How do you know what he thinks? The food's going to be a problem, but that doesn't give extra information about his opinion.

Hasn't done anything since the parley. He could at a minimum kill a lot of people, if he just sent the force he took to that here.

Expecting us to fall apart of our own accord for lack of supplies is one possibility. My first speculation would be that there's some hidden cost, enough to make him think twice before deploying that.

That's also possible. I wish we knew more.

We tried interrogating orcs. It didn't go very productively.

Because they refused to talk, or what happened?

They loathed us, you'd think we'd personally murdered their families, which I guess maybe we did. They refused to talk. 

King permitted people to try making them, and that got lots of stuff, even verified true, but none of it useful.

If they've sworn not to tell anything useful, that might be intended to make sure nobody tries making them.

Yeah, we've all done the same for something of the same reason. It's proof at least that he does have some way of forcing orcs en masse to swear to things.

Of getting them to, at least; force would be optional. I hope none of you were forced when you did the same.

Of course not. The camp doesn't even formally have discipline, no one's forced to do anything.

So the fact of the oaths doesn't necessarily mean force. For what little that's worth.

I doubt Melkor won the trust of the orcs through hundreds of Years of tireless work on their behalf. But yeah.

Yeah.

Your oaths, the productivity ones, are those swearing to do the thing or swearing that specific problems like lack of motivation won't be what stops you? I could see it working either way, but the second one is a lot easier to defend against a shocked stare if that comes up.

With the other host? I mean, they have more comprehensive reasons to consider us awful. People actually mostly swear to find the work interesting and energizing - you can use oaths to modify emotions - but if you said "I swear I'm going to do this tirelessly all shift' you wouldn't get more than a raised eyebrow, it's definitely not frowned upon the way it would be under less extreme circumstances.

I didn't realize it could do mind control that effectively. Harmless use in this case, but that's. Scary. 

Hmm? Yeah. You can swear to trust people, you can swear to adopt their ends as your own - no one would, but you could.

I can imagine. And of course whoever's using the person that way would be the kind of person who uses people that way....

...if you want to go run and ask the prince I don't think he'll take offense, I can imagine what the other host must say about us...

Oh, I was thinking something else, not really important here. 

You mean ask if he's had anyone swear that? He could just say no and would have every reason to. And it genuinely isn't something I'd expect of him anyway.

Partly because he wouldn't have to, but that counts.

He could swear no. What were you thinking?

A...person, that definitely shouldn't be able to exploit that feature of oaths. No one who's going to get the chance.

The prince could swear, right. Still, even if he wouldn't take offense, I get the sense that people in general might. Better not get in the habit of asking for the easy verification on every question.

People in general definitely will, it's significantly worse than being asked to swear you don't molest your children or something, coercing mind-controlling oaths...

It'd be hard to exploit that feature of oaths. People know better than to give them. 

Good.
I see why people take oaths so much more seriously than just being unbreakable would deserve.

Oh, yeah. They tell us as kids, 'imagine someone says to you 'something really awful just happened, I want to explain, but I need you to swear you'll trust me for ten minutes, just trust me long enough to explain, and imagine you swear that. And then, now that you are under an oath that makes you trust them, they say 'someone's about to come around the corner and when they do I need you to swear to do what I say' and you do that and someone comes around the corner and they say 'swear me eternal servitude' - that's it. 

Oaths are incredibly dangerous. 

And just swearing that specific things are true doesn't have that problem, but culturally overreacting toward safety is a really good idea.