"I am Alfonso Antoninus Blanxart, Archduke of the Heartlands, and also a follower of Iomedae, though not an empowered one," nor a fucking insane one, which isn't a thing he ought to think about a Select of the Goddess but She picked this one to lead a doomed rebellion against the Thrunes, not to attend this convention, and it shows.

"Ester Lacort of the Creator Herself."

Holy gods, Valia is so cool. The part about destroying Hell is kind of confusing (maybe she means something like getting vengeance on Asmodeus? but why talk about silencing screams?) but mostly that's drowned out by how incredibly cool she is. Victòria wants to be that brave.

"Victòria, of Calistria."

"Aspexia del Mar Lluisa Gosol, countess of Cérvoles, worshipper of Desna." Desna is the goddess of the stars, and that's where Aspexia del Mar is headed.

Well, the girl has fire, you have to give her that.

"Xènia, also of Pharasma."

Korva crosses her arms and stares as levelly as she can at the chair, who she's pretty sure hates her, although honestly her hearing wasn't working perfectly after that speech and she is not entirely sure what was said about her after it, apart from the thing where she was definitely drafted to sit on this committee. It is fairly terrifying to be seen by Iomedans. You'd think it would be less terrifying than being seen by Asmodeans, but it's been a long time since one of them has looked directly at her.

Well. Let the gladiator games begin. Her primary strategy right now is going to be remaining as calm as humanly possible, which is admittedly not one of her greatest strengths as a person.

"Korva Tallandria, of Egorian and of no one in particular. I pray to Pharasma, Erastil, Irori, and Abadar, when I pray. I care for children in an orphanage currently run by an Iomedan order."

"Aspex Ibarra, known as the King-In-Irons, captain of the Court of Exiles, late of Absalom, Andoran, Varisia, and the Academy of Westcrown's dungeons, friend of many gods but servant of none and foe to Asmodeus in my own person." He taps the acid-scars eternalized on his iron mask. (He's not under an illusion, right now. Well, he is, but not that illusion.)

"Alicia Rivera, of Halmyris in Longmarch. I'm a lay priestess of Shelyn."

"Right. Well. I think we should start with a statement of the wrong which this committee is tasked with righting. If we all agree on what the problem is it will be easier to agree on what to do about it, and if we don't even agree on that then we may as well determine that as soon as possible.

As I see it, the situation is thus: many of the people who prospered most under Asmodeanism, people who still worship Asmodeus, still serve Hell, or would should Hell bother to convey any commands to them, remain in power across Cheliax. Hell's servants, not being idiots, have identified this as a moment to lie low; but they aren't gone. Secondarily, many people who have done great evils that are not precisely the great evil of diabolism - say, pacts with different infernal powers, or simply the evils and cruelties in which they were encouraged, but evils that certainly served the ultimate Evil and that continue to do so - are unrepentent and continue to practice those evils openly. Thirdly, those of the Chelish people who have renounced Evil in all its guises are still many of them misled, serving those who themselves serve Evil or just unable to identify it from Good as Hell sought to hide the knowledge of that.

There are many other ills in the realm, of course, but those are the three that I identify as being ours to redress. Does anyone disagree?"

"I think the third has some overlap with the Committee on Promulgation of Virtous Churches, but I don't think that's disqualifying - it's an important task, and perhaps more central to this committee than that one. I can keep us abreast of anything that comes up there."

"For a broad enough definition of 'power', no. There's a good many rich men with no office who'd serve Mammon again for a crooked cent."

"I've also heard there might be a count who's a vampire. I don't know if that's Hellish or just some other kind of problem."

"I agree in spirit, but I think it is possible, in trying to drive out evil, to do an even greater evil inadvertently, and we should take care not to do that."

"Really, a vampire count? No, I shouldn't be surprised. Does that mean he's a delegate? Are we allowed to talk about killing him, if he's already dead?"

"I didn't spot him squinting at the nobles with Detect Undead so maybe the rumor was mistaken, I certainly don't know if we're allowed to talk about killing him."

"I think his granddaughter, who is technically alive though she doesn't quite look it, has been attending in his stead. I entirely support removing him but I don't think it's in the remit of this committee. He was, as far as I know, an enemy of the diabolists."

"Let's stick to saying that if we were at liberty to make our own rules for the convention, the undead would be made deader than that. ...thank you for checking, honored priestess. Is there by chance any similar way to check for diabolism?"

Of course, the nobleman is the one going around saying they should just abide by evil rather than risk... what, hurting evil too much?

"If we worry too much about 'doing a greater evil' we'll never manage to eliminate the diabolists. We can't just sit around and not even try to make things right."

"I'm worried about what happened in Galt, that is, mass killings of those who were by any account more victims of diabolism than perpetrators of it. Do we all agree that we do not want another Terror?"

"Some of us don't have pen friends in Galt."

"There's a spell for detecting clerics and devils - it's an orison and cantrip - but I don't think there's one for the unempowered followers, other than of course discern lies and truthspells combined with questioning. As for Galt, well. I'll certainly be taking some cues from Andoran instead, but the country is remarkably free of Asmodeans."

Alexandre Esquerra would not say he's a 'Baphomet cultist," exactly. (He mostly worships Norgorber.) 'Person who shares a lot of goals with Baphomet', maybe. But if he goes to the Abyss when he dies he is going to show up in Baphomet's court, turn into a pride demon, and start trying to destroy everything Asmodeus has ever done. 

"The difficulty one must face about Galt is that it worked. It threw off Asmodeus's governors, defeated his armies, and in two hundred years - or twenty, if the archmages make it a project - we'll dig the souls of the innocent out of the Final Blades and give them new bodies, just like we have half the nobles here at the convention. With a Final Blade, all mistakes are eventually correctable. All mistakes in one direction."

"Nor do I, Delegate Lacort, but I have read history. If the President seems overly friendly to diabolists, it may well be because he has seen with his own eyes what results when the sort of passion of which this committee seems full gets out of hand."

"I don't know much about Galt. I obviously don't think we should kill innocent victims, that's awful. But diabolists, tyrants, people who abuse or rape or kill innocent people— every day that passes with those wrongs unavenged is an evil that can never be righted. If you think rectifying that is 'getting out of hand'— well, I frankly question why you're so interested in protecting evildoers."

"If you've got Detect Innocent Victims that's all well and good but if you haven't then it seems you will need to go through many more kidnappings than this convention to sift them out, since I don't see who'd care to take time out of their day to stand for questioning after what an ominous word that was a couple years ago."

"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."

Oh good. Most people here are actually being pretty reasonable, she was worried after the way this morning went.

"That sounds like a good place to start, but I'm still worried about keeping it going, given just how many nobles there are in Cheliax, and I think we might have some trouble funding it, after a while? I think clerics of Iomedae here are pretty busy and so we might need to hire clerics of other gods from other countries." Please someone else make the obvious suggestion...

"Some of them in that room are evil, you mark my words. There's one with devil blood sitting with them, you know."

Korva has met a lot of five year olds and is really pretty sure they don't only do things that make them freer, but this is probably not the most important argument to have, here.

"If this were a free committee of the Chelish people I'd propose we work hard these next few days to find all the Evil people at the convention, and then propose their expulsion. But this isn't a free committee of the Chelish people, so I think the most we can do is read the names and encourage other convention members to be mindful of them while deciding whose counsel to take...

....we should start by checking ourselves. I don't think Iomedae can take an evil person as a priest but I have nothing to fear and anyone with the means to check may."

Oh good, a question with an obvious solution.

"We can fund it by seizing the property of diabolists. Though we'd have to be careful that people don't hijack it to go after whoever they don't like, since the lure of money is a strong temptation towards evil - putting a cleric or paladin in charge of it would be ideal, but we don't have enough of those spare for all the agents to be clerics. It won't be an issue here at the convention when we're all keeping an eye on it but we could start bad habits if we aren't careful."

Victory!

Yeah, he thinks most of this room is Evil.

"Oh, that's perfect. You'd just need to have seized money not go directly to the people who seized it, but to Iomedae's church to be distributed by a paladin. The part where the money goes out is the step where you need an incorruptible person."

"As long as we have a way to keep people from skimming off the top, at least. Regular truth spells of agents, perhaps, since we already need a lot of those for the searches?"

"Regular Evil checks of agents, which will cover whether they are thieves and liars as well as whether they are otherwise betraying their duties to the benefit of the forces of Evil. I guess also a truth spell in case stealing from the Good churches for personal benefit isn't Evil enough to make you Evil all by itself."

"I'm afraid I haven't asked for the spell today, Delegate Wain. I can ask tomorrow, but only for three people, if they're not strong enough that the evil can be detected easily, and you'll need to find some way of telling what they saw. A powerful evil is much easier to see, though. I can check the whole assembly for those tomorrow, if no one can do it easily today."

"Someone who is good enough at rooting out diabolists might be able to get away with a good bit of theft and only end up chaotic neutral, and while that's obviously better than letting them go free it's still not ideal. Still, I'm confident it's a solvable problem. As for the detecting... I don't have detect evil myself, not that we need it with paladins around, but I can at least check for any fiends or clerics thereof."

"I can detect evil like a paladin for long enough to study a hundred people, if not six hundred. But clever evildoers have a way to hide it." There were a few of those in Pezzack, Asmodean priests who tried concealing their evil. "But the Pharasmin spell is rarer, I think, and many of those who would want to hide their evil won't know what to guard against."

She gestures around the religious contingent. "If we all ask for Detect Evil tomorrow, I think we should be able to cover the entire conference between us, though of course that will only catch powerful evildoers— but we were focusing on those first anyways." 

Victòria is very confident that she's Chaotic Good and therefore has nothing to hide.

He's going to prepare so many Enchantment Foil spells tomorrow. (He has one up right now, but only one.)

"I want to do it today if we can, so there's no time for word to leak and evildoers to escape or conceal themselves. Are there any others in the Pharasmin contingent who may have prepared that spell of yours this morning? Are there any other gods that grant something similar?"

"A paladin's smite should work, if we have someone with protection from arrows to cast it on them. If they're not protected, they're evil, and an evil person can't protect themselves even if they have spells of their own."

"I've been fretting over the pregnant sortition girl - the obvious one, at any rate, they may've caught more - and I'm prepped for her, not for detecting, but I can see about it in the morning."

"Shooting arrows at everyone seems a bit much, you're liable to kill someone on the floor by accident that way."

"I've never heard of another god with it, but I haven't had much occasion to speak to clerics of other gods before now. It's a harder spell, I did a bit of ghost hunting before the Lady of Graves saw fit to give it to me. But you'll only catch a handful of the lesser evils unaware, even if you could surprise them. I'd be shocked if no one prepared to detect evil for the big ones this morning, though. That's only a question of asking around."

The war for Pezzack didn't have paladins. Just Valia, and another priest of Iomedae who died in the fighting. "It'd have to be the paladin shooting the arrows, right. We could set up a room for it...That's not enough by itself either but five tricks like that and we'll be set - and even if evildoers know to prepare they won't know which test we're going to run on them, so they will have to try preparing for everything -"

She does spare a smile for Ester. You can't stop caring about people just because you've got to be ready to let them die rather than compromise with the forces of Hell. "I can ask the priests at my church if one can be nearby for the pregnant girl, should she need anything while you've prepared your spells for our cause."

"I'm sure that's all well and good if she needs a channel but she looks like the sort of person who'd be prone to breech."

On the occasion Valia had to deliver a baby who wasn't cooperating she did it with a knife and a channel. She does not really want to say this proudly to someone qualified to do better than that, though. She nods solemnly. "Then it's good you're here. ...I haven't tried asking Iomedae for other, rarer spells to detect evildoers. I don't know that there isn't one."

—she has an idea, belatedly. Possibly belatedly enough that it won't work, against an evildoer who's even a bit clever, but if it roots out an incompetent evildoer that's still one less evildoer.

"—You're right, I didn't think about the risk of delaying. Calistrians get a spell for frightening evildoers, and I do have it today, but anyone who can fool a truthspell" which is apparently a thing people can do?? "might be able to get away with just pretending they weren't affected. But it still might be worth trying, now, in case anyone didn't have a chance to prepare. Only on the people in this room, it won't last long enough to check the entire convention."

She looks around the room to see if anyone suddenly looks nervous.

He's pretty sure at least half the people in this room won't like the results of a convention-wide alignment check, or else are confident in their ability to defeat it. But people are angry, he reminds himself, about evil done to them on a scale he has no experience with, and he probably cannot stop them from proposing bloody vengeance. He can, however, ensure that the Queen, and probably also the Archmage Cotonnet, throw this committee's report out as soon as they read it.

"I propose that, whatever the Galtan's opinion on who may be present at the convention, the supreme law of Cheliax ought to state that no Evil person may hold any title or office in the empire, including the Crown itself. However, several of the other delegates are correct that almost any spell that detects Evil can be fooled by a sufficiently powerful person. Therefore, I further propose that for the most important office of all—that of the monarch herself—the result be checked by a Commune with Iomedae, whom no mortal can confound."

Fucking abyss, this is too many things and she doesn't know what to think about any of them. Okay. One thing at a time.

"I am fine with testing the people in this room, as long as I don't have to pay to be tested and the test is not obviously life threatening, like paying a paladin to shoot an arrow at me. But a divination, sure. At least I can know whether to take up a cleric's time asking for counsel." Nobody has come out and said that they think she's evil yet, although she almost definitely is, and she has the impression that this very much isn't trivial to fix. But there's nothing to be gained by hiding from the eye of Iomedae, when it's on you. Iomedae is going to fucking see what you're doing, and decide whether you are or aren't worth killing.

Honestly, her fear of Iomedans is growing by the second. It's a shame. She used to think so highly of Lastfolk, and in many ways she still does. You can't say they didn't win, or that they aren't just as practical as she thought, or even that they take cities the exact same way as other armies, but - the feeling of living under their eye is exactly the same, in the end. Worse, even, because they think you can actually do it, and apparently the penalty for failure is that they just kill you, if they have time? Even Asmodeans didn't check the whole population for chaos, or for good, and kill everyone who failed inspection. Possibly because they couldn't, but still. All the same fear, but in red and white, this time.

Zara will do brilliantly in red and white, at least.

Whatever. Asshole noble put her on this damn committee and she's going to make polite suggestions. Just needs to think them through one at a time.

Is it good to remove lords who are evil? Well, if you can replace them with ones who aren't, but there's the rub. Almost anyone who rules will turn evil, even more than almost everyone is already evil. There will be people in the line of succession who aren't evil... but most of them will probably be children. Children don't rule alone, she thinks; other people manage things for them. The so the realm will end up managed by people not covered by the rule.

"Archduke, I - worry that a rule which removes any evil noble may in practice lead to many titles being held by children too young to have an alignment, and their lands being managed by people the law does not have such authority over. You know better than I how often this would happen in practice, I'm sure, but I worry about a system which doesn't have a way to prevent it."

Finally, someone with some fucking sense. At least now he doesn't have to be the most "pro-diabolist" (anti-mass-murder) person in the room.

"Regretfully often, under current conditions; I would suggest that this proposal or any like it not actually be implemented until there are more Good people in Cheliax capable of taking on the burdens of nobility. I know that replacing the Evil nobility of the old regime is already a great priority of our Queen. Part of the business of this committee ought to be proposals for where she might find people to replace them. But I do think that something like this ought to be the law eventually; if we had followed such a law in ancient times, the Thrunes would never have been in a position to seize power."

"I channel positive, so according to everybody else at my church I can't be evil, but I could be close, or could've been evil a few years ago, and be none the wiser. And I wouldn't've known what to repent of, and still don't know what I may or may not've been repenting of. I wouldn't be so sure that's not true of some definite evil people."

"I think if you have nothing to repent of then there's no reason at all to presume you might have been Evil; people don't catch it like the chills. And...I think the committee is too pessimistic that most people are Evil, that Good ones to replace them can't be found. That is an Asmodean lie. Most people are honest and decent; tainted by evil, maybe, but not consumed by it. Most people who are Evil have killed and tortured and raped and enslaved the innocent for their own benefit....I suppose an additional benefit of checking everyone as soon as possible is that we can put these fears to rest, if I am right they are in error."

"You were in Pezzack. I have no difficulty believing that evil people are a minority in Pezzack. But almost nowhere else threw off Thrune rule by itself."

"No. The rest of us ran. We didn't have an Iomedaean priest to serve as a leader - the one Good man I knew to be good, as a child, was burned. We fled the country and we made war from outside its borders, and now Asmodeus is beaten, and now we're coming home."

She's not sure most people are evil but she has no trouble believing most nobles are, whether or not they started that way. But if they keep killing off evil nobles that's not really a problem except for all the people who have to suffer under them, and it's not better if you just leave the first evil noble in place. (She's also not really sure what the Pharasmin's channels have to do with anything, obviously Pharasma is going to give her priests magic that helps them deliver babies and fight undead.)

"I think we can probably discuss that after we figure out if there are evildoers hiding on this committee. —As a reminder, the archmage said we aren't allowed to kill each other. So if it turns out you're Evil and didn't know it, you should just come out with it, so everyone else knows not to listen to you." Probably most Evil people won't care if they're leading people astray? 

"If you're not Evil, you have nothing to fear."

Silent Image.

Victòria doesn't actually have any idea what Hell looks like, apart from what she's heard in sermons. Her illusion has black-and-red stones, vaguely reminiscent of human faces, blanketed in fire. In the center of the illusion, a smaller devil is being held down and whipped by two larger devils. She'd like for the stones to be screaming, but her magic doesn't do sound.

She looks around to see how everyone else reacts.

"I believe you may've done it wrong."

"How about everyone draws what they saw," says Valia as calmly as she can, "so we can catch out liars and so no one can just imitate what they heard someone else saying."

... The thing is she's not frightened? Aspexia del Mar considers a not very realistic picture of devils to be much less impressive than the demons her mom has as bodyguards. "Fair enough!"

"—that's a good idea. I can also read, if anyone here is literate but not good at drawing."

They have paper here. She watches for anyone trying to obviously sneak a glance at anyone else's paper. Probably no one here is that stupid but you never know.

Alexandre Esquerra, King-In-Irons, has an appropriate spellcraft for a fifth-circle wizard. More, actually - he's an arms and armor specialist. He'll wait to critique the plan until it's done, but his sketches will include detailed anatomical notes on what she got wrong about the nature of torturer devils and how to do better next time.

Ester is not very good at drawing but she can do an outline with the devils.

He flinches, but only slightly; this isn't even a Vision of Hell, it's just a Silent Image composed by someone who's only mostly been comprehensively lied to about Hell. He doesn't point out that it's a trick, because that's probably the point: see who pretends not to be frightened.

He draws the scene he saw.

Valia is frightened, but she's not a coward and she's not a liar. Perhaps she is destined to be maledicted and that is why she saw a vision of Hell. She sketches it.

Fine, she's evil and the Phrasmin is - wait. Not lying about her channels, how would a Phrasmin manage it?

Whatever. Have a shitty devil drawing.

Xénia avoids sighing. She doesn't know what the trick is, but there is one; Xénia is very confident about how she reads. She'll point this out if the Calistrian does something else after, but for now, she'll draw.

(Aspexia isn't watching other people's papers. She's watching other people's eyes. If their gaze turn towards the same devil-shapes she does, the same soul-faces hers do, that means they're looking at the same thing. Many people can control their expressions, but very few can control their eyes.)

Alicia can draw a devil. She has art supplies on her, so it's a pretty good drawing, even if her sketch work isn't as good as her singing. She's pretty sure that was a silent image, anyway, she recognizes those somatic components.

"Right, okay, let's show them." Valia turns hers out to the group. "A priest of Iomedae can't be evil so I think your spell tests something else."

She looks around at the papers. "That was a test. Calistrians don't actually have a spell like the one I described, but I do get a spell most days that lets me make people see things that aren't there. All of you drew devils, so everyone here is either a good person, or clever enough to notice that was a test. —We should still check other ways when we get the chance, in case it was the second thing."

"- Second thing, Avenger Victoria. That was Silent Image, the world's most common illusion spell. You'll need better tests in the future if you want to catch spellcasters."

"—I don't know very much about magic. I'm sorry if it wasn't a very good test."

"It'll work well on anyone without magical experience, poorly on a cleric or wizard. Sorcerers vary."

"With that out of the way, may we please return to our previous topic? Which I believe was the feasibility of replacing the Evil nobility of Cheliax, and where replacement candidates might possibly be found."

"How are those elected folks faring? Are they just as bad or are they a different breed?"

Well the guy they got into a fight about earlier is elected, so.

"If we don't have enough non evil nobles, we should be finding ordinary people of good character to replace them. Most non nobles don't detect, so we can't just use that for all of them, but surely checking people who we are considering for a barony is even less work than checking the existing nobles. I doubt they'd have the experience to go much higher than that, but barons can be promoted to counts to fill holes and that leaves more low level roles. I know a number of territories alongside the borders to Nidal or the Whisperwood are already appointed this way, though without concern for the soul of those involved, and it's not unheard of for other counties to have adventurers marry a daughter and then rule. The elected folk are a good thought there - we're checking them for evil anyway, and after the convention they should have some experience with governance to fall on."

"Delegate Lacourt, of the four quarters of the convention, the elected seem probably the worst. But we already know that we aren't empowered to expel delegates from the convention, and they don't have any lasting power. They might be an argument against including any institution in the new Cheliax that encourages such naked power-seeking."

"Those non-noble delegates to the convention that are of good character would be fine candidates for titles." He's slightly tempted to make Korva a baron when this is over.

"I propose that people who believe themselves to be wise and Good apply for consideration for those roles made empty by the removal of Evildoers, and we check them, and if they're in fact Good then they do some kind of - training, to learn how to be a good ruler - nobles aren't actually wiser or more suited to governance than anyone else, they just get more education for it and adventure more and get stronger.

The Elected at the convention are Evil because of course if you tell people they'll have power to rule others and don't check if they're Evil they mostly will be. Or perhaps because the Archmage, servant of Evil as he is, wanted them that way."

"You speak of those things as if they're trivial to obtain."

" - oh, that's actually a major point." Here, at least, is an observation that won't make everyone hate her. "All of our educational institutions are completely Asmodean. I think talking about how to overhaul them when they open again arguably is the job of this committee."

...not that she's sure she wants them talking about that, either, but it would be hard to do much worse than what they have.

"Executing every teacher at Westcrown Academy would be a good start."

"Who says they're going to open again?"

"I think they should, if there's any way at all to do it without the material support of Hell. The old schools were cruel, and no doubt turned to Hell's purposes, but the desire for an educated populace is not a Hellish one. Aroden, if he lived, would also want us to teach all of our children wizardry that can learn it, and at least letters and numbers to the rest."

Valia does not care at all what Aroden would think about anything; he died and handed Evil more ground in the war of Good against Evil than any other man who ever lived, as far as she can tell. "It seems particularly important that students are not made subject to Evil teachers and overseers, but our rule that Evil people can't hold power in general should fix that...and if there is no one non-evil who is qualified to guard and punish students then I think it's better for the job to go undone, really."

"Why couldn't parents just teach letters and numbers to their own children? They should mostly all know how to read, and if they're being Evil about it that'll be covered under some of the ideas we already talked about."

"I don't know where you're from but out in the country a lot of us forgot whatever we learned. There's not much worth reading, or there wasn't."

"I'm not from the city and my mother knew how to read! ...she was a laundress, though, maybe that's why."

"That'll do it, they have those books."

"Even in the city children haven't got fathers, more often than not, and plenty haven't got mothers either. Of course Good parents will try to teach their children their trade, so if they can read they probably do a reading thing and will teach their children that. But if they don't or can't, that doesn't mean we should go back to enslaving all the children to try to fix it."

"I survived Chelish wizard school," he says, "and grown men who themselves wish to learn pick up wizardry far faster than schoolchildren forced into it and taught by rote."

"And I think it's less Evil teaching adults, because if you beat them most of the way to death they'll just leave...indentures are a problem but they should be covered under our primary proposal, having people indentured to you is a kind of power and should only be permitted to the non-Evil."

“I agree but I’m nervous about checking it… there are a lot of people who do indentures, and most of them aren’t strong enough to detect. We might need to find something that scales better than Pharasma’s spell, unless we think that with less powerful people it’s fine to just put them through a zone of truth since them slipping past is less bad.”

"The great Abadaran inquisitor is here. After this meeting concludes, presuming this committee votes for further investigation of options for identifying and removing Evil people in power, I will go ask him if as a powerful inquisitor he knows of any."

"Abadar's not Evil but he's not Good either, will his inquisitor care?"

(Whether or not there continue to be schools really should not be in the remit of this committee. He'll propose, in the next general session, a committee on reforming them specifically which is hopefully more sane than this one.)

"I don't know if his inquisitor will care. But I know inquisitors earn many powers of their gods for rooting out cultists and diabolists and so on, and if he has those powers but does not wish to employ them in our defense then maybe we can find an inquisitor of Iomedae who will."

Korva is about to suggest that schools could be, you know, voluntary, and then decides that yeah, you know what, maybe that topic is actually too important to be used as a distraction from killing half of the remaining adult population of Cheliax.

...which seems bad, but probably the Inquisitor won't support them in doing it?? Probably??

"Fine. Do we break here, and continue our business when we have a better sense of how many people out there are evil? The numbers there admittedly seem pretty relevant to what kinds of policies this committee should be pursuing for Cheliax as a whole, especially among the sortition delegates."

"I agree. We are at the stage of planning where what we need most is to know what we're up against. Everyone who can prepare a means of detecting evildoers should do so, and I'll talk to the Inquisitor about what other options remain. Then we can approach the topic tomorrow with a clearer picture of what needs to be done."

Alicia nods. She would be grim, but in fact she's feeling pretty optimistic about this - Valia seems to have a good head on her shoulders, and at least most of the rest of the committee will probably help more than they hinder.