"And don't play this with Melkor. Just, y'know, in case."

"...won't," agrees Kib.

And Maitimo shoves the game out of the way and kisses him.

Eeee!

Thank you. That was therapeutic, which I assume was your intent.

Wasn't sure if it'd work but yes.

I should ask survivors of the Enemy for game ideas or something.

I assume you'd put it differently.

Depends with who. But probably, yes. Come to bed, I want to commit a crime I'm confident is not actually a moral wrong.

Kib comes to bed ever so obligingly.

Hair-petting, nibbling. I wonder if that's the answer to the question of orcs.

If what is?

Oaths that bend thoughts, better-worded than the one I gave - it's odd otherwise that there'd be a million people, all of them evil, but if he just overwrites them...

...yeah, that'd do it.

And he's paroled.

Which depending on the wording of the oath has all kinds of interesting possible implications none of which are very good pillow talk.

Right, he says, sorry, and then he nibbles on the back of Kib's neck and there are no atrocities discussed all evening.

Mission success.

Findekáno congratulates him on it the next day. That was a good idea.

I'm pleased with how it turned out. He made some really interesting faces during the game. I was not expecting it to leave him in exactly the mood it did but I'm not complaining.

And now he has lots of good ideas on how to be evil, which hopefully he won't use.

Yes, although honestly he's got the turn of mind for it without help and could have gotten half of them from reading the books from my world. Not the ones having to do with oaths or osanwë, but most of the other stuff I didn't make up out of thin air.

I am pretty confident that even an evil Maitimo wouldn't overwrite peoples' minds with carefully-worded oaths if only because he'd find them boring.