"What counts as 'cannot progress', how gradually is gradually, how are prospects for fooling oneself about whether a step advances a thing you swore not to do, are there any customary aesthetically-contributory rituals around swearing things, what's the thing where they can be released like, how good is the time limit thing can you use that to derive information if you don't have very good time sense..."

"In general you cannot take any voluntary actions which progress something you've sworn not to do. Gradually - unless there's a narrow window of time in which the task has to be accomplished, years. If there is a narrow window it intensifies very fast. Never heard of anyone successfully fooling themself about that but it's not terribly safe to test. There are customs; you make oaths in public, loudly and clearly, Elves like them to be well-composed, sometimes you repeat previously-made ones at key moments, you might hold a sword or a pen or a work of art or a banner as appropriate. You can derive information from the time limit. Being released is - a Maia or Vala to whom an oath was addressed acknowledges that they're releasing you, no specific phrasing needed, and it doesn't affect you anymore. You could derive information about whether someone was really that particular Maia or Vala that way."

"Are time limits about time or can they be about contingencies?"

"You can do contingencies but then you need to know whether the contingency was met."

"Can you be fooled?"

"Yep. Oath is back in effect if you figure out that you were, though. And if you swear two incompatible things that are operative simultaneously you just collapse in horrible agony."

"The horrible agony thing is very, ah, aesthetically important."

"Good to know. Swearing to contradicting things results in horrible agony until they somehow cease to contradict or someone puts you out of your misery. - you might suffer while dead, actually, if the oaths made demands that were possible to act towards while dead."

"Are there many things you can do while dead?"

"Think things. Tell or refuse to tell Mandos, the Vala of the dead, things."

"Fair enough. I'm thinking this is a two-sheeper. If you want the sheep to live. I can do it on one if you would like a dead sheep."

"I'll have someone bring - probably cows, actually, we don't have a lot of sheep."

"Never bled a cow myself, cow might survive! Cows're big."

"We will hope for the best for the cow and the experiment."

"Just don't send your favorite cow that some farmer's daughter has named, I have a terrible track record with things farmers' daughters have named."

"I can ask the farmers if they have sentimental daughters! They probably do, our human birthrate's really high."

"How high is really high from the perspective of a species that hasn't had any kids in centuries?"

"All right, admittedly we'd think it was striking if they occasionally had one. But it's about six on average, the population doubles every twenty-four years."

"Okay, yeah, six is a buncha kids, especially if they don't start till their late twenties."

"Are there various social and cultural things in your world that produce lower birthrates, we could try changing some cultural conditions -"

"I don't really know the causality on that? - Magic can be used for abortion and sterilization, I assume if you have those you do them some other way."

" - we don't have those. Well, Elves do, humans don't."

"...well, there you go, then, people who are more pregnant or fertile than they want to be at home go to a mage. Except now that everything is terrible, I suppose."

"Having kids they don't want in a dying world."

"Yeah I think I mentioned I did not come from a pleasant time and place."