nice deal."

"In many respects."

"Mixed bag in others?"

"The people we didn't arrive in time to save are still in Angband. Sometimes he gets bored of one and releases them to - remind us - but not often."

"And they're not thrilled about living as long as the world? Well, there's a shorter-lived world available..."

"They don't believe they're out. He breaks up the torture with vivid hallucinations of release, or of rescue, that always turn out to be a lie - he can do time dilation, sometimes it's ten years subjectively before the scenarios reveal themselves for lies, he makes every microexpression or question or situation a cue that it's about to unravel, the ones that come out intact at all generally prefer not to die only because then they'd wake up in Angband even sooner, and the others act - almost normal - until something sets them off and they murder their family in their sleep."

"I'd, uh, offer you a prisoner to talk with but once we realized he was doing it for our reactions and the effect on -" morale -"we started killing them on sight."

"Morale."

"Same with the orcs. He'd try sending unarmed families of orcs out to settle on our lands. They'd refuse to go back, say they'd been driven out of Angband. If we let them stay, then eventually they get remotely ordered to commit massacres. So - devote endless resources to guarding little villages of innocent pending disasters in our own territory? Or cut down families holding their little orc babies? Morale."

"Can't adopt the orc babies who can't talk yet?"

"It's not safe to have children from oathed species in a war zone, the Enemy can osanwë them and coax them into swearing to things."

"Are Elves just not having children?"

"That's correct."

"I guess if that works for you."

"This is not a good world to bring a child into."

Nod.

"Even once the war's over we'll probably make sure we have a world for them which won't be eventually destroyed."

"Seems reasonable."