This morning the Committee for Combating Diabolism used powerful magic to check that of our members who was drawn from the Chelish people, by sortition, to see if she was Evil and merely too weak to show it. Pharasmins can do this.She was not Evil. We also sought the advice of senior and experienced members of this body to identify those who are Evil and by magics hiding it, and we found two among our committee who were so guilty, one among the nobles and one among the elected.

Following this discovery, Delegate Ibarra, a member of our committee, confessed that he was secretly Evil, that he worshipped Norgorber, that he had burned children to death in their homes as part of his campaign to get revenge on someone who had wronged him, and that while that someone was 'Asmodeus' he would as happily have murdered innocents in the pursuit of his vengeance if he'd considered himself wronged by Erastil. 

The Archduke Blanxert stood firmly against removing Delegate Ibarra from our committee on these grounds. I know the Archmage Cotonnet stands firmly against removing anyone from this convention on these grounds. They are wise men and they speak of history and I have, perhaps, no right to disagree with them. But I disagree with them. I think it would be easier to do the very painful and complicated work that we have to do here if the unrepentant powerful Evildoers were, for a moment, excluded from the room. 

And I do not, in saying this, declare the Chelish people too Evil, too misled, to have a say in their own destiny. The opposite: I say, the Chelish people are not as Evil as they have been told. Good spreads; to Asmodeus a city is lost, once it has twenty Good men and women in it, for they will tell the word to their friends and tell the word to their neighbors and rise up as one. There will still be Evil, once all whose hearts are open have chosen the side of Good. But it will be outnumbered, and it will be cornered, and it will die by a thousand pitchforks and stones.

The people of Cheliax have celebrated the overthrow of Evil. But I fear that they have celebrated too soon. Evil is not driven from the halls of power, here, and it needs to be. We have not built institutions that Hell's servants cannot bend to their purposes. We have not even attempted to build institutions that Hell's servants are not at this very moment bending to their purposes. Some people fear becoming Galt. I have no desire to become Galt.

But Asmodeus never did take Galt back, and he tried. 

We're not trying.

We live still in the shadow of fear. We abandon all standards for ourselves and for others, we embrace having our laws written by the worst of men and their staunchest defenders, we fret that 'you should be here to do the right thing' is far too much to ask of our countrymen. We condemn our children to the battle we are too cowardly to fight ourselves.

The people of Cheliax have been induced by Hell to do evils of which we should repent, of course, but the ordinary people of Cheliax are not evil. The ordinary people of Cheliax are not damned. It is those in power in Cheliax who are Evil and who are damned. And while the Queen and her friends have put to death some of the worst of the lot, Evil is still in power, in Cheliax and in this convention.

Do our discussions of important measures for our starving people run aground in pointless bickering? Perhaps it is because half the nobles in this room are men and women who first gave their oaths to Abrogail Thrune, and who as far as the Judge can see have not repented of it. Perhaps it is because the Hellknights are unabolished and present and about their Hellknight work, and some of them still proudly worshipful of Asmodeus alongside Iomedae. Perhaps it is because we are caught up in debates about whether all the gods in Hell serve Hell and whether it is troubling to serve one of those. Perhaps it is because a delegate can confess to my face to horrible murders of innocent people, can assure us he does not regret them at all and has benefitted richly from them, and still the most powerful men in this country think we have no business desiring a committee without him.

I do not wish for the innocent to be afraid of the committee for combating diabolism. So I wish to be specific about who ought to be afraid of it.

 If you swore your fealty to Abrogail Thrune and still possess the lands, slaves, titles and riches that you stole under her auspices, and you are not repentant, then you ought to be afraid. If you are a devilspawn," she looks directly at Delegate Napaciza, "you need not be afraid because you are a devilspawn, but you should be afraid because you are an evil titled devilspawn. If you came to the conference cloaked in magic to conceal your Evil, with the intent to extend the suffering of the people of Cheliax, as Delegate Ibarra did, as he was not alone in doing, you should be afraid. If you burn children to death in their homes, you should be afraid. If you worship Norgorber, you should be afraid. If you worship any power of Hell, you should be afraid, and if you worship Asmodeus you should certainly be afraid.

Afraid of what? Afraid of me?  I am not powerful; any man strong enough to radiate Evil is strong enough to kill me in one blow.

Afraid of Elie Cotonnet? No, for he invited you all, and he has said that we are forbidden from requesting that you be expelled, or indeed from debating whether your deeds and your history ought to be an impediment to your participation. 

You should be afraid of the people of Cheliax.

 For they are not in the end different from the people of Pezzack; we are all one people. The people of Cheliax know what you did to them. They witness how you have prospered from it. The only thing that stays them from retaliation is the fear that they are, themselves, as guilty as you, and as damned. But they aren't, so your peace is a lie. If I were you I would repent while you still can. I would give up your lands and your titles and your slaves and your riches; I would cease to impede the functioning of this convention with your petty Evil dealings; I would go to the Worldwound where your victims cannot reach you. That is my advice.

But to everyone else my advice is, be unafraid. This is our country. We are a strong people, a brave people, a good people. Asmodeus always feared us, and all the riches of Hell still left his grip so weak one theatre-hall of people could shake a city free of it. 

Valia Wain is going to get herself killed. 

This would not, by itself, be a problem, except in that it eats into Naima's precious resurrections. But Valia Wain is going to get herself killed, and the rest of the convention is going to realize that it won't stick, and they'll do what scared animals do and start eating each other alive. 

He wasn't in the assembly for Lucien's last speech. He was in Mut and didn't read it until four months later. It wasn't that they hadn't heard – the other Galtan exiles knew within weeks, which he knew because there was dancing and drinking and singing in the streets – but back then he'd go for months at a time studiously avoiding any news from home, and then go up to Alexandria and buy all the newspapers he could find and read them at once and get very drunk and regret it the next morning. He knew Lucien was going to die. So did he. He said so, the last time they ever spoke. He should have hated him – but he didn't, and he couldn't, and anyway it was so unlike him. Lucien was always so careful – 

He was really unravelling, towards the end. Losing faith in his goddess, in himself, in Galt. If he'd been in his right mind he's never have gotten up on the Assembly floor and said that their work would be finished if only the body could be purified – the last infernal remnants removed – the innocent had nothing to fear – but nobody, by then, could seriously believe that they were innocent. They tore him apart before carrying what was left of him to the final blade. 

Lucien could always make him feel small. It was that way he had of believing so strongly and firmly and purely that people are good. Nobody else believed things the way Lucien believed them. He's met any number of paladins since then, and he still thinks it's true. The lot of them are cowards in comparison. None of them could stare into the absolute blackness of the human spirit day in and day out and keep faith in the persistence of virtue. Lucien did. The people were good: meaning, that if the people want something manifestly harmful to the nation, the people must be misled. The devil was among them. He must be found, and caught, and  – 

He'd argue in response: people aren't particularly good, nor are they particularly bad – not even in Galt. They're venal and silly and selfish and short-sighted and ignorant, virtuous one moment and evil the next, and on the whole they've never concieved of such a thing as the general will, but a nation made of such stuff was good enough to expell the infernal tyrant from Galtan soil, and it would have to be good enough to build whatever came afterwards. Anyone hoping to build a republic of angels must wait until he gets to Heaven. Lucien wouldn't laugh, or berate him – just look back with such an absolute and shining purity of conviction that he wanted to wither and die, weak vacillating creature that he was. It was impossible to face Lucien when he was like that and not feel like he was right and you were nothing at all. 

Well, not so impossible: he did it. He'd spent the next five years wondering if he'd done the right thing, but he did it. And then he'd gone and called a convention against everyone else's better judgement because he believes now what he believed then: that we oppose Asmodeus because we hate tyranny, and not the other way around. People – even venal, silly, selfish, stupid, ignorant, evil people – deserve to shape the laws that rule them. Gods know he'd done his best to give them that. He refused to dictate even when they begged him to. This thing was theirs to ruin or not as they saw fit. He'd only tried to do one thing, and that was to stop them from spending all their time trying to kill each other – which is, of course, the only thing any of them actually want. 

He could say something right now. But what would it accomplish? Valia has made no threats, called for no murders. She's doomed herself and her cause, but that's the only way anyone ever learns. He'd know. 

Xavi believes he does not belong to Asmodeus, probably, and will not go to his Hell when he dies, probably. He does not believe "you need not be afraid because you are a devilspawn". Not that it's true nor that she means it.

Valia does not understand Asmodeanism. She is Iomedae’s, and there is no mercy in her; perhaps Pezzack was on the rim, and did not see. But the truth is that Asmodeus is everywhere, and our only salvation is to pray for mercy, for we are, all of us, His chosen people. Sarenrae save us all.

Aspexia-Isona suspects that she's evil and doesn't want to lose everything and be driven into exile, and, thinking about it, she thinks she's evil because her grandfather eats people and she's assisting him, and if the evil wizard guy who is on a personal crusade against Asmodeus is evil even though he's fighting Asmodeus, she is probably evil.

And... she doesn't think she should be kicked out of the country? She thinks she's mostly trying to do the right thing, it's just that this is hard. Definitely she takes lots of risks saving people from monsters and bandits. So probably the very good speech is false.

... Yeah, Voshrelka is skeptical of the benevolence of anyone who stands before a crowd of people and says, 'The innocent have nothing to fear.' The innocent have everything to fear, just like everyone else, they'll all be painted with the same brush in a war, no matter how pretty this girl's words are. Maybe she thinks she's being good and kind and merciful, but 'viciously attack everyone working to make peace' or 'distance oneself from anyone who has ever felt sympathy for an evil person or their actions' is really not going to get anyone to peace anytime soon.

She's been on the other end of that, actually, filled with righteous fury and feeling justified in her wrath. That they are right to be afraid, and they deserve it and everything they get from the consequences of their actions. And you know what happened? A lot of people, most of which didn't actually hurt her or anything she cared about, died. They died beaten under the whips of their masters for not producing enough, and they died of desperation as they tried to escape the inevitable doom of a blighted harvest, and those that didn't scrabble desperately starved. It was perhaps still the correct thing to do at the time (Voshrelka herself is still unsure of this, she just knew she wanted to stop), but it was definitely Evil. This girl mistakenly equating the idea of righteousness to being right, along with a woeful naiveté and general lack of world experience, is this druid's main takeaway from the speech. Well, that and the reaffirmation of the idea that all humans are actually children, and that they really shouldn't be allowed to participate in any kind of politics until they've had at least a couple decades of sitting quietly and watching what exactly the grownups are doing.

This girl might be right about what to do (though, judging by the naivete, Voshrelka doesn't particularly think so), but she is going to get a Hell of a wakeup call about whether she is Good. Because: ha, no.

Voshrelka will be staying far, far away from this person. And pray to any decent god that will listen that she doesn't start a civil war. This druid would really like if this previously damned country could not be on fire for, you know, five minutes. Or two decades. One of those.

Llei would really like to be angry, but he is, in fact, afraid. He has a strong internal sense that he needs to kill someone, but he's pretty sure you can't challenge an illiterate peasant girl who is also an Iomedan Select to a duel because she said that you're an evil titled devilspawn, when the only part of this that isn't obviously true is the part where you are not, in fact, actually titled, and therefore have no license to give up the title you don't have.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

(Raimon isn't in the audience - he gets his two hour's sleep in during convention hours - but a boy's already rushing him a swiftly-scribbled report of Valia's speech, and the pamphlet will be out before the convention is over.)

Is this the nonsense you have to believe to get Iomedae to choose you? Cansellarion had seemed a very different sort of fool, but perhaps she was mistaken in her judgment about him, or perhaps this idiocy is just Valia’s own blinders.

You can’t make a good country with evil people helping write the rules? Sure, she’ll believe that, but only in the most meaningless way imaginable. You can’t make an organization larger than a dozen people centered on any virtue whatever, even if that virtue is as simple as being smart enough to not get yourself killed because you left the camp to take a piss in the night and didn’t even put on your armor.

What is the Church of Iomedae trying to accomplish here today? 

THIS. THIS IS WHAT SHE HOPED FOR WHEN SHE LEFT HOME FOR THE CONVENTION. 

Pezzack rules, and Valia Wain rules.

She's pretty sure this was ...already...the governing philosophy of the new regime? Otherwise why would they have killed her father? She applauds, in any event.

Twenty years ago Artur would have had any insolent child whipped for speaking like this. Of course everyone in Cheliax was evil! To say otherwise is blasphemy unto Asmodeus!

But right now, in a hallway stunned silent a moment, he is instead afraid. Afraid that when he makes it outside the mob will be there, and he will be in the hands of a thousand blood-frenzied children and criminals and ruffians, who aren't afraid of noble steel any more, and he will burn.

His sword's in his sheath, right? Good. No sense drawing attention himself, but Her Majesty can't accept this and the girl and her streets of friends won't hear that, and Sarria's son will not go down without a fight.

More meaningless human squabbles about things irrelevant to the Whisperwood, he sees.

Oh no.

Oh no.

Oh no.

Iomedae— he starts to pray, and then stops. What can he say? The Goddess already knows. The matter is in her hands now.

Permira's eyes are shining. Someone should have said this before, and now? Someone is.

He's pretty sure Aroden wouldn't have done this. Maybe he picked the wrong Inheritor.

(Séfora nearly cried, hearing that. She could see the blades rising, in her heart of hearts. She also has a brief, quicky squashed, thought about how she could find out if Valia is single)

A very good speech, but this is the wrong phase of the revolution for it. You need to rebuild, now, not tear everything down further.

...That's nice. 

Halflings were slaves in Cheliax before Asmodeus. He checked. 

He doesn't, actually, care, whether the human holding the whip is really actually Evil or not. He cares about the whip. 

Maybe Cheliax will become a place worth living in, and maybe it will do so on the basis of this girl's platform. That would be nice! He approves of it. He hopes it happens. 

It's not going to happen fast enough that he's inclined to make it his problem. He's getting his family to Andoran.

Korva thinks of a child, lying unnaturally still. A man with three small children, fallen after an orc slave gave him a blow to the head that crushed his skull. Children birched and bleeding, children lying in their shit, children sent to he mines for being bullies, or being annoying, or being bodies when the orphanage needed money to buy food for the others. And she thinks of the spiked whip digging into her back, tearing chunks of flesh away, not because she was good, but because she was unworthy to be one of the nation's magical elite, and if she died it would be no loss.

She's not evil. She knows this. But she doesn't feel good, either. She feels very small.

She... has no idea how evil she is. She thinks of herself as a basically normal person? Maybe she should talk to a priest at some point? Probably if the priestess of Iomedae is saying that they won't kill normal people it's safe to talk to a priest?

...she doesn't think she'd have joined a rebellion if there had been one back home. But it's not really that strange for a priestess of Iomedae to be braver and more good than she is.

Purificació stands and applauds, cheering.

Yes--it's like she's known for years at this point--Good is there, if you can only bring yourself to reach out to it--

Most people in Cheliax aren't actually Evil? Awesome! He might not even have to shell out for an Atonement. Iomedae is great. Maybe he should try praying to her sometime instead of just Abadar.

She says, If you swore your fealty to Abrogail Thrune and still possess the lands, slaves, titles and riches that you stole under her auspices, and you are not repentant, then you ought to be afraid. Josep swore no fealty directly, but he obeyed, and would have sworn had it been asked of him, and he holds the lands and the slaves and the riches that he earned under Abrogai's rule, and he does not think, really, that Valia Wain or her ilk will spare him because he holds no title. 

She thinks that all of Cheliax would have followed the example of Pezzack. She conveniently forgets to mention all those in Pezzack like him, those who fled the city before the hammer came down; all those in Pezzack like his cousins, those who simply survived day to day as the siege went on; all those in Pezzack like his schoolmate, those who died in the streets or in their houses, afraid and undefended, because Valia Wain and her friends wanted to run their mouths about the queen and forgot to ask anyone else if they wanted to die for it. Funny how that works. 

Like she said, people aren't inherently evil.  He's not done enough to make himself Evil, so he's safe?  Right?

Daniel would have been more in favor of this before he moved to Cheliax and had to pick up the pieces of his family's ruined county. He's pretty sure 'the innocent' in Cheliax have quite a lot to fear from the antidiablosm committee, considering most of them are Evil.

Feliu ditches Joan-Pau with a wave. Hopefully Joan will see him. He can't catch Select Wain now, but he sure can the moment she leaves the room, to buttonhole her and tell her that this is not how you win.

Preachers of any kind have never had much impact on Theopho. Asmodean, Iomedan, Pure Legion, demagogues in Absalom he'd seen speak just for the novelty, their words roll off him and blur together until he misses good arguments even if they have them, buried in the slop. If you want to convince him of something, this way would never do it, no matter how right you might be.

But he can recognize them. Recognize people too splendid for their own good, who can't be convinced they're wrong because they're better at convincing people than anyone around them. Who can swirl up masses to their back and bring a riot anywhere they walk.

He's not afraid for himself. He's two moments from Absalom, if it comes down to it. That doesn't mean he's not afraid.

Professor Coeliaris is lawful good. She had it checked before she left, and every year. Tillia is good. They don't have anything to worry about. But this makes her nervous, and if this turns into another bloodbath, they're leaving immediately.

Perhaps it's time to try to prepare teleport again.

This is the speech of an only child who isn't close to her parents and doesn't have a lot of friends who aren't just like her. Raimon knows full well his mother has smothered two babies who came during thinner years than he did. Her friends have probably done in more. Is Raimon going to Hell? As he understands it, he can't, and can be sure of that as long as Calistria hands out the spells every morning. But that does not mean he has nothing to fear from a groundswell of This Sort Of Thing. Did she selectively buy all and only the propaganda that Chelish people don't care about anyone but themselves, that she thinks most normal people have nothing worry about?

Heloisa claps! They are not very likely to be rid of the diabolist nobles with one pretty speech, but it was a fine speech, after all.

Aniol will be happy to follow all this advice on how not to go to Hell once it has any chance of affecting the matter at all. He is getting to be wretchedly sick of people who on the one hand threaten the fires of the damned to elicit the behavior they want, and on the other condemn people in his situation for the impurity of their motives when those motives are one and the same.

Wow, what a great public speaking voice! Maybe she'll do it again during the pamphlet reading hour if Laia finds her to ask.

When Blai was in seminary a senior cleric once told him - witheringly, sarcastically, but still - "you may be glad to learn that your feelings do not matter at all".

He took that as permission. Permitted thus to be glad of the inconsequence of his feelings, he realized it was a gladdening fact: there was no urgency about sorting them out, there was no hidden meaning behind his twinges of random fear, there was no duty to report on them, there was no responsibility to beat them into any shape other than that which allowed him to carry out his orders. (This did not turn out to be the whole of the applicable doctrine. It turned out there were situations where there were expected feelings or situations where he was meant to use his discretion so as to be appropriately enjoying a tyrannical opportunity. But in the main, he -

- hears this, and it doesn't matter at all, how he feels about it.)

Ser Cansellarion has just returned to the hall following his meeting with Catherine and...

...Perhaps he shouldn't have left the Iomedan cleric delegation to their own devices. Not because Select Wain is wrong that the convention is full of evildoers, or wrong that a convention of only good people would create better laws, but - 

Archduke Narikopolus is trying, very sincerely. More than many others here. Alex knows that's in large part because he has more to make up for, more to prove than most, but - nonetheless. In fifteen years the Menadorians might be among the most Iomedan nobles in the country. And even if not... The church of Iomedae abandoned Galt, or at least so every Galtan believes and that's very nearly the same thing. Many, Catherine said, because they felt the purges weren't going far enough. The church of Iomedae cannot abandon Cheliax as well.

It's a good speech. She probably even means it, if she's an Iomedaean priestess. The problem — well, besides the fact that she's calling for his head — is that it isn't true. 

(This isn't the sort of thing he would have noticed, or been capable of noticing, five years ago. He'd never admit it, even to himself, but Joan's rubbed off on him a little.)

Most people are Evil. Most people will hurt others if it benefits them; most people won't help others unless it benefits them. The people of Cheliax are probably more Evil than the people outside it, but this is true of almost anyone anywhere. Even in Lastwall, people don't avoid hurting others out of the Goodness of their hearts, but because there are a lot more things that'll get you in trouble with the law.

And most people won't stand up and tell you no, when you conscript them into fighting your brother, as long as they know you're scarier than they are. 

He'd be worried, if she were right. Even with her being wrong, he'd be worried if she were in his barony; she's a good enough speaker to persuade people. 

But she isn't.

...Does she think everyone in the room is stupid?

"The innocent have nothing to fear" is just a way of saying that if you hurt someone, that means they weren't innocent. He wishes abruptly that he had checked how the anti-diabolism committee voted on the slavery issue. He's been worrying about his livelihood, not his life. That may have been a mistake. He needs to send a message home to his wife now, to start preparing to leave the country. Where to go... maybe Katapesh, he's heard good things about Katapesh. 

If the Queen meant to kill him, Archduke Narikopolus would already be dead. He tells himself that the Queen's will matters much more, on this point, than that of this convention hall.

He claps enthusiastically! Evil is the archdukes voting to make the normal people here give them all their money! Thank you, Iomedae!

And how many lives have you saved, Valia Wain?

Gods all curse idealists. And may Iomedae show her the error of her ways before she does any more damage.

If you swore your fealty to Abrogail Thrune and still possess the lands, slaves, titles and riches that you stole under her auspices, and you are not repentant, then you ought to be afraid.

He doesn't exactly still possess his riches, he cut the difference at a 53% loss to try to turn them towards a better direction.  But maybe that remaining 47% is still a reason to be afraid.  He'd be happy to be rid of it... if they cut away his debt owed to that useless wizard school, which Fernando is pretty sure swore featly even more often and more firmly and possess substantially more riches and slave and titles than he does.

The speech is passionate and energetic.  It might trigger a mob.  But Thea thinks Valia means well.  Thea is at least repentant enough to reach Lawful Neutral, she just needs time.  And for all Valia's passion, Thea knows, roughly at least, what the Acts of Iomedae teach.  Carefully weighing the costs, reaching out to make friends and allies, acting in good faith.  Thea thinks Valia should understand that she wants to help.

That's a fanatic.  And the future instigator of a riot, possibly a mob leader if the mob is organized enough to even have one.  How long do fallen clerics take to lose their powers?  It could be decisive in trying to fight through a mob if the mob is getting channeled positive energy.  They need to make sure their plans for swiftly sealing off the monastery are in place.  And Dia supposes they should warn Nuria and the Hellknight and the peasant of these plans so they don't get sealed out with a mob behind them.

And the worse part is Thea might still be trusting the propaganda that is the Acts of Iomedae and thus think Valia can be cooperated with in good faith.  Well, after an attempt to meet the anti diabolism committee today, hopefully Thea will recognize her folly and play things more intelligently (and listen to Dia more).

What a stupid little girl. 

Girl has a point. Arlet's not evil. She's a normal person doing normal things with her life and it was to the Asmodean clergy's benefit to lie to her about that when actually she doesn't need to change a thing.

Leaving your baby out to die or smothering it is evil, and Margarida knows she has only avoided doing so out of luck and circumstance.  She doesn't want this priestess anywhere near her neighbors who weren't as fortunate.  It is not like she can do anything though.  She'll continue to keep her head down and try to make it through this thing.  And she is more sure than ever Erastil is the only God worth trusting.

Ah. Sorry, son, sorry Archduke, but Antonio's never been gladder to be seated among the elected delegates. But, also - Fuck you, Valia Wain. You've fought one little rebellion and suddenly you're so sure you know how the whole country ought to be run. Try fighting a decade or two in the mountains, then maybe you'll understand why Narikopolus is still around.

...Iomedae, protect us from your servants.

"GLORY TO IOMEDAE!"

Alicia can't stop grinning. She'd heard the entire speech before, of course, helped draft it even, but Valia had scarcely needed the help on more than a few wordings. She waits a moment for the echoes of her comrade's voice to die down, then stands to speak her part.

"Perhaps it is a fool's errand, to stand here and speak after Select Wain has said her piece - but where some might say that Pezzack alone is an anomaly, I stand here and now to tell you it is not! Even in the villages where none dared to be the first to speak out, goodness remains - because while it is Good, to stand in the face of danger and rise up in revolt against Hell, this is not the whole of good. Goodness is when a mother helps her children to fake stupidity, that they might escape the infernal schoolhouse even a week sooner. Goodness is when a man is deep in his cups and says something the church of Asmodeus would wish him dead for, and those around him quietly pretend to have heard nothing and speak of it no more. Goodness is when you spare a kind word for a neighbor, when you sing a song while you work just to make the world a bit more beautiful, and when you feed a child instead of leaving them to starve. And goodness is when, having done evil, you listen to the part of you that screams at every torment and decide to change. Even the most wicked of men can come to virtue, if only they dare to try - the only evil that cannot change is that which is embraced like an old friend."

Valia is so cool. It's not that she didn't already know how cool Valia was, but seriously, Valia is so cool. Probably it's slightly embarrassing to be this awestruck by her speech when she was literally there when Valia wrote it.

She moves to stand next to Valia. "I second the words of Delegate Wain. 

Inside all of us, there is a voice that cries out for justice. That says the strong have no right to abuse the weak. That watches as the servants of Asmodeus walk among us and pretend to be just like anyone else and says — this is wrong.

Asmodeus tried to silence that voice. He failed. Now it falls to all of us to listen to it, even when it's difficult, even when it feels like it would be so much easier to just let the diabolists run your committees and enshrine their tyranny into law. We must have the courage to stand up against them, not only for our own sake, but for the sake of all the ordinary people of Cheliax."

Alexandre will stride up to the podium, giving not an inch.

“Delegate Wain makes many errors,” he says, in the tone of a sophisticated man inviting his sophisticated audience to recognize that he is being polite enough to not call her a liar, “but one will suffice: In wartime, it is not murder, but killing.”

And then he will go back to his seat.

No, sorry, burning down houses full of children when you could save them is always murder. War does not have to make men a monster. (There are a lot of people lining up to speak so she can't answer.)

Is there any way a first-circle priestess can even theoretically kill a fifth-circle wizard, because he absolutely has it coming.

Rouen is deeply tired. This is not an uncommon response here. She has too much work to do, and not enough time to do it in.

So she will go up to the podium and say, “The Order of the Pyre has already sent a message to the Church of Iomedae requesting their expert assistance in reforming our organization, and offering to provide additional support at the Worldwound to allow them to spare people for this task. I have written to the other Lictors suggesting they do the same.” Then she will return to her seat.

...success????? 

Someone needs to defuse this. She'll just have to extemporize. Fortunately she's thought a lot on one fraction of this topic.

"I can't speak for all of Cheliax, or even all of Ravounel; I am far too new to them, and to power. But I can speak for Kintargo. Kintargo contains many people who I would fight, have fought, dearly to protect. Even ones who curse my name for the things I had to do to keep the Thrunes from crushing them or to keep them from rising in a doomed rebellion that saw us all starving and dying in flames like the people of Pezzack. I considered, many times, if it would be right to let them rise, let hundreds of them die valiantly praising Iomedae and Milani and see the city burnt down to its foundations to deny it, and us, to Asmodeus. Perhaps in some celestial calculus it would have been right to let it happen."

"But if I did let the rebels rise, it would have been hundreds, not thousands. I know my people, and while many of them would have hidden and made any excuse for why they couldn't help the Asmodeans squash it, and hoped for the rebels to win wherever they felt their thoughts were secure, they would not have joined in, not without miraculous victories. The rebels would have died shining and golden, but they would have died, desperately outnumbered and outarmed."

"And the retaliation would have come after that. All those people I was fighting to protect, would have died in their thousands, and the majority of them would have been damned. Mothers who'd smothered a baby or had an abortion. Fathers who abandoned their children's mothers, or kept them, drank too much, and beat their families. People who were genuinely loving toward their families despite Asmodeus's preaching, but had no such kindness toward their slaves. It wasn't everyone, never everyone. I think I would have made Nirvana myself, and found many of them there with me. But the damned would certainly be more than half."

"And Kintargo, to all appearances, was significantly better off than most of the cities. It was always rebellious, always a city where Caydenite graffiti could be found in half the alleys you walked down, where I got news of the inquisition shutting down new Milani cults at least once a year. I checked, sometimes, if that happened in Corentyn and Ostenso, to see if I was right that, despite all the terrible trades I was making, I was preserving something special about my city. All the sailors who reported for me said that it was special; Kintargo seemed to be much more restive and un-Asmodean than anyone, though Pezzack came close."

"So Select Wain, I can say with some confidence that your rebellion sent a great many people to Hell early, who otherwise might have been saved, in time. Iomedae judged it worth the cost, and only She can say why, but you did. And I think you have drawn some badly incorrect lessons thereby. Correct them, before another half a city is sent to Hell by your actions."

 She takes pride in the fact that she prevented Kintargo from rebelling against Hell. 

She doesn't understand why Iomedae would have supported a rebellion against Hell. 

Is there something about becoming an archduke that sucks all of a person's morals and values out and replaces them with  'it's bad if rebellions happen, always, under any circumstances'? It seems like there must be.

—is it Evil to smother your baby? That's just— what you do, when the harvest is bad and you won't be able to feed your whole family otherwise. At least if you aren't the sort of — pathetic failure of a mother and a wife — who gets all upset about the idea, and leaves the baby out in the fields where it might end up rising, just so that you can imagine there's a chance the faeries will take it away and raise it as their own.

Well, it is true that sometimes you need to keep the young hotheads from flying off into fights they're not ready for. ...Shut up, that doesn't apply to me, my Rokoa said I could go. Sure, I had to convince her, but I did convince her! So it's fine!

Let's SUPPOSE, wildly and ridiculously suppose, that nobody he cares about is evil.

So fucking what.

If they all die because some monster swings through the valley and the lord is a green sanctimonious idealist who says the right things and can't cut that monster down, there are six afterlives left his little family can be scattered through. The babies both in the Boneyard where he'll never see them again, him in, where, the Maelstrom? Axis? Fucking Elysium? And his not-wife cooling her heels in Nirvana, or not cooling her heels because she's been turned into a goldfish and they haven't got heels, and she'll never do a bit where she pretends he must be a traveling merchant here to seduce her or that he's a faerie prince there to carry her off to the First World to live on honey and champagne or - anything. And neither of them ever get to make growling noises at their babies, pretending to eat them up, since in this scenario they've all been very toothily eaten for real.

Bitch thinks it's fine if they all die. If that's Good he doesn't want it.

He is a PENNILESS FISHERMAN. It turns out if you give up all of your everything you cannot trivially head off to the Worldwound.

This is all really intense!  He keeps waiting for the Queen to show up with a sensible set of stuff for the committees to approve and him to vote on, but he's finally realizing that isn't going to happen?  At least he isn't evil.  He should have checked with Sefora what she reads as.  And maybe come up with a plan to ride the current tide of emotions to make sure she and their peasants are in the clear.

"I want to answer the Archduchess. The Archduchess believes that under Infernal Cheliax's influence many people are Evil, and therefore they should never rebel against Infernal rule; after all, some of them will die in the rebellion, and those will go to Hell. She says that it was mistaken of Pezzack to fight back, that we should have served and obeyed the Thrunes instead, and hoped that one day an archmage would sweep in and save us all. To this I have a brief answer. 

My answer is that may all praise every Good god and most of the Neutral ones that the people of Galt, and Andoran, and Rahadoum, and Varisia, and Sargava, and Molthune, were not the beneficiaries of such wise counsel, as they would not have rebelled, and then been free of Cheliax, and then ceased to be damned by the works of the Thrunes. But would they not have been freed without bloodshed, if a few decades late, if only they had waited around for an archmage to save them? No! Because the archmage is from Galt, and without the revolutions none of us would ever have been free. The Thrunes were destroyed because of the willingness of people to rebel against them, at great risk, for the sake of the souls of their children and their children's children, and if men lacked such courage we would have been slaves to Hell forever.

 If your counsel is that one should not rebel against Hell itself, then the people of Cheliax have very little use for your counsel or for your rule."

Wow, really digging in her heels, isn't she. The only thing that will convince that girl that she's maybe incorrect is probably witnessing chaos in the streets first-hand. Voshrelka updates her likelihood of people killing each other, and begins acting accordingly. That is: assessing the room for threats and escape routes.

Is the argument room going to devolve into violence right now, while the archmage is right over there, watching? Er. While he's staring off into space, probably having some kind of archmage conversation in telepathy about tactics or magic or something, but nonetheless still close enough to stop them all from being stupid. Everyone is containing their stupidity, for now? Okay, good. Then she can save her Barkskin for later. Good thing she prepped Entangle, though, that's definitely going to come in handy. Where are the good windows for sneaking out in this building? She wants to know just in case this building gets rushed by a mob or something. Not that she thinks this has gotten out, yet, fortunately the girl with too much splendor for her own good didn't say any of this outside... but she's just going to try to figure out if any of these windows look like they can be pried open from the inside by a bird. Just in case.

"I believe that people should rebel against Hell, and should not rebel against the Lawful Good Queen who saved us all from Hell."

Valia is frustrated and angry that she's saying that like it's a refutation of anything Valia said!

Liushna's sympathies naturally lie with Valia, but that doesn't mean she doesn't respect the Archduchess. A good Rokoa puts her tribe first. 

...No one is talking about rebelling against the current queen? As far as Liushna can tell? Is she missing important nuance again, shit. 

It feels good, being part of a peasant mob instead of being a specific person thinking thoughts and taking actions.

We can do so much more when we're a hundred men and women, full of Holy Fury, with a speech like that in our ears and a shout of GLORY TO IOMEDAE on our tongues. We can burn down the manor and cut down the baron and his men as they try to escape the flames. We can take over this hall and throw out everyone standing between us and the Age of the Glory. We can, if Valia Wain stops letting the nobles talk her down and starts calling for blood, do 'driving evil out of the halls of power' right now.

Being a specific person thinking thoughts and taking actions, being Enric Porras who wants people to live good not to die fighting evil, that will resume once Holy Fury and GLORY TO IOMEDAE wear off. 

Spells aren't guaranteed to get a wizard out of mob violence but they've been pretty helpful in recent months.

Hopefully the delegates here assembled are mostly reasonable people who wouldn't join a mob, like that Enric Porras guy from yesterday.

Abadar abhors war. This is, Jaume thinks, one reason why: if you set about choosing the time and place of a war, you may gain a strategic advantage, but the chips with which you are gambling do not belong to you. Valia thinks that just because it's good if she wins more chips, that gives her the right to claim every soul in reach as table stakes. The Archduchess has the right of it. The noncombatants did not belong to their revolutionary neighbors. A bit of personal resistance is one thing. But the selfsame people who thought it was Asmodean and irredeemably wicked to own someone you bought and paid for are now thinking nothing of bringing down a nation's worth of wrath on a city full of uninvolved men, women, and children without investing one red cent in their futures, and most certainly without making sure it was in their several personal and individual interests. How heroic. Abadar help him, that these are his vacillating and bloodthirsty countrymen.

"Everyone has the right to rebel, Select Wain. I cherish the spirit to do so; it is said my family sword was once blessed by Cayden Cailean himself and when I wavered on what was the right course, for Kintargo, I would touch the hilt, and know that if it went cold in my hands instead of warm, I was stamping out the impulse that He loves, and making  a mistake. That, more than just the wishes of the people who elected me, was how I kept my purpose clear."

"What they do not have is the right to get everyone they know killed, most of them decent people by nature who nonetheless, because they have lived in Infernal Cheliax all their lives, will be damned to Hell forever. Weaken the hold of Hell, encourage the spirit of rebellion, make your city and countryside places where rebels can find purchase, to draw them off to fight elsewhere or slowly amass a large number who could overthrow a city and hold it. Do not get your people burned to ashes in Hell to make yourself feel virtuous. Pezzack might have been a wonderful thing, if it succeeded, and I imagine Iomedae was optimistic. What you actually achieved, though, was a great many people in Hell early, who could have escaped it if they lived and found the little sparks of Good in their life that good leaders can encourage. Ones they would have found, had they survived the Four-Day War. There is no Good to be found in a field of ashes."

Now Valia is almost too angry to think. The one city in Cheliax that was free and safe - hungry, nervous, but free and safe - when the archmages came, and the Archduchess slanders them for her own evil purposes? She dares call their revolution a failure because people died in it? 

"Your ignorance, Archduchess, is understandable given your many other duties but may mislead the poor people of this convention. Our rebellion succeeded. Pezzack freed itself; the Asmodeans blockaded the port as they were unable to root us out. We were hungry, but the strix came to our aid, and the woods came to our aid, and the gods came to our aid. We ruled ourselves by vote. There was, and is, much Good to be found in Pezzack. I invite you to visit some time and witness it; the free people of Pezzack have long considered the people of Kintargo our kin, and admired their courage in the face of the cowardly collaborators who rule them."

✨ Valia is so cool ✨

"I received my own reports, not filtered through Asmodean superiors. You lost an enormous number of people and achieved nothing that would not have been achieved by waiting. If you call that a victory, I say you need to study Iomedae's domain of strategy."

"They couldn't have known an archmage was going to come and save them! If everyone just sat around hoping that someone else will save them, and no one ever took anything into their own hands, then Evildoers would just keep being in charge forever."

Also she still doesn't understand why everyone is so obsessed with counting how many people go to Hell. It would be really bad if someone was super Evil but got to go to Heaven anyway!!!

What is the Archduchess thinking? She wants to intervene and say "Archduchess, I fear you might be misinterpreted as saying it was wrong for the people of Pezzack to rebel because the archmages happened to sweep in shortly afterwards, but as I understand your point it's really that..." but she can't actually think how to complete that sentence.

Joan-Pau started running to the podium as fast as possible halfway through that exchange, and made it right after the last go-round thanks to the power of Expeditious Retreat. "May I remind the distinguished delegates," he said, "that the President of the Assembly has banned duels?" He ends it in a slightly teasing voice, and hopes for a ripple of laughter to break the mood. And snap out of it, President of the Assembly, whatever you're up to.

"Archduke Jilia is Good. Select Valia is Good. Both of you contributed to this war; Valia forced the Asmodeans into a costly siege of Pezzack, Jilia inpeded Thrune plans for Ravounel to such an extent that they imprisoned her. If either of you wishes to claim the other is evil, my good friend and cousin Knight-Captain Feliu Tauler is a blessed paladin of Iomedae, and I will gladly volunteer his services, knowing that he would do the same to me -" another attempt to cut tension "- I mean, for me, in this situation, as a reliable witness to confirm the lack of any detectable Evil aura. Disagreements about which strategy is correct should not cross the line into personal insults, and as the President of the Assembly likes to say, we are all reasoning beings and adults, and we should act like it.

"I think that this conversation is missing a few important points. Asmodean soldiers and their Asmodean allies are currently in control of significant parts of Druma and parts of Molthune. There are Asmodean clerics in Cheliax, and I do not mean this in the sense that they may have fled into hiding after losing their powers, I mean this in the very literal and straightforward sense that three months ago one of my barons' castles was held by his former confessor and eighty well-armed Fists of Asmodeus, and if I was a couple circles lower it would be still." Sorry for the slander, Feliu. "When we talk about turning our attention to our own inner evils, there are very legitimate, very real, and utterly unambiguous evils inside our nation that all of us can agree we need to solve, such as necromancers, vampires, a fortified compound of Belial cultists that my good friend Archduke Xavier still has under siege, and entire counties of the empire that are burned-out wrecks, that we will not deal with them by bickering, and that when we have strategic discussions it is usually the case that someone's strategy is suited to solving one problem and someone else's for another. All of us should calm down, think about which of the things we are saying result in us achieving valuable strategic goals that it serves our interests to obtain, and while we are doing this I motion that we switch to some extremely boring, unexciting topic, such as the judiciary, if the President of the Assembly will permit it."

"On the topic of the judiciary! I think that laws should be short, easy to remember for ordinary Chelish people, outlaw as few things as necessary because either Her Majesty or future sessions of Congress will build on any laws we lay down and it's best to at least start simple, and provide as little employment for lawyers as we can humanly achieve. What does the rest of the convention think about this?"

She's not, actually, but she's trying. As is he, and doing a better job at his objective than hers.

Okay, maybe the Select isn’t able to effectively reach for allies and friends, but Thea wants to make an attempt anyway.  She’ll keep in mind the caution Dia advised and avoid exposing any weaknesses in the process though.

Right. Right. Probably it's going to be a problem that she called the Archduchess of Ravounel a coward and a collaborator. Even if it was true. Her heart is still pounding. "Let's go," she says to Victoria. She should eat something and pray and then probably apologize.

Nod. "You were really good up there!!"

"It's not - true that it would've been better for Pezzack to do nothing - we couldn't even have done nothing, because they cracked down before anyone had even done anything -" Now that they're off the floor she's crying. 

Huh. Trying to avert disaster and things coming to blows, are we? Sure. She'll help him out. She also doesn't want this to turn into civil war.

"A fair idea, but I think you would need to put the different laws in front of a variety of people before properly approving them, to avoid misinterpretation from those of different walks of life. I believe there was a call for a committee on courts and justice?" That happened earlier, she noticed, see, she's paying attention.

"Of course it wouldn't have been better for you to do nothing!! I think— nobles, even the ones that don't show up as Evil, mostly don't care if normal people are getting ground down into dust, as long as things are stable and peaceful. But they're wrong, it's good to fight back against Asmodeus even if some people get hurt.

...do you want a hug." Victòria has never in her life given or received a hug but she is pretty sure they're a thing in places that aren't being ruled by Asmodeus.

Yes, she wants a hug. "We didn't know, we couldn't have known, about the archmages, and it wouldn't even have helped if we did know -"

Okay, you know what, Liushna is also going to leave to go support Valia Wain. 

"Are you okay?"

"I believe a committee on courts and justice would be an excellent idea," Archduke Xavier says firmly. "- Also, Joan-Pau, the Belial cult's dealt with, Archmage Dujardin kindly offered her assistance and then crushed it single-handedly." Reportedly there was a giant invisible cat. "That particular crisis is over, though I'm sure another seven have turned up in the morning mail."

She is very much not okay but her instinctive response on seeing strix is to smile at them. With no teeth. Strix don't like it when you show teeth at them. "It's - it's fine. I knew people'd be upset."

Hug. "I think— even if you had known, and even if the Asmodeans hadn't been trying to kill everyone— it's still better that you got rid of them sooner. Every day that they were walking around in charge of things, burning innocent people to death and telling everyone they had to support Asmodeus, was— was wrong, and the sooner you stopped it the better."

"It'd have been worth waiting if it gave us - better odds. Or saved a lot more people. But you can't - you can't plan like that. The thing about rebellions is that they just kind of - happen. Because - because people are Good and when they see a chance they take it -"

"Even if you knew what you were walking into, it was still really brave and really difficult. ...I loved your speech." 

Sefora has moved around to be vaguely in the area where Valia ended up. She probably definitely has a lot of common with her group, and they should become allies. 

It's good to be among friends and not among nobles, who she's not convinced aren't an Evil institution even when they're not Asmodean.

"There was a proposal to form one, earlier," says Voshrelka loudly, absolutely trying to cover up the sound of people talking in the aftermath of the latest debacle, "but I think it got lost in the," chaos? "arguing." That's not really a better word.

... Look, she's trying, okay. Diplomacy is not her forte. Why is she even doing this. She hates talking. Oh, right, she's attempting to assist with plan: a fight doesn't break out in the argument room.

Well that was EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE.

.....noble fucker can have a point for helping the Archduchess. She really likes the Archduchess.

"...Yes. Vote on that." 

This is Cheliax, not Galt, and Valia Wain, not Lucien Levasseur, and he's the archmage who helped depose Asmodeus himself and not a first-circle wizard in a river village at the end of the world hoping that his friend lived long enough for the peace of the final blade. He can pull himself together. 

Jilia is not angry at anything said of her. She's been called a collaborator a thousand times, and a dozen to her face. It's true. She couldn't do her job, her real job, without it.

She's angry that this girl thinks she's never made a mistake and is going to ruin as much as they let her touch until she makes a big one that she isn't saved from by miraculous archmage intervention.

She touches the hilt. It's still warm.

Oh good, the archmage is no longer broken. This means she can stop talking! She will be so happy to just vote for things and resume the things she's actually good at, like: assessing this place for where an angry mob is likely to break in, and how one might escape said angry mob through a window.

Victòria would not have been surprised in the slightest if every noble here had turned out to be Evil. She will... keep hugging Valia, because she doesn't really know what to say.

Liushna thinks about it for a moment, then uses her enfluffening hex and lays a wing tentatively on Valia's shoulder. 

Then Valia will give herself five minutes to weep for all the dead before she starts trying to pull herself together to appease the cowardly collaborator noble.

Blai would sort of like to be hugging Valia and sort of would like to have never met her and would sort of like to be waking up at three in the morning to find that he has been having a weird microsleep-dream in seminary and will now spend the next few days forced constantly awake with nothing to eat and no water until someone in his dormitory is chosen and can get the rest of them a drink. But those are all feelings, so they don't matter. He goes on mechanically taking notes on what non-feeling things are going on in case he needs to remember any of it later.

Liushna feels sorry for Valia for having to deal with this, and admires her for her bravery and her speech, and feels less alone than she has since she got here. She still has to wade through some deeply unreasonable people, but there are other people dealing with the same problem, and at least one of them looks at her and sees, immediately and instinctively, another person and not a weird monster. 

A peasant mob, dispersed before it could really get started, breaks down into it's component people. Enric emerges somewhat dazed and somewhat disappointed. The nobles made Valia flee, when she had every man brave and good enough to act standing in support? Yes, the nobles have their guards and spells, but does that compare to the protection of the goddess Iomedae and heaven waiting to receive the dead?

Why run, instead of rallying the people and finishing the work of putting every evil wizard and noble, every cleric of slavery and torture, every...

...Theopho, who the cleric of Iomedae said was at worst evil in the way a normal man might be, not a diabolist, but not everyone thought to ask

...Korva, not a diabolist or a noble or anything, who would probably go up too for having defended Theopho last morning

...Lluisa, a bit strange but she's never tried to buy his soul even once, and seems like some unknown not-evil type of lawyer 

...Jilla, who was the sneering noble arguing against Valia but still on the same side trying to get everyone rights, who even helped him understand how the rules worked in the committee 

Good gods, he feels sick. He feels his heartbeat in his chest and in his temples. Some part of him still wants to fight someone, break something. The rest of him wants to find somewhere quiet, where it's safe to sit down and breathe. 

Xavier is in favor of the committee on the law.

So's Jaon-Pau, who proposed it.

Alas and alack, the fun's over.

She will nod gratefully to Joan-Pau as she votes for the committee on the law. 

He watches the entire exchange without a word, stone-faced as always. But it isn't until things appear to cool that he loosens his grip on what's hidden up his sleeve. He will not allow this to descend into mob violence, not while he's here. He doesn't care who or what the cause.

It's not that she's wrong. She just has the wrong way to go about it. She reminds him of Élie: committed to doing what is Good, and saying so no matter what the cost. In a way, He admires her the same way he does his friend. But that doesn't mean he doesn't think her foolish.

He understands her revulsion at some of the monsters here—more than a few he would gladly rid the world of himself. But there will be time enough to root them out. Not everyone, not in the way she wants. Justice comes slowly, but better slowly than not at all, and there is no justice to be had at the hands of a mob.

If there is to be a committee on law, he supposes he should volunteer, though it seems somewhat redundant.

"...we should probably volunteer for that," she says quietly to Valia and the bird-person Valia is friends with, once Valia seems to be marginally okay. "I'm worried that a bunch of nobles are just going to join the committee and say that we don't need to change almost anything. But you're a priestess of Iomedae, so probably most people will listen to you if you tell them 'nobles shouldn't be punished less than regular people for breaking the same laws.'"

Trying to be on four committees is probably objectively unreasonable but what else is she going to do, not sign up for those committees?

Grow up. Do your job. "Yeah. We can go over and sign up once the vote passes."

The vote on the law committee passes, 304-83, with many abstentions. What a productive morning! So many committees were formed! Republicanism!!