I'll try.

And a few hours later - I notified them. They're all coming to check out the portal, trial's on hold, I guess that's a good outcome? 

It's something. Should I expect to talk to them?

I guess you can make sure it doesn't go too badly and avoid it if it seems to inevitably do so -

If it does so within range and if they're as blasé about conversational pauses as they are about other delays. And if I'd definitely notice if it went badly with my copious experience observing offended deities.

They're not offended, they're scared. But your call.

I mean I'm not sure I'd notice if I did offend them. Or frighten them, for that matter.

I'm coming back, I can try to help.

They're not likely to get here before you?

It'd surprise me. We may have a month.

Okay, I'll wait.

And she rides back to Tirion.

We'd need a really trustworthy psion, is there a better screening method than talking with them?

Some of them might put up with being mindread. There's something of an employment problem with new eclipsed, so offering to pay them for the time they spend learning to do something is a good deal.

Okay. Because erasing oaths would merely be socially disruptive but if they figured out how to alter them or put them in place -

Do note that any psion who learns that oaths exist can try for those things if it strikes their fancy.

You can swear yourself into emotional states or belief states. You can swear not just to obey someone forever but to desire whatever you understand them to desire.

I wish I had noticed this was a thing sooner, I was - translating it without all the implications - humans promise things too it just doesn't do anything -

I should have noticed we had different assumptions playing Governor - Elves and orcs and Valar and Maiar all have oaths, I just assumed them universal -

Nope. How do they - work?

You say something - aloud, osanwë doesn't do it - formulated as 'I swear' or more frequently concluding with 'so I swear' so that nothing bad happens if you're interrupted in the middle - and you can feel it - counts - and then the effects depend what you swore -

If osanwë doesn't do it then it's reasonably likely that it is at least fiendishly difficult for a psion to create an oath - it takes a lot of investment to get control fine enough to make people say things. Easier to affect memories about what was sworn, does that matter?

Matters but doesn't have the same potential for disaster. 

Howso?

If you don't remember an oath it'd kick back into force if you were reminded of it and you'd probably feel a persistent compulsion to remember it or learn what it was if you knew enough about what you'd forgotten and that was possible at all, but it's not like you could end up obliged to do something different if you only remembered half an oath. if you swore not to do something you still couldn't do it even if you didn't remember swearing. If you swore to trust someone you'd still trust them even if you didn't remember swearing. 

How would a negative oath you didn't remember take effect?

You'd try to do something and notice you couldn't? And probably infer you'd sworn not to, whereupon it'd snap back into place?