Free Citizens of Cheliax! Beware the evil in your midst! This evil stretches from the dockyards of Corentyn to the fortresses of Menador. It is found in the streets and markets of every great city, in the fields that grow our food, in our very homes. If left alone it will drag you into Hell where the Torment is Unending. I speak of the evil of Slavery.

The institution of slavery was forced upon the people of Cheliax by the church of Asmodeus, who prizes it above all things. Our noble ancestors fought against it and we must as well! To be a master to slaves may seem to offer riches and leisure but that is a fool's pursuit, the honey which tempts you into the maw of the beast. To take a slave is to put yourself into the hands of Hell! To keep one is to remain there, complacent, as the flensing knives and fiery rods are made ready.

There is but one solution, Citizens of Cheliax! First you must be rid of your slaves! Profit only from the toil of your own hands, and not the forced labors of others! But that can only be a temporary solution, an expedient to save our individual souls. It will not be enough to save the Soul of the Nation! We must be rid of all slaves! Slaves are the poison of Dis! Treat them as you would any other poison! Drive them from our soil as a purging agent drives toxins from the body! Cleanse them with fire as a fever burns away venoms!

Some may say that the slaves should be Free Citizens. This is mercy, but it is also folly. How can any slave be a citizen? They are too subservient by nature to participate truly in a nation of citizens! They would be nothing but puppets for corrupt nobility, or foreign princes, or Hell itself, for they can be naught but puppets. Do not forget how they came here! To keep half-slaves in our midst, "Free" by law but not by temperament, would be sowing the seeds of our return to damnation. The People would be Tempted, by Greed or by Pity to return these Natural Servants to a state of bondage, and in doing so would invite the devil back into our midst.

Citizens! Will you allow yourselves to be Damned again? You must not! Our freedom and salvation is not yet achieved! No wizard can do this for us. Only Citizens can make a nation of Citizens, a nation without slavery or slaves!

Citizens of Cheliax! People of Westcrown! I call upon you now to safeguard our nation in its direst hour.

You all know how our city has been host to a great Convention which shall give our Nation its first Constitution. But that noble purpose has been betrayed!

A Chosen of Iomedae has identified numerous traitors and diabolists, saboteurs and agents of Hell, within the very Convention itself! They will corrupt our nation's law and return us to the slavery and bondage! They will sell us to Asmodeus to gild their own Hellish prisons! Here are the words of Valia Wain, faithful servant of the Inheritor:

 

This morning the Committee for Combating Diabolism used powerful magic to check that of our members who was drawn from the Chelish people, by sortition, to see if she was Evil and merely too weak to show it. Pharasmins can do this.She was not Evil. We also sought the advice of senior and experienced members of this body to identify those who are Evil and by magics hiding it, and we found two among our committee who were so guilty, one among the nobles and one among the elected.

Following this discovery, Delegate Ibarra, a member of our committee, confessed that he was secretly Evil, that he worshipped Norgorber, that he had burned children to death in their homes as part of his campaign to get revenge on someone who had wronged him, and that while that someone was 'Asmodeus' he would as happily have murdered innocents in the pursuit of his vengeance if he'd considered himself wronged by Erastil. 

The Archduke Blanxart stood firmly against removing Delegate Ibarra from our committee on these grounds. I know the Archmage Cotonnet stands firmly against removing anyone from this convention on these grounds. They are wise men and they speak of history and I have, perhaps, no right to disagree with them. But I disagree with them. I think it would be easier to do the very painful and complicated work that we have to do here if the unrepentant powerful Evildoers were, for a moment, excluded from the room. 

...

Do our discussions of important measures for our starving people run aground in pointless bickering? Perhaps it is because half the nobles in this room are men and women who first gave their oaths to Abrogail Thrune, and who as far as the Judge can see have not repented of it. Perhaps it is because the Hellknights are unabolished and present and about their Hellknight work, and some of them still proudly worshipful of Asmodeus alongside Iomedae. Perhaps it is because we are caught up in debates about whether all the gods in Hell serve Hell and whether it is troubling to serve one of those. Perhaps it is because a delegate can confess to my face to horrible murders of innocent people, can assure us he does not regret them at all and has benefitted richly from them, and still the most powerful men in this country think we have no business desiring a committee without him.

Afraid of what? Afraid of me?  I am not powerful; any man strong enough to radiate Evil is strong enough to kill me in one blow.

Afraid of Elie Cotonnet? No, for he invited you all, and he has said that we are forbidden from requesting that you be expelled, or indeed from debating whether your deeds and your history ought to be an impediment to your participation.

You should be afraid of the people of Cheliax.

 For they are not in the end different from the people of Pezzack; we are all one people. The people of Cheliax know what you did to them. They witness how you have prospered from it. The only thing that stays them from retaliation is the fear that they are, themselves, as guilty as you, and as damned. But they aren't, so your peace is a lie. If I were you I would repent while you still can. I would give up your lands and your titles and your slaves and your riches; I would cease to impede the functioning of this convention with your petty Evil dealings; I would go to the Worldwound where your victims cannot reach you. That is my advice.

But to everyone else my advice is, be unafraid. This is our country. We are a strong people, a brave people, a good people. Asmodeus always feared us, and all the riches of Hell still left his grip so weak one theatre-hall of people could shake a city free of it. 

 

Do you see, people of Westcrown? We are betrayed to Hell. Our salvation cannot be a gift by a foreign archmage or a puppet queen. It can only be taken with our own hands. The new queen, traitor to the revolution in Galt, has betrayed us here in Cheliax as well! She decrees that none may incite others to violence. She says that she will hang any who calls for the cauterizing of the cancer among us. So I name her a liar or a tyrant! Let her hang me, if she dares. She shall make of me a martyr for the Revolution.

If Julien Élie Camille Cotonnet will stand aside and deny us the justice we desire, we can borrow his example and take it for ourselves. We do not have gallows enough for every puppet of Hell? So be it! We shall hang them from the lamp-posts!

Go forth, people of Westcrown, citizens of Cheliax! Cut down every servant of the devil! Hack every tiefling limb from limb! Purge the hall of the convention of each evildoer within! Burn the mansions and torture gardens of the nobility, and send every master who lurks there to the Hell that they serve! Citizens of Westcrown, we will prevail! The blades and conjured hellfire of the devils' servants cannot overcome our righteous wrath, cannot stand against our will to liberation. Each man who dies in driving out the diabolists dies a martyr. For him the summerlands! For him eternal bliss! For the enemies of Liberty, the torments of Hell! Send them swiftly to that fate!