Dolor is also here to reform the army. There's nothing else plausible she would have been picked to come here for, and it's a purpose she's happy to fulfill, because gods above and below she has a lot of thoughts on the entire damned institution.

Blai hopes that nobody asks him about the exact capacity in which he served at the Worldwound.

If only every officer who sneered at him could see him now. A grunt in a patchy uniform, barely human, here in the decision-making-room with the nobles and officers. 

As the only officer to (have formerly) possessed general rank to attend the convention, it is clearly Count Melcion Sarria i Sulemeiz duty to attend this meeting, so as to be available to provide key information for all parties on the sources of the disastrous failings of the Thrune army.* It's important for the state to have full understanding of the sources of the disaster, so that they will be fully qualified to reverse it.

(*: i.e., not him.)

Berenguer-Aspex Riner is here to stop Xavier from pulling a coup and conquering Molthune, since apparently someone has to.

Cansellarion has very little concern for the reformation of the army per se, but a great deal of concern about to whom the army will be sworn. Maybe, just maybe, he can arrange for an oath to the Constitution like they have in Andoran - and had in Galt before Cyprian's coup - instead of one to serve the queen.

The table already has rapidly-Scribed dossiers on it, one at everyone's place, and quick-scribed placards with everyone's names on them for them to claim.

"Gentlemen." Polite, fair-spoken. "Soldiers." That word rings out.

"I'm Archduke Xavier. I've just spend the past year trying to restore order to Sirmium, with the assistance of the Galtan army and General Cansellarion's -" he nods to the man "- troops. Mostly, I'm trying to restore order from deserters who used to be part of the Chelish army."

There's... two officers in the room, one is an Iomedaean cleric who came here from the Worldwound and one's supine. "If you don't count the Worldwound army, which I hear got all the best men - your officers were all shit straight through, your sergeants were brutes, and most of your soldiers didn't want to be in the army and so got beaten every day, and, surprise surprise, really didn't want to be in the army."

"I've been trying to fix it. But it's going to take a lot more than me to get this done. I want to get a proposal out of this committee for a plan to make sure that in five years - two, if we can manage it - we have a real royal army that can stop the Rahadoumi if they try to sack Corentyn again and go get my house back from that diabolist bastard Nefol up in Molthune who claims to rule Cheliax."

"For that, we're going to need - well. We're going to need people who knows how the Chelish army got that bad." He nods to Sarria. "We're going to need people who lead companies." He nods to Blai. "To tell us how you could get any work done, in the Chelish army as it was. We're going to need people like Marshal Cansellarion -" nod to him "- who have lead armies that weren't Hellish and know what an army that Hell isn't out to damn looks like. And we're going to need people who fought man to man, soldier to soldier, with pike or bow, because you saw it all and nobody ever thought you'd get to tell everyone, and because whatever we come up with - it'll be a way of sending people like you into the push to kill or die, and you're the ones who know it has to work."

"I expect a lot of bickering in the other committees. This one? This is the committee that's keeping Cheliax alive. So let's get to work. Names all around?"

"Dolor Rado."

She doesn't trust this man as far as she can throw him, but at least he seems to know the right lies to claim about his motives are, and that's more than she can say of most of the officers she worked under before she defected. He might be the useful fool kind of officer instead of the useless fool kind.

"Alexeara Cansellarion. I can bring copies of Lastwall's manuals with me tomorrow. Best practices for having an army that doesn't damn everyone in it."

"Select Blai Artigas," aaaaaaaaaah, "and I have the garrison discipline handbook Lastwall sent with me now, if that is of use, though I'm sure there are others."

“Iker.”

Melcion and Riner, generic important people with important names. That Xavier, though, he knows how to make a good speech. He probably wouldn’t have said any of that about the soldiers if not for that rule about a conscript in every committee, but it still feels good to be flattered. Let’s see if he can back it up. 

Blai’s name sounds familiar, but Iker isn’t sure where he heard it from. 

Dolor… there’s only really two types of girl conscript, and she looks like the type who stabs you if you try anything.

Alexeara— oh he’s already taking this in the wrong direction. 

“Whoah, Lastwall discipline handbook? Those sods have it worse than we do, keep the pointless beatings if the only other option is not being allowed to have any fun ever.”

"The petty cruelties enjoyed by an undisciplined soldier do no benefit for him in the long run. Lastwall's soldiers may have less fun in this life -" he's not even sure that's true " - but they are not damned to the torments of Hell."

Does Iomedae hate chess? He still hasn't gotten a clear answer on that one.

We're all burning anyway when hell wins. Wait, that's not something you can say to paladins to piss them off, not anymore. How about–

"Lastwall rules would turn three of us into deserters and bandits for every one of it it turns into an angel. Might be a good deal for heaven, but it sounds like a bad deal for the army."

Berengeur-Aspex had somehow gotten the wrong location for this, probably because Xavier bribed one of his servants -

Lies and slander.

- But he'll actually show up now.

"Archduke. Lord Marshal. General. Men." 

He'll sit down. The Committee To Stop Xavier From Pulling A Coup And Conquering Molthune has begun.

To Alexaera and Blai, "Thank you." To Iker - "I think we're not going to have much fun on duty," he says frankly. "But instead we're going to actually pay the soldiers their salaries instead of docking them for not weeding their officers' gardens and then they're going to spend it on drinking and gambling and women off duty, because if I try to ban whoring off-duty there will be a mutiny, I'm not Iomedae and I know it."

Ricard is mostly here to agree with Xavier, his new liege lord.  He had a passing fascination in military history, perhaps that might even be useful.  But then again, most of that had been filtered through an Asmodean lens, and everyone else here was probably more familiar with the truth.  His parents might have taught him about fighting and command, but it couldn't match up to the actual experience of everyone else here.  

He'd actually wanted to join the committee on the Rights of Nonhumans, he'd always been curious about other races, but the angry halfling and the Strix both seemed scary, and there seemed to already a fair bit of drama around it, and there wasn't someone whose opinions it was clearly best to follow, so he fell back on the safer option.

Iker gives the room a sharp-toothed grin. The new guy arriving and interrupting means he got the last word against the paladin, and then Xavier took his side. Or, at least, Xavier knows what's up. Your move, paladin.

Eventually he notices someone staying quiet and trying to avoid attention. "Hey you, he said we're introducing ourselves."

Ricard is mildly startled.  "Ricard Tosel i Castel, Count of Gaulter-"  Ricard seems like he's going to say something more, but cuts himself off.

That's how it's done. Push around the scared guy on behalf of the boss, show whose side you're on and where you stand. Iker gives the count one last smile and then settles down. 

Xavier's expression in response to Iker doing that isn't actually approving. It's a raised eyebrow of reprimand -

- And a more gentle smile and nod to the young man.

Ricard gently smiles back.

Coming to this committee was probably the right idea, the Archduke already approves of his presence and was willing to stand up for him.

Huh? The boss is siding with the scared guy against him? Oh, he wants to get the count on his side. Mrh, how is Iker supposed to make himself more useful to keep happy than a count?

"The first stage of our meeting, one which I expect to take up most of the day and probably the next, too, is to try to locate every failure in the Chelish system so we can produce a better one. We'll then discuss how the alternate systems used by Lastwall, Galt and the Royal and Imperial Army up in Molthune province would handle these problems, along with any other alternative systems someone wants to propose, and prepare a synthesis plan for military reform. So, 'round the table again. Dolor. What's wrong with the Chelish army?"

"It would be easier to start with what isn't wrong, but to put some order on it... almost nobody wants to serve in it, and even those who do wouldn't if they knew what it was like. The conscription process selects for people too poor and unpopular to get out of it, or people uninterested in being in the army as anything other than a way to rape without retaliation. The training is a joke, with instructors more interested in taking out their grievances than teaching anything, and what they do teach ends up completely useless the moment a soldier finds themself somewhere they can't stay in perfect formation. 

"When they do finish their training, instead of doing the things that need doing with an army, like hunting down bandits and monsters and dealing with corrupt guards, the army spends a third of its time asleep, a third of its time off whoring and raping and gambling, and a third of its time obeying the whims of whatever local notable bribed their officers the most - any actual work is largely incidental. The army's gear starts good, but people who take proper care of their equipment are few and far between, and I doubt we can just expect a new shipment of hellforged breastplates or arrowheads every time we run low like the army used to. And then there's, frankly, the bigger concern that half the army doesn't even nominally obey the officers, and were split up amongst the local barons as their feudal forces or the fists of Asmodeus or the local militias or so forth, which is less of a problem now since the army is about as worthless as they are but means even an actually effective unit would be hamstrung. There's no discipline in the ranks, so whenever a battle slightly turns against a group they run as soon as you make yourself seem scarier than whoever's forcing them to stay, even if you're just one person. And the less said about the officers and sergeants, the better.

"I've got some other thoughts on what the army ought to be equipped with, like replacing the crossbows with proper bows that don't force you to choose between standing still and shooting or ensuring that you can't just trivially outrun any force without a cavalry detachment by not wearing heavy armor, but given the state of the current training I expect the places that could actually make use of them are few and far between. The Sarissas are pretty handy when you can force someone into a proper battle, though."

Oh now she’s just rubbing it in how much nicer it is to be stationed on the home front than the wound front. 

"Sounds about right." Next around. "Captain Artegas?"

"Select, please. Or Delegate. My experience was entirely at the Worldwound and so I know very little about how the Chelish military has behaved domestically and I think the supply constraints and constant demonic threat alleviated some of Delegate Rado's complaints. However, compared to forts of other allegiances we were not able to attract and retain the help of high-quality itinerant adventurers. I think that can change if we solidify a reputation as a Good country, a friend rather than just an ally of convenience," he does really like the line in the Acts about how good has friends and law has allies and only lawful good does both, "and pay on time for services rendered. I also have a disagreement with some of the design of the cold-weather gear but that seems possibly too specific for a committee operating at this high a level of organization, particularly since the need to deploy at the Worldwound will only continue to diminish."

“No! If you have an idea to deal with the cold, you have to say it.”

This is important even if he’s speaking out of turn. He’s tough enough that cold doesn’t bother him, but he’s seen people he actually liked get sick of cold and then replaced with people he didn’t like.

"Call out the problems now, fix them at the end of the session, Delegate Iker. If we start debating this proposal without knowing the scope of the problem we'll get too focused too early. We will fix this, but rushing it is how you end up in a trap."

"Ricard Tosel? I think you may have something useful to bring up here."

"The military academies were dens of Asmodeanism, where the primary occupation seemed to be vicious power politics; my brothers came home worse and crueler men every year.  They produced a surplus of petty tyrants, and if the past two decades of Chelish military history show anything they did not produce competent commanders.  This culture proceeded into the actual military.  My father always seemed more concerned with pleasing his commanding officer and outmaneuvering his rivals and fitting expectations, and for that matter with what he was doing to his lovers, than the performance of his unit."

His grandfather's humiliating defeat at Cyprian's hands might make a good example of Chelish military incompetence, but not everyone present might be familiar with it, so perhaps best to not discuss it till someone else does.

He nods. "Iker? What do you think's wrong with the army?"

Huh? Well, if Xavier wants everyone to just complain and not find solutions, Iker has years of experience griping about the conditions.

"Okay then, here's some problems. Hell gives us decent gear but, when something breaks, you'll get assigned a new one faster than you get it fixed. Then the cost of a new one comes out of your pay, and it's a lot more than what the cost of fixing it would be. Except we don't have enough smiths to fix things, and now without hell we don't have new gear either. I've seen a squad where their half-plate was quarter-plate. Well, the captain beat them all for it, but they're still wearing mostly scrap."

"We're fighting the wrong kind of war. We fight provinces when they leave, that leaves us with less or what we already had. We fight at the worldwound and get nothing out of it. When's the last time we conquered something? Sack a few cities, get some loot, conquer new land and make some new barons?"

"Everyone says that, in Cheliax, they don't call it the 'wound because of the demon hole in the ground, they're just talking about how they spend all their time in the infirmary. You all heard that one before?" Iker has gotten into several fistfights with soldiers from other countries over that fucking joke. "Well it's true. There's barely any healing, compared to what every other country gets. Somehow, switching from hell to heaven made that worse. We went from having halfway useless clerics to having no clerics. I've seen a fort where everyone was melting snow for fresh water. Then I'm in the city here and there's a cleric of that little dancing and birds goddess standing on a square doing little performances based on pamphlets. Why hasn't she been sent to the front?"

"The girl already said what's wrong with training, but I want to say it louder. Squares are all nice against dretches, but when someone gets overrun or when a demon just appears in the middle of the formation and starts eating people– then what? Just die? I had to figure that out myself, got good instincts, but a lot of people didn't figure it out."

"I know everyone is going to complain about the torture, but someone will just say even good armies have punishments. But they need to be lawful at least. There's a priest of asmodeus who paid out of his own salary to bring all kinds of torture devices to his fort, there's another who just makes you play chess. They should give you the same beating for the same reason whichever fort you're in. No matter who you are, not worse if they don't like you. If an officer wants to beat you up just because they don't like you, that should happen off duty in a bar."

Iker maybe has ulterior motives for the standardized punishments, because of the thing where soldiers who are good at fighting can take a lot worse than the conscripts and stay standing.

"The count already said what's wrong with the officers but I want to say it louder. They spend all their time blackmailing or sabotaging each other. I think most officers have more plans against other officers than against the enemy. Two of them order you to do different things and then you have to figure out which one is going to win and live in hell for a few weeks if you get it wrong. Sometimes there's a halfway competent one with the right priorities, but then one of the worse ones loses a battle and makes it look like the competent one's fault."

"Meanwhile a guy who rushes into every battle, takes down big demons not just dretches, and all that, makes it onto the special squad but never gets turned into an officer at all. Doesn't get much of a pay increase either, year after year, until he's trying to bribe a wizard to teleport him to another country so he can make some actual money as a mercenary. Is it pissing off the wrong noble, not being all human, getting into too many bar fights? What is it?? Even the uncivilized places know to put the strong people in charge, how are we worse at it than that?"

Iker stops because he's getting louder each time he adds a new thing and if he keeps going he'll be shouting at the generals and he can't actually do that. 

OH NO THIS GUY KNOWS ABOUT THE CHESS

He nods. "An army like that can't survive." He smiles wryly. "You've heard that ten of Cyprian's marshals started as private soldiers or cavalry troopers?"

"Good numbers. War bloody enough to cull the useless ones must have helped."

Iker has dealt with would-be-Cyprians before. They're one of the better types, easy to flatter. Xavier is the first one to want his way of doing promotions instead of just the military genius. 

"Anything to add about Cheliax's army, Berenguer?"

It's not that hard to see that these people (a) know each other and (b) don't like each other, if you happen to be observant.

"Build an army on Asmodeus and you'll build it on sand, Xavier. That's the Chelish army." And on Asmodeans the same.

Die in a fire, Berenguer.* "A good lesson to learn. Well, in that case it's time of the person with the most experience in the Chelish army, here, to give his story."

(*: This hatred is not immensely obvious except to people who have spent years learning to navigate the treacherous confines of modern Chelish politics, in which case it totally, totally is.)

WHAT is the beef there.

oh no
oh no
hell and the abyss

Iker has already visibly thrown in with Xavier, so hope he wins this one.

Ah, feuding. She knew these people would be doing it too, but she had briefly had hopes they would at least be better about not letting it interfere with their business than the usual Chelish sort.

Melcion is firmly opposed to feuds in the armed forces, but fortunately Berenguer doesn't seem to be in the armed forces, he's just some noble who showed up because you can't stop nobles from showing up. And Xavier's an archduke, so he's a bigger noble.

"You're all just right," he says, "but the truth is, you're just getting started. I know you look at me, you see an old fool and a damned Asmodean collaborator, and maybe I am. But I've been trying to serve the army this whole godsdamned time, make it something the whole Chelish people can be proud of, and it's like trying to make bricks out of quicksand.

"The men we get aren't any good. There's a few who are, sure enough, but  - our army is boys and drunks. In Galt a mason or a tailor will do his part in the army, but in Cheliax it's whoever the lord can't get any more work out of, and he just bribes the recruiting sergeant aside. We let the lords pick which men to give us and they give us the worst, and there's not enough volunteers to make up the loss.

"And if they were good? We wouldn't know what to do them. Because the drillmasters don't know what they're doing. The old army, the army that won the war - they're all dead, and not of age, then we'd still have the hellblood and elfblood left. The Thrunes killed them and summoned devils to do teach new men to do their jobs, and the devils taught 'em the drill of Hell and that doesn't work for humans. They're not outsiders, they're mortal men, and there's only so many times you can beat a man before he's too bloody useless or too bloody angry to fight.

"But you've heard all that. What you haven't heard is why the officers are like that. There's a book - the Forge of Triumph and Damnation. Every year there's a new edition, and every year you memorize it. Get told to quote it, if you quote last year's you're whipped. It's useless. Tells you orcs can't shoot straight and elves are all cowards and the Raha have no healing, tells you that whenever your army won't fight the answer is more beatings, tells you that your priest's always right when he tells you to march all day and night. Only way to kill someone following this book is if the other side is, too - or to use it as a club. Any good officer will ditch it all and any officer will get burned for heresy if he ditches it all.

"Because there's priests following the army, a priest for every company - and that's not near enough! - and inquisitors watching the generals. They don't carry pikes, they've got halberds, and they stand in line with the bearded devils and they hack down any men who runs. That's the way we advance, the only way we've ever advanced. They don't put the devils in the front rank, they don't give them pikes. You march or you die. And what you get out of that is priests with their throats cut and sentries with missing knives, and then you don't have the Blessings you need if you're going to fight.

"But say a good officer gets out of the army. Say he gets a priest who doesn't want to be knifed in the night, one who wants to win. What's that matter? You don't get promoted for good work, you get promoted for sucking up and framing your boss and saying 'Hail Asmodeus' louder than anyone else! It's religious to say we're better than the Rahadoumi so it's got to be more religious to say one of us can beat ten of them, so that's what they promote people for, and it's even more religious to lead your whole army to get beaten ten-to-one, so if you don't it means you're a traitor and a heretic, and then they burn you.

"And let's talk about logistics. They say ours are the envy of Avistan. Why? Because of the wizards? Wizard teleport it up to the Worldwound, sure. Great. Means we've got no wizards - no good wizards - for anything else, all they're doing is Worldwound, Worldwound, Worldwound. There's bound elementals over the border, and the earth ones come up out of the dirt and grab you under and leave you three feet into the rock, air ones scout - our scouts are imps, and imps are all lying bastards. All we've got is them and the bloody bearded devils. And you want to talk about anything else? They talk about all the skeletons and how much they haul but the things creep you out, better not to have them." This is false. "Maybe the horses eat well, if they're cavalry. Mules, though - who'll complain if they're off their feed? Who'll complain if half of them are lame? Who'll care if all the supplies disappear, we can solve that, we've got wizards. Not blood enough.

"And let's imagine you fix this, it doesn't help. The soldiers still fight and get killed. Because nobody but the soldiers are fighting anyway. They're being clerks. They're making up numbers and writing them down to cover up the supplies they're stealing, because they didn't get sent enough and because nine out of every ten lieutenants are just greedy bastards. And why? Because they were clerks before and clerks' sons. You don't get warrior blood, in the officers; the Thrunes killed them all because they might fight back. You want to know who's in charge of the army? The people in charge of the army are merchants and moneylenders who look at the mud and go back to their nice lovely book that tells them everything they need to know, and then their men all die. It's nine base at the school to every one who's noble, and not a single lowborn man who's ever held a sword.

"And why? Because everyone who'll stand up to the Asmodeans is dead. That's why I'm telling you this and not someone who fixed it. Because it couldn't bloody well be fixed before the Thrunes were gone, and good riddance to them!"

Well, that explains how Blai succeeded in never being promoted.

She'd say that was an impressive amount of ass covering, but she has in fact met Chelish officers before - this is pretty much par for the course. Probably some of the stuff that she didn't already know even has the virtue of being true. A few years back she might have protested that the army needed more Hellish discipline instead of less, but it's not like Asmodeus' clerics didn't run like the rest once you got rid of their human shields - she'll buy that the whole edifice there is as broken as the rest of it. She'll push back against one bit, though.

"I rather doubt it's the ancestry that makes the officers useless. I knew a few people whose parents were half-decent soldiers, and their kids certainly weren't much less useless than average."

So, he wants to blame asmodeus and his devils for the officers all being like that. Easy excuse. The explanation of how they’re all clerks with weak blood sounds more right. 

“No, he’s right. When they get the someone with blood that makes him run into fights, even before being drilled, the officers get scared.”

(At this point a person enters the room with a memorandum from the Duchess, presently elsewhere, that she thinks the Armed Forces committee should also contemplate the Hellknight orders, which have some of the best disciplined soldiers in Cheliax but as part of an institutional structure that is exceptionally evil and almost certainly beyond reform; she can speak privately with the chair after the session if he doesn't infer the rest of her thinking from there, but he probably will.)

Wow, they really pissed her off. He'll need to get to that, probably tomorrow.

The Archduke's a noble, too, even if he's new to being an Archduke, and Sarria has a response to the soldier. "Takes a hundred years of hanging the cowards to breed a good captain. One lucky man's not enough to bet on his kids being solid."

"Lastwall has many captains of humble birth. I suspect training matters far more than breeding, in this matter."

"I never noticed a particular quality difference by background myself... or, no, a specifically Menadorian noble officer will know how to kill things, but it's anybody's guess if he can do it in formation."

"Maybe you're right in Lastwall, Marshal, and maybe it's just that the nobles get set straight by their parents and the moneylenders don't. But in the south, all the merchants' sons are rotten."

"Perhaps you ought to consider the farmers' sons as well - It will likely prove impossible to import Lastwall's culture wholesale to Cheliax. But finding quality officers seems to be a matter of culture and training, not blood, so I doubt a policy aimed at finding officers of better blood will achieve much."

"As you say, sir."

"Can you say more about what from Lastwall will and won't be portable, sir?"

All of everyone's sons are rotten. Which now that she says it like that, it's obvious that this is just something he's saying so he or an ally of his can ensure their kids inherit all the best positions, not something he believes. She was an idiot for not realizing it sooner. Which then implies that the paladin doesn't have allies in the nobility, but he does have a support base among the common soldiers he wants to empower. Is he worth backing, then? She's pretty sure he's one of the worst of the lot himself - you don't get everyone praising you like he does without having a lot of skeletons you need to invest the effort into keeping buried - but she already knew that, and it doesn't mean is proposal is definitely the wrong one just because he said it. Even incompetent officers sometimes want mildly competent subordinates to steal credit from, and expecting to get more than mildly competent out of the army is a fool's errand.

Iker gives Blai an actually genuine smile at his compliment to Menador. Hell yea we can kill things!

The Lastwaller probably had the right of it - he'd led an actual victorious army, after all.

Besides, if the Tosel clan were anything to go from, old military blood couldn't stop men from playing the old Asmodean games, at least until their armies were destroyed and their bodies statues.

"Some things that we hopefully can copy from Lastwall are things like officer training, standards for discipline, the concept of an unlawful order - Things which I don't expect we could easily copy here are - in Lastwall every man is conscripted for three years. I think that would be extremely difficult in a country of Cheliax' size, and a lot of the other things that Lastwall does rely on it. Training standards for ordinary professional or levied soldiers take into account this existing experience. Perhaps the conscript training and the volunteer training on their own would suffice to produce soldiers of the same quality and virtue as those in Lastwall, but I doubt it - I think the three years of real experience on the border does something. And without that quality, it might be harder to draw capable officers from the ranks. Many of the best officers I've known were drawn from yeoman volunteers, and I find Cheliax lacking in yeomen... Perhaps other committees will change that, but the culture will take some time to adjust to that. The fact that Lastwall does not have a king, merely a governing council, and that the officers and soldiers are sworn to the faith and the cause rather than any individual helps with discipline and morale, I think, but cannot be straightforwardly imported here."

Blai writes this all down very attentively. "It seems at least possible that the Queen isn't attached to having the army sworn to her person."

She most certainly is. "I appreciate your advice, Marshal. What, though, would you say are the flaws you have noticed in the Chelish army, leading forces against it on campaign?" 

"The war was over fast; it wasn't much of a campaign. From my limited experience actually fighting the Chelish army - Poor coordination across levels. The army I captured lost a tenth of its men to their own side when they set the river aflame. Their generals didn't know it was coming. They got orders to march their army to Detmer, and they did - no explanation of why. We assume they were supposed to take transport to Xer for an invasion of Galt, but again, the generals didn't know. They were ordered to make Detmer in four days, and might have made it in eight, if we let them, but they surrendered with barely a fight after two and the war was, rather famously, over in four. Poor morale, of course, as you might infer from that quick surrender. A great deal of trouble dealing with skirmishers, though that's only a secondhand report and I have no personal insight into the tactical follies that led to that."

Iker hasn't not noticed the talk of the army breaking off from the queen, but he's going to pretend he didn't. They're not even hiding how many people they have on the sidelines listening in. That's an easy mode loyalty test. Even the paladin is smart enough to ignore it and move on, talk about how bad we lost the last war.

"Two days, and that was with the clerics and devils ready to stab them in the back for running..."

"Two days, which started with them being decimated by their own side, followed by a forced march while harassed by veteran rangers, and frequent night attacks so I doubt they got much rest - Also I think the devils weren't there. Teleported off to some other front in the war, I imagine. The left flank broke, the clerics couldn't stop it, and then their commander killed his Asmodean supervisor and put up a white flag."

"I think it's a very useful observation that any general who you don't trust without an Asmodean observer you can't trust with one, and that the discovery of this rule significantly aided the dissolution of the Chelish military system."

"Sounds like a coward of a general, breaks when the threat in front of him is scarier than the one standing behind him."

Iker suddenly gets the actual point being made. It takes a moment.

"Or sounds like we need a reason to fight instead of running, better than not wanting to get tortured and killed once you get back home."

Good for him!

"Exactly. Now, we've covered a good deal today, but there's one more thing I want to say before we move on." 

He looks at Blai. "I believe you had a concern to raise with the cold-weather uniforms?"

"- yes, if it's at the right level of granularity, though I had supposed it wasn't."

"Best to get it written down now even if this isn't the right place to submit it, we've got time."

"The uniform code requires pants to be tucked in to the boot. This has some virtues but allows sufficiently deep snow to get into the boots and melt there. People who allowed their soldiers to wear the pant cuff outside of their boots saw reductions in this problem but greater wear and tear on the pants. I think the ideal solution would be something like an additional ring of cloth sewn to the end of the pant leg, so that the main part of the pant is worn inside the boot and the additional part, relatively quick to replace as Mending becomes ineffective, remains outside to keep snow out. The placket for the standard coat buttonhole is not thick enough, I think to enable the buttons to be sewn on more snugly; either some button looseness should be tolerated, or an additional flap be added over that area. Balaclavas were issued for a period of two years and then discontinued; I think they should have remained standard, at least for women who cannot grow beards as insulation."

Iker will remember that. 

Anyone with decent insight can probably read these thoughts from his face: A guy who says he’ll follow up about cold weather gear and holds to it… might hold to it when he says private soldiers will be turning into marshals… Well, it’s not like the queen made a better offer.

He may be failing the obvious loyalty test, but he’s only failing the detect thoughts part. Not going to say any of that out loud. Instead he sticks to the safe topic of criticizing the last regime.  

“They’re still looking for a punishment for wearing your pants untucked that’s worse than what the frost would do to your feet, ha! Or, they have worse but they still need soldiers able to walk.”

Xavier's secretary is writing this down! "I'll see this reaches the right place," he tells Blai.

Any other issues anyone needs to raise?