There is a small room, originally intended to be a supply closet of some kind, currently serving as the apartment of last resort for this human teenager. There's no furniture; all his possessions are sitting either on or beneath the folded quilt on the floor. In one corner is a pile of necklaces of coins whose colors change constantly by magic. The one tall, narrow window looks out on a city of mostly four- and five-story buildings painted to look vaguely reminiscent of a forest.
"Second slowest in the empire, assuming similar year length. Well, welcome. If you see any sign of anyone else from your world, I'm sure we would all be in your debt if you'd let someone know as soon as possible."
"Ideally a representative of the imperial government or any state government. But in a pinch you can go anywhere not hidden by any illusions and say, out loud, in Hari, 'I need to report a crime' and the police will scry whatever you say next."
"No, but it's what they're already listening for. We tried to change the phrase to 'I need to alert the police' for exactly this reason years ago but it went poorly."
"Because the public service announcements failed to reach a lot of the most isolated people, because people who need police attention are especially likely to be in a bad state of mind to stop and remember the change, because a rumor started that the response time was worse for the new phrase and people responded by sticking to the old one and after years of that they genuinely did start scrying it less frequently and that eventually made the rumor true. Is that not the sort of thing that would happen where you're from?"
Like, one orc murdering another orc? I don't think that happens that much unless his lordship's ordering them to because he's bored.
Her guide thinks that sounds horrifying and uncivilized.
"What do you do to avoid that sort of thing?" asks the cat.
I... don't know? It never really occurred to me as a problem we were avoiding. People beat me up all the time but they didn't try to make me actually die of it.
...there's a lot of orcs and also me and everybody in Angband has to do whatever Melkor says but mostly he delegates to the Maiar and the only one who does a lot with that is his lordship except if they're commanding campaigns outside against the Elves or something.
They have to swear to be orcs and seek orc greatness and serve Melkor and stuff? But the baby hasn't, she's too little, and I'm not an orc.