lintamande | don't touch me

Confirmation reaches them in the spring that Elwing of Sirion has the Silmaril.

It takes as long as the spring only because they weren't looking. They can stretch the oath that far, they can be disinterested in knowing - but now they know, and so there it is. Elwing of Sirion is twenty-three. Half-man, so fully grown. Sirion is a city of refugees. Elves and Men and, since there are Men, children. Elwing herself has infant children.

They debate whether to send messengers. Debating is allowed, even protracted debating. The Oath, these days, is loud in their minds, and louder when they're pushing it like this, but they drag out the debate for a few months. Messengers will probably be shot on sight. The last time Elwing of Sirion received news of the House of Fëanor it would have been the news that her brothers, twins, aged seven, had not survived the sack of Menegroth.

They send messengers anyway. The messengers are shot on sight. They have good armor, Fëanorian armor, and return home injured but not lethally. Maglor's songs no longer stitch them together. War makes you worse at healing. Maglor's songs are more powerful than ever - he can knock back a wave of approaching enemies, he can make a blade's next touch deadly, he can make them faster and more impervious to danger, but he can no longer do healing.

Maedhros, when he thinks about this, thinks that perhaps there needs to be part of you that is not broken for healing spells to draw on. Or perhaps the Enemy is amused to strip that away first. Perhaps the Enemy finds it suited to the theme as the Oath tugs and yanks and twists them into violence against the lands they once defended and the peoples they once sheltered.

They send messengers to Sirion again. The messengers deliver a plea for the Silmaril, an offer of anything at all in exchange. The messengers do not return at all.

The Enemy is many many hundreds of miles from here but at night Maedhros can hear him in his head. Is it so implausible that I really let you go? the Enemy likes saying. You serve me better free than you ever would have willingly.

The Oath allows them to work slowly. They begin planning the sack of the refugee camp even more slowly than the Oath allows, so slowly that its currents are constantly tugging at them. Any slower and the currents would erode all the things they care about which are not the Oath, and it would be a disaster to go to Sirion once they've been stripped of their capacity to care about anything that is not the Silmaril. So they do not hold out forever. But they work as slowly as they can.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

imeanforever

She kneels.

From:

lintamande

"Hello," Morgoth says. He must have already been told her name, because the next words are orders. "You can speak to answer questions addressed to you. Tell me everything I might want to know about how fairies work."

From:

imeanforever

Well, what might he want to know, he was unspecific about order. "We're all winged humanoids but design otherwise varies a lot. We eat plants."

He was unspecific about truth.

"Fairies come in a variety of kinds each of which have their own powers. My kind, if completely physically obliterated, returns with the ability to do sorcery outside of Fairyland, which is otherwise impossible -"

Edited Date: 2016-05-25 08:45 pm (UTC)

From:

lintamande

"Orders," Sauron says. "Explain truthfully and completely how orders work."

From:

imeanforever

"Orders can be delivered to or by any fairy. Someone who can order someone else, at least if able to act freely and unobstructed in communicating, is called their master; and those they can in principle order are their vassals. The ordering party must have fed the ordered while not already being the ordered's vassal at the time; or the ordering party must know the ordered's original name, full name in the case of a fairy vassal, partial in the case of a non-fairy vassal. Orders are fulfilled to the letter with slight but not overwhelming acknowledgment of master intent in fine-grained definitions. They can only cover volitional actions. More recent orders take precedence where there is conflict but old orders otherwise stand until rescinded or overridden. Orders cannot prevent a vassal from thinking about a topic outright. It is impossible for a vassal to harm a master even if ordered to do so. Orders wear off if the ordering party forgets the name of the ordered or if the ordering party dies. Enforcement of an order is optional and inaudible. Orders can work in writing if and only if the vassal directly observes the writing; the orders take effect then, not later."

From:

lintamande

"All right," he says. "I order you to act exactly as you think I would order you to act if I understood orders perfectly."

From:

imeanforever

She rolls her wings up. "I know your name but not his. My current orders forbid me to move except as directed by new, enforced orders or if I am removed from Angband. They forbid me to enforce orders except on designated recipients. They have me trying to guess when it's been about an hour so I can think of something to tell Maedhros to do but it's supposed to be 'random' which is difficult to do without a source of randomness and I haven't settled on an interpretation yet. I do not expect more fairies to enter this world for the foreseeable future or for there to be a way to access Fairyland in that time. I am immortal but not more durable than a mortal would be against any particular injury. Ordering hostile vassals is very difficult and this stopgap will not serve you in the long term."

From:

lintamande

"How do fairies usually manage hostile vassals?"

From:

imeanforever

"They get very, very good at issuing airtight orders, rely on themselves or non-hostile vassals for sensitive tasks if possible, they make sure escape is not a relatively appealing alternative if possible, they give self-incapacitating contingency orders in case of failure, and they make liberal use of qualifiers like 'sincere' and questions about the state of mind of the vassal."

From:

lintamande

"Is there a commitment I can offer you that would make you not a hostile vassal?"

From:

imeanforever

"I don't know what the spectrum of commitments you'd be prepared to offer for that would be, but in principle you could get me considerably less hostile."

From:

lintamande

"I plan to command the Valar and control this world. I have no particular designs on yours and am happy to grant you significant latitude if I could be confident you would not use it to work against me."

From:

imeanforever

"I am opposed to torture and death in general, would like to go home eventually if there's a way to do that from here after all, hold up better psychologically given time to draw, want him to stop touching me..."

From:

lintamande

He raises an eyebrow at Sauron, who does not take his hand off her shoulder. "It doesn't sound like we can be happy collaborators, then. Tell me, if you had the names of the Valar and ordered them to obey me, how would you expect that to go wrong from my perspective?"

From:

imeanforever

If he understood orders perfectly he would have fucking qualified that for truth and therefore - "They could interpret your instructions. They could do things to avoid hearing them. They might have some way to break fairy control, yours over me or mine over them, because they're Valar. They could warn each other if I didn't speak to them all at once. They could render me unable to communicate before I finished the order."

From:

lintamande

He nods. "Very well. Sauron, I think you owe someone the Silmarils. Kill him and bring them right back. Fairy, climb up here and sit where you can see, and then order all the orcs in this room to kill themselves. I shall feed you names."

Edited Date: 2016-05-25 09:50 pm (UTC)

From:

imeanforever

Promise gamely attempts to climb. She is pretty bad at it. She falls.

From:

lintamande

He picks her us, sets her level with his shoulder.

From:

imeanforever

...well. She can see from there.

From:

lintamande

And he can give her names.

From:

imeanforever

And she can tell orcs to kill themselves.

From:

lintamande

He gets bored before Sauron gets back. He tries lighting her on fire. That doesn't work. He tries crushing her. That doesn't work. This is intriguing. "Why can't I hurt you?"