"Sure I could, but I can't show writing to somebody in the Halls."

"Doesn't work quite like osanwë."

"And she could fake it. Anyway - I don't think that's your most pressing problem, I have no idea if Melkor's repentance is real but she's sufficiently sophisticated at being horrible that faking it isn't beyond her the way it'd be beyond the other Valar -"

"I'm not clear on to what extent understanding that faking it might be in her repertoire is out of the other Valar's repertoire..."

"Manwë is said to be literally incapable of comprehending evil, or dishonesty, but I don't think they all are. And they did insist on an oath, it's not as if they just said 'oh, she repented? must be genuine' - I think they understand on some level but not on another?"

Nod.

"If there's anything else potentially relevant -"

" - did she ever get oaths out of any of the prisoners, some of the other psions are working on ways around that but no one's mentioned it having non-orc applications."

"Probably. Not - not by torture, mostly, just by arranging reality such that it made sense to swear something - she can tamper with memories -"

"...I have no idea how that would interact with eidetic as I can currently do it but in theory it's fixable..."

"The Valar can and do fix that one, but they can't fix anything you swore while not remembering you're a prisoner or not remembering that Melkor isn't your trusted friend you've been working alongside for a century -"

"Right. Well, the kids are working on de-oathing."

"I heard, yes. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"If there's anything else you need to know, I'm usually around the palace."

"Good to know. Thank you very much."

"Very welcome."

Well. That answers some questions.

Yep.

And gives me less mixed feelings about denying Melkor redemption opportunities, although I know that 'was she evil at one point' wasn't really in question -

Valar seem... architected, as a group, in a way that makes the idea of spontaneous redemption peculiar.

They really do. Though 'three thousand years' stretches any definition of spontaneity.

I mean spontaneous as in not particularly prompted, not as in quick.

Could've been prompted by the war somehow. But - yeah. If it's a purely pragmatic epiphany then it'd still be good to let her out if we could contain her. But if we're not sure -

Yep. The hallucinations thing is just... there are occasionally practical motivations to be evil but that doesn't have one -