"Huh. Do gods...reason about ethics? I have no idea." Vanyel shrugs. "Not sure I'm in a good place to actually do careful reasoning about that right now. I'll, um, stick to trying to figure out what I should ask him to say under Truth Spell that will do the most work towards showing whether he's planning to cooperate here. Any thoughts on that?" 

"Uh, I'd like to know if he'll peacefully leave Milliways should our consensus be that we want him to do that. - specifically as a condition for being allowed in, that might matter. Meeting him elsewhere risks less."

Vanyel nods and sits down, retrieving the notes he was taking from earlier. "I guess I had been thinking that I meet him at the message-drop location, which is where he offered to go before we paused him. And I request a general cooperative-intent oath under Truth Spell – we might as well inform him of that using the drone, before he heads over, I sort of predict he'll be more comfortable saying it if he's had time to think it through. He seems to prefer having time for thinking. Um, anyway, but I wouldn't mention Milliways until after he's passed that. So we can split up the risk, if that make sense? I don't know how much he's inferred about Milliways given his existing observations, but it can't be everything, it's too weird." 

"We can do it that way, that makes sense. Milliways is a really colossal opportunity - that's why I'm hanging out here - and my read is that he'd be very tempted to chuck every other opportunity out the window to get it but it's probable that he knows enough fancy game theory stuff to cope with 'this invitation was conditional on you reliably making this promise so you actually have to keep it'. I can ask him about that."

“Ask him in the hypothetical before mentioning Milliways specifically, you mean?” Vanyel shakes his head. “He would be so tempted. This place is incredible and I think he would see a thousand ways to make use of it that I haven’t in the first twenty minutes.”

"Uh, we can also ask the security guy if he can kick Leareth out on his own discretion."

“Oh! If that might be a thing then it definitely seems worth asking. Er, where is he?”

"Office is around the corner." Cam leads the way.

In the security office is a guy with his feet up on his desk reading a book. "Hello again," he says.

"Hi Nechar," says Cam. "We're wondering if you can kick patrons out on your own discretion."

"If they seem likely to make trouble, sometimes. It's pretty hard to make trouble I can't undo though."

"So only within the scope of keeping order in the bar?"

"Pretty much."

"I guess that covers us against some types of bad outcome?" Vanyel says cautiously. "Um, but not any I'd expect to happen if Leareth already passed the Truth Spell steps and genuinely wants to help you but actually we just disagree with his moral philosophy and-or the wisdom of making a god to solve all of humanity's problems." 

"Yeah, it's nice as far as it goes but doesn't really help with kicking him out under the likely scenario. Thanks anyway, Nechar."

"Uh-huh."

Vanyel hauls himself back over to the bar area and sits down in a booth. 

"...Where are we at, then? Meet him, Truth Spell, shuttle him over here, second Truth Spell – or that should maybe be before, don't want him to know where we are before we've decided. I think we need paper to plan this out." He digs out some. "Cam, are you coming along or were you going to stay here and listen via drone? If I'm there I can still Truth Spell him while you talk to him, and give you a signal if he passes or not."

"I can't risk losing the door. If I ever really need to leave the bar I'll ask some Elves in before I - actually I should do that anyway, one second." He goes to the door. "Alassëo, come here please -"

A tall, absurdly pretty man with braided hair, wearing lovely embroidered robes, comes in and looks around in bewilderment as Cam shuts the door behind him and murmurs a quick explanation.

Vanyel looks the other way and tries very hard not to stare at the unfairly beautiful man who's suddenly standing right there and where did he get those robes and– stop, stopstopstop and focus, please, at least this is less awkward as a distraction than finding out he's future-lifebonded to a preteen and damn it now he's thinking about that again. 

"That makes sense," he hears himself say. "I think there's no need for you to come." Focus focus focus. "We should probably get the wording of what I'm going to ask him to say written out..." 

Cam buys Alassëo a room upstairs and Alassëo disappears to go hang out in it without, apparently, noticing Vanyel's staring. "Yeah, that's a good idea. I'm not sure exactly how good this translation effect is, it seems to be fine for conversation but might be iffier for exact words, so you should do the phrasing even if I can help you think of stuff."

"Right. So, er, the first part I want is – well, the thing I'm actually trying to test is 'have you been telling me the truth about your motives for the last ten years'. I guess I could straight-up ask that? Why not. And then I want to know his intentions now. That he's planning to help you with the specific request, and not to do anything behind our backs even if he thinks the results would justify it, and...that he doesn't have any reason to think that would change. That'd cover in case he did something clever like put a temporary compulsion on himself that changed his beliefs about his own intentions, but would wear off later."

It would be really nice to be doing this at a time when his mind was working properly. Vanyel rubs his eyes. "Er, can you see other loopholes I should cover here?"

"Does he expect he'd be able to figure out if there were any such compulsions, if so will he please do so now, are there any."

“That’s a really good idea.” And this is why he’s so glad to have help from someone whose brain is working. “All right, that just covers part one. If he’s clear, then...we tell him Milliways exists - maybe in vague terms to start, so he doesn’t know enough to just find it anyway if he refuses our terms - and then extract an oath that he’ll agree to leave if we ask him to? Um, any other requests or loophole covering you’d want to put in there?”

"Uh, we should probably cover the contingency where we don't agree perfectly."

“You and I, you mean?” He...hadn’t thought of that.

"For that matter, do Lissa and Yfandes get votes. Does Alassëo, though I think he may be under orders from his king to help me out so he probably would just do whatever I thought best unless we tripped over an Elf cultural taboo that didn't manage to come up in the war or something."

:Van and I vote together: Yfandes sends to both of them, approaching. :If we disagree, we resolve that first: 

Lissa perks up at her name and also wanders over. "...Sorry, what's the question?" She does, in fact, seem most of the way to sober already. 

"Do you want or should you get a vote on whether we evict Leareth."

"...Um, what?" Blink. "I – hmm. I feel less qualified than either of you to make that call, if I were in your shoes I wouldn't give me a vote, in practice I think I'd go with what Van said, but...in principle, yes, I sort of do want a say." 

"We can at least plan to consult you even if we consider your input nonbinding?"