"Not if we get this to the point where I present the offer and I don't then immediately realize a disaster in paragraph eighteen. I'm just going to be in a really bad mood for a while about it."

"Understood. If rebuilding Endore after the war and bringing back most of the dead will help your mood or be tolerable in a bad one, though, it'll be much appreciated."

"Yeah, I won't mope, I'll just -" Shrug. "Yeah, that can be next."

"Yeah.

I don't see anything else here that worries me."

"Me either, but that might just mean I need to spend another few hours forcing myself to laugh at arguments about whether magical girl anime intended for five-year-olds is to be banned on Valinor so I can come back with fresh-ish eyes..."

Fëanáro sighs. "Yes, go do that. I have calm and clarity for everyone else, if you want to try an adjusted look..."

Cam goes and does that.

When he comes back the Elves all look utterly intent but oddly disinterested. One more revision, they aren't even sure it's necessary but it seems safer.

Yeah, it does. Maitimo have any opinions on this version?

They'd forgotten Maitimo existed. Fëanáro removes the blessings for calm and clarity, exasperated, and runs this version by Maitimo.

Maitimo has no suggestions.

"...you have something called 'clarity' that causes you to forget people exist?"

"Gives you total focus on the task at hand. It's good for coming at a question from a completely different angle but which angle is unpredictable and you can't correct course. I have an automatic expiration after an hour on mine, because it really does help but it's very narrowing."

"Makes sense. ...I think I want to sleep on this, actually sleep not just caffeinate. And then if I don't have anything new I guess I drop more bricks on Angband."

"All right."

Cam goes and sleeps. He has a shower and eggs Benedict and reads a new installment on a slow-updating serial fiction he's been following for 38 years. He looks over the text again.

It still looks okay to him. Does it still look okay to everyone else?

Yep. Airtight, to everyone's eyes.

Okay then.

He goes up and gets a bead on Angband.

And he drops bricks.

And a while later, he gets a response. 

Cam, 

Delighted to work with you. A few problems. Some of the Maiar in Melkor's employ are vampires. If you're willing to continually supply them with the blood of people they can swear not to harm any, but they want a stipulation to the effect that if their health and capacity to reason are suffering because they can't get blood then they are obliged only to minimize the harm to people involved in feeding. Some of the Maiar in Melkor's employ aren't on this planet and would take weeks to call back. Some of the Maiar formerly in Melkor's employ have fled and their locations aren't known to us. If any Valar survive we require an exception that permits us to continue our war with them. We also require the ability to take actions that might constitute harm in self-defense, since many Elves will certainly continue their war with us. With those revisions we accept your terms.

Cam brings this reply to the Elves who will certainly continue their war with them.

"You could for a start ask him to swear that this message's contents are all true and were not orchestrated after receipt of our message, even though the oath itself does cover that, just so we can check if they're operating in good faith. They're Maiar and can go immaterial and lightleap without a ship, they do not need self-defense unless constrained from both those abilities. Are you happy to feed vampires indefinitely? What's minimized harm from vampires even look like?"

"I'm not thrilled to feed vampires indefinitely, and if anything sends me back to Hell it wouldn't matter if I were. It seems unlikely that he can do prion diseases but can't do vat blood or couldn't after some R&D - it hasn't been done by humans but that's because all their producing-animal-parts-in-vats interests are about getting meat not blood -"

"Agreed. So let's refuse that, or time-limit it sharply."

So Cam writes up these complaints about their complaints and flings a brick at Angband about it.

Such a research program would take some time; we'll accept a time limit of twenty years. Self-defense exception for if we're unable to flee or dematerialize to protect ourselves? Proposed revision for the clause about all Maiar who have engaged in the described activities at Melkor's broadly-defined behest is 'and who it is within his power to force to take this oath', does that work?

Cam doesn't buy that it will take the prion disease brigade twenty years to adapt vat meat tech into vat blood tech and he tells them so. What, pray tell, would they care to do in self-defense precisely? And no, 'force' is not the thing, 'cause' is the thing, if he has to ask nicely then ask nicely he will have to do.