"Good."

"Yeah."

"The development of orcs was largely a psychological warfare tactic - their first generations were made from captive Elves' forcible children."

"...wow."

"Yep."

"Not that I'm one to talk, but this guy has some fucked-up hobbies."

"Oh, his were pretty unambiguously worse than yours, I think you can talk of him as you like."

"Fair enough, I suppose."

"Some orcs today resent that Melkor's been captured and continue to worship him in absentia. They're - there's only so much we can straightforwardly explain to them the factual errors - they're not terribly fond of Elves or the remaining fourteen Valar, see -"

"...what kinds of factual errors...?"

"They have their own story about Melkor's, ah, rebellion against Eru."

"Ah."

"It's harmless more or less as long as he's locked up and even if he got out I think they'd notice the issue once he started trying to use them. Since the oath reform act he wouldn't be able to force them directly."

"Depends what he tried to use them for, I guess, but yeah."

"They could be coerced but not compelled."

Nod.

"The Oath Reform Act was a bit controversial when it was under discussion, some people liked the opportunity to dramatically cut off options."

"Yeah, but then later on you've got all these dramatically cut-off options to deal with."

"It's never been my style. You can arrange some of the drama with the form of oath we have remaining but retain the ability to change your mind, which means people may expend effort in getting you to do that; if you'd rather they knew not to bother..."

"People don't often put effort into getting me to change my mind about things."

"I've noticed that. You seem to have come around to patterns that are - livable for most people - in your own time."

"Turns out that when I can have most everything I want and the only thing left is to figure out what that is, it gets a lot easier to be nice."

"Makes sense."

"Does it?"

"I think so. Most everything?"