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Tolkien said something similar about orcs - that they were aware of good behaviour and bad - viz Shagrat and Gorbag's conversation, where they spoke of 'a few trusty lads' and one didn't trust the other when he was 'mad for fun,' nor the other's lads, nor all of his own. The good behaviour would be 'good behaviour among villains/honour amongst thieves,' I guess. They also thought to heartlessly leave a corpse of a fellow being unburied a 'regular elvish trick.'
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"Sit by the firelight's glow; tell us an old tale we know. Tell of adventures strange and rare; never to change, ever to share! Stories we tell will cast their spell, now and for always."
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