He has the grace to look sheepish. “Er, essentially. In the context of necromancy, that’s the accepted rule for what’s… legally permissible. Any self-aware humanoid will have a black soul. The main flaw, if you ask me, is that plenty of self-aware creatures have white souls. Whether it’s fair to trap them is a matter of personal opinion. Sorry, I’m not used to discussing these things with anyone who doesn’t know them already.”

In turn he tries to imagine buried wires stretching across the length and breadth of Tamriel: it’s an astonishing image, still more if he considers the effort it would take to implement. And then manipulating the electricity, translating it into some sort of message… keeping the imps off the lines...

“Whether they’re your messages, to begin with. How big an electrical impulse would you need to cross those distances?”

Hey, you have to go mad before you can deliver to New Sheoth…