Different planets? I thought Gimlith was passing me off as being from waaaay east? Maybe she decided that trick wasn't going to work. But is 'different planet' actually more believable?

"If we can't trade, then no, not really. In fact, these days, we don't drink as much natural blood any more. I try to drink mostly artificial blood, so less animals have to be killed. Unfortunately, there's no artificial blood around here, so I make do."

"Huh. Well, welcome to Númenor. Have you had the chance to see the sights?"

"Um, I saw some pretty buildings on the way over here... And I saw the port where I arrived... That's it, I think. Anywhere else I should go?"

There are lots of places! And she starts describing the whole country, estates in the south, moors in the north, the harbor of Andunië, Armenelos the capital, the Menetarma...

She tries to look like she's paying close attention, but focusing on this many non-history things is haaard. "Uh, are there any memorial sites, or something?"

Númenor has not been in many wars, but it was founded in the aftermath of one! The first King, Elros Tar-Minyatur, fought in it! She can tell all about the war!

Carmen is eager to hear all about the war!

And wow, is it a long story. "So before there was a Sun and a Moon in the sky, the Elves lived by the waters of awakening," she says. 

Gimlith, coming out with food to join them, rolls her eyes.

"Wait wait wait, you used to not have a sun? How did you see? How did plants grow? What did the planet go around? How could you tell when to - oh, right, you don't use a ritual calendar to sustain the universe. But my other points still stand!"

"Well, we couldn't have managed. But Elves have amazing vision and can live on very little food and can grow plants with magic, so they're fine."

"That... That... But a planet without a star... You know what, never mind. Your world works in mysterious ways. Do go on about the Elves, please."

She goes on about the Elves! The Elves awoke in married pairs at the lake, and the men looked on the sky and fell in love with the stars, and the women looked on their husbands and fell in love with them, and these were the greatest and deepest loves of the Elves ever after. 

She tries not to roll her eyes. All men get special interests in astronomy? All women get special interests in their individual husbands? Boooring. I mean, I can't fault them for not picking a good interest like history before there was any history, but seriously? Your husbands? Who do I need to seduce around here....

"Melkor liked kidnapping and murdering and tormenting the Elves, and did so freely, because their arrival in the world was not yet known to the Valar. But eventually the Valar found out and then they warred with him, and the war lasted a thousand years and nearly tore apart the world."

"So, the Valar aren't omniscient? Even though they're gods? Wait, if the gods didn't make the Elves, who did?"

"Eru," she explains, "he's like the King of the gods, he created the Elves and Men, and he commands the Valar."

"No one has ever seen or heard him," Gimlith says.

"Oh! So, Eru is like the God of my religion, while the Valar are like Nashi and Noleki and such. Alright."

"Ooooh, tell me about your religion, maybe you have filtered and confused pieces of the truth like the savage tribes of Middle-earth!"

"Um, this world is almost certainly separate from mine. It probably wasn't even created the same way. I mean, you have 365 day years. I don't even know how your cosmic machinery could be operating on a cycle that isn't a multiple of 37.

"But all right. In the beginning, God created the cosmic machinery which our universe is built upon. He then poured out His divine energy - which translates most literally as Godblood - to set it in motion. After the divine energy has passed through the cosmic machinery, it is consumed by the Destroyer. This flow is constant and eternal, and it sustains the universe.

"However, the cosmic machinery is not perfectly efficient. In the process of turning all the gears of our world, some of the divine energy is lost as... Heat, I guess. This excess heat is what creates life, because the original plan of God was cold and lifeless. We are the excess heat of an imperfect mechanical system.

"This displeased the Destroyer, as he wanted to consume the maximum possible amount of divine energy. Thus, he used some of the energy he consumed to create the Azura, who try to correct any bugs in the system and ensure that the divine energy takes the most efficient path.

"However, the more efficient the machine, the less life there is in the universe. To prevent this, some of the most powerful beings that had been constituted from divine waste-heat banded together to fight against the Azura. They were the Deva, and they did their best to break all the efficiency hacks the Azura had implemented.

"Eventually, the Azura decided to attack the Deva directly. Unfortunately, the Azura knew how to hack at the root of the universe so, whenever the Deva opposed them, the Azura would just turn them into numbers. It was quite unfair.

"Then along came Nashi, the most cunning of the Deva. He had been the one most adept at throwing grit in the gears of the universe, and the Azura despised him. However, one day, Nashi came to the Azura and offered them a deal. If they promised never to harm a human being, he would stop breaking their systems. The Azura readily accepted, assuming Nashi had lost his mind, because what could mere humans possibly do to stop them? The Azura promised and, as they were beings of purest logic, were permanently bound to their vow.

"Then Nashi revealed himself to a tribe of humans in a desert in all his otherworldly splendour. He promised the humans that he would guide and protect them through the ages if only they followed the book of laws he gave them. They sealed the covenant with him and, ever since, have been bound to do horrendously computationally expensive rituals, while the Azura have looked on impotently, cursing how unfair it all is."

She looks absolutely entranced. "That's amazing. Does Nashi come to you sometimes with revised rituals that are even worse? Does everyone do them?"

"There was a time when he showed up every couple years with new information. Over time, scholars were able to figure out some of the underlying rules of the system, based on what changes he had us make. Then those scholars wrote commentary upon commentary upon commentary, devising increasingly inefficient processes. So, as we needed him less, he manifested in person less often. For the past several centuries, no one has actually seen him. He just works in the background to make sure we aren't wiped out, because who else will keep the world alive?

"There was a time when the original tribe had grown into a great empire and converted many peoples, but then the empire was overrun by adherents of a false religion that was created by the Yurriel, an Azura who had decided to copy Nashi's plan, but repurposed it to make its adherents as computationally efficient as possible. Only one tribe was able to escape into the mountains, with Nashi's help, and has kept to the traditions ever since. We are the Zifarti, and we are proudly expensive."

Her guest is enchanted, and wants to know more: why Nashi didn't intervene in the war, whether the world has declined since they lost, a few centuries isn't really long not to have seen him, has she met him personally?

She explains that, while the Azura were barred from attacking the humans themselves, they were free to attack Nashi whenever he tried to intervene, which prevented him from ensuring the war went the way he wanted it to. For a while afterward, there was a period that could be thought of as a decline. Then the 'industrial revolution' happened, and everything started accelerating. It was possible to sustain larger populations, which meant more system resources were being used by them. New inventions were created, such as those using electricity, which were a drain on the universal machinery. There were even inventions that had made expensive social changes. For example, for a very long time, the problem of marriages was reasonably simple. Then birth control and casual sex had happened, and it was as if a thousand universal gears had been rusted away.

She looks horrified and fascinated. "So in your world it's good to be - indiscriminate about partners?"

"Um, sort of? Zifarti ethicists divide 'The Good' into three parts - the individual good, the social good, and the cosmic good. Furthermore, they cascade into each other, with the higher levels only being good because they sustain the lower levels. The individual good is doing what makes you, as an individual, happy or satisfied. It would also be individually good to help any other person, because a person experiencing a good life is inherently good. At a higher level, creating and maintaining institutions that allow people to live good lives is the social good, because it allows for many instances of individual good, even if a good society isn't perfect for any individual person. In the long term, the social good makes the individual good possible. Likewise, the cosmic good is that which sustains life itself, and the more life there is, the more good societies can exist, which means more happy people. The way this is relevant to sexual partners is that things which are good at one level may not be good at another. Having sex with as wide a variety of people as possible is good at the cosmic level, while stable marriages and families are good at a social level, and what's good for any given individual varies wildly depending on that person's temperament.

"However, it's worth noting that Nashi has these priorities reversed. He only cares about the happiness of individuals so that they don't become dissatisfied and defect from the Zifarti society, and he only cares about keeping Zifarti society alive and well to the extent that it promotes the cosmic good. The cosmic good is what is directly good for him. The fact that our supreme benefactor has goals only partly in line with our own is called the Value Alignment Problem, and makes Nashi imperfectly trustworthy. He is, however, the best we've got. At least, I think that's how it all shakes out. I'm not a philosophy expert."