Alas, someone on this committee that is in favor of humanity flourishing isn't a dumbass. Pity, watching Cheliax attempt to actually enact this extremely terrible idea would have been entertaining.

"Mm. Then designated logging areas, which are clearly marked and then replanted? If you simply must fell old trees from the Barrowood. Though, I do want to be clear that currently the Barrowood is not by any stretch of the imagination safe, and you are better off finding logs elsewhere until it's back in order again."

A few 'lawless merchants' trying to log the Forests would still be a lot better than all of Cheliax doing it! But there will be separate negotiations later, and Feather thinks that anything said right now is more likely to derail them than to help them, so she just nods.

"By designated logging areas, you mean that if they log too much and don't replant enough and run out of trees in those areas, they still can't log outside them? If they can make that work on the borders of the Barrowood then I don't really understand why they can't do the same thing somewhere else, where it's safer."

"...unless you make it a loop around the whole forest, you'd still get people on the other side of it who don't know they're not supposed to."

"I'm not concerned about people gathering firewood," clarifies Voshrelka. "I'm thinking of the type of large-scale, state sponsored, systemic logging that occurred around Egorian."

"I believe currently most of the large-timber logging is in the Anferita Wood just outside Corentyn's shipyards, and the intrusion into the Barrowwood. To replace the Barrowwood with an official managed area, the safest place would the north-west edge of the Whisperwood, which thanks to our efforts is largely cut off from the portal to Hell and comparatively thin of uncontrolled beasts. This is faint praise indeed, even leaving aside the objections Delegate Tiumfane or his compatriots are likely to have."

Possibly objecting now, possibly after the portal is closed and they no longer have selfish incentives to cooperate. She doesn't need to say that. She does write herself a note to check on the druid status of Anferita; the navy manages - managed - the monsters themselves, so the Pike hasn't been requested there and doesn't have enough records that she knows about them.

"I expect with the current situation, your country is likely to prefer crops to logs, anyway," shrugs Voshrelka. "You'll note my demand on this front is not 'stop entirely,' it's 'be predictable,' and 'replant.' I want consistency and a care towards long term thinking, not total abstinence."

Yes, you somehow have a better understanding of basic Law than all the non-Chaotic people in this room who are not Hellknights. Which Anna would trust much more if you didn't read as strongly Chaotic.

...Okay, that's unfair to the Sower. He's not sophisticated but he's fine.

It's called being really old. Just because she doesn't practice being Lawful doesn't mean she doesn't understand it. Also, you try to be Lawful when you're resisting a Lawful Evil government! They're the ones who broke all bonds of trust and then made some very stupid laws, so she considers it perfectly fair to not follow a single one of them. Laws are for governments, not people.

"I think 'designated logging areas, local lords responsible for punishing any of their people who log outside those areas and survive long enough to be brought to justice' is a viable agreement. They're largely going to be bandits, not peasants." In fact in a sense if you think about it, if they're committing crimes and wandering into prohibited areas they're automatically bandits. Everyone's in favor of hanging bandits.

"Is there a way to say that the lords are responsible for telling their peasants where not to log, and if they don't bother to tell their peasants they can't punish them for logging there? Assuming they don't get killed by the forest anyways."

Anna can solve for the equilibrium there but so can the dangerous elf, or probably even the child druid, so she'll just let them explain it.

"Yes. Hold them responsible for infractions in their territory, probably by, mm, fine? Of some kind?" She knows what fines are, but she is completely incapable of coming up with an appropriate sum of money in the currently highly complicated economy. "And hold only the general populace responsible if they can verify under truth telling that they knew the policy and reneged. If they survive the experience. But my experience of the common people is that they're smarter than their leadership when it comes to the forest."

Feather thought they were talking about logging old trees for ships, but now they're back to all the - common people - logging, presumably any trees they can get. If they log the younger trees, they won't grow up to be the old trees that they want for shipbuilding. And they'd need logging zones around the whole forest, like Taís said, because common people probably can't go very far for logging, because they need to carry the trees back home.

Feather is confused by this proposed deal. She's also disgusted by it. Here's a druid offering their forest up for logging, zones 'managed' by the humans and not even by the druids themselves, with replanting at the humans' mercy and lack of it punished, if at all, by the humans themselves and under their laws. And when the humans inevitably strip their zones back and fail to replant them in time they'll be back demanding more, and the forest will be smaller and weaker and in a worse bargaining position.

This is worse than what the Verduran did. This is not just 'groveling'. This is a druid who failed to protect their forest, gave up on succeeding, and is begging to be spared to die a century from now and not tomorrow. Begging the humans, instead of begging their fellow forests for help.

She's not going to say any of that now, it won't help anything. (But it surely shows on her face.) What she does say is - 

"Will you fine the lords for not replanting quickly enough, and not limiting logging to keep their assigned zones - sustainable?"

"Or something. If they'd keep to it. I think this is more Cheliax policing itself than needing me to nanny them. I'm merely trying to offer options to not continue burning every available bridge with the druids of the Barrowood. This is more advisement than direct demands."

Feather meant will 'you', the delegates of Cheliax, fine your lords! Not will Voshrelka do it personally. Druids don't... fine outsiders. How would that even work. They don't want their gold anyway.

Liushna gives Feather a concerned look. 

Feather is very concerned! About many things and for many reasons!! She wishes she could speak to Liushna and Voshrelka in Sylvan without provoking de Seguer.

"If you try to log in the outer parts of the Whisperwood something will kill you and it probably won't be a druid," he says. "If you're lucky it will be something that can talk and use bows and if you're not it will be armies of devils."

"Presumably that will change if we can convince the archmages to close the hell portal? At least the latter part..." 

...thinking about it some more, Feather can figure out the source of her sudden distress.

Until now, Voshrelka was offering her personal Plant Growth castings in return for things. Feather didn't always understand why she offered the things she did, or the way she did it, but at the end of the day they were hers to offer and she was asking for good things in exchange. Feather would have no grounds to complain, not even if Voshrelka's negotiations failed, considering how her own have been going.

But now she's offering things on behalf of her entire Forest. The same Forest whose druids she previously claimed did not make their decisions in common. Who is going to assign the humans logging zones all around the Barrowood? Voshrelka herself? What will happen the first or second or tenth time another druid, or someone else in the Forest, decides to object, either to a specific zone or to the whole idea? Will Voshrelka fight on the humans' side against them, to defend the treaty? Will someone else from the Forest try to kill Voshrelka over it, losing the humans their Plant Growth? Will the treaty fall apart within a year, with the humans deciding forests could not be negotiated with, just as some of them had claimed to her?

Even if the treaty Voshrelka proposed works it will not stop the Forest's destruction, as far as Feather can tell. But she doesn't think it will get that far.

The only thing worse would be if she really thought the druids of the Barrowood were united behind Voshrelka's proposal, but Voshrelka herself isn't claiming that, so... how does anyone imagine this working?

"Well, once we kill all the devils that are already here," he says. "And the devilborn animals. But humans tend to think on the very short term and the devils won't be dead in the very short term."

Devilborn animals? Wow, gross, Liushna is totally failing to not think about how that must have happened. She's not going to derail the conversation by saying anything about it out loud, though. 

"So what I'm hearing here is that most druids don't really care if people harvest the trees that aren't dryads, or go hunting in there either, but do care that when they do that they dig some holes and put some acorns in the holes so that there will be trees in a hundred years. Things in the forest might kill people, like sea monsters might do the same to fishermen, and it's okay to go in enough force to kill those things back, maybe unless they're fey too? Have I got the right of it, more or less?"

“More or less. The concern is, to put it in fishing terminology, overfishing an area until all of the fish are dead, and none are around to breed more for anyone else. Though the metaphor breaks down when it also comes to the equivalent of destroying bodies of water people can fish in as well, which happens with forests and not so much with rivers and lakes. We care if the overall balance of the system is upset, such that everyone loses out on resources that can only be found in proper forests.” Because caring about the sanctity of life of the original inhabitants of the forest is beyond the pale for humans, it’s all got to be explained in small words why destroying things is bad for them.

This is broadly right except for how the druids of Ravounel Forest will correctly never trust the outsider humans to actually maintain the balance of the system, and so they will not make any 'managed logging zones' in Ravounel Forest, and so it will still be around in her grandchildren's time. (Hopefully.)

If all it took was putting some acorns in holes in the ground, forests wouldn't need druids. Soler may be a 'sower' but Feather doubts he even knows what depth to plant acorns at, because 'dig a hole' suggests something alarmingly large.