Creepy.

I don't think that's the kind of problem we might have here? But, yes, we should definitely be careful.

That's the reason there's such a strong taboo against them, even against harmless ones. Can't be careless with something like that.

Yeah, definitely. But having an exception for using magic on servants of the Enemy might be a mistake and so might not having one; if we can't risk any mistakes at all this isn't going to work.

I want to err on the side that doesn't risk us constraining ourselves in a way the Enemy can exploit.

Yeah, agreed.

But 'no casting on other people without their consent if there's another way to achieve your goal' is definitely safe, if you think it's important.

We'd want that to be 'another effective way', and in either case a malicious mage could still hex someone if that itself was their goal.

I'm really not worried about malicious mages, and phrasings that don't let you do anything if you're malicious are really constraining if you aren't. But yes.

Mm.

If malicious mages really won't be a problem, it might make more sense to talk to people and ask them what kinds of restrictions they'd need to feel safe? If that's the problem we're trying to solve.

We're trying to solve the problem of capture by the Enemy, and possibly something triggering a war between the two hosts. 

Okay. Is there reason to think that just teleporting out if you're captured won't work? If we assume I can make that automatic somehow.

It should work but it'd be very good to have a backup plan.

Mmhmm. Do oaths work from what's true, or from what you believe?

Mostly what you believe, with limits. What are you thinking about?

Whether there's a way for oaths to help at all, if the Enemy can make people hallucinate and forget things. Sounds like no, or at least not reliably.

Oaths that you've forgotten are still in place, so you can say something like 'I swear not to swear any more oaths unless I remember this one and why I swore it', but you can't do "I swear not to tell the Enemy anything" - or, you can, but it just means you'd have to not know he was the Enemy...

That first one is pretty clever. I'm starting to think I'm not going to be all that useful for this, though.

Oh?

There's definitely ways it's similar to spell design, but I don't know enough about the details of how oaths work, or the details of the situation, or Eldar culture.

That's fair enough. I'll think about it and maybe have my brothers do it if it seems like something the Enemy'd benefit from having me think about.

She nods. Sounds good.

And once we've got something safe we can have enough mages to cover unexpected needs without any one of them being a major Enemy target.

Mmhmm.That part is pretty much up to you - not personally, I mean, but I don't really mind how you end up deciding who gets to learn magic, so long as you realize that the decision needs to be taken seriously.

I appreciate that.

She grins, just a bit ironically, and tilts her head acknowledgingly. I do get that you've had more than enough of people interfering with how you want to do things.

Dinner? Dinner.