Me too. Oh, me too. 

It wasn't a mistake rescuing him, was it - I could have killed him -

Would that be better, what magical powers of actually useful healing should I be attributing to Mandos...?

He could possibly make him forget the whole thing, if there aren't oaths that are still acting somehow. Sent us back to us as he was when he waved goodbye to me and went off to talk to a village of Men...

Well, as he was plus edits for Valarin decency. 

Not exactly best finesse, that.

Nope. And this might be beyond Lorien - Lorien's usual thing is that it gives you whatever you need, but 'a population of people with a pressing problem the Enemy couldn't plausibly care about' is not the sort of need it can handle.

Not as such, I would not imagine.

And that's what Maitimo needs. To matter. 

I have no idea what to do. Want to come up with oaths that might cause him unthinkable psychological torment but not more than a month of it?

This does somehow manage to be worse than his current unthinkable psychological torment?

You know, I actually don't know. I could try a minute of it and see, if the information might change anything...

You can't compare straight across, Kib points out, also, augh.

No, but I could get a sense of 'could conceal this for months until my boyfriend happens to wonder why everyone who makes it out wants to die' versus 'if this triggers he'll spend the whole month begging us to kill him in between screams and we should probably do it'

Any data extant on recovery from oath contradictions? Even if it only lasts a minute by itself...

No. But if we're asking Maitimo to chance it -

If it turns out the result is "recovery, what recovery, do this and you are a trembly heap of misery forever even if it's literally one minute" it will obviously have been a mistake in retrospect for you to try it. Maitimo has upside potential.

I am not sure 'Maitimo is a trembly heap of misery literally forever because of something we did' is actually something I'd successfully cope with anyway.

...yeah.

Maybe we could build in a contingency to avoid it - 'if this oath contradicts with another I will yell really loudly and then this one is discharged' and then if he yells really loudly his golem reacts -

That should work.

If there's not a way to knock him out though it'll probably just have to kill him.

It'd be nice to have the trigger for killing him something other than 'yells loudly', lest he yell loudly for some other reason. And I'm going to need to be very politically careful, lest it happening be very destabilizing. But. yeah.

Yeah, 'yells loudly' is not necessarily it. Anything he won't normally do that the golem can distinguish. Pick a random string of nouns from when I'm sleeping as a code or something.

Doubles as a suicide trigger.

Yes. Golem can make it quick?

Yeah.

Then let's figure out what we want him to swear to.

Some sufficiently rigorous definition of sabotage, something to prevent passing information...

Acting at all on altered motives if he comes to realize he has them....