"From note one or after it's been magicking for a while, how long do these take to take effect -?"

"They usually take a few verses to start having an effect."

"Does it matter how fast you sing them?"

"They wouldn't sound very pretty if you went very fast but they might still technically work..."

"Yes, that's what I meant." He adds a note under the one about checking if they work recorded.

"I've been wondering if any of our stuff has incidental telepathy interactions like how Occlumency is good enough as a private thoughts designation. Like, does that conversation privacy thing apply to telepathy, the same way it'd stop you from hollering into the next room. Or other interactions. Can air pressure from a demon making stuff break an Imperturbable container."

List list - "if conversational privacy applies to telepathy we have a way to experiment on Sauron - speaking of which, do oaths made under the Imperius Curse count -"

All of the Elves look completely horrified at him. 

"...well, it would be better to know before we have to decide whether to consider quarantining wizard populations from Elves as well as daeva..."

"Yes. I assume there exist oaths harmless enough to run tests with? 'I won't tell anyone my favorite color for the next three minutes' or something?"

"One just doesn't do experiments with oaths."

"...you don't do experiments with oaths? So, you have mind control stuff that might work under all kinds of dangerous conditions and you don't know how it works?"

"Works better if there's just a rule never ever to make an oath even if it seems like the perfect occasion for it and a really good reason..."

"That sounds sensible as an everyday practice... but it means you have this thing and don't know how it works."

"Yes."

"Do you happen to know anyone suitably reckless."

They look at each other and giggle. "We just had a son," he says regretfully. "No recklessness until he's all grown up."

"You should have more sons, Theo's alt'd do it."

"Being around wizards and various other potential forms of mind control without any information on how your thing works is also reckless."

" - normally you'd ask a Vala to help you, and cancel the oaths if anything went wrong..."

"They can do that?"

"If you swear to them, yeah."

"Okay, so what else do you in fact know about how it works."

"Intent matters, matters less the more specifically it was phrased and once you start acting on one interpretation you can't then bend back around to a different interpretation - like, if I swore to tell Nerdanel before I started new projects, and then I stepped in here and met another Nerdanel, I could probably decide whether the oath applied to other universe versions of Nerdanel, but once I'd decided one way or the other my interpretation would be binding. If you swear by a Vala they can release you. If you swear by Eru he can release you but honestly I wasn't even sure Eru existed until my alts said that their Eru created a new species during the war and therefore probably does in fact exist. I think you can swear by Maiar, too, but I'm not sure. You can't swear by other people, not in the same way, but you could say something like 'until Nerdanel releases me I swear to tell her before I start new projects' and that'd have the same effect. You can be tortured or coerced into swearing things, but to a point, because intent if you say something under torture is pretty much 'to stop being tortured' and so any ambiguity bends in your favor. You can alter your beliefs and mental states by swearing things. You can't get new information from oaths - like, if I swore not to harm you, and then tried to trip a random stranger in the street but the stranger was you in disguise, the oath wouldn't do anything, it's acting off my current state of information. You can't do something you've sworn not to do; you can delay indefinitely doing something you've sworn to do, but it's unpleasant, and only works if there isn't a window of opportunity..."

"Dear, did you check -"