"It won't take nearly as long the second time, not when we've thrown out all the possibilities that turn out to be completely unreasonable. Porras is right. If virtually all the nobles are single or infernal holdovers, and don't feel qualified to speak on it, the family committee will have a hard time getting taken seriously no matter what it does, even though its business ultimately touches everyone. We put so many things related to it on the first list because it is important, and we shouldn't set up fundamental rights to be treated as secondary."

"We can set a time limit for discussing them, if that would help, and scrap the attempt to integrate them into a single list if tweaking them into a form this committee will accept takes longer than that."

Technically they already passed the vote 5-0 out of 8 but this does not really matter when at least two have backed out.

"Tallandria's solution of a time limit seems an acceptable compromise for reintegrating suggestions. Do we want to vote on that separately?"

"I'm in favor of the time limit."

"Seems as good as plan as any. Archduke, you want to speak against it? Bet you will if anyone does."

"No, none at all. I've raised my objections, this proposal answers them and I have nothing else to say."

Enric tentatively raises a hand in agreement.. "Aye."

"I think we can assume this vote passes without counting, Delegate Porras, though I appreciate your clarity. Even without subcommittees, I think the groups we gestured at are a good way of structuring our discussions. I suggest we start with the suggestions around criminal matters and our code of justice. Does anyone want to contest maledictions, torture, or being turned to undead?"

"Don't contest but, when we get to it, we need to put in what exactly we mean by torture. You think you know it when you see it, but sometimes they do things that don't look as bad as they are."

Sheeee should talk less but nobody else is jumping in. "I don't know that I know it when I see it. I expect people to have lots of different lines about what is and isn't torture." As we have just seen, earlier. "Malediction and not being turned into an undead seem straightforward, anyway."

"I'm also against a full ban on torture, depending on what you mean by it. You need some way to punish crimes that aren't bad enough to just execute someone over. I'd be fine with saying that innocent people have the right not to be tortured."

"Malediction should be banned outright, and the others except as punishment for a crime. I'd rather whip a thief than maim him and I'd rather send a skeleton than an orphan to work the mines - neither will last long."

"A lot of people are mighty confident that punishment for a crime is the sort of thing everybody knows full well how to hand out justly, when two years ago a crime was 'primary worship of anybody other than Asmodeus', or 'not sending your little boys and girls to be beaten in school till they convinced everyone they were feebleminded enough to go home'."

“That. Yes.”

”I don’t think sending either to the mines is good. There has to be a not evil way to get metal.”

"Obviously people shouldn't be tortured if they haven't done anything wrong! But worshipping decent gods isn't illegal anymore, and hopefully we can fix the rest of the laws too. If one man starts a fight with another, but doesn't kill him and wasn't trying to, I don't think he should be put to death for it, but you can't just let him go."

It takes her about five seconds to retrace the sentence twice and figure out which of whipping or maiming is the torture and which is the alternative to torture. 

"Some available punishment seems necessary, if we're going to have laws at all. But there should be some things the government can't do to you no matter what, and some things that they can do to you but only if it's - I don't know, a sentence that has to be recorded by someone is at least better than it being random and at will."

" - I would like to suggest rape and being forced to have children for the 'not allowed ever' list, if we're making one of those." Sigh. She really doesn't want to look obsessed with this but also really doesn't want people be allowed to round up the sorcerers.

"I'm for banning those." You can just pay people to have children.

"I agree with not allowing those!!" The part about not being forced to have children is a good idea, she didn't think of that. Delegate Tallandria is pretty smart when she isn't getting tricked by diabolists. Probably lots of smart people get tricked by diabolists sometimes?

“For that too. Put it in the family rights and the other rights if we have to.”

Enric would hope that with the asmodeus priests gone and the new nobles sent from heaven and axis and good countries, they wouldn’t even try that. But better to make it a right than to trust. 

"Those seem obviously good, yes. Archduke, for what crimes does Molthune permit skeletonization as a punishment? I see the practical value but it seems... unstable?"

Enric is looking down trying to figure out how to explain to these fancy nobles that necromancy is evil.

"Capital crimes - murder, massacre, rape*, desertion in the heat, grand theft, treason - permit the judge to offer the convict the choice to instead be sent to the mines on a twenty year term to be served until the sentence is complete, living or dead. He can always choose execution." But not by Final Blade, because they don't have one of those.

(*: Linguistic divisions absent in English clarify that this a very narrow subtype of the crime with a maximally sympathetic victim.)

"For the torture rule, we could say that if a judge has an innocent person tortured, the judge has to also be tortured the same way? That way judges won't want to torture innocent people and if they do they'll get what they deserve."

"Do people actually choose twenty years in the mines over death? Does anyone survive twenty years in the mines?" Can she feel less bad about certain things that she's participated in?

Maybe druids are onto something, if metal can only be mined by using necromancy or sacrificing orphans. 

"If we need to worry about judges in quite that way I imagine we shouldn't let them torture anybody to begin with!"