Well, she's managed to attract a Calistrian, which may not bode well on priors however chill he looks at the moment.

If Carlota were designing this convention she'd have gone to even greater lengths to keep out the Calistrians than the quite literal kobolds, but if the man feels strongly that one should take vengeance on bridge trolls it's not as if this gets different results than 'justly and consistently enforce bridge troll laws by burning the bridge troll to ash as soon as possible'. 

She also has a tiefling noble, who looks peaceful at the moment, but one might justifiably have worries about him being on the far opposite end of the lampposts issue.

Séfora didn't have any lamp-posts to hang her Asmodeans, but she didn't let that stop her. But she is here because her peasants want safe roads and safe villages almost as much as they want no taxes and no nobles. She takes a seat quietly, her hood up.

"Your grace," says Aniol, nodding to the duchess on his way in.

Here's the requisite sortitonee.

And a Hellknight of the Chain.

What a...fascinating...collection of people. Plan of attack: bore them all to death.

"I call to order this session of the committee for policy proposing safe roads and safe villages. I have my own topics to introduce before the committee, and other committee members may introduce a topic as well, ideally by presenting each member and the scribe with a written summary of their proposal, though I will make accommodations in cases of illiteracy, impromptu proposals, etcetera." She has copies to hand out of each of hers, though.

"First, I desire that the constitution affirm that Cheliax's roads and rivers should be free of violence, that it is the duty of each lord who has been entrusted with Chelish territory that he maintain the rule of law within his territory and further his duty to ensure that he not permit the escape through his territory of those who have done violence in the territory of his neighbor, and that no person acts wrongly should he, having failed to secure redress for lawlessness in a specific Chelish territory from the lord of those lands, speak or write to that lord's liege to make him aware of the problem yet unredressed, presuming he speaks truthfully and with courtesy, or speaks or writes to the lord of a nearby territory to the same effect.

Second, I desire that the constitution affirm that it is among the duties of any lord hereby designated -" (the ones who can afford it, to a first approximation, though she's happy for there to be a great deal of haggling over who is on the list) "- to have in his possession a means of rapid magical communication with the army, or with a person in the staff of Her Majesty, with which a large scale threat such as that of the Tarrasque, foreign invaders entering through a Teleportation Circle, etcetera could be conveyed at once to those positioned to respond, for example but not limited to a scroll of Sending and a cleric or wizard competent to cast from it, a crystal ball, a pair of linked magical mirrors, a distress signal visible from another location which possesses such, etcetera.

Third, I desire that the constitution affirm that it is among the duties of every lord of Cheliax to, should they having raised an army for more than a single season discharge it, to discharge the soldiers in their own territory and within one week's walk of the location where they were conscripted or hired, and to discharge them with two weeks' pay if they were hired, and that no lord of Cheliax may hire foreign mercenaries in numbers exceeding that of an adventuring party, which is to say six and retainers and staff, without a special dispensation from the Queen, and that in the application for such they shall state their reason to believe they can pay the full length of the contract and that the mercenaries will depart when the contract is over.

Fourth, I desire that the constitution affirm that any lord may oblige his citizenry in militia activities outside the harvest and planting season so as to have a better pool of men from which to recruit for his forces, and so that villages are better empowered in their own defense, but that he may not oblige them in mixed-sex units, nor in labor for his benefit, outside those provisions for conscription laid out elsewhere.

I have more but perhaps we can begin by discussing these."

"Can the Crown afford the crystal balls and replacement of scrolls and whatnot for everybody who'd need to have them?"

"The Crown isn't paying for it, it's obliging those wealthy enough to afford it themselves. I'm sure it won't always be an easy expense but in the last eighteen months there have been two different catastrophic incidents where the difference between a response before dusk and a response a week later is enormous, and many wise men don't think that situation is over. It's a one-off expense, unless the Tarrasque really does come."

"Fair enough, fair enough."

"It's not always clear how to get in a report on the bandits or what have you to the nearest lord, and you can't have every traveler carrying a crystal ball."

"You mean when you don't know for sure whose land you're in? What goes wrong if you ride to the nearest farm and ask?"

"They think I'm a bandit and shoot at me, they know the tax collector's name but not which way the baron's manor is, they look a little like one of the bandits and tell me I'd better move on from there and get wherever I'm headed..."

Well, is he a bandit? she doesn't ask, but she isn't ruling it out either. "How would you like the lord to do things? Build a taller castle so you can't miss it?"

"I'd like the waystations to have maps in them. And for the lords to make sure they're kept up."

"That's very expensive. Worth it, plausibly, but our proposal's going to be very unpopular if it makes it dramatically more expensive to do things other than fight monsters and bandits without directly helping with that."

"They don't have to be very good maps, for this, just enough to get someone passing through to the nearest castle."

"I certainly don't want to have to be the direction-giver for every random stranger who walks by. Sometimes a random stranger is harmless and sometimes he's a bloody Nidalese."

Llei looks up from reading.

"Many of these suggestions are reasonable. Paying for new signaling requirements will be extremely painful, perhaps impossible, given the present currency crisis. At the same time, I see the need. I would like more discussion or suggestion, ideally from wizards, of the cheapest possible ways to achieve this and what level of reliability should be considered sufficient, given that very few sending wizards will work for paper, and very few sending clerics exist, in Cheliax."

"The near-ban on hiring foreign mercenaries - even two adventuring parties at a time, unless I misunderstand - seems too extreme. Perhaps some legal measure is called for to prevent them from routinely devolving into bandits. But as you say, speed of defense is paramount, and the palace may or not be reliable to give leave on a schedule appropriate for the pace of a disaster, when no other forces are available."

"Maybe we can start by requiring the maps in the Heartlands, where I happen to have them, the Duke of Chelam having had a secret mapmaking hobby, and if it's useful enough then we can tell everyone else it's worth the expense of surveying and having copies made in some format where the first storm or first thief won't do them in.

I don't know how impossible to expect signaling to be. Worldwound forts manage this; it may be possible once they no longer need their scrolls to reappropriate them domestically."

"The army that maintained the northern worldwound forts was aided by a government effort to conscript every child of sufficient intelligence into wizard education, leave them in massive debt afterwards, compensate them less than the pay they could command as foreign adventurers, and prevent them from leaving their base or the country so that they could seek employment elsewhere. We have stopped doing many of these things, and many of the wizards we had are gone, or hiding. Scrolls are useless, without spellcasters qualified to use them."

"The Worldwound also had a very large number of fourth-circle clerics, until last year. Now, I am not sure there are any fourth circle clerics in the whole of Menador."

"I think many of the wizards, particularly the ones who were or were on track to get particularly powerful, would fly back home in numbers if we had a way to restore them their souls."

"In the west hills, we have signal fires. We light them when taxmen or bandits come. We have three grandmothers on the high bluff keeping watch. Friend Carlota- I also desire that the constitution affirm "that Cheliax's roads and rivers should be free of violence". But your proposals are a Lord's proposals."

"Do you have a proposal of your own? My scribe can make copies for everyone to review."

Séfora scowls. "You are very prepared." 

She gazes at Carlota, her still-human eyes incongrous in her brass face. "I say we start from empty paper. Prohibit lords from raising armies. Make justice not be a lord's whim." 

Her voice becomes a little gentler. "Many bandits come from runaways from evil lords. I have met some."

"Deny lords armies and every village will be wiped out by monsters within the decade. But the rebel isn't entirely wrong. It's optimistic to trust most petty lords to deal with bandits according to the law rather than their own convenience. Monsters, yes, anything which they can claim ambiguous no."

"Make villagers and farmers stronger. Every goodwife has a crossbow in the west hills. Arm them and train them. If we must, maybe bounties on monsters. Adventurers can go out and kill them. But don't give lords hired bullies."

"That is how the River Kingdoms do it. Six months later five men have made themselves the monster-hunting squads, and six months after that everyone in the village is calling them 'my lord', and no justice or superior exists to be appealed to. I assure you, you would not prefer it."

"I've got a crossbow, but I haven't got the time or the freedom to trek across the pastures hunting someone down who might have rustled my cows, nor the immunity if I guess wrong and get someone who merely looked like a cattle rustler."

Séfora smiles. "Good! Guards 'guessed' wrong a lot in the west hills. I make fewer mistakes. Blind horses make fewer mistakes. Let the village have a court, and a guard."

"Are you offering to pay for it?"

"We all pitch in, in the west hills. I paid for most of the crossbows."

He makes a coded note to investigate this woman and ensure her road home passes through a full hunter-squad of Knights of the Chain. The more she talks, the more certain he is she's a bandit of the worst kind.

"I see. I think 'instead of having local lords equipped to enforce the law, we should devolve it to the villages and the people should run their own courts' is an interesting idea but not in scope here. It might fit better under 'alternatives to the monarchy', despite it not particularly being the monarchy you're interested in alternatives to."

Séfora raises an eyebrow. 

"Lords and queens are different. You can have lords without queens and queens without lords. This committee and that committee are different. But here I am not saying, turn out the lords. I am saying, no more bullies in leather jerkins."

She sighs. "The name of the committee is safe villages. This makes villages safer. Village justice is in scope." 

"Fine. Séfora proposes that lords are released from all responsibilities related to providing for safety or justice in their realms, and that in their place farmers be given crossbows, and convene collectively to decide who to shoot with them. Is that a correct summary of the proposal?"

Sefora glares at her. "No. I'd say try again, or listen to me again. What would you prefer? You said it before, when you were not trying to be old regime. Devolve local justice, and to village councils. They can pay for adventurers, or arm goodwives. I would do both, because there's always a kobold stealing your pie, but sometimes there's a thing with tentacles too."

"Many peasants are trained to use bows where I come from, and some gain combat experience that equips them to defend the realm. I strongly recommend this. But bows are certainly not enough to keep the bulk of them alive against real monsters or experienced bandits, let alone overwhelming emergencies like the Tarrasque. Even if they could pay for sufficiently powerful adventurers in those cases - and they cannot, not right now, if ever - by the time peasants are able to hire them, hundreds of lives and farms may be lost."

"The entire purpose of a lord is to be an adventurer whose services have already been paid for, who knows the lands, can be reached nearby, and who loses all that he cares about if he utterly fails to defend his people. That many of them are scum does not mean that adventurers who are not tied to the lands that hire them are any better. They are merely preferable to death."

"That's how it's supposed to work. I think a lord shouldn't be able to get one damn cent - or the new kind either - out of a house that took damage from a monster since the last collection."

"Friend Llei- Lords are not their guards. Lord's guards are not adventurers. Mine I killed as easily as cutting dry wheat. They will not help against bandits. Perhaps this committee wants to keep their good adventurer lords-" her face shows what she thinks of this idea- "but don't give lords hired bullies."

"I think that you may, due to your unusual personal experiences, be seriously mistaken about the capabilities of the typical lord under a functional government. Certainly if it were the case that all lords and their bodyguards were incompetents useless against monsters and bandits then the case for their existence would be tenuous. Further, no one gives lords hired bodyguards or hired adventurers. They hire them, which is to say that they pay for them. 

Delegate Ginel proposes that it is forbidden to collect taxes from a house that took damage to monsters in the last year. I think that's an interesting proposal but I worry too broad. If someone has a flock of sheep, and doesn't round them all up, and one gets eaten, that shouldn't exempt them from taxes; if they have an idiot third son who wandered off into the forest, likewise. I also worry about faking monster attacks to evade taxes and therefore diverting the lord's attention from the real monsters trying to track down fake ones."

"I think Abadarans like to solve this kind of problem. For insurance purposes, but maybe they could also be enticed for taxation-limitation purposes."

"I don't think anyone's ever designed a monster-insurance scheme on Golarion that wasn't far more expensive than anyone involved could afford but they could be asked. ....Delegate Ginel, the first of my proposals is aimed at lords who are failing to protect their villages. It states that a villager in that situation can go to a neighboring lord or to a more powerful one and report the problem, and that this does not constitute disrespect of his lord. It is intended to ensure that someone who will fix the problem learns of it, and that no one is troubled for having told them."

"How's writing it down going to make sure that the lord's nastiest grandson doesn't pick a fight with my boy later and say it was over marbles, hm?"

"It's much easier to put something in the law than to make everyone do it. I still think it's usually worth putting in the law so people know what they're supposed to live up to, and so a judge or a priest will see the law's on your side."

"I concur. No one is perfectly Lawful, but we must still have law. And there are means for the crown and state to place independent checks on lawless lords."

"Friend Carlota, I see the purported purpose of the good adventurer lord. But what is the purpose of the baron's guards, who go down to one or two crossbow bolts, as a farmer would? Should they be adventurers as well? And if so, why can't the village council hire them, if adventurers are so cheap? Why can't the village hire and fire their lord, as a merchant fires their guard-captain?"

"Adventurers are very expensive, representative Séfora. I do not know of any law that prohibits a village from hiring some, but they are as a practical matter barred by the adventurers' fees. Why would a lord agree to leave if his villagers told him he was fired? Who are you asking to go to war with him and kill him when his villagers tell him to leave and he refuses?"

"You were just speaking of laws binding lords. Now you speak as if they don't. What war will happen, if the lord has no troops, but militia? Perhaps, as you say, speak to the greater lord, and ask him to fight our lord, as one woman fights another in the tavern for a man?"

"Every society is held together by some combination of law, honor, tradition, and the cold reality of who would win in a fight. You are proposing fights you will certainly lose, and neither law nor tradition are on your side. It can be productive to change tradition and to change, over time, how people conceive of honorable conduct. If you ever travel, which I would recommend, you will find that people conceive of honor in different ways in different places; there is real power in having nobles who think of themselves as men of Iomedae rather than of Asmodeus, even if the laws are the same, and of having laws of Iomedae not Asmodeus even if the men are the same.

But while this convention has real power it does not have infinite power. Announcing that all nobles are hereby to be appointed by a vote of villagers will fail unless there is a concrete means by which it is enforced, and if that means is that a greater lord will come in and go to war, you have the problem that the greater lord will not, actually, do that.

I will be disappointed if instead of the essential work of this committee we are diverted into offering remedial politics lessons. Plausibly this convention should offer remedial politics lessons, but you get five more minutes of them, here, and then I'm going to ask you to submit further proposals in writing."

"Is Friend Carlota the chair, that she may say that I cannot speak?" She sighs. "I only thought I understood Galt, before now."

Sefora closes her eyes, and imagines a thousand blades on a thousand pale necks, ready to fall. She is not strong enough herself to see it through. Not yet. 

"I did not mean vote, I meant hire, like a merchant's guard captain. At any rate, there are no barons here. Just counts and dukes. Perhaps we might get justice for villages, if not for cities-  I would call for a vote on the following:"

She writes with metronomic precision letters on a page. 

"Should peasants and villages be permitted to form village councils by vote among the villagers?"

"Should peasants be permitted to form a militia, to make them safer?"

"Should a small portion of taxes be diverted to paying and purchasing weapons for the village militia, to make them safer?"

"Should that militia be commanded by a person appointed by the village council?"

"Should judges be appointed by votes by the village councils?"

"Should judges be permitted to call on the village militia to enforce justice on barons?"

"Should barons or anyone below a count get to have guards?"

"Should our chair be Friend Carlota, or someone who is not a duke?"

"While she's working on that, can we return to the proposals? I'd particularly like to have the first in a form to recommend to the broader council. In Chelam we've had a lot of trouble learning of problems as people are nervous of reporting them."

"Have an anonymous report box, if enough people can read."

"The contents will be burned every day by a new crony she will appoint, paid by taxes. I am done."

She presents the paper.

"Thank you. I've added this to the queue of proposals and we'll discuss the first of them after we discuss the four proposals presented ahead of them." She turns to Raimon. "I'd expect an anonymous complaint system to fail because people cannot write. Is that not your experience?"

"Who says that Friend Carlota can set the agenda? Who made her chair?" 

"All right. One of Séfora's proposals is that we call a vote to change the chair of the committee, and she is plainly going to interrupt proceedings until we do that, so in the interests of minimizing interruptions we will bring that one of her proposals to the top of the queue. Can each committee member nominate a person who they believe should chair this committee going forward. I nominate myself. Having governed Chelam both before and after Infernal rule, and worked in Axis in the meantime, I have written proposals for about a dozen alterations to our code of laws to improve the safety of Chelish citizens, all of which I believe stand a good chance if this committee manages them well of passing a floor vote."

Rosa looks at her assessingly, and then says "I propose Count-Regent Napaciza as chair."

...well, if the Hellknights want to declare her their enemy fair enough. She hadn't been picking that fight unless they seemed inclined to, but she neatly writes a memo to pass a secretary to introduce motions for the total dissolution of the Hellknight orders in Countering Diabolism and in Army Reform.

"Second."

Rosa looks startled to hear the second. He was not expecting the crazy rebel to compromise.

He may have been outplayed. He'll have to see if he can assuage the political duchess's pride.

He is mildly surprised by the hellknight and very surprised by the - revolutionary? bandit lord? - however much she's been butting heads with the duchess. He doesn't even particularly want it, but hadn't even planned to say that he was willing, on the assumption that no one but Aniol would even consider it. "I am personally content with the Duchess of Chelam as chair, but I will serve if called."

"Abstain."

"For Count Napaciza."

"For the Duchess."

"Can I ask you to reconsider your abstention, Representative Pages, you're the tiebreaker." Carlota finishes her memos and hands them to a page. 

"Well, I suppose he said he's fine with you, so it can be you."

"Thank you. By a vote of four to three this committee selects the Duchess de Chelam as the chair.

Let's return to the first proposal under consideration, which was the proposal to affirm that Cheliax's roads and rivers should be free of violence, that it is the duty of each lord who has been entrusted with Chelish territory that he maintain the rule of law within his territory and further his duty to ensure that he not permit the escape through his territory of those who have done violence in the territory of his neighbor, and that no person acts wrongly should he, having failed to secure redress for lawlessness in a specific Chelish territory from the lord of those lands, speak or write to that lord's liege to make him aware of the problem yet unredressed, presuming he speaks truthfully and with courtesy, or speaks or writes to the lord of a nearby territory to the same effect."

"I don't love the courtesy requirement. You think more people know how many times to say 'my lord' and how to imply all the right things than know how to write a few words in a suggestion box?"

"I think of courtesy as being a matter of intent, not of knowledge. If someone gets all the titles wrong but humbly requests help they've spoken with courtesy; if they write impeccable Westcrown Chelish but choose to frame their message as a denunciation of their lord as a cowardly bastard in cahoots with the bandits, it seems a bit much to put in the Constitution that they've done nothing wrong. I suppose we could say 'truthfully and not in a manner otherwise prohibited by law' and then the Rights committee can decide if there's a right to fling insults at people without our taking a position on it."

"If I correctly understand that this proposal contains no penalty beyond embarrassment for lords who fail in their defensive obligations, but does prohibit them from punishing peasants who complain to others, and make that embarrassment known, I am in favor. I may want a clause specifying that, because it is not wrong, it cannot be punished." People certainly haven't consistently restrained themselves on that front in the past.

"I do think that enough men can write, even in very remote regions, that anonymous written suggestions would not be useless, or at least not for that reason. Not every man can read, but almost all know one who can. If the boxes go unused, it will be because they are unknown, because they receive no response, or because the peasants don't believe that they actually protect anyone's identity."

"I like the idea of specifying that as they did no wrong they can't be punished for it." She adds that. "We could add a recommendation but not a requirement for the anonymous boxes, see if anyone finds success with them."

"Please rephrase this proposal, and for that matter your others, more simply. I believe I understand it, but belief that you understand a contract being agreed to is, as everyone who has dealt with the past regime knows, more dangerous than lack of understanding. I have no reason to believe you are hiding traps, Duchess, being of Axis and not Hell, and yet I will not be comfortable approving anything until I am satisfied I could find all the traps if they were present."

Is he actually illiterate or is he pretending to be so he can imply she's a diabolist? It doesn't really matter. 

"I will do my best to explain the proposal in simple language," she says. "affirm that Cheliax's roads and rivers should be free of violence" does not set out a law or a punishment, but a statement of the intent of this body. In simpler words it might be "we say fighting on the roads is bad and fighting on the rivers is also bad". "that it is the duty of each lord who has been entrusted with Chelish territory that he maintain the rule of law within his territory" also does not set out a punishment. It is a claim about what obligations lords have. In small words it might be "if a man has land in Cheliax it is his job to enforce laws on his land". The next bit means "it is also his job to not let bandits who just burned down a village somewhere else run away through his land, or shelter safely in it". The final part means, "if a person writes to a neighboring lord, or to a greater lord, to say that their lord is not doing his job, then he has not broken any rules and he should not be punished, so long as what he said was true and the sort of thing it is otherwise legal to say."

He is losing his confidence that she isn't a natural Asmodean who somehow did enough Good to land in Axis anyway. Complete with petty insults.

"You have certainly simplified something, and yet I am no better equipped to parse your intent," he says, and takes on a tone like a mixture between a drill sergeant and a bored primary school teacher, "Allow me to attempt to rephrase, and perhaps you will see how one who wants to maintain Law in an environment with potential Asmodeans must speak."

"First, we require that each lord defend the territory he has been granted, enforcing the law properly and preventing the passage of criminals from elsewhere, as best as he can."

"Second, we provide a right to all subjects, that if their lord is failing in his duty, they may contact the lord's liege or a neighboring lord to request they act on it instead. And that those requests cannot be punished by the original lord, if they were honest pleas."

"And if we are to add the anonymous boxes, then, thirdly, that we encourage lords to set up boxes which can be used for anonymous requests in writing. That those anonymous requests remain valid, and must remain anonymous."

"Plainly stated, with as little flowery language or room for deception as possible. An anti-Asmodean phrasing, for those who expects all fancy words to be hiding daggers, which is to say, everyone not resurrected or immigrated in the last two years."

"That's -  a different law and a much worse one I wouldn't vote for. You can't just write that you require something with no provisions for who checks if the requirement is met or what they do if it's not. You can't say 'enforcing the law properly', that assumes everyone already agrees on what's proper. If you're mandating something, you have to have in mind who is checking if it's done and what the punishment is. I don't think there's an enforceable requirement that someone do their best as a lord, which is why I didn't write one into law. 

I have no trouble believing that those of you who survived Asmodean rule have difficulty writing and interpreting laws because of how law worked under the diabolist state. But I think that's a reason to think you don't know how laws work, not a reason to do it your way."

"If you intend it to do a different thing, change the words. But if you want the laws to be seen as Lawful, not as tricks to trap honest men, phrase it in the manner I used, and not the one you began with. Unless the rest of the committee says they prefer your way?"

The committee consists of a damned man, a peasant, a bandit lord, a Calistrian and a tiefling and precisely nobody who Carlota would expect to have ever read a non-Asmodean law. 

"That the paralictor's law is different seems to prove the point. When the Queen appoints new judges, we all pray that they will be honest men, but they will not be Axis lawyers. They will, by and large, be men educated in the Asmodean fashion. I guessed - correctly, it sounds - that the original proposal meant not to have teeth to force lords to protect their lands, but to provide real protection for peasants offering complaints. But this was a guess. I would not want a judge to guess differently."

"I see. I'm worried that existing legal traditions do things the way they do for a reason, that things which seem to a suspicious observer to be flourishes are in fact important for the law being unambiguous, and that if we change lots of those things then that will have unintended consequences, but I can attempt a few rewritings of each proposal tonight and the committee can discuss whether any phrasing exists that is clear to former Asmodeans and clear under existing legal precedents.

In the meantime perhaps we can visit Séfora's proposals, which cannot be accused of having that problem. The first was..."Should peasants and villages be permitted to form village councils by vote among the villagers?" That is.... not illegal under the existing law. Does anyone wish to argue that it ought to be?"

"I mean, you can form a council but if it's anything more than a knitting circle it will feel pretty illegal soon enough."

"Can you describe what you mean by 'feel pretty illegal'?"

"The same kinds of people who bother you if you're skipping church or keeping a kid back from school or come up a little short on the taxes sniff around that kind of thing."

"And now that we've abolished schools and don't mandate attending any church are there still people, uh, enforcing that in your area?"

"Not those things specifically but there are some sniffing types still."

"So possibly, even though it is already legal for villages to have a council if they'd like and some do, it'd still be useful to people to have it in the law that a village may form a council and may select a leader by election or by income or by lots or by any other method they like, but that they're not obliged to have a council or for it to have a leader. I'm a bit tempted to refer that over to the Rights committee but we can write it up, either way."

When Carlota brings her proposals back, she looks surprised. She expected them to be quietly burnt by the end of the day.

"Thank you, Delegate Carlota," she murmurs. 

....you know, in the bandit lord's defense she has probably never encountered an objection to her that was genuinely process-oriented. "We'll go through every proposal anyone submitted, in the order they were submitted absent reason to reorder. I may vote against them but it's my job as chair to raise them, let everyone weigh in, and put them down as a recommendation if the committee votes in favor of them."

"Frankly I'd like it if my villages had a clear leader whose job it was to be the point person for any contact with the higher-ups. Like a mayor, only -" he makes a palms-a-vertical-inch-apart gesture - "smaller."

"Yes. The reason I put in rules about limits on organizing militias is because I assumed nobles would want them but would be occasionally abusing them as unpaid labor. If we can get anywhere just by making them easier, all the better. And even if something is already the law maybe it'll be easier to get out word of it if it's in the constitution. As long as we don't end up with five hundred things in the constitution."