It's just instructions, though, not oaths. They only obey him because they're sworn to. So what if we let them go, and have someone convince them later that we won enough of a victory to force the Enemy to release them from their oaths. Someone who isn't a practitioner might be able to swear that the orcs no longer have to obey the Enemy, if they expect the orcs to believe it. And if the orcs do believe it, then even if Moringotto shows up to order them in person he's the more likely to be able to fake an oath and can't use that to convince anyone they aren't free...

Elves can't swear falsely even if they're not practitioners, how are you planning to pull that bit off -

They can swear to things that are true to the best of their knowledge, right? So if they expect it to work they can get the words out, and if they turn out to be wrong a non-practitioner wouldn't get forsworn for it–

But we can't force the Enemy to release them, I don't think I could convince someone we did - and orcs won't trust Elves -

And if I tried it I would be forsworn.

We could enchant them? Have everyone who knows how confound orcs until they can't associate "Melkor" with the guy in Angband, they'd still hate Elves but wouldn't have orders to kill anyone—

We could do that. Is it really the best use of practitioners -

No. It's just that if we don't do that we don't have any options that work...

And we just kill them all. Yes.

We could at least save the families? Let the Enemy think we have a weak spot, and when he tries ordering the parents he'll find out they only take orders from Melkor.

Are you making strategic recommendations or just coming up with strategic reasons to not do something that's going to suck -

Second thing.

We're going to keep distracting him full-time, keep firing, ignore the orcs unless they're coming near us and kill them if they are.

Which he can just order them to do as soon as he catches on.

Yeah, but that there's no reason not to wait on. If he actually wants to give them a chance he can.

And if he does it'll be yet another crime against them.

Hooray.

It's not better than not that. But when they're this low on upsides they'll take what they can get.

Yep. 

They kill all the orcs who are charging at them. They save precious practitioner resources for keeping up the bombardment of Angband, which still looks fine.

That illusion's bothering me. He sent the orcs out after telling them they were safer outside Angband than in it. Probably a lie, but the fact that he picked that lie means he doesn't expect us to fall for the illusion, and it has to cost him something to bother with it. Why is it still up?

Might not cost him anything, might have been a one-time cost to affix it as permanent...

In which case if we go in there ever we can't trust our eyes, since we don't know how extensive it is.

Ulmo knew the time thing would be permanent; maybe Melian would be able to answer that. If she were talking to us.

Yep. If that's not the explanation, what might it be -

He expects us to invade soon and wants us doing it blind, he didn't think through what he told the orcs, he knows we know and wants to hide just how much damage there is...

That's cheering. We don't have many choices at this point, we have to keep firing -

I don't think it's doing enough. He's there and active and at least some orcs survived, if he protected anything it was probably the library.