I bet I could get her to but it wouldn't work anyway on multiple levels like at all.

Okay. Moping forever it is.

Productively.

Sure. The plumbing's great, I like that fountain with the red tiles.

Thanks.

Y'welcome.

It really is great indoor plumbing. Her next project is improving roads for the new industries cropping up.

And the Valar announce that they are holding on Taniquetil parole hearings for Melkor.

Wait what. Did Isabella somehow mix Melkor up with someone else.

Doesn't Isabella have an eidetic memory?

Yes but possibly someone falsified every book in the library or there are multiple individuals named Melkor or her memory is glitching because she could have sworn they said "parole for Melkor"?

Well, parole hearing.

What's to hear? Is she just going to say "very" 500,000,000 times before finishing up on "sorry"?

"No idea, but I'm going."

[I don't have a range limit, lemme know what happens?]

Will do.

She sends her reports, actually. Apparently all orcs, and there are millions, are sworn to obey Melkor, and she's asking for limited freedom of movement so she can tell them all to disregard orders from her, and swears to turn herself back in as soon as she's done that, and swears to do absolutely nothing else in the meantime.

Sworn to...? ...I'm suddenly contextualizing a lot of reading, please elaborate on that phenomenon.

Uh, if we give our word, it's binding? Permanently?

...humans don't have that.

They could try psions on the orcs. Might work, wouldn't take long by Vala standards to find out.

I can suggest that but we still haven't formally told the Valar about Earth.

Yeah I'm kinda regretting that now, I didn't know that they had yet further options to do stupid things simmering in the background.

I don't know for certain this is a stupid thing, it's been three thousand years, the wording's pretty tight and the offer makes sense -

You have enough money to hire a psion straight out of control training and pay them to figure out if they can learn oathbreaking and you will have an oathbreaker inside ten years if it's doable with psionics and then they don't have to let an intensely difficult to recapture adversary-deity off the leash to get that result. Being able to consider the questions separately is worth it.

Let me think how to interrupt the Valar with the news that there's powerful foreign magic that might be able to erase oaths - the fact it exists also complicates this, because right now she's not off the leash but if she could get her oaths erased -

Yeah, I'd avoid letting her overhear that if possible.