Aniol is delighted by the invitation! He scared up an inn room at a tolerable inn, but he's historically been the kind of person who has every random baron over for supper if they're passing though his march, and he misses the society. Besides, he's hoping to form a bloc, and most likely there will be other members of the bloc there.

He's not sure how fashionable it is to be fashionably late, nor how late it is fashionable to be, in either of Westcrown or Chelam, so he appears on time.

The count of Sanaüja was far from the greatest of the nobility of his day, before the thrice-damned Thrunes slaughtered all the true nobles in the whole realm. Today, though? The Archmage Naima raised many, but many more of those worthy to return chose to remain in Heaven or Axis instead; Those who did return are mixed in with the descendants of traitors and collaborators and barbarians, which in Alfons-Valentí's mind makes him senior to most, in the proper ordering of things at least if not in formal station.

When he travels to Westcrown for the convention he settles in on the outskirts of the city, away from the rabble. Of course, he's happy to travel into the city to meet the other notables! He never met the new duchess of Chelam, but he did know her grandfather back in the day and knew him to be an honorable man.

Xavier Armand Requena i Cortes's ancestors were also very far from the greatest of the nobility of his day! His great-grandfather was a mere count, and his paternal line is descended from an adventuring wizard a mere hundred and thirty years before the start of the Age of Lost Omens. Also, through his mother he is (most of two hundred years back - Great-Great--Great-Grandpa was a very impressive adventuring wizard) descended from the Henderthanes, which is why he gets to be on this list, because he is now Archduke of Sirmium, The Whole Thing, The Breadbasket Of The Empire Though To Be Fair That Is Less True Than It Was When We Had Plant Growth. Also the place with Brastlewark in it. He is perhaps less enthusiastic about Brastlewark than he might otherwise be.

He does not have anywhere near as fine a place to entertain (though he is indeed renting somewhere suitable to entertain a small company), and is pleased by this generous offer. He will come to Carlota's party.

(Also attending is Aspexia del Mar Lluisa Gosol! She is going to say as little as she possibly can because she is thirteen and this is her first Meeting In The Halls Of Power, which are very important especially if you are a song-sorceress and a countess.)

- And Berenguer-Aspex Riner, veteran and Duke of Tendrui, also here in full extremely fancy uniform with extremely fancy medals and the expected magic items. His bloodline goes back significantly further than the Archduke's, he's not a parvenu, but he does rather act like one.

And, of course, the count of Gandisa, Joan-Pau Ardiaca, a product of Molthune's plot to have everyone with sorcerer powers to have as many kids as possible so one of them would be competent, currently in exile from Molthune over a trifling matter of grand piracy.

It's not that much of a secret that he's in debt, nor that he's unmarried, nor that he's a wizard who can Teleport four times a day.

Xavier is happy to share the gossip, but in his case it's mostly horror stories of Sirmium. Two of their prewar counts are undead. One is a devil, just literally a devil. One of their dukes was apparently murdered by three of his children, simultaneously, through separate means. His second-largest city is economically dominated by a mummy lord running an international smuggling firm. The great dam of Sant Martí de Tous broke and now most of the duchy of Rocamora is swamp.

(He isn't the hero of most of these stories, but he's in a hero-adjacent position. The heroes are the vast collection of Molthuni exiles he managed to smuggle into Sirmium to run it, who are doing all sorts of heroic things while he attempts to coordinate them.)

Xavier is not married! Xavier is really very busy right now pacifying Sirmium and of course in the long term he'll need to get married...

(But right now, the message is, he is alas married to his job.)

He'd love to hear what Axis was like.

Aspexia del Mar will say nothing unless spoken to.

Joan-Pau thinks that he's managed to use druids reasonably well as a substitute for foreign priests, which of course isn't ideal druids being druids but some of them have shockingly low standards after lifetimes of fighting the Asmodeans and so he expects quite a good crop, next year.

His chief aim for the convention is to try to establish the country on solid ground. He thinks her program sounds very sensible but he thinks that will be in the hands of Elié Cotonnet, who is a rather notorious radical and hardly one given to behaving sensibly under the circumstances; he has some of the man's pamphlets if she'd like to get an understanding of just who they're dealing with?

(Joan-Pau is also not married, except, of course, to his own job. He is very attractive, though.)

Berenguer-Aspex is absolutely going to talk about traitors and barbarians and the sheer unreasonableness of all these people and how slavish and treacherous the Asmodeans are and how unnatural it is to have everywhere in the country ruled by monsters! That is what he is here to do!

Things have been shockingly quiet up in Juncosa. It wasn't the sort of war with a lot of border-specific action, and there's not much else up there. Monsters happen, but he's a dab hand with a bow, and what he can't handle, various adventuring types can be hired for. One of his barons is now, not a bugbear, but a mermaid - this was to be clear previously a baron, not a baroness - and her children are graciously allowing her to live in a duck pond to bleed off her Evil while they administer the place but of course he supported the eldest son in stepping in as baron, not even regent, being a mermaid is only better than being dead in your personal life and not in your ability to rule. He's got a few Andoren Abadarans trickling in over the border, visiting without commiting, and he likes them, you know where you stand with them provided you speak Money.

Sanaüja has seen better days, but to be honest it's also seen worse. He got the county back in better shape than he left it - not due to any mismanagement on his part, of course, just mismanagement on the part of the invading armies of Hell. Fewer Erastilians than before the war, but enough to keep the harvest okay as long as they don't take any days off from their circuits. His vassals are all utterly wretched but at least they're only a human degree of wretched, no devils or mummies for him, thank Iomedae. There are dozens of minor short-term problems but his only big long-term problem is that his children preferred to stay in Heaven and so he lacks both heirs and trusted adventurers who can handle serious monster problems, should they occur.

Convention aims? Well, he's not entirely sure what this convention will be. He's read about the Galtan ones, of course, but he's much more personally familiar with the old assemblies, where the King would gather everyone who mattered and they'd petition him for new laws or help with a dragon or what have you, and then he'd ask for some new taxes and the body would vote on whether to give him them. That's what he'd assumed this convention would be, when he first got the notice and before he'd done his reading. Now, as he reads it, what went wrong in the Galtan conventions was that nobody was strong enough to stand up to the mob, but that's not going to happen here because the Queen and her allies can stand up to just about anything. So maybe it will wind up more like the old assemblies in essence, even if the form is more like the Galtan conventions.

Now, if he's right about that, he thinks it is their solemn duty to support the queen in almost whatever way she asks. In the old days he voted against the taxes as often as for them - more often, really - but that was because the empire was peaceful and stable and united. Now, by the gods, the country still needs to be put back together. That's hardly the time to be stingy!

Terrible and troubling news, most of it, for the wellbeing of the people of Cheliax, and the restoration of their nation's greatness under Her Majesty Catherine may look distant, but it's hard to beat this moment for gossip. Carlota has more courses brought out, and more wine, and sparing tales of Axis (did you know that Taldaris I still lives in a village that resembles Taldor of his era, corresponding with historians of Taldor about Taldor's achievements? That is, in a way, much of what decided her on coming back.)

And she would indeed like to know all about Elié Cotonnet, the man of the moment, in that this is presumably only happening at all because he wants it and is going to have to ultimately be satisfying to him as well as to the Queen. She is aware that he is a passionate revolutionary. It's good for a nation's soul to have a few of those, among the young. (It is not as good for a nation's soul if they become an archmage.) She presumes his sympathies to be ultimately with other young city men with strange ideas of how to run the country, but perhaps he'd be receptive if one of those were to suggest a smaller convention, of a size to actually get work done? Does he have known views about the obvious points of contention like whether the Queen's or the Duke's agents collect local taxes? Or rapprochement with Molthune and Andoran? Or whether to compensate property owners for the Andoran-style abolition that anyone can see is coming? (She's against. All the mildly clever people have sold already so it'd just be rewarding idiots for idiocy.)

Xavier agrees with Alfons-Valenti in general scope, of course. Cheliax does not need to be defended, Xheliax needs to be restored. Fortunately, Galt is already restored and in union with Cheliax, but there are still many other provinces yet unreconciled to the crown, and he suspects that will be one of the chief issues at the convention.

... He thinks, but won't quite say it in those words, that the story of Taldaris is the saddest thing he's ever heard.

Joan-Pau does not, of course, know the President personally - only by reputation - but he suspects the President to have few opinions on those topics other than a general disinterest in warfare with nations not ruled by Hell. He expects that Elié Cotonnet is chiefly interested in establishing whatever democratic elements in society he can, rather than questions of tax collection, and while Joan-Pau does not know how far his youthful opinions have moderated since he last wrote, in his pamphlets he did express some fond emotions about hanging nobles from lampposts, and so Joan-Pau suspects that as members of the lamppost clique they may, perhaps, be underestimating the scale of his agenda.

One hopes that age brings wisdom; it isn't always so. In Cotonnet's partial defense, though, he grew up ruled by diabolist nobles, yes? The only case against lampposts for those is that the Final Blade keeps Hell from making any use of them.

Indeed.

By all accounts the wayward province of Rahadoum is ruled by a council of blasphemers whose will is enforced on the people by fiends from Hell. While this is obviously not as much of a dire emergency as the diabolists ruling the empire's heart were, surely Cotonnet will not be averse to restoring the Rahadi to the empire.

...As for lamp-posts, Alfons-Valentí is sure they have little to fear. The queen and her allies would not have gone to such effort and expense to raise many of them from the dead merely to send them back.

Just as she says, so it is.

Joan-Pau suspects that perhaps the wise and noble Alfons-Valeti may be overestimating Citizen Cotonnet's patriotic devotion to Cheliax; that is to say that he has none, being a Galtan. A great many of the Queen's own allies are Rahadoumi, after all.

Ah, but will he object to the Chelish people's declaration that they wish to retake Rahadoum? Can he, without abandoning his Republican convictions?

Xavier suspects there will be more than one committee handling those matters of practical decisionmaking too complex for the state as a whole, and wonders if the Geographical Committee may find itself in an unusually interesting position in the near future.

... Berenguer-Aspex Riner wishes to say, not in quite those words, that he thinks that the thing where a Galtan archmage is running the convention is bullshit. What right does he, who does not even claim to be a citizen of Cheliax, have to try to determine their fate? If he truly has any principles, he must bow to the will of the Chelish nation and not seek to control it himself!

It hardly matters what the man's personal sense of patriotism points to! He liberated Cheliax, which was not Galt, from the forces of Hell out of sincere Goodness. Surely he would also support liberating Rahadoum from the forces of a slightly different part of Hell for much the same reason! The fact that Hell is so fractious that the Queen could play its factions off against each other does not mean that the Rahadi ruling clique are her genuine allies.

Perhaps he will want to kidnap a bunch of Rahadis and show them Cheliax and ask them to vote whether they'd choose to be a part of it. She thinks they'd come out reasonably well, if that's how he does it, but she doesn't hide that she finds it an exasperating way to do it. 

The problem (he doesn't say, at all) is that, in fact, asura aren't devils, and don't work for Hell, and indeed are at war with Hell, but this doesn't help since it is calling Alfons-Valeti kind of a moron. Unfortunately he is sufficiently busy not saying this and trying to avoid saying anything resembling this that he will drink a small amount of wine slowly and then refill his glass so he can not explain why his fellow nobles are wrong.