"Anna Tomàs, Mistress of Blades of the Order of the Pike, which places me second in command. Our primary responsibility has been the monsters of the Whisperwood, as it has been for Delegate Ascathel and the other druids of the Whisperwood. If I may speak for a moment, I think I ought elaborate."

"Forests contain three things, principally: druids, good strong trees, and problems. In some forests, such as the Whisperwood, the problems are greater than usual, such as a hostile dragon and a corrupted portal to Hell which sends out devils even the Church of Asmodeus could not control. In these cases, the settled humans and the druids both recognize that they share priorities, and moderately lawful conduct is enough to cooperate."

"In other forests, the problems are limited and the druids can deal with them all on their own. Then it becomes very important that the settled humans desire to turn the trees into useful lumber, and the druids desire that they not do that, and the standards of lawful conduct required to prevent hostilities are much higher."

"I do not expect this committee can identify a policy that will prevent all war over the trees, where many centuries of kings have failed. But we must avoid recommending anything that would prevent cooperation or negotiation, or we are no better than the River Kingdoms where no policy or agreement can be trusted beyond a handful of years."

"I don't think you should be trying to chop the Whisperwood down, it's not yours. But there's a time for normal bickering over where the lines are and how much dead wood you collect and whether or not we give you Plant Growth and a time for closing the portal to Hell that is sending giant hordes of devils to attack everyone while we're talking."

“Of course the archmages should close the portal but no one here can do anything about that. …I so hate to disappoint Delegate Feather but I do represent the people of Cheliax and the rest of this convention, so you had better have some proposals for peace which aren’t “I’ll just tell everyone that it’s not Good to kill monsters and they’re probably so naive about Good they’ll believe me.” I support the nomination of the Hellknight as the chair and I second the motion to expel delegates who declare themselves at war with Cheliax, this being a convention for Chelish people and not for Cheliax’s enemies to try to undermine us.”

Wait, did she call the elf a druid?!

...this calls for a rapid reevaluation which Feather does not feel she is qualified to carry out while in the middle of possibly the most impactful argument of her life!! Maybe she can, uh, ignore it for a few minutes? It sounds like the Whisperwood has even worse problems than Ravounel forest somehow??

"Everyone thinks 'monsters' means something different," she says half on autopilot. "It's not Good to kill people who have done nothing to you. Many people live in the forests who aren't druids. My family aren't druids, most of my friends and the people I know at home aren't druids. The druids often speak for the people of the forest but we're only a small part of everyone who lives there."

"Cheliax attacked the forest. If this convention of yours can't decide to make peace, what good is it? Do you want to keep killing people just because you got used to killing them when Asmodeus told you to do it?"

"I don't know about Whisperwood, it sounds like you have different and worse problems there and Delegate Ascathel should speak to that. But I've been to Barrowood, the other big forest in Cheliax." For a few days, but they knew what she was going to try here and didn't tell her not to, so.

"It's true that we don't want you to chop down the trees. There are several reasons but the one I think you will understand best is just - that's our home. If you chop down enough trees to make the forest smaller, it can only end with no forest."

"I'm not asking you to do it only because you are Good." She probably isn't, is she. "There are things the druids, and maybe some other forest people, can offer you if we're not fighting. Plant growth, of course. Help with creatures that go out of the forest and kill humans, some of those you call 'monsters'. Some of them are only there because they help defend the forest against humans, because there is no peace we can trust in. Other spells. Help talking to the animals and plants you farm, and even if you don't care about treating them well out of Good, it can help you care better for them so they work better for you. Kinds of plants you don't know about, or don't know how best to grow, which you could eat. Quick-growing bushes you can burn without logging whole trees. Probably many other things I haven't thought of yet, because we haven't actually sat down and tried helping each other yet."

"But we won't help there be more humans if we can't trust the humans not to be at war with us. Next year, or next decade."

"Feather, we had an entire conversation the other day, and I told you, you need a log for a good fire. Shrubbery's kindling. I don't deny you could be very useful if you took it into your head, but it'd help a lot if you only needed to be told a thing once."

Delegate Ascathel thinks this is dumb because humans are dumb, and two humans talking to each other won't fix problems long-term even if one of them says she's a druid.

"I remember that. I think that's the kind of problem you shouldn't say can't be solved until many people, wiser and more experienced and with more - different experience from each other than just me or you, have spent some time seriously trying to solve. My point is that that's a problem you have, you need firewood, and maybe we can solve it if we try to solve it together, and we shouldn't fight over the trees before we've even tried doing that."

“Are you demanding that people not kill monsters when they leave the forest, or are you not demanding that.”

"It depends on what you call 'monsters'. I am not asking, and never asked, for you not to kill someone - or some creature - that leaves the forest and that you have a good reason to think is going to try to kill you or someone else," not that she trusts this woman's evaluation of good reasons when she wouldn't even give her name after Feather asked.

"It would be much better for it to be clear that when, say, I or one of my friends want to leave the forest, someone isn't going to try to kill them and then say they were 'monsters' just for not being humans. And the Committee on Nonhuman Rights already agreed that nonhumans can live peacefully in Cheliax without being attacked. But even humans not going into the forest to kill people at random would already be better than the current situation."

"The reason to think a monster that leaves the forest is going to kill someone is that the last twenty did or tried."

Oh good. She was going to say that but now she doesn't have to. She nods.

Sigh. Here they go again. "Every time someone says that I ask, what are you calling a monster? Some people answer 'a creature that kills humans', which is just circular. Some people answer 'anyone who doesn't live peacefully by the laws, including human bandits', which I am fine with but then how do you tell them on sight? If you can identify some race, and you know they always want to kill humans and there are no good or peaceful people among them, and you're sure enough of that to attack a stranger on sight without even trying to talk first if they're the kind of creature that talks, then - I think you'd better be very sure, and very wise, and know a lot about all the different creatures there are, to be right."

"But I can't actually stop you from attacking creatures that go out of the forest. It's probably too early to talk about that. You - I mean the humans outside the forests - have suffered from this war, just as we have, and you're afraid of your enemy and angry at them just as we are. That's probably not something we can just solve by talking here today. What we can do is stop fighting. And hopefully years from now, we or our children can do better than that."

"So what I'm actually asking for is more like - if anything from the forest tries to come out and is likely to kill humans, the druids and other people of the forest will try to stop it. If any humans try to enter the forest and kill people there, or burn it or log all the trees, then the humans will try to stop them, or punish them or turn them away when they come back home, or not complain or be angry if the forest kills them. There will probably be - people on both sides who don't obey this. But if both sides are working against those people, it has to be better than working against each other."

"Can we distinguish between owlbears and nymphs and devils, here," says Tuimfane. "That's the important distinction. You should kill all the devils and I don't care if you cull the owlbears that leave the forest and if you get in a fight with a nymph she was right and you were wrong."

Liushna nods along because the thing Whisperwood Guy said was 100% correct.

Finally someone talks sense! 

(Feather is aware that she still hasn't properly processed Tuimfane actually being a druid - why didn't he talk to her before the committee, they could have coordinated better than this -)

She gives him a nod and a smile. Can someone else please say something sensible? She feels like half the people in the room haven't spoken yet and she doesn't know who they are and so can't pretend to understand them even on the  horribly inadequate basis of 'imagine an average Chelish human'.

"Nymphs are perfectly capable of breaking Chelish law, and I cannot conceive of an agreement under which we would forfeit the right to enforce the law on her. But I will concede that a thinking resident of the forest like a nymph should be treated like a human who might possibly be an outlaw, not like a devil or owlbear."

"Yes. If a nymph goes out of the forest and kills or hurts someone, you can deal with her as you would have with a human. But humans shouldn't be allowed to go into the forest and kill nymphs and other people. Then the nymphs and everyone else can at least stay home and be safe, even if they don't understand or like the laws of human Cheliax."

He inclines his head slightly to the Hellknight. "If a nymph goes out of the forest and hurts or kills someone it's probably because the someone was doing some kind of elaborate evil ritual," he says. "And you should presume that she had a good reason, even if you want to find out what it was or if she made a mistake somehow."

"No. Nymphs are usually Chaotic Good, but so are Azatas and priests of the Drunk. If she will not stop when challenged by the law or explain herself, then she will be fought, captured, and if necessary executed, because the Law has expectations and if she does not meet them that is her own fault."

"The Law is an idiot."

(To Feather:)

"...in the meeting earlier today one of the priests said you think birds and squirrels are people? Do you think people shouldn't be allowed to hunt, or cut wood?"

"A nymph that goes against the law in human lands is a self-destructive fool."

"Nymphs don't, but if they do they have a good reason and you should take facts like 'nymphs are Good and are smarter and wiser than everyone else' seriously when you're deciding what rules to make."

"I would like it to be possible to arrest a nymph if one's up to mischief, but we should all remember that a couple years back the law was actively evil, yes? Instincts won't change overnight."

Liushna is inclined to agree with Ascathel about human law but probably saying so wouldn't be constructive.