"I'm the Condesa of a port city, and what I care about is passports and taxes. If a gnome ships parts from Brastlewark to Andoran- does he pay taxes twice or once? If a gnome visits Westcrown does he wield a passport? And even outside Brastlewark- to whom do ungoverned peaceful entities pay taxes?"

...Liushna turns to Baron Ramirez and says, quietly, in Draconic, "What are taxes?"

"Brastlewark pays its taxes. It pays rather more taxes than anywhere else in Cheliax, although I am hopeful that the Queen will see the injustice of this, since she is Lawful and Good and does not have to be bribed to allow gnomes to live in peace."

"Halflings don't have land, but we should. We should be given a place of our own, from the land of the slavers or the lands of evil nobles."

Feather once asked the villagers around the Forest to explain 'taxes' to her. The answers she received (across several villages) included:

- Lawful payment for things the rulers do, like building and patrolling roads

- Lawful tribute to your superiors

- Good (?) contribution to a common cause, like fighting enemies of Cheliax

- Evil tyranny (?) by the strong of the weak

- Chaotic (???) theft by the tax-collectors

Taxes seem to be one of those things the humans don't understand themselves (but will get offended if you point this out). She hopes she can sit this one out, because if someone asks her 'who will the Forest pay taxes to' it probably won't end well, or at least won't end in any kind of mutual understanding.

"We are saying what things should be given? The kobolds are fine to live where we live but want food sent."

"Delegate Permira, I am in principle okay with an arrangement like that, I have done something similar on my own estate where I inherited and freed a large number of halfling slaves, but most halflings currently work on the same estates as free human farmers. This arrangement would necessarily limit your ability to govern yourselves."

"Delegate Kicharchu, it is one thing to compensate a freed slave by giving her the lands she has worked without pay all her life. It is another to continually send food that must be grown by the labors of those that live above ground. If you wish to continue to live in the sewers you will need to trade with the aboveground races for food."

"We could also live somewhere else if there is a good place."

(Aside, to Liushna) "The closest Draconic word is 'tribute'. It's the portion of the produce of the land that is given to the queen, rather than given to the local lord or the churches or kept by the farmers. I think there are also city taxes sometimes but I don't know how those work."

(To the committee as a whole) "I think that separating each race and giving them their own laws would be a disaster. Perhaps it works for gnomes; I know little of gnomes and would not say. But dwarves live among humans, by human laws. Should we banish them all back to the Five Kings? I doubt they would be happy with that, and we'd all suffer. Who would manage the mines? Elves live among humans, by human laws. Should we send them all to Kyonin Forest? Trust me when I say that to put orc villages with their own law and own governance in the middle of a human countryside would not lead to peacefully living side-by-side. And that is to say nothing of true monsters - dragons, the hungry dead, trolls and owlbears and dinosaurs and beastmen. River-singers and" strix, but he won't say that in this company "harpies and ogres and man-eating flowers and faeries and demons. That's an awful lot of tiny villages with their own laws. It seems more like the Varisian Wastes than like a real country, to me."

Liushna did not understand and/or recognize every item on that list, but she does know the word owlbear and she knows that those aren't people. 

On the other hand, that doesn't mean his general point is inaccurate, and he was just helpful to her, so she won't say that out loud. 

In the Forest, everyone depends on other races to live, and someone depends on them in turn. This idea of every race living all alone by itself feels - unnatural. Like everyone trying to imitate the humans in miniature, because the humans want to fill the world with nothing but themselves and the creatures they eat, and the other people who live among them have come to think that this is what good living looks like. That it's a way to happiness, and not just victory in war.

Feather has talked with over two hundred Outsider-humans. Almost none of them were happy.

"As long as halflings are as free as humans to be wizards and priests and lords and delegates and merchants and can never be enslaved again, we can live by the same laws humans do. But if we are not, we must have our own laws and our own judges."

"We are voting on who can be wizards and lords? Excitement!"

"Halflings can already be wizards. So can kobolds, Kicharchu." Alexandre is one of the humans who are happy! "I've trained halfling wizards myself.* It's just that Asmodean law doesn't let them."

"And I agree with Baron Ramirez. In Absalom, every race of people lives under the same laws, cheating and stealing from each other without care to height or pointiness of ears, and damn near every one of them is happier and less wicked than the richest and most independent lord in Cheliax."

(*: And killed kobold, but he doesn't want to talk about that.)

"Think most people happier and less wicked not have deal with Asmodeus." 

Permira is really quite sure his claim to have taught wizardry to halflings was a bribe and a trick but it's a really tempting bribe, see. "The masters get to be happy, by the old rules. We don't."

"Delegate Esquerra—Absalom, though cosmopolitan, is still a human city, in that the majority of its people and nearly all of its councilmen throughout history have been human. I did not mean to suggest that other races were not welcome to live among humans if they wished, only that if they do so, they must abide by human laws. If a human goes onto halfling or strix lands he will need to abide by their laws just the same. But, purely as a practical matter, I doubt many humans will abide being governed by nonhumans."

"I have plenty of humans in my barony who abide it just fine." Admittedly, it's easy to be a step up from a red dragon.

"Most of the councilmen, yes, aside from all the ones with elven, draconic or extraplanar blood they lie about. Funny how aasimar - I'm sorry, 'Celestial-blooded sorcerers' - get called shining exemplars of humanity please nobody notice their glowing eyes and tieflings get called another race, isn't it?"

"Everyone knows the regard in which they aren't alike, but I would happily expel all the aasimars from government if we would also expel all the tieflings." Considering he's seen none of the former here anyway.

He's pretty sure that's not how sorcery works. Case in point: Antonio Ramirez is not a dragon.

"Delegate Conde Antonius, it would seem to me that if strix have their own laws and lands, we must have border-taxes and passports and the possibility of war."

"Border-taxes and passports, yes. War is a possibility, but—two dukes would not go to war with each other unless the crown were in dispute, and even then they might hope for a peaceful resolution. I hope that nonhuman vassals of the empire would enjoy similar peace."

"My bodyguard is a tiefling, archduke, and one of the finest men I've ever met. Expel them all - I'll take and train every one of them." To come back looking for vengeance, obviously.

'What if the strix get hungry?' He doesn't ask because he still wants to keep this particular strix friendly or at least nonhostile on the slavery committee, and it's not like anyone else here is ignorant of strix dietary habits.

...right?