Causing destruction, focused on destruction of people for what I'm sure seem to them like good reasons.

I think they come in types and prefer different kinds of destroying things, but it's really not my area. Or anyone's except for the occasional person to stay very far away from.

Don't tell the cousins.

It won't come up. I don't know much more about diabolism than that it exists, and that it's the absolute most dangerous thing to try to reinvent.

Understood. Well, maybe we can tell some people that we're considering swearing not to share information with the Enemy, if they freak out at that it'll at least be informative and they'll have to calm down after a bit.

People here know that one and didn't, at least that I could see. And they were the ones who asked us for the oath about not serving the Enemy. One data point.

Yeah. I'd expect them to be less cautious than we were in Valinor, in Valinor it was one of the only really bad ways to hurt yourself...

And it didn't get less bad but it is trading off against other possible injuries. Doriath seems relatively safe though.

Yeah, true. Maybe the people in actual danger wouldn't even blink.

Your cousins probably know this one. They're the ones with the oaths, and some of those people joined them.

Right, we could ask. And they learned the local language immediately, probably so they could swear to things...

Maitimo did mention that as the reason why anyone would bother. But that'd work even if it's normal truthfulness oaths.

Yeah, the taboo is mostly just on mind-altering or priority-altering ones.

Or maybe somewhere it's oaths about future action, or... actually, what happens if you swear something's true but you turn out to be wrong or just don't know?

Depends on phrasing, but it's not like with your magic, in general there's an implicit 'to the best of my abilities' on all of our kind of oaths.

I'm assuming you can't swear you don't know whether the sky's blue on the grounds that it could have changed recently. Does it commit you to your best probability estimate, or whatever's least misleading for the purposes of whoever you're talking to, or some other thing?

Not 'least misleading' but 'using words in the same spirit they'll be understood', I think. People do not exactly experiment with it. You could swear you don't know for sure whether the sky's blue.

The failure mode is just that you can't swear, right? Not that you wind up forsworn? If so then someone has probably tested it.

The use I'm picturing is like, swearing you came alone and do not expect your allies followed you, when you specifically told them to roll dice and give themselves a forty percent chance.

I am pretty sure you could get away with that.

And I don't know how likely you could go before you do start expecting it, but anyone doing this has probably checked. So I guess we can't necessarily trust oaths about expectation.

Has anyone made you any?

No. Well, yes but nothing where they could have set this up. It's just the kind of thing practitioners might say.

The trick with the dice would count as a lie for us, maybe not a dramatic-thunderclap forswearing but false enough to cost, so people don't do it on Earth.

I'll keep in mind not to get too clever.

I'm sure wording it slightly differently could be safe, but yeah. Multiple sets of rules to navigate, what fun.

I have had a hard time with the not lying once or twice. Just because now there are so many secrets to keep.

There'll probably be more, but at least it'll be a more stable number eventually.