Bella wakes up in the hospital.
She is not critically low on gem clarity, so she has the next two hours to herself to think as long as she doesn't make noise, which she doesn't, and foxes all the monitors attached to her real quick before they beep, which she does; she could go out the window but she has no plans for this loop which require her to skip town. She clicks her heels together and gets into her costume and pulls out a notebook to organize her itinerary.
It's magic but it's not anybody's soul, it just shines very brightly and contains the divine light of Valinor. And burns the Enemy when he touches it.
Does the divine light of Valinor actually do anything besides burn the Enemy on contact?
Not that I know of. Maybe it does for them, since they're exiled from the actual Valinor and will probably weaken away from it?
They're stronger than Elves born in the Outer Lands, better endurance, more resilient. Because of Valinor. Now that they've left Valinor they will eventually get weaker. I don't know if they level out to be like other Elves or if Valinor makes not being in Valinor hard to sustain somehow. I suppose that'd be a reason to want their jewelry, though not to swear to kill anyone who takes it.
Yeah, that does seem to be pushing it even if that's what it does.
You can see why I am not eager to give them guns even if it'd help defeat the Enemy. I just don't understand them well enough.
Yeah. And once they had the idea it probably wouldn't work to just make ammunition contingent on good behavior.
I expect they could manufacture their own. We could hand out the guns for an oath they'd never be used save against the Enemy? Oaths that come into conflict are really bad, but a categorical negative one shouldn't invite that problem.
Swearing not to do something just makes you unable to do it. Swearing to do something is dangerous and stupid. If you've sworn to do two incompatible things you just kind of - collapse in psychological torment. But if you swear to do one thing, and then swear not to use a particular tool towards that end under certain circumstances, you should be okay. If they're sufficiently incompatible you'll just be unable to make the negative oath at all, and if they're not incompatible then the negative oath just works like anything else making it impossible to follow through on the positive oath would work. I think. Obviously there's no ethical way to experiment.
Most people would never chance it because of the risks.
Yeah... humans don't have this and I think I'm glad we don't.
I like that people can work even with people they have no reason to trust, but oaths can do some awful things too.
See, the thing is, they shouldn't be able to do that. Usually coercing people into oaths doesn't work. The orcs would have to swear willingly. But maybe they are misinformed when they do, or something.
How exactly does coercion not work? What does 'willingly' mean?
Oaths are governed by intent. So if you say them with the intent to make an agreement with someone, the shared understanding of the words binds you. If you say it at swordpoint, your intent is probably 'don't get murdered' so you're later allowed any possible interpretation of what you said.
But it still has to be an interpretation of what you said? So snug enough wording could do it?
It'd probably be a bad idea to import evil fluffs to the world, but concentrating all the magic help into one or two people seems iffy too - especially if there's a risk the Enemy might figure out that I'm doing time travel -
Yeah. Though it's still possible that adolescence is only the sweet spot for humans.
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