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.

Xavier sees what Joan-Pau is doing and thinks this is hilarious.

He does think that there are many Rahadi who would support the reconquest, though one might need to select them with care - the cities are powerful centers of the Pure Legion, after all, and they may have families that fear reprisal.

Aniol thinks they need to get their own house in order before repatriating old territory. It's not that he doesn't see the appeal, but they still have a great many of their own unambiguously Chelish citizens bound for Hell for this reason or that, and have not even begun to decide what the government (apart from the Queen herself) will look like, and apparently some people think they are going to be trying radical reforms like forcibly and without compensation appropriating and manumitting all of everybody's slaves, which any Abadaran could tell you would be a wrongheaded idea and only the more so if you drag additional lands into it.

Alfons-Valentí is also capable of not insulting his fellow nobility and so sips his wine and murmurs an acknowledgement of the importance of caring for the core of the country as well, rather than anything about traitors and collaborators.

Mass manumission is probably a prerequisite to Andoran's return to the fold, and if it's all they hold out for she'll consider that a great success.

Andoran may change; it hasn't existed in its current form for all that long and older nations than it have radically altered. Twice. In living memory. They can leave it until later and cross that bridge when they come to it, perhaps when there's a budget to pay for the slaves instead of lawlessly stealing them.

Xavier thinks the longer they leave the provinces of the empire autonomous, the longer they will come to believe that the people of Cheliax are not their estranged kinsmen, but foreign foes, that this will harm relations when reunification comes, and that this may call for sacrifices in the name of restoring the Empire swiftly rather than allowing the bonds among its people to decay further.

Berenguer-Aspex is of a differing opinion. "Can't unshatter eggs, Xavier." Andoran, Rahadoum, Molthune, Galt - they're all their own countries. Their leaders won't settle down and be Archdukes, tomorrow or today.

Berengeur-Aspex gets a supportive nod.

... Joan-Pau thinks that while this may be true for Galt and Andoran, Rahadoum has many who would leap to join any state that didn't hang priests who offered daily channels, and Molthune is hardly under a stable government, not with so much of the population already upset with the state's land reform schemes and then made still more furious about the Lord Protector over his open alliance with diabolists failure to intervene in the Four Day War.

Carlota thinks that while Molthune is the most reasonable starting point some pessimists are overstating the difficulties Galt and Andoran pose. Cyprian is wedded to the Queen, after all, and Andoran is (nominally) ruled by a paladin who will probably just ask Iomedae whether the reunion of the Empire is Good or not - so they just have to make it Good - and (de facto) ruled by Morgethai, who in addition to the Empire being Good probably wants it to turn cartwheels. So be it. Some things are worth turning cartwheels for.

And how would one "just" go about making it Good? (Wouldn't it also have to be Lawful, to suit a paladin?)

Well, reunification would put a stop to all the piracy. That's Good. And Lawful.

And a united Empire would be more prosperous, and better equipped to address trouble when it inevitably again arises, and could perhaps reintroduce to Andoran, with the delicacy of a gardener trying to get a graft to take, those traditional values they jettisoned mistaking them for diabolism. She of course has not tested the waters with the Church - who's their senior delegate here, the Queen's friend Cansellarion? - but she thinks it's attainable. 

Would it actually alleviate Inner Sea piracy, though, or would it only do that if they also abolished slavery? Not that he's opposed, per se, but he's opposed to doing it without paying whoever's holding the bag of slips at the end of the day.

Back in his day the government hanged pirates instead of pinning medals on to them, and there was less piracy. It's possible this was just a coincidence, but he doesn't really buy it.

The piracy would stop because instead of being governed by Morgethai, who approves of it, they'd be governed by the Queen and she wouldn't. Carlota finds it a little baffling to spend much time worrying about manumission. It's not that she's fervently supportive - she expects the situation will end up much the same with different contracts whose subjects of course can't read them - but diabolists have no property rights, as a general principle, and everyone who acquired slaves under the previous regime is at least under suspicion of being a diabolist, it's not as if the recently resurrected are going around making acquisitions. It would be a difficult situation for the recipients of a diabolist's inheritance but truly, if she were the recipient of a diabolist's inheritance she'd give it all to Iomedae immediately and still not count her soul clean of it. She's not sure it's a kindness to the children of diabolism to make them also its beneficiaries.

"Well, it's no secret that when I was a child - of diabolists, as it happens, as most of modern Chelish folks are - I parted with my soul, and being stolen from isn't going to get it back for me, eager though I am to solve the problem."

Oh, he had not imagined that they were in such mixed company.

The new Archduke of the Heartlands is the inheritor of a vast estate that has been ruled by diabolists for much, much longer than the rest of Cheliax, and is not entirely sure that he has any money at all that will not taint his soul to spend. He is donating his entire income to the Church of Iomedae for the time being, and though he took out a loan from the Abadarans to cover his expenses, and spent some of it on hiring one of them to audit his finances for Evil, he does not currently have enough money to rent a house worthy of his station. So he's here, unpleasant as he expects cavorting with a bunch of recently-deconverted diabolists to be.

He arrives late, not to be fashionable but because in fact he only got back to the capital this afternoon. He's managed to acquire some fashionable-for-this-era clothes, but his speech is still distinctly accented in a way that does not immediately suggest any of the extant provinces of the Empire.

"Oh, are we discussing reunification?" he says as he takes his seat. "When I was born, the Empire was united, and I don't in fact recommend it."

"Oh, tell us about that, our lovely hostess has invited persons both recent and un-" since some people seem to only just be realizing that, he was invited, anyone can look up the fact that he wasn't dug up out of a statuary backroom or resurrected having died at a fetchingly young age a century ago - "and I'd love a firsthand history."

"Alfonso Blanxart," he's using his mother's name both for the obvious reason and because it's the source of his claim to the Heartlands, "onetime Count of Egorian before the Thrunes stole it. That was about 700 years before they stole the country. They were sorcerers, and everyone knew they were tieflings but couldn't entirely prove it, and the Emperor had no power to stop them, because he was weak, and far away, and corrupted by that pit of serpents called Oppara. Aspex did the right thing when he rebelled."

"That I have never doubted. But Oppara seems no better now that it governs practically nothing, and the old Empire was at its height when it was also at its largest."

"Of course; all empires are." Discussing history is so much better than discussing politics even if they're basically the same subject displaced in time. "Expansion and the project of Civilization give the ambitious something to do; when those cease, people who want power inevitably turn to petty, self-destructive scheming, or for that matter to pacts with Hell. Civilize Varisia, destroy the undead of Ustalav, restore our hold in Sargava, by all means. With three archmages to make Teleportation Circles for us we can have an empire on which the Sun never sets. But why should we force unity on other civilized nations that have no desire for it?"

"Why presume they have no desire for it? There are men of Andoran clamoring outside the doors, eager to be invited to this convention; the people of Rahadoum dare not speak their desires, but I doubt it is to die in childbirth; Galt began the process of reuniting the Empire nearly the minute they were independent of it."

"Does Galt want the Empire reunited, or does Cyprian? Galt was rebellious seven hundred years ago, and if Cyprian does succeed in making his marriage a marriage of empires, it will be rebellious again inside another generation. As for Rahadoum, I know little of it, but it seems a worthy experiment even if we must now deem it to have failed. Are we not all commanded to eventually surpass our gods?"

"We are, of course. But to surpass them through growing ourselves is very different than to surpass them by grinding their servants into the dirt. There is no glory in winning a race by laming your rival's horse."

On the one hand: PRIMARY SOURCE for 700 YEARS OLD HISTORY. On the other, "One might then ask, why not yield to the clerics of Erastil and have no settlement larger than a village? Villagers across Avistan clamor for no taxes, no lords, no men-at-arms at all - and then, should they get it, are overrun by orcs or eaten by dragons. Asmodeus could conquer one part of Cheliax because it was divided against itself until the hour was too late, but united even a god would have failed - and the greater the unity, the greater the realm, the greater our power to cast down the dark gods themselves. I do not know if we wish to reunite with Andoran, but that is not because of their desires or lack thereof or because unity is not stronger than division, or because I would not plant the flag of Aspex on the stars themselves - it is because there are better ways to solve Inner Seas piracy than to risk a deadly war with a ninth circle wizardess, should she still prefer independence."

On the other, he's wrong.

To Sanaüja—"I don't by any means claim to approve of all Rahadoum's methods. I have no desire to see women die in childbirth, and it's deplorable to let them when help would be so easy. But I don't think Aroden wanted a Cheliax so dependent on him that it collapsed into thirty years of war when he died, either. And every woman that Iomedae saves from dying in childbirth is some fraction of a soul she can't afford to save from Hell. If we could heal people without invoking the gods, that would be better for both us and them."

To Joan-Pau—"There is a certain size of empire at which the inefficiencies of administration begin to eclipse the advantages of unity; Taldor, in my day, was larger than that. In this day, perhaps with the Teleportation Circles and such, the limit is larger. I don't claim to know for sure. Though I will observe, on the subject, that while Cheliax has a vast surplus of wizards compared to what I'm used to, most of the teleporters it has are those foolish enough to have sold their souls to Hell, which seems like it could become a problem."

"Which is why a way to substitute the contractees out is so essential a national priority!"

"Yes, being infernal it was rather leaking its best wizards. It has a few more now." Three archmages and him, say. "- And the world has changed. Teleport Circle. Faster ships. Mass wizard training. Oppara was and is a pit; Westcrown can do better. We are all commanded to surpass our ancestors, and now we can."

"I can't say I see it as in any way a national priority to offer people who have damned themselves any more aid than a Final Blade. They may of course pursue some solution themselves, but it defies comprehension to suggest that they are owed one, rather than themselves owing the Queen eternal gratitude that they are not yet in Hell."

Yeah, Xavier's with her. Nice to know what Aniol's mission here is, though.

(Ah, Joan-Pau. He'd be a cleric if his god wasn't dead. You live in the world you live in, though.)

"Senyor Reixach, are you not aware that damning another to save your own soul is, in fact, Evil, and will leave you no less damned?"

"I'm not that old. And I do think it should be a priority, a national one. Not so much for myself, I suppose replacing a few more nobles might not trouble Her Majesty much as she's already done so much of it and I wouldn't suggest she ought to pay me any personal mind - but the wizards. The archmages aren't going to want to handle every teleport themselves, and our national supply of arcane power is substantially in hock to Hell! A bulk solution would be a tremendous improvement to Chelish sovereignty and security, and as long as there is one certainly I'd like to participate, but that's not my argument."

"Was in hock to Hell," says fourth-circle-at-forty Berenguer-Aspex Riner. "Damn sure many of the ones who got away are coming back now there's someone to come back to."

If they destroyed Nidal and sent all its souls to Hell—no, best leave that line of argument to people actually qualified to make tradeoffs like that, not to ex-Asmodeans.

"Of course it's a security risk," he says instead, "but I don't think there's anything conscionable to be done about it except the mercy of a Final Blade, as the good Duchess said. And we have the infrastructure, now, to have vastly more wizards than any empire in history, and no more reason for them to flee as soon as they can Teleport. We'll replace the ones we lost, eventually."

"If there is anything to be done, I'm sure, the only people alive who could do it are the Archmagi Cotonnet. And I wouldn't put it past them; it's an impossible deed, but it's said that all archmages can do a few of those, and I'm more inclined to believe that these days than I was in my youth. But even were they tomorrow to release all from their contracts, they would still nearly all be damned, in their own right, for collaboration with diabolists and for the deeds done in their service. So were I in such a position I imagine I'd set myself to ceasing to deserve Hell, and then hope that someone else devises a way for that to be sufficient."

"Do you have reliable information to the effect that good deeds done without title to one's soul accrue in the same way as they do for the self-owned?"

"Were the secrets of judgment ever revealed to me I have forgotten them, but if neither gratitude for Her Majesty's mercy nor self-interest nor piety can inspire you to Goodness without an ironclad assurance from Pharasma that She's attending to it then I daresay you're damned at least twice over."

"I'm not going about doing wicked deeds because I might as well, you understand, but if I'm going to give away my fortune I would like to time it to benefit the donor as well as the beneficiary."

"I think it is shortsighted to contemplate only Pharasma's judgment, in that."

"Why? There will be temples and beggars in a year, or in five."

Because the realm's true nobles may be more tolerant of traitors and collaborators in their midst if they at least act abjectly sorry about it and aim at once to demonstrate their loyalty, but if he hasn't picked that up she won't spell it out. She turns her back on him instead. "Conde, you knew my grandfather? I've found myself wishing of late that I could more cheaply consult him for advice."

"I knew him, though as much by reputation as by personal acquaintance." He can tell a little anecdote involving the old Duke, one of Carlota's uncles, a blink dog, and a dire lion. It paints the duke in a reasonably good light, but as stories go its main virtues are that it is both true and one of the few where Alfons-Valentí can provide a firsthand account. "I'm afraid I don't remember any of his sage advice, and if I did it would likely not be applicable to the changed times we find ourselves in today."

Jilia received the invitation late and so arrived late, and sat down while her hostess was absorbed in a conversation. Listening is a good way to orient herself in any case, and she is both under-dressed and under-studied for this company, despite her best efforts. The conversation will drift around again, she's sure, and she will have opportunity to make herself memorable.

Carlota will drift over once there's a gap in the conversation and she can do so courteously. She has a servant Messaging her to put faces to names when new people arrive, not that 'the only Archduchess' requires it. How is the Archduchess finding everything? What evils have been necessary to root out of Ravounel?

Everything is very pleasant and the mansion is of course delightful. Barzilai Thrune was certainly a major problem, but the archmages killed him in a handful of moments and Jilia's soul was soon rescued from his trap, and really other than the problems Ravounel has had since Aspex's day, the evils have not been so bad.

"The Goods, on the other hand, have given me no end of headache. We were fortunate enough to have some resurrected rebels from the time of the Civil War returned to us, and I owe them my freedom from Thrune's soul trap, but they insist Ravounel ought to declare its independence and I cannot persuade them otherwise."

"Oh no. Has word reached Ravounel that the Queen fought the Tarrasque, here?" If they go to war with her they'll lose.

"Yes, but I'm not sure that they believe it. And they suspect sir Archmage Cotonnet will support them in their desires, if it comes down to it, and possibly his wife as well, seeing as she was the one to raise them and must therefore agree... I've had more success on the latter count than the former."

"I will admit that the Archmage Cotonnet is a mystery to me but he hasn't intervened even for Galt, where one would expect him to have stronger feelings. ...I don't envy you. I'd rather root out a hundred diabolists than have to try talking spirited revolutionaries down from treason."

"I'm at least the right woman for the job; they respect the opinion of the common people, particularly in my city of Kintargo, and there'd surely be rebellion already without my popularity there. But yes, it's exhausting to try to keep peace between two sides who ought to be my allies and who want, near as I can tell, the same things."

"Is there some symbolic concession on offer that'd satisfy them? Ravounel has a special status, Kintargo is a free city and elects all its mayors, the constitution guarantees some - I'm sorry, I don't know much about revolutionaries, you'd think the pamphlets would be informative but they really aren't -"

"I hope so, but I haven't found it yet. I'm hoping whatever the Queen approves for the constitution will be something that reassures them she isn't planning... some unspecified tyranny the moment they turn their backs. I'll certainly have to lobby against any sort of union or conquest with our eastern neighbors, even Isger, or they'll be insufferable."

"But surely the cause of freedom would be better served by Isger being elevated to an archduchy whose ruler sits among equals than a satellite state directly held by the Queen in her person!"

"Ah, but, you see, it would show she's conquering and trying to secure her power and enforce uniformity... Or some such argument, I think it is very much a matter of emotion and aesthetic, not logic or even solid principle. My last resort, if I think they cannot be dissuaded, is to beg Her Majesty to make Ravounel independent on much the same terms as Isger, with myself or another kept as an intermediate vassal. I am mostly confident they would accept that as enough independence, and it's much less symbolic than I'd like, even if the Queen approves."

"I don't think Cheliax can afford to be splintered even slightly, not now."

"It does seem a remarkably poor time for it. But no god ever promised us that we will only face challenges we are equal to."

"My intent for the convention is to propose a series of committees - on the rights of the churches, on neighborly relations, on rooting out diabolism, on taxation - so that we can get the thing written in a group that's small enough to be functional. It sounds like it'd be most useful to you to chair something on - the rights of the Queen's subjects? Andoran-style?"

"That sounds appropriate. I can negotiate with the few radicals I'm sure have slipped in one way or another, and the Asmodean tendencies, and write something sane and moderate."

Jilia sighs, and shrugs.

"But I've been monopolizing the topic, haven't I? Are there matters you've been preoccupied with?"

"I thought I had it bad before I heard how many more problems everyone else had!" And she'll pull in the Archduke of Sirmium to retell his mummy lord story, which is also a good opportunity to ask him which committee he wants to chair. 

The Archduke of Sirmium will tell his mummy lord story again! It's a good story. The mummy lord had apparently been there since halfway throught he war, apparently; he was an adventurer who'd spend his fortune building some tremendously garish buildings - ever been to Ostenso? Seen the Tower of God in Man? Exactly. - rose as undead when someone looted his tomb in the war and then discovered half his buildings had been torn down and nobody'd ever heard of them and devoted the rest of his unlife to assassinating and scheming and plotting everyone who stood between him and preserving the rest and building newer, ghastlier ones "dedicated to the memory of Jhandorage Vaulnder Alexayn". Undead.

Committee on Borders and Geography seems particularly important. He expects Her Majesty the Queen will appoint a closer acquaintance of hers to chair the committee on War*, but he hopes to have a seat.

(*: The euphemism "National defense" is anachronistic.)

Undead, indeed. Speaking of the Queen's close acquaintances, has anyone been properly introduced to the Inquisitor Shawil? Or the paladin Cansellarion? An acquaintance of the Queen who isn't an eccentric political radical seems like they might be of use in planning for the convention to be productive.

Xavier has a passing acquaintance with Cansellarion, but not well; they both have lands in the upper reach*, but his cousin Feliu knows him somewhat better; they served at the Worldwound together.

(*: Euphemism for Molthune, the northernmost province of Cheliax, referring to Molthune specifically as a province of Cheliax.)

"We've spoken; I spent some time at his new estate at Lladó, after I was turned back from stone. We didn't get much into politics, but he seems a sensible man, and devoted to the Goddess."

"Everything I've heard speaks very well of him. But manages not to include any political opinions. The Church when I knew it was pointedly disinterested in Chelish politics but they can't be pleased with how that turned out."

"One might suspect his political opinions are ones he doesn't care to express; perhaps he wants to avoid antagonizing the Archmage?"

"The alliance of the Archmagi is certainly worth a great deal to Cheliax even if substantial concessions must be made for it. But - many of us long to hear from the Church about how it sees the Goddess's greatest priorities in the present. ...do you suppose he'll actively take offense, if I have him chairing the committee for it? No one else'll take it for fear of insulting him."

"He obviously should chair it, and I don't imagine him to be the sort of man to take offense at anything true."

"I imagine a chair can be scrupulously neutral as well as a delegate, should he feel the need. And if he should choose not to attend, there will be no fear of insult. ...You might ask him first if he ought to chair War, if we are to have it, and you have the opportunity."

"I don't want to overstep... we're here in service of Her Majesty and there's no way a horde of six hundred people can do anything faintly useful, and there's too much important work we're leaving undone at home to let this drag out as a performance. But I don't want to appear to be weighing in on any appointment which she'd naturally have an interest in."

"That's fair enough. I rather suspect she won't permit us to render opinions on war at all; that seems the last thing you'd surrender willingly, if you intended to keep calling yourself a monarch."

"You could task the committee with, I don't know, the forms she ought to use when she calls us to war, whether to readopt the Imperial ones. ...possibly the wisest course, really, is to have all of the headline committees tasked with things like that and all of the working committees that actually need to get something done titled something like 'a report commissioned for the queen on strategic and diplomatic questions surrounding rapprochement with our northern neighbors'." She raises an eyebrow at her scribe to make sure he caught that.