"Maybe? I don't think it's impossible in principle... y'know, like pulling the moons out of the sky... but anybody who could do it would have more layers of filter than me on the don't-waste-my-time thing."

"Thanks. See you later."

And out, and to Cam, and "Nechar can do it. Bar, if Nechar holds the door to his world and Cam or Edie makes a person in it, will that person be able to hold the door for me?"

I don't know.

"...anyway, that's the best approach I've got on the 'import a sorcerer who sees the fact their world is a smiling ray of sunshine as a frustrating bound on their opportunities to do good rather than a reason they're unqualified to consider things with real stakes' plan. Also I'm not a magic Elf and it's possible it can't even be done for them."

"I'm... not sure I want to invite the landlords to fuck with us on this level. Like, suppose we fork someone into Nechar's world, the door closes on them for mysterious reasons, and they don't find their way back to Milliways until a trillion years have gone by in-bar, and then the door thinks their home world is somewhere weird because of the circumstances of their existence..."

"Nechar's world sounds like a perfectly nice place."

"Okay, but that's just one random thing I came up with as a possible landlord-fuckery."

"I really really resent having to even take into account the fact that this place is run by something sentient that punishes cleverness, it's really annoying and if I'm ever omnipotent it'll be stupid to retaliate for it but I'll definitely take away their shiny sentient toys."

"One could make the argument that they didn't have to offer us doors in the first place."

"They are not even in the running for 'worst people' but still, they could give a door to someone who could fix all of this easily and they are instead likely to change the rules to punish efforts to fix it at all."

"They're not punishing all forms of effort. The engineers are usually running faster than the us, Bar's giving out all the textbooks we can specify to the point where she can help, the establishment is just - very firm on its intended use and cares more about being used correctly than about being unobtrusive in encouraging that."

"If what my evil alt is doing is intended use -"

"It's also very firm on its neutrality policy. Look, this is not what I would be doing with these capacities, but as alien powers messing around with people go, 'idiosyncratically constrained help which will probably in fact result in killing several Melkors when before nobody even knew there was more than one' is better than 'Lovecraftian horror' or, say, 'Melkors'..."

"I know."

"It's frustrating. I'm cultivating an attitude of acceptance because I'm not sure being ostentatiously frustrated doesn't make it worse."

"Fair point. Okay. Nechar can also clear any oaths I've sworn, of which there shouldn't be any standing ones right now, and I considered asking him to do that to cover that scenario we discussed a couple days ago, but then it occurred to me that on the off chance I was evil and was modified away I should at least discuss it with you first."

"Well. That would be disturbing."

"It is vanishingly unlikely. But it seemed better to run by you before I said 'yes, please remove everything that might be fucking with my head'."

"Nechar can't do divination, he won't be able to tell for me... Will you notice? Does it feel like anything?"

"No. Didn't know this one was gone until I checked for it."

"Would you notice if it'd been a mind-altering one?"

"...possibly. Don't love the idea of swearing one to check, but I could."

"That's not where I was going with that, I'm just trying to figure out if having him clear you and then you swearing that as far as you know it didn't do anything is reliable or if I need to be more creative."

"I don't need to ask him at all but if I do ask you might need to be more creative."

"If you were under oaths you have forgotten how would it have happened?"