"To your question, Delegate Wain, it really depends on what is meant by diabolism. A cleric of hell will detect as evil, if he hasn't put up anything else to prevent another cleric from seeing it. A person who serves Asmodeus without getting any power in return, well... I can show any person where he's going, but it's only for him to see. You could ask him under truth spell after, but of course that's quite a bit of magic."

"I am interested, Delegate Ferrer, in protecting the innocent, and in protecting the rule of law. Can we proceed to concrete proposals, rather than arguing generalities?"

"The proposal I am contemplating is that any person who is Evil should be barred forever from holding any position of power in Cheliax, and anyone who persists in it put to death. We don't have to determine guilt and innocence - Pharasma did that for us. The Judge does not err, and Her judgments are knowable with magic. We are not permitted by the Archmage to punish any deed that is in the past - but seeking power while Evil is a deed done in the present."

"Even if you just started by eliminating— open servants of Hellish gods, and vampires, and former priests of Asmodeus, and anyone else that everyone already knows has done great evil, that still seems like it would be an improvement over the present situation! And not one that would risk the life of innocents, unless you think there are innocent priests of Asmodeus running around. If the law says you should let murderers and rapists and Hellpriests go free then the law is wrong."

Valia Wain is going to get murdered by Alfirin and he'd really rather that not happen, but it's not like he can stop it.

Aspexia del Mar, who has Undetectable Alignment up, will nod along to Victoria and Valia.

" - every person who persists in seeking power while evil, or any person who persists in being evil at all?"

She does not sound incredibly calm, but holy shit.

"Being evil is a sin, but anyone who is evil can be redeemed in time. The most critical part is ensuring that they don't have power over others, and that they not damn others alongside them."

"I agree with that, but would add that they should also be prevented from hurting others, including by deterrence."

"What counts as power, are we sniffing out every bad husband?"

"I think as a simple matter of practicality we cannot go over every peasant in the country with Detect Evil. Even a wizard won't detect until third circle."

"If someone persists in being Evil but possesses and seeks no power they are at the least not a priority, not when so many people who are Evil seek and hold power. 

...I was thinking mostly of being wealthy, or being titled, or owning other people, or being entitled by law to command them. Husbands are not entitled by law to command their wives; they command them, inasmuch as they do, mostly because the wife would be worse off if she left. ...a husband who prevents his wife from leaving him with force, yes, that's power and he should die."

"I think focusing on 'redemption' is missing the point. If a lord orders his servants whipped to death for minor transgressions, then even if he stops, and even if he's removed from power, it doesn't undo or repay the wrong he did."

She nods to Alexandre; it's a fair argument.

"Agreed. But that also holds true for why not detecting evil isn't good enough - a wholly neutral magistrate is not a problem, but an evil one too weak to detect is. Unless there's a way to rule them out that I haven't heard of, perhaps we out to limit the truly important positions to those lawful or chaotic neutral, or obviously those who are Good. As for those who used to be evil, but have since repented... I would certainly be suspicious of whether they just hid it, but if they have truly left their wicked ways behind, then that is a success, not a failure."

"I agree with you," she says to Victoria. "If I ruled Cheliax, he would be prosecuted for his crimes. But I don't, and he hasn't been, and we're not empowered to propose a change to that, because the Archmage is powerful and chooses the powerful over the powerless, and would rather that no wrong ever be righted than that a powerful man be inconvenienced for a crime that happened in the past. But I can't fight the archmage, and you can't fight the archmage. What we can at least do for the victims of the evil lord is have him removed from power, and punished if he persists in Evil and does not leave."

"Possibly you could allow complaints to be delivered - through the new churches, maybe - to have some sort of priority, if a man terrorizing his wife and kids is a lower priority than a baron is a lower priority than a duke, as the duke will have more people under him who might complain."

Well, strictly speaking, killing people doesn't fix what they did, either, but that seems unlikely to ingratiate her with the Calistrian.

"Only a few men prevent their wives from leaving them, but almost all parents prevent their children from doing so. Do all of them have enough power that the evil ones must be killed?"

"........Should some other constitutional convention, ruled by, uh, Chelish people for ourselves instead of by Galtan archmages, find themselves in such a situation, I would say that they should avenge all the obvious grave evil that everyone knows about."

"Again I agree with Victoria, but taking the question as a good faith one and not an attempt to distract us from the more obvious problems...Certainly we should accept complaints from children about ill-treatment at the hands of their evil parents! I know of evil parents who beat their children to death, and they were less cruel than the ones who raised their children to sell their souls. I would much sooner every Evil parent in the realm fear their children might denounce them to the good churches. 

I like Ester's proposal. It lets us prioritize but also lets everyone know there's someone who'll care, if there's an Evil person who has power over them."

"I'm entirely serious. I just - I would expect that the number of parents who would be judged evil, were they to die today, is more than half of them. I don't want children to have to live in fear of them. But I don't think that orphaning children generally leaves them free."

"Under Ester's proposal, we would as part of the inevitable prioritization task before us wait for someone who is under the power of an Evil person to denounce that Evil person. One imagines that a child would only denounce their parents if it would in fact make them freer."

"Well, only they might have little brothers and sisters, there is that."

"How would we make sure that everyone is able to denounce Evil people with power over them? People need travel passes just to leave their hometowns, and there aren't enough priests most places that you could just have the churches hear it in people's hometowns. If your lord is Evil, and being Evil refuses you a travel pass, you'd be left with no recourse."

"Abolish travel passes," he says. "Allow every man in the nation to travel freely. Andoran has no travel passes. Absalom has no travel passes. Why do we need them?"

(Other, that is, than to make it easier to catch runaways from wizard school who happen to be engaging in occasional banditry to feed themselves. But he's opposed to that.)

"I don't see any good reason for travel passes. And - maybe there's few enough lords we can start by going around checking if each lord is Evil. With the good Pharasmin spell that works even on people who don't shine like a torch for every paladin in the room. We could start right here at the convention, all the most important lords are gathered here. 

And then if all of those aren't Evil, then everyone at least knows if they can get all the way to the local lord he's not Evil and he can't refuse too many innocent people in need or he'll become Evil and die for it."