He can totally swear not to drug or poison the food, what do they want to eat?

Dinner tonight was going to be pasta and garlic bread and peaches and salad, the other adult orc volunteers.

Sounds delicious. Bon appetit. He can copy their home cooking and hopefully this is more comforting than creepy.

They seem comforted. Maitimo is amused by Cam swearing to things. "The Enemy might not even know that you can't, Maiar and Valar have binding oaths and seem the obvious referent."

"Well, if he does figure out I can't he might pretend to think I can, so better not make that a load-bearing hypothetical. I did swear to the orcs I wasn't an Elf, that's more universally credible - the voice is synthesized though, I don't know if that's relevant."

"That would make it not valid. Might be enough for them to decide they needn't treat you as an Elf, though. Oaths have to be spoken aloud. A good illusionist Maia might in fact be able to fake them."

"And people trust Maiar oaths anyway?"

"Most Maiar can't do illusions, let alone well enough. And I've never been in a position of needing to trust one. I think the Enemy must have faked some oaths somehow in Valinor, while he was setting himself up for this."

"Oh?"

"Either that or the Valar never asked him to deny intent to return to mass-torture-and-slaughter, which is stupider than I tend to assume they are."

"Faking it to a Vala seems like it ought to be harder than faking it to a regular person."

"And yet they paroled a mass torturer and murderer. DId you have any time to make progress on suicide triggers?"

"The next steps are 'see if the basement dwellers die' and 'try in a live volunteer, possibly even if they do' - I should have a control basement dweller, I should have thought of that."

"We should have suggested it. We'll leave that out of the epic song. Won't be ready to go in three days, in any event?"

"Not for mass deployment."

"Mass deployment wouldn't be the point. I don't think I should go to a parley without one. Though if you're there you have the means to do it anyway, probably."

"Yes, given certain assumptions, although I have never actually killed someone before and may not have the instincts you'd want for when to do it."

"That surprises me. Guess you mostly have better options."

"I was murdered at age twenty-two and between then and being summoned here I have spent literally all of my time in a dimension with nobody who could possibly die, or under at least modestly competent bindings!"

"Well. I'd be delighted to end this without killing anyone more except the Enemy, but I don't have any idea how to do that.

How likely are you thinking it is that the Enemy got backup-hijacking working?"

"Don't know. I'm not sure what other things he could have efficaciously chosen to lie about if he were choosing a lie, that's a factor."

"I don't know enough about orc culture to know what else would excite them. 

Mandos doesn't torture souls, incidentally, though the process can involve isolation for thousands of subjective years which under some definitions ought to count."

"Counts under formal definitions even for much shorter periods, where I'm from."

"The main things we need my father for are an assessment of whether he could have gotten the Silmarils working in that manner, an assessment of how indestructible they are and what kinds of Angband-levelling they can tolerate - a black hole would definitely destroy them - and whether given that he now has you he can remake them. And to learn the language orc-oaths are in so he can find loopholes, there always are some."

"Sounds like a plan."