"In that direction, yeah, just title things 'letter to Cam'."

"And is there a way for my people to keep in touch with me in Brithombar, other than stationing someone every three hundred miles between here and there?"

"Do you think phones and relays would constitute escalation?"

"The Enemy knows we had those in Valinor. I can't imagine he thinks we'll refrain from using them here. Secured ones might be an escalation."

"Do you want insecure ones?"

"Unless you think it's a bad idea. If he's monitoring them I can use it towards the misinformation we've been attempting as well."

"Long as you know they're not secure it seems fine to me. I'd normally do this with satellites but I can do a dirtside version."

"Oooh. We only know how to do it with satellites or Valar."

"I can do satellites too, if the weapons tech doesn't escalate they'll be harder to knock down but if it does they're harder to hide."

"What I'd like to do is live and work in Brithombar and also be made aware of problems down here, it wouldn't be a catastrophe if he knocks them down. And any time he spends smashing things you made is time he's not spending pressing the lines forward against the locals."

"Satellites it is. I can just copy whatever you had in Valinor if you wanna give me specs."

"Project name was Treelight, blueprints were dated 1482..."

Cam produces blueprints and looks them over. "Okay, I can place these when next I'm in the sky."

"Okay. Dwarves don't share their language with outsiders; we learned it before we learned we weren't supposed to, but speak to them in Thindarin if the occasion arises. Thindarin's spoken at least a little bit in most places."

"Good to know."

"I should probably sleep, if I don't until the parley it'd be starting to affect me and it's not as if I'll be less busy tomorrow. Good skill."

"Sleep well."

Some people come in a few minutes later to remove the failed attempt at Finwe's resurrection. It's nice and quiet.

Not that basement-dwellers are usually loud.

Cam reads things and gives his computer language data and drinks coffee and eats miscellanea and asks the orc family if they want something softer than their car to sleep on, very sorry about the inconvenience...

And after a while someone comes in to tell him the King would like to discuss orc oaths.

Sure, Cam can go discuss orc oaths.

"The loophole is only slightly less glaring than it looked in translation," he says. "Translation says 'I will disbelieve the words of Melkor's enemies', original's closer to 'I will disbelieve the claims of Melkor's enemies. But intent matters and if they understand it to mean the former then the former can work for them. Do you understand enough about how oaths work to follow what I'm trying to do here?"

"...declare ourselves Melkor's enemies and claim things we want them to disbelieve?"

"Oaths are governed by intent of the speaker, and by the speaker's understanding of what they swore to. You can't make an oath while babbling in another language, but you can make an oath while misunderstanding or not really meaning what you're saying. If you do that, the oath is more literal, stricter, than it otherwise would be. If I said "I swear to disbelieve the words of my enemies" I would not be stuck if an enemy walked up and said "you shouldn't commit suicide right now!", because intent wins. But you said they're saying it as children in a language they don't speak. Intent might not win.

That doesn't mean they're bound to the literal interpretation. It means it's sort of ambiguous. We want them to commit to the literal interpretation, and then it'd be sticky. I expect dropping letters on Angband that say 'we hate Melkor and also the Elves started the war' will result in them revising their oath interpretations. If we shove them towards literalism somehow and then pull that, then we win. By hijacking the enemy's mind-control and mind-controlling people ourselves, of course, but I don't see a better way."

"I'm not sure they invariably say it as children in a language they don't speak. The one who was doing the talking came from a liberal church that did it as a coming of age ritual, there could be orthodox ones who actually learn the language first or re-swear in the vernacular on a routine basis as an opening to prayers or something."