I might buy that if I had never heard of either variety of binding promise.

Ex-prisoners of the Enemy won't swear not to harm anyone save in self-defense.

We don't have the same limitation.

Do they ever say why not?

They don't usually say but I'm starting to get a picture. - slight infohazard, you want it?

I'll take it.

The Enemy has pretty impressive capacity for time-dilation within his domain, and can also do hallucinations which are vividly detailed and don't have many or any tells - and he can tamper with memories, so if you do notice something's up he can correct that. Everyone released from Angband has hallucinated dozens of times that they were released from Angband, sometimes to years of peace and safety back at home, only to wake up one day back in Angband. They don't think they're out. 

And since the Enemy does this sometimes having in fact erased even the memory they were captured in the first place, they don't think anyone can reasonably be in the position of 'confident they're not in Angband'. 

And Angband is sufficiently bad that most people who've survived it will tell you that, in fact, there's no goal at all that could possibly make the risk of capture worth it, that if people understood what they were facing they'd commit suicide en masse. 

If they don't ask us to kill them it's just because this hallucination is momentarily less bad than what they'll wake up to if they prematurely end it with their death. 

And swearing to things under those conditions would be very silly.

That's minor?

You've got the magic that enforces arbitrary laws on, and removes its protection from, anyone who knows it exists.

Barely true, but good point.

Do the hallucinations ever involve the Halls of Mandos, do they at least know they're free once they die?

I'm not sure. Most ex-prisoners of Angband aren't reembodied but that could be for many reasons other than not really believing it. We did have a discussion of whether we should kill people whose preference if they believed this was reality would be to die.

I was thinking Ungoliant might be able to kill people permanently if she's a demon. But if she's a demon that would be all kinds of bad idea, even if it was what they wanted.

I don't know if that'd be what they wanted. A lot of them, probably, but they're also talking to someone they think is the Enemy, there are incentives there not to reveal your actual preferences...

So we couldn't be sure, even on top of everything else.

Mind control...

Different kind than the kind your magic can do.

It's relevantly similar. In that neither should exist.

We are going to figure out how to kill him. We are going to have weapons that reduce Angband to dust.

Thanks for the certainty. I always stop at "it's winnable."

If I'm wrong I'll be in no position to suffer from having spoken falsely anyway.

Neither would I, what with the time scales you're planning on. It's just a good habit that gets really annoying sometimes.

I've noticed that. It's not my primary reason for not considering becoming a practitioner but it's definitely a consideration.

Yeah.

I should warn Melian about Ungoliant soon, so there's no risk of her starting without knowing. How long do you think it'll be before there's a decision about the palantir?

Next time my father surfaces, it's not worth interrupting him over. So within a week.

And she's on a Maia's time scale, so that's practically immediate.

It'd stun me if she decided to conduct the demesne ritual in less than a year. I'm actually a little surprised she became a practitioner at once but I suppose she needed to determine whether you were telling the truth before you left. 

I guess. Seems a bit extreme if that was why.