"Narcis Soler, cleric of Erastil."

"Tetula, cleric of Cayden Cailean!" 

Enric has realized 'rights' is Galt-speak for ‘things the baron isn’t allowed to do to you’ and wants to get as many of those as possible.

"Enric Porras, I have a farm out in the plains. I guess I'm representing the what common people demand part, and then we can figure out how much the queen and the nobles will actually let us have."

"Victòria, priestess of Calistria." 

"Korva Tallandria. I work at an orphanage in Egorian."

The Erecuran is here. She's going to make some attempt to look neutral, there, since she doesn't in fact know what his intentions are or anything about him. 

"Theopho Lebanel, of Westcrown, former citizen of Rahadoum. Also high priest of Erecura, but I don't expect that to come up much here."

"Xavier Requena i Cortes, Archduke of Sirmium, late of the northern reaches."

"Very good. I have a few initial proposals, based on Kintargo's experience with a particularly egregious Thrune shortly before the liberation, and then I'll open the floor to others."

"First: no sumptuary laws. Class and wealth should not limit what may be worn. With the possible exception of insignia formally indicating military or noble rank that would be considered impersonation."

"Second: no limits on peaceful assembly, in public or otherwise, outside conditions of martial law."

"Third: no limits on peaceful speech, under the same qualifiers."

"...What if someone uses 'peaceful' words to try to convince people to worship Asmodeus?"

That also doesn't cover almost any of the rights Victòria cares about, but she can suggest more once she's pointed out the obvious problem.

Why does the Duchess think sumptuary laws are important? Rights are for people who have no way to defend themselves against officials, not people who dress like nobles and have enough money to bribe them anyway.

No Censorship is in fact the primary reason that Korva decided to sign up for this committee, but please let someone else speak in favor of it first? The Archduchess brought it up, so she can't be entirely alone, and she'd really like to not be declared the most obvious diabolist here.

"Military, noble, or religious rank. People trust me when I wear this thing," his mini bow and arrow, for a while he was just using an actual full sized one, "and that shouldn't be up for grabs."

To Victoria: "Do you really think people would worship Asmodeus if they had access to full and accurate information about other gods?"

There's a solid argument for this that they make in Absalom but Theopho is not the one to share it.

"If someone tries to tell everyone worship Asmodeus, we now know they're a cultist of Asmodeus. Don't let them talk, and they're still a cultist of Asmodeus, but one we don't know about."

To Tetula:

"I don't think people have the right to try to convince everyone else to be Asmodean even if it doesn't work!"

To Xavier: 

"—I might have misunderstood what a 'right' is? I thought a 'right' was— you're allowed to do it and can't be punished for it. If someone is a cultist of Asmodeus but no one is allowed to do anything about it, then knowing doesn't help much."

"You can't be punished for telling people to worship Asmodeus! You can be punished for owning a holy symbol of Asmodeus and a shrine to Asmodeus and a pentagram of Asmodeus drawn in cat's blood, and you can be followed by spies until you lead them to the important members of the Cult of Asmodeus, who I assure you have all those things."

Jilia nods to Narcis. "Or religious rank, of course, my mistake. On speech, my understanding of the principle is that, one, Delegate Tetula's objection is wise, and, two, that policing pure speech tends to allow the government to find excuses to punish anyone who disagrees with them by declaring things they say to be prohibited. Say, to declare a lawyer's normal business to be proselytization for Mephistopheles. And then, as a practical matter, that the Archduke's point is also correct, and so the costs are smaller than we might expect. I certainly agree that if we make an exception, here, proselytization for forbidden gods is the obvious one."

It doesn't seem hard to tell the difference between normal people saying normal things and someone advocating for Mephistopheles????

He'll nod along with the entire speech. "Oh yes. If there's any exception, it's that exception. But the need isn't quite so great as it looks."

"I think guilds want their mark protected too. Maybe just let every group pick an insignia?"

"How about limits to speech to a crowd but no limits in private? We don't want people preaching for Asmodeus on the street, but people just talking at home shouldn't have to worry about saying the wrong thing and getting reported."

Oh good, both nobles in favor.

"I think it's most important that we can hear and read what others have said, even when the things they said are imperfect or wrong. Taking away our ability to know and understand what things are like in other places was among the worst weapons of Asmodeus. We can't do better than we are if we aren't allowed to know what else exists."

Jilia nods to Korva but holds up a hand to prevent more responses.

"Are we agreed that some form of a right to speak freely is warranted, and disagree only about which precise restrictions should be applied? If so, I'd like to table the specifics for the moment and take more suggestions."

She pauses for a beat.

"To 'table' in this context means to set aside temporarily with the promise of returning to it. For those not familiar with the kind of procedures committees use, which I realize is most of you."

Enric appreciates the explanation, though he doesn't entirely trust that they'll actually take it off the table. Sometimes people say 'we can talk about that later' and then it never happens. 

He agrees though. There's things people shouldn't be saying, but that doesn't mean the crown and nobles should be in every house and tavern listening for them.

"I have some more suggestions.

"People should have the right to travel freely without needing a travel pass. People should have the right to worship any god not of the lower planes. People should have the right to justice. People should have the right to their own person, free from being defiled by force. People should have the right to defend themself against assaults on their person, including when a battered woman or a victim of rape kills their assaulter, even if that happens later. If an ordinary person accuses a noble or a priest of a crime, or vice versa, the ordinary person should have the right to have the trial judged by the priest of a legal god of their choice, and they should be allowed to bring them to trial even if it's the count or something." Or just kill them, but she knows she's not getting that through committee. "Crimes should be punished more seriously if it's done by a noble or a priest— right now it's less, even if you manage to bring them to trial at all, and I think that's backwards. Farmers should have the right to own the land they work. Women should have the right to divorce their husbands at their own will. Husbands should have the right to divorce their wives if their wife isn't pregnant and doesn't have children, or if their wife gives consent, or if a priest of a legal god hears both their complaints and says he should be allowed to. Either way the wife should get to keep her dowry, obviously. —I wrote all that down before I came, if anyone didn't catch everything." Some of the wording is stolen from pamphlets that she thought had good ideas.

And now we get the insane back-of-the-house early-convention nonsense.

"We have now heard the position of Calistria," he says. "As an Iomedaean, I wish to note that, as well as legalizing the assassination of everyone who ever won a fistfight, this gives every rich merchant the right to accuse any poor priest of murder and then go to a cleric of Razmir, god of greed, Gorum, god of conflict, or Norgorber, god of crime, bribe the judge, and have the entire matter settled that way."

"I don't think it should be legal to kill anyone who won a fistfight, but if someone punches you you should have the right to fight back. And greed and crime are both Evil so they should be covered by my proposal, unless Razmir and Norgorber being evil is something the priests lied about? I heard Gorum was the god of battle" hopefully that's true??? she's not sure "but I guess if there was a conflict between a soldier and a priest he might side with the soldier even if they were in the wrong. Soldiers aren't really ordinary people anyway."

"I think that Delegate Ferrer's proposals have some merit, but, yes, some are much too anarchic to include in the constitution of a reasonably lawful state. Protections for worship of gods and judging those gods to be adequate arbiters of legal disputes are not the same. Something similar with permitted Lawful gods seems worth considering, and even some Good gods, but Gorum would declare for whoever could win a fight, and that's just inviting warlords in. Also, Norgorber lives in Axis and Razmir lives on Golarion, so neither of them are in the lower planes."

"Why does Axis let him do that?? They should kick him out. I know that's not really our business to decide but he's literally the god of crime. ...I'd be okay with saying you can request it be judged by the priest of any Good god, the Good gods aren't going to let anyone get away with killing innocent people or anything." That excludes Calistria too, which she's not happy about, but she doesn't want them saying it has to be a Lawful god.

"I don't think I'd make a very good judge, and we're spread a little thin, cleric-wise, already."

"Well, he is the god of crime. They haven't caught him yet."

"I think at this point we are already relying on the clerics of Good gods - and the Abadarans - for everything they can be relied on and a little more."

If he's telling the truth about why they let Norgorber stay and this isn't some Hellish trick then that's a really dumb reason.

“Abadar is the god of cities and roads and money, and there’s always thieves in the city and on the roads and anywhere there’s money. I think that’s just how the world is, even if the city is axis.”

to Soler— “I trust your judgment more than a magistrate who didn’t get picked by a lawful and good god, already. But if it’s not your job and you’re busy, like Xavier said, maybe we shouldn’t need clerics to do it?”

"Perhaps it could be handled as a right of appeal? I've heard the state of justice in small holdings is pretty atrocious, if the local lord is corrupt. A small fraction of appeals with some consequences to the lord for having a local verdict overturned could keep them honest far out of proportion to the amount of cleric time used."

"...Not that I'd ask or want my own church to be one taking appeals, to be clear, even if other Lawful non-Good churches are permitted to. That would just lead to a repeat of this morning every time."

"I see no reason Delegate Lebanel's proposal should be a problem. Right of appeal to approved churches aligned with justice, including but not limited to Iomedae, Torag and Abadar, in all cases outside - how would you mean to handle it, Delegate Lebanel, if a hundred bandits are captured by a baron's men and the baron can't hold them?"

"That is a good question and I do not have a ready answer. Probably any satisfying answer is sufficiently complex that it leaves the realm of the constitution and becomes ordinary law which may be updated as complications arise and circumstances change. Was there any provision for a right of appeal of any kind in pre-Infernal Cheliax?"

“I have a question too, how do we stop the local lord from messing with anyone who tries to appeal? And how do we make sure everyone can appeal, some of us can't write letters and are serfs who aren't allowed to leave their lands or even servants who can't really leave the manor."

"Maybe a right to go to a good temple on holy days? That one's good on it's own, even without needing it for appeals."

"I like a holy day as much as anyone, but if one happens to fall during an emergency you don't want everyone to have an excuse they can all pull out one after another."

"Right to travel freely would be the simplest way. Never been fond of serfdom, myself."

("Mateu, could you?", she whispered earlier, and her bodyguard started an unseen servant taking notes.)

Proposed Rights

- No sumptuary laws, except for criminal impersonation of military, noble, or religious insignia

- No limits on peaceful assembly, in public or otherwise, outside conditions of martial law.

- No limits on peaceful speech, conditions to be decided (martial law, proselytization for banned gods)

- Right to travel freely without needing a travel pass.

- Right to worship any god not of the lower planes.

- Right to justice (clarify?)

- Right to their own person, free from being defiled by force.

- Right to defend themself against assaults on their person,

- Right to retaliate against past assaults on their person significantly later

- Right to have crimes judged by a priest rather than a local noble, or right to appeal crimes to a priest (decide which gods)

- No decrease in punishment for crime from a title or position as a priest (or military officer?), and perhaps an increase in punishment due to the increased responsibility

- Right for farmers to own the land they work.

- Right to divorce. By consent, or if there is no child nor pregnancy, or if a priest hears the dispute and judges it allowed, and possibly unconditionally for wives.

- Right to pilgrimages to temples on holy days

"The best thing would be something like the Asmodean Inquisition except instead of hunting out heresy they're checking that no one is abusing their power."

"I heard the words 'something like the Asmodean Inquisition' and am immediately concerned."

She thinks. If you could have anything, be free of any interference from the state, aside from things already listed - ?

"Right not to be made to punish someone else, except as a condition of voluntary employment. - this may have consequences I don't foresee. I am thinking about schools."

"Might not even need something official for that, the clerics of the gods like Milani or Cayden are going to go around finding abuses of power on their own, I think. Just need to help them and get them to trust the appeals thing instead of solving everything alone."

"I assume we're going to go twiddle the details of these later? They're none of them egregious but there's a few I'd quibble over."

"I am definitely assuming that we're listing first and debating later." Because several of those are INSANE.

"I don't think we want all of these rights, but certainly some of them are important, positive changes."

"I want to add some more rights too, if we're just adding to the list. I'll need some help with making them make sense and sound right, afterwards." 

"A right to your family? So they can't send your kids to school by force, baron can't mess with your wife, army can't send your sons to the war. Or if we can't do that, at least no conscription until they're old enough. A right to your own work, for serfdom and indenture and all that. Or if that doesn't work, a time limit, so if you go into debt or they take you on a ship or something, it doesn't last more than ten years? A right to not be tortured? A right to not be taxed off your land?"

"Oh, Delegate Tallandria's suggestion gave me an idea — right for the victim to carry out the punishment for a crime, if it's possible and they want to. Like if someone is sentenced to be executed for something other than murder, their victim could be the one to swing the axe. But I just thought of that so it might have problems I didn't think of."

Tetula hears the clerics of the gods like Milani or Cayden are going to go around finding abuses of power on their own and something cracks inside her. 

The clerics of the gods like Milani or Cayden are going to go around finding abuses of power on their own, and that was the missing piece, that was what Cayden Cailean wanted from her, it's not about tavernkeeping and not about killing monsters although both of those are good things to do, it's about-- being safe, being someone you can talk to-- someone who isn't part of the law, someone who's not going to do anything if you don't want them to, but someone who can help you, who knows who turns a blind eye to what and who can be bribed and what the written-down laws actually mean, and who instead of using that knowledge to enrich herself or get more powerful is going to use it to help--

--someone who was there when the government itself was forming--

Korva is right that they don't need an Asmodean Inquisition because the Asmodean Inquisition is part of the systems of power and can't be a check on it, they need-- someone outside it-- 

the clerics of the gods like Milani or Cayden are going to go around finding abuses of power on their own

Narcis nods at Enric's "right to your family" idea. And again at the one about not being tortured.

Xavier is going to let some of his moral objections to Victoria's plan leak to his face so other people will feel safer having moral objections to Victoria's plan.

She doesn't think everyone has a right not to be tortured but apparently they're just supposed to be listing things right now, not arguing about them.

"I fear we're going to skip something just because we're not worried about it, and then in a few generations our grandchildren are going to be dealing with the Queen's and it'll be a different world... right to not be turned into an undead, right to be ransomed back if taken prisoner, right to not be Maledicted."

The Archduke is in fact opposed to the first two but they can argue about that later.

Oh, this feels exciting, proposing these. The age of glory! But If he forgets about any rights now he might not get another chance. Rights, rights, rights...

"A right to the woods, for hunting and firewood. A right to good loans instead of evil loans. A right to buy food for normal prices at a market instead of having to go buy from baron when your crop fails and then going into debt to him. A right to have your debts taken away if they were like that, maybe a good priest can judge. A right to not have to pay taxes that the tax collector just makes up, just the real ones. A right to know where your family is and if they're still alive, if they get taken away to the army. A right to a good baron instead of an evil one. A right to go to Andoran instead of living in Cheliax. A right to get married to a man even if he's a noble's son and doesn't want to acknowledge the kid. A right to choose whether to be paid in coins or paper or in kind. A right to form a village militia if the baron isn't protecting you from monsters. Or get a new baron."

He's losing his breath, but there have to be more rights. Is there anything from those pamphlet readings that he's forgetting. But Soler is right, they're going to miss one. "Wait, what about a right to put new rights in here, if it turns out we forgot one?"

"Right to property - to not have your property arbitrarily seized by the government, I mean - seems actually important, but I don't know the right wording so that the government can still, you know, collect taxes." She's not personally invested in this because she, personally, does not have any property anymore, but hey.

"...right to think your own thoughts. Possibly."

"Well, surely if someone is going around detecting thoughts, and your thoughts are, I'm going to set that house on fire, that's got to be some kind of punishable offense, you can't wait till they actually do it if you already happen to know. - and we can't have a right to paper money, turned out it was Evil."

"How about a right to try and not go to hell? Let people who are going to get executed donate money to a good church and spend a year working for them and repenting, first, in case that helps."

"The right to not be forced to do evil. The right to only be executed for things you did, not things someone else did. The right to have the undead of you destroyed if you end up as one. The right to be turned back into a human if a fairy or archmage turns you into a frog or kobold." Enric thought that last one just happened in stories but he's met people in the city who said it happened to them last week.

"The right to know your rights, by sending someone to say them to everyone not just in writing."

"The right to own slaves," says an elected delegate who until now had not done anything of note.

"I don't think there's enough halflings to go around for that one."

"Well, the right to not have your slaves taken away from you, at any rate. But I wouldn't mind spreading them around a little, there's lots of dead nobles with more slaves than they needed."

"I think there's a different committee discussing that one."

No one on that committee should have ever been let anywhere near the convention. "I don't see why we can't discuss it too."

"Some kind of rule against when you may go looking for people's thoughts, perhaps. I agree we need some precautions there."

"I doubt very much that the committee on slavery is going to suggest we permit it, or that the convention will reject their suggestion. I would rather not submit a conflicting recommendation."

"Right to... Oh, I don't know the right format or whether this is something the government can even do anything about, but as long as we're listing everything that's worth discussing, I want to think about whether there's something to be said about fathers abandoning obligations to their children. And mothers, but there are many more children without fathers than without mothers, and the children are certainly being deprived of something."

"The right to a father either beneficial or dead? I don't know the format either."

"We definitely need to put that one in. Rights for orphans too. I don't know how to say 'let them stay with relatives, don't let someone just take them to the city if all the guy cares about is an orphanage that pays for anyone who brings orphans big enough to work."

Enric is just ignoring slavery guy. The archduchess seems to have him handled.

"...so, is that enough rights? That's a lot. Even if there are more, we should maybe debate what we have, now, and get a more manageable list before we add more."

"Yes, this will be a few days work sorting through. Unless there are last objections, we can hand out copies of the list and read them for anyone unlettered." 

Maybe he ought to learn to read at least a little. He knew how once, enough to make it through school without getting some ghastly infection from the whippings, and then promptly forgot it all as irrelevant diabolist hideousness.

Enric gives an apologetic look to the invisible servant writing down all these rights. He went a bit overboard coming up with as many as he could, didn’t think about how someone had to write down everything he said.

"Then I think we can go ahead. Here's the list I have so far."

Proposed Rights, Continued

- Right not to punish others except as terms of employment

- Right to preserve family; no intrusion on marriage by lords, no conscription of children

- Right to the proceeds of labor

- Limits on time of indenture or conscription

- Ban on torture

- Right to stay on land even if taxes exceed savings

- Right for victim to carry out punishment (dangerous?)

- Right not to be made undead

- Right to be ransomed when captured

- Ban on maledictions

- Right to hunt and collect firewood in the woods

- Right to good loans (?), and forgiveness for loans seen unfair in a judge's sight

- Right to reasonable food prices in emergencies

- Right to contest and refuse taxes claimed illegally by collectors

- Right to know the status of your family when separated (difficult to do)

- Right to a good baron (?)

- Right to leave Cheliax

- Right to compel a father to marry their child's mother

- Right to choose which currency to be paid in (including in kind)

- Right to form a village militia against the dangers of monsters and outlaws if not competently protected

- Right to keep property (requires care to permit taxes)

- Right to your own thoughts (with some caveats for legitimate investigation)

- Right to attempt to achieve salvation before execution (donations, labor for a Good church, etc.)

- Right not to be compelled to do Evil

- Ban on capital punishment for being an accessory or accomplice

- Right to have undead forms destroyed

- Right to be returned to human if polymorphed

- Right to know your rights (even if illiterate)

- Right of children and mothers not to be abandoned by their fathers (and vice versa where applicable)

- Rights of orphans (extended family before paid orphanages, etc.)

"Also, I don't think this is properly a right, but as delegates Soler and Porras suggested, we ought to have some procedure for adding more rights later. I'm inclined to recommend that the convention write a procedure for calling a future, smaller convention to add additional rights."

Social gladiatorial combat considerations, although she likes this group much more than the one tasked with rooting out diabolists:

Delegate Ferrer has some insane rights on there, and she did catch that the Archduke of Sirmium is extremely bothered by them. However, Ferrer is also on the rooting out diabolism committee and Korva would like not to be immediately declared a diabolist. On the other hand, Ferrer also has one really good right that Korva can speak in defense of while they're working out the details (right to your own person). 

Her best bet, socially, would be to give measured criticism of the Erecuran, but his only rights were right to travel and right to appeal cases to a church, neither of which is especially insane. She likes Delegate Porras, and doesn't want to antagonize him or weaken his position relative to the more powerful people in the room, but he has a lot of rights and is clearly not specifically attached to most of them. Delegate Arguata is an easy target, but the Archduchess (who put a right to speech on there by! her! self!) already shut him down.

.....she's going to go for Ferrer, because she thought of a line she can't resist using.

"Against a victim's right to carry out their own justice. That a six year old girl physically cannot kill a man who rapes her does not mean he should survive an execution for it."

"A smaller re-convening be needed for other additions to the constitution too, not just rights, so it should be general."

"Oh, that's a good point, I wouldn't want him to go free either! You could make it so that the victim gets to try to carry it out if they want to, but if they aren't able to then you bring in a normal executioner?"

"I am also against this right. I support the ban on torture and one cannot reconcile banning torture and having a man hacked to death by an unskilled executioner. Moreover, to kill a man for the sake of making him suffer is Evil," the Archduke says. "In the Good afterlives the blessed angels do not bring suffering to anyone; all the death they deal to the wicked is swift and clean. I have a summon spell that can summon a lantern archon, or can ask a more capable wizard friend of mine to call an Azata, a Chaotic Good outsider, tomorrow if you still require persuasion."

"... if there's nothing else the spell slot will be good for today I would like to meet a lantern archon."

"—I mean, I'll talk to an azata if you want to? As long as someone else" who isn't a nobleman "makes sure that it's really an azata and not... some kind of trick. I don't think I know as much about magic as you do so there are probably lots of tricks I don't know. But I don't see how it can be Evil to repay wrongs. If someone... forces himself on all the girls in his barony, and has his servants beaten for minor errors, and orders innocent people executed for making fun of him, and then a faerie cursed him so he couldn't do any of that anymore, but he could still go and live his life normally apart from that, that would be wrong. That's obvious to anyone that listens to their conscience." She learned about the concept of 'listening to your conscience' from a pamphlet. It's good to know there's a word for it.  

"...unless you just mean that sometimes you might be executing someone who never specifically tortured anyone? I'd need to think more about that. But even if you were executing people some way that didn't hurt them at all apart from killing them, I'd still think it would be good for the victim to have the right to release the blade if they want to. It's them that was wronged, not the executioner."

"I think the victim's involvement in determining the punishment will cause more crime. If the punishment depends on who you victimize, and not what you did, then everyone will think they can get away with murder, because sometimes you can. Better to prevent victimization in the first place than to avenge it." She's reasoning entirely from five year olds, here, but if she's learned anything today it's that the whole of Cheliax is much more like its five year olds than one might hope.

"—just to be clear, if the victim doesn't personally want to carry the punishment out themself, I still think the punishment should happen. I just think they should get priority if they want it."

"Allowing personal delivery of justice tends toward feuds. Ferrer kills Oriol in a bar fight, Oriol's widow or brother delivers the execution, Ferrer's brother takes offense and wants his own right to deliver punishment, and then another Oriol takes offense to that, and you have a cycle of violence. Rahadoum has problems with this, particularly in the desert. Having an uninvolved executioner is deliberate, because most states see personal violence as dangerous."

"It's not that I don't understand the impulse, I share it. But I think you're wrong, Miss Ferrer: that tends toward Evil, not just toward Chaos, and letting the man go if he's not a threat is mercy, which is classically Good."

To Theopho and Victoria: "Indeed. Sarenrae, Neutral Good goddess of mercy, holds as her primary belief that everyone is fundamentally good and kind and should have good things happen to them; Iomedae, Lawful Good goddess of opposing Evil, thinks that devoting resources to fighting people who are not actively trying to cause more evil is almost always a waste of resources that could be used to fight evil that is trying to make the world more evil. We must have justice - swift, sure, and efficient - so that the wicked fear opposing the righteous, but that justice must never be cruel or personal."

To Narcis: "The only other uses for it are self-defense and summoning another lantern archon later; I can cast the spell any time you wish."

She absolutely does not trust Theopho's explanation not to be some sort of complicated diabolist trick.

"I don't have a brother. But if I killed an innocent person for no reason, and their family took revenge on me for it, I don't think it would be right for my mother to hunt them down and kill them, because it would be Good to kill me if I did that, and you shouldn't take revenge on people for doing the right thing."

(To Xavier:)

"And I guess if I thought everyone was actually inherently good then maybe it would make sense to think no one should ever take revenge, because in that case if they hurt someone it was probably an accident? I'm on another committee with an Iomedaean priestess and she also thinks it's good to take vengeance on evildoers. If you had to pick between executing the guy who was cursed by a faerie and someone else who was just as bad but not cursed, I guess you should choose the second, but normally you could just... execute both of them..."

Enric isn’t sure about what Xavier is saying about heaven. It sounds good but he’s also heard stories of an angel of revenge. Theopho is right about the feuds between families, though.

Openly disagreeing with a calistria cleric is scary in an unnervingly similar way to disagreeing with an asmodeus cleric, in that if they’re irritated they will probably hurt you. So Enric tries to just be helpful and then ask a question.

”On the good gods committee, we have an outsider from heaven, a child archon they resurrected. We can ask him to come, see if he can recognize one of his own.”

”Is there a way to keep the victim safe, if we’re doing this? The family of someone who gets executed will wanted to get payback, even if it’s not right. Better they go for an executioner than an innocent?”

Wow, a resurrected archon that will be able to talk for more than thirty seconds is even better.

"What if you ever want to punish something with less than death? A flogging is a completely different punishment depending on who gives it, as all of us who went to public school no doubt remember. I'm going to stake out the position that this was a bad thing about them."

"—that's also fair. It might be there's no way to put this right in the Constitution without hurting people more than they deserve, or who don't deserve it at all."

"We can perhaps return to it if you have a different proposal, but I am also against it, I think the tendency to unjust vengeance is likely to be strong."

"I note several of these seem to be related: policies on the regulation of the family. Divorce, orphans, conscription of children, child abandonment, lordly intrusion. This isn't somewhere we can look to other countries for shining examples; Lastwall and Osirion limit the status of women more than I'm comfortable with, Andoran hasn't made any progress on its flood of street orphans, Galt has a little of both, and I've been advised that the norms in Infernal Cheliax around sex and childbirth were very much intended to damn us by treating our partners and our born and unborn children badly. This might be important and difficult enough to split out a dedicated Committee on Family Rights and Duties, and if not, we ought to look at them together."

”It’s important enough for its own committee, I think. But if there’s a separate family committee, we need someone good at politics on it, so people actually listen to them when they go back to the big room.”

It has to be a real committee, he means. Not one of those like diabolist-hunting and nonhumans where they’re planning to shove an issue into a side room and ignore it.

"It's worth the attention. I'd go to that room over this one, I think, if it added up to too many to do both."

"I would want to be on it, too, I - think the orphanage context may be useful. But I'm on too many already. I do think it's important and that many things touch on it, and if it was a particular project of hell, then fixing it should be a particular project of ours."

"The obvious thing to do is to make it illegal to sire bastards, but you'll never get that past the floor. Not that floor, anyway."

It would be a good law, though.

"I agree it is a real and meaningful priority," Xavier says, "and does deserve a committee devoted to it that can give it its full attention. But I don't know who would be the right choice to lead it." He isn't dreadful at politics, but he's not good at it, either.

Also, far more importantly, he's unmarried.

"We have some of the right people here - Calistria and Erastil should absolutely be included, and having an orphanage worker does sound relevant - but I think we'd likely want more faiths. Pharasma, at least, and Shelyn. Torag, if he's present, maybe? And some of us would want to sit out; I'd have nothing to contribute. Perhaps we could meet on alternate days, or something?"

"Rights has too much work to slow it to half the speed of the other committees. Although - if there are other subcommittees, we could split a few different ways tomorrow, pick up some other people, and then come back and discuss all the rights in a larger group? That's faster, not slower, although I expect that many of us are invested in multiple rights. But we could all discuss everything when the subcommittees come back together, and no one's left out then. - right?"

"Hmm. Splitting out other parts of our list isn't quite so easy. One around property and taxation, perhaps. Limits on criminal investigation and punishment, though those seem mostly uncontroversial. And I'd be reluctant to group everything else as the Subcommittee on 'Miscellaneous', since even I'm not quite sure what would be left there."

She could offer to chair the Committee on Family Rights and Duties, but since she was, until a year ago, expecting to be married to her city until her untimely death, she really is not at all qualified.

She scans the list again.

"...justice and punishment seems important, and I don't know that it's simple. Ferrer's idea of the the right to your own person seems enormously important, since if you don't have your own body, you don't have anything. At the same time, any punishment the state can mete out will violate it. But there should still be some things the state can't do to you, even as a punishment for a crime."

(Rape. Being maledicted. Maybe being made undead. Not listing it because she'd really like to limit the number of times she specifically brings up rape, here, she does not need to come off as obsessed.)

"Criminal rights have some controversy, and we need to figure out the specifics. There's religious rights too. Which gods people are allowed to worship, pilgrimages to temples, right to healing and help from clerics. Maybe we can work with the good gods committee there."

"Any of us on both of those?"

She drums her fingers on the table. "I don't think a right to healing from clerics is really something the government can promise. Aroden could, since his church overlapped with the state so much; Asmodeus, even; but we don't have a state church... I suppose I'm making your point for you, Mr. Porras, that we ought include that in the subcommittees."

"I believe only Delegate Porras is on both this committee and the Virtuous Churches committee. But we could invite someone else from their ranks onto that subcommittee. Anyone you would recommend, Enric?"

"I am on both. For recommendations, I'll have to ask who isn't too busy. Lluisa is a lawyer; I don't know how good she is, but she knows a lot about how gods can fit into governments and how laws work. There's the child from heaven, Soler wanted to meet him anyway. Maybe one of the actual clerics? I'm not sure."

"I feel as though, if we split into several subcommittees, that will significantly slow our work down to no major benefit, since every new right would need to be debated in the greater commitee. I think a new full committee on the family is an important and necessary thing to have that would otherwise slip through the cracks of the existing committees, and I agree that there should be a capable nobleman or high priest to steward it through so that the recommendations it makes don't get lost. But - a married man or woman, with a family, should head it. Someone who knows what it should be in Cheliax, to work with the people who know what it is." His lip twists. "And as a perpetual bachelor, I'm unqualified."

"Well, I suppose if I went to head up that one you'd still have her for the religious requirement," Narcis says dubiously, nodding to Ferrer.

Oh, she's going to do the thing where you sign up for too many school assignments and get beaten horribly for failing, except the penalty isn't that you get beaten, it's that the laws of your entire country suck forever, which is also what they were like before, but this time it's all your fault in particular.

Well.

"...are any of the other Archdukes married? That would get it taken seriously."

"Ignasi Narikopolus of Menador, who has kept his seat through the transition of queens, and Shawil de Abadar of Longmarch, the Osirian adventuring companion of Her Majesty and the archmages. Both are busy men. Few of the new, less-Asmodean, crop of nobility are married so far, having mostly been recently resurrected."

Enric looks confused. Everyone knows archdukes are the same kind of thing wizards and fairies, where they aren’t completely a man or a woman. They’re some other kind of being, with strange powers and strange minds, that can look and act like both or neither whenever they want. The thing they do is obviously different from how commoners have marriage and families.

But the people good at politics seem to think it’s relevant to which noble they should have as the face of the committee, so Enric doesn’t say anything. 

Well they don't want an infernal noble, but they don't want someone who thinks women are chattel, either.

"...maybe we can just open it to the floor tomorrow, and see who wants it. A Sower seems a good choice to chair it."

"I'll ask around among the dukes, and see if I've missed anyone I could wholeheartedly recommend. But that may be best. Let's have a vote: All in favor of creating a Committee on the Rights and Duties of the Family, separate from this committee, but not other subcommittees?"

"Aye."

"Aye."

"Aye."

“Aye…”

Though he’s still a bit worried about family rights being divided up and then ignored. Hope they can find a good enough noble.

Victòria was worried this was some kind of trick until she realized she could just sign up for both. "Aye."

“Wait, uh, un-Aye?” Is that allowed? Doesn’t seem allowed. 

“I think this is too important to separate. We’re trying to get important people there like we do here, but we’ll still lose something. If all the rights are all together, people will vote for it just to get the ones they like. If we separate a right, like family, it might not get through alone.”

"- on the floor, you mean? - ah. Yes, I see, if we give them a list of ten they might see six they like and wave it through, but if we give them two lists of five they may strike one down."

" - does it work that way?" 

Nobody's... actually done a vote yet... so it's not immediately obvious what exactly the floor gets to vote on.

"...I think if everyone expected the committees to have the final word someone would have made more of a fuss about all the nonhumans on Nonhumans."

"No, sorry, I meant - can the floor not take apart the bundles for only the things they like? I guess maybe no one knows how it'll go, yet."

"Maybe they can send it back and say to do it over, but it'd certainly be a hell of a way to do it if we could work out a nice list that works nicely together and they could pick it apart into bits that don't."

“I don’t know, never been to one of these before. Not from Galt.” He smiles. 

“But look at how things went on the floor last time. One person already had a plan for which committees to have, there was a fight, but at the end the plan mostly happened without anything taken away. I think that’s why we have committees.”

She looks at the Archduke. (Something inside her is SCREAMING at addressing this person directly, but if she can't slow her heartbeat she can at least ignore it. Mostly. Sort of.)

"Split into only two groups, but have someone on both committees who can add any family-specific rights to the main list, if those working on the main list feel they belong? Many things relating to families are not rights, and don't need to slow this committee down, but some are."

"I'm also on both the Good Gods committee and this committee," Tetula says. "I think it makes sense to separate out the family, and we can make sure to put any family-related rights on our list too."

"I'm somewhat concerned we may find ourselves reduplicating effort; I see the advantage to submitting the rights proposed by both committees to the full convention as a single package proposal, but that suggests that we'll find ourselves redebating every family-related right that the family committee passes if some members of this committee have worries about endorsing it." 

Thoughtful nod.

("My mistake, Delegate Tetula, I thought you were only here and on the Anti-Diabolism committee.")

"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!"

"Almost always and almost never, Delegate Tallandria. We don't have Final Blades." And it's another chance to delay the Abyss.

"I suppose that's not as bad as I feared. I think if we permitted it, I'd want to restrict it to massacre, treason, and some notion of particularly severe rape and torture. It's still distasteful, and I'm sure Evil, but unless we get many more dwarves in Cheliax so are all the other ways to man the mines."

He considers adding misuse of authority and dereliction of duty, but ultimately decides that's not actually merited.

"This requires that the government hire someone to do Evil for them, which is at least not of a piece with all the other things we're driving at with our list."

"If we can't man the mines without being evil about it then maybe we shouldn't have mines. It's wrong to say 'well, sure, this is evil, but I really want to, so I'm going to do it anyway.'"

"I think... executing a murderer is doing him an evil. Flogging a thief is doing him an evil, or gelding a rapist, or sending a deserter to the mines. We need the threat of punishments in the law, or theft and murder and rape will be common and our armies will crumble. We should all pray that we never use these punishments, we should seek mercy where we can. But, ultimately, all these deeds - all these punishments - are sins, and they are justified only by the fact that a greater good will come from them and a greater evil will come if we forsake them. It is our duty as followers of Iomedae to weigh the odds, and always choose the lesser evil and the better path, but until Hell is destroyed it cannot be our path to never take a single evil action."

"How is destroying Hell supposed to make you stop skeletonizing folks?"

Executing murderers is obviously not evil but she said that already.

“But there has to be a line somewhere, lesser evil you might have to do then repent of and evil you’ll never accept no matter what. Necromancy is on the wrong side of that line. Iomedae would agree, I think. Lots of stories of her fighting necromancers, haven’t ever heard of her working with one.”

"You're not wrong, any of you. But metal is weapons, and the cost of missing weapons is measured in blood. By all means ask the resurrected what the Arodenite solution was, and I hope they have a better suggestion, but I think they will not."

"If we permit this, making someone undead should of course be a punishment no one can be required to inflict."

Korva has arranged bad indentures for bad kids when times were good, and bad indentures for good kids when times were bad.

"A world without evil may not need metal weapons, but this one does, and this one uses children. Someday, maybe, we will have enough skill with magic to do it all with elementals, or enough dwarves to do it all with them, but not today. I am fine with convict's choice of swift death or condemnation to the mines. I don't know enough about mining to say if they must be made to work past death, or enough about necromancy to say if we should make a law against fixed term use of it. Perhaps we can say that the government may not use it without offering execution as an alternative, or for a term longer than a man's natural life. If participation in punishment cannot be compelled except as part of voluntary employment, the policy will fall out of use if people give up on necromancy."

"I have no objection to either of these two proposals," he says in response to Theo and Korva. They do seem to be sensible people who understand what a tradeoff is.

“That’s… still too complicated for something this obvious. Necromancy isn’t like killing where you sometimes have to do it to bad people, or even like halflings where you can’t stop it because everywhere except Andoran does it.”

“Every good god is against making undead and every good cleric can hurt them the same way every good cleric can heal people. That makes it obvious enough what side everyone even trying to be good should be on.”

"If you have a cleric of a Good god I will gladly offer myself up for an examination to determine my alignment. My confessor is Iomedaean and when last I received a Discern Alignment spell I was Lawful Neutral." He's also been Lawful Evil and Lawful Good in the past. He doesn't think he's ever not been Lawful. "But I'd rather send a skeleton to labor in the mines than a halfling, though I'll freely admit that was an easier decision before the Final Blade was invented, when the only choices for the wicked were undeath and Hell."

"Haven't got it prepared today. But that's not really the question, is it, it's whether the skeleton thing is evil, and ideas haven't got auras."

"I'm not sure there's an option here that isn't Evil. Iomedae is against necromancy, Cayden Cailean is against slavery, and Erastil is against not having metal for plows."

Enric crosses his arms. “Look, there’s evil and there’s— Okay, here. If you get a cleric of Iomedae or Cayden or Erastil or any good god to say that the courts using necromancy to punish criminals is the kind of evil we should allow, I’ll step back.”

“If not, I think we table this? Or have a vote?” 

He looks at the clerics of the Good gods before answering. This isn't a vitally important fight, not worth the two teleports it would take to prove it, but he thinks that the two basically sensible people who understand compromise are probably with him and the question is where they stand.

"Delegate Tetula, you said you're blessed by Cailean. Would you say this is an Evil we should permit?"

She counts votes. The Erastilians and Calistrian against use of undeath, Xavier in favor and Tallandria and Lebanel grudgingly approving. Herself and Tetula undecided. One way or another, Jilia's going to have to be the deciding vote on something she thought was an obvious pass an hour ago.

...Coward's way out.

"If you're unsure, I'm inclined to table it for other voices or more time to think."

"I was clericed a week ago and I don't know what I'm doing, but-- it seems like the least bad option to use the mines only as punishment, and if undeath is necessary to make that possible it seems best?"

“Cleric for a week is still more than not chosen by a god at all, that’s how I see it. So I’ll stop holding this up.”

Enric is suddenly less sure about a lot of things. He knows they can’t win on every right, but he didn’t think Good would give up something this important this early. The age of glory?

"For the right not to be made undead, except as punishment for severe capital crimes or as part of a voluntary agreement for other capital crimes, how do we vote?"

"Hang on now, are we sure it can't pass without the 'except'?" says Soler, visibly counting heads on his fingers.

"Aye." And to Narcis, "I vote in favor of this proposal. If it fails I'll vote for the other, but I'd like to see if we can pass this, first."

"Can't we just vote on both?"

"Voting in tandem is best left for times where the outcomes aren't really in doubt and it's better to save time. I don't think we need it here."

And everyone will have the chance to affirm they're decent people who dislike undead afterward if this fails, which will hopefully be what sticks in the heads of those against the complicated version if they vote it down.

"...but I think we shouldn't turn people into undead at all, but if" the nobleman "other people don't want that, I'd rather say that you can't turn anyone into undead except criminals? ...Can we vote on not turning anyone into undead first?"

"I agreed to stop getting in the way if they had a good cleric saying this wasn't the line, and Tetula did. I'm not voting either way, if that's a thing I can do." 

Jilia is too dignified and Chelish to pinch her nose in frustration at Victoria.

"There are many ways in which we could structure this vote and order the pieces. As chair, I have chosen this one, because I think it is better for the committee as individuals and as a project. I am avoiding using my position overly much, because it defeats the point of this committee if it's my views rather than the group's, but we can't be arguing over procedure every time or we'll be here for months. Please just vote on this proposal, and we'll move to the other one next if the first fails. I assure you, if the committee bans the lesser evil, I will still want to ban the greater one."

"Yes, Delegate Porras, you can. You would say 'I abstain.'" Or 'Present.', but that might take explanation and it's equivalent so she's not going to mention it.

"I don't like the 'except' part and don't care for the taste of voting for it with that part in. Makes it sound sneaky. I'd rather have the right for some people than nobody at all, but...."

She sighs, which is performative but probably doesn't look it to most people.

"We don't have infinite time today. I'm postponing this vote for a later day, and I'll consider whether there's a better way to structure it so everyone's heard, before we vote on it." And also ask Xavier how much of a benefit he really thinks it is, and whether it's worth bothering.

Oh good, she doesn't have to be that person and quibble about whether you can make people undead without the option of execution if you say the thing they did was a severe capital crime.

Hope this committee is ready for the best treatise comparing the ways different countries run mines a barely-literate not-at-all-well-traveled farmer with only a few days of research can create. 

"Alright. Malediction? Right not to be maledicted, to Hell or any lower plane. I vote in favor."

She considers adding 'involuntarily', but can't think of a madman who might want that because she hasn't spoken to the King-in-Irons or a Chelish Baphomet cultist.

"In favor."

"In favor."

"In favor!"

“In favor.”

Enric is watching out for someone to suddenly disagree, since he recently found out some people here are actually in favor messing with death and afterlives.

"In favor!" he says firmly.

"Yes, of course."

"In favor."

"Passes unanimously, good."

"I want to discuss more on how we define torture and forced children  before we vote on those, so for today I'd like the last vote to be on rape*. Right of all citizens not to be raped... male** or female. I vote in favor."

(*very narrow sympathetic-victim version again)
(**No, this doesn't include female-on-male rape.)

"In favor."

"In favor."

"In favor."

"In favor."

(...it's possible to rape men? That's... obviously still awful... but how?)

"In favor."

“In favor”

Why are we voting on the ones it’s obvious everyone… oh wait.

"In favor."

"Also unanimous. I think that's enough for today, and thank you all. We can keep considering this category of rights when we meet tomorrow, and see how far we get."