Thea doesn’t have anything major for this committee so she simply nods at the suggestion of a refresher and shakes her head at the question of anything urgent.

Dia is with her today.  But Dia is trying to appear as a simple note taker and aide and wouldn’t say anything even if she had something to say.

Slight head shake, attentive focus on the Chair who is simultaneously being relaxed and friendly and executing Procedure, definitely not fidgeting with any cantrips.

Still a bit shaken up. Does asking if the hunting diabolists committee is going to keep going and if anyone has plans to flee the city, does that come before or after the summary? Probably after.

Drevnic is here, as usual.

Present and accounted for. 

She’s here! Hopefully this continues to be less stressful than the Diabolism one.

"Okay then! Here's what I wrote:

- We are agreed that there should be an official list of churches of benign gods in good standing whom it is definitely licit to worship, and a similar list of evil gods, demon lords, etc., whom it is not, with it understood that there is a gray area between the two (obscure empyreal lords, minor deities) the handling of which is beyond the scope of this committee.
- We are considering the ideal nature of a proposal by which some part of a citizen's taxes owed may at that citizen's option be diverted to a benign church instead of their lord or the crown, to encourage the establishment and proliferation of these churches and the services they offer most particularly in regions where the lord's service to his people is unsatisfying.
- We are considering whether it might be desirable to expressly endorse Erastil as the state god but at present the committee leans against.
- We suggest that the Crown consider hosting a sort of Grand Salon of artists, writers, and performers from all across Cheliax, gathered into Westcrown or another suitable city, to exchange ideas for the presentation of Good catechesis and cultural mores, and then disperse again with these ideas to the corners of the kingdom.
- We are considering the best ways to integrate the benign churches, given their limited coverage and staffing at present, into an improved system of education throughout Cheliax, with each church taking on different subjects of instruction, but do not have a firm proposal as yet.
- We recommend extending formal invitations above and beyond those informal ones already presumed, to clerics of benign gods from abroad to visit and teach in Cheliax, and perhaps also to send some Chelish people on pilgrimages of religious study to bring back their learning to their homes."

"I asked into it last night and have a list of some empyreal lords that didn't get mentioned yesterday. I mostly made it in case the Hellknight tried anything, but it might be relevant to the list of licit gods."

"Great! Let's put together that list, then." She gets a fresh sheet of paper and writes nice and big so everyone can see without passing it around.

“I have a couple things to add to the list of things to figure out, once we’ve got all the empyreal lords.”

Enric makes sure the Stag Lord and Lady of Orchards get on the list, Erastil’s and Jaidi’s kids.

This is all interesting information worth copying down!

She knows rather a lot of empyreal lords herself at least vaguely, so she'll also do her part. Hopefully this won't be needed, but it's better to have it and not need it than the reverse.

And they can fill out a similar list of bad guys too. They can probably at least piece together a list of who they covered in school.

She'll make sure the queens of hell get on there. If Iroria is legitimate, she'll appreciate it, and if she isn't maybe someone else will be able to fact check her on things Alicia missed.

Thea has extra copies of her information sheets about the Queens of Hell.

Hm yeah those should probably go on the bad list!

Drevnic can name the empyreal lords named in The Birth of Light and Truth, not that that's very many.

Lluïsa knows a lot of names of Infernal Powers and doesn't want to write or speak them, ever, which is a dilemma.

They're getting the major ones like archdevils, this should be fine, right? Copying the ones they already wrote with scrivener's should be fine, right?

Enric can tell horror stories about all sorts of evil things that people are said to worship in other villages:

Ghosts and devils and evil fey and ancient wizards and demon birds and an angel that accepts a lot of human sacrifices for something claiming to be an angel. He’s even heard travelers say some worship the old queen, and say this whole thing is a loyalty test; when she returns as a god everyone’s getting tortured for renouncing her. 

He’s not sure which ones are actually real and which ones are just people trying to be entertaining or make up slander. Stories travelers tell grow every telling, and you always say it’s about a place everyone already doesn’t like. But if there’s any truth to any of them, people should know to not worship any of those.

"I think there are probably enough evil fey and demons and so on that it's not practical to ban worshipping them individually instead of collectively." 

"Well, if some of them are especially popular they can be on the list, if maybe on the second page."

“A book I read summarizing less common groups of Gods with a sentence or two each implied some Fey Eldest are Chaotic Neutral, but it didn’t have specifics. I guess if you specify evil Fey it excludes the non-evil fey from the ban?”

"Honestly if I were the queen I wouldn't want people worshiping random Chaotic Neutral fey. Calistria's at least a relatively known quantity!"

"Well, the whole reason we're here is because it doesn't just matter what the queen wants, right? Do we think it's a bad idea to worship random Chaotic Neutral fey? ...Which, now that I say it like that, it might well in fact be a really terrible idea, but,"

"It sounds like a bad idea to me, and I think the queen still has to sign off on whatever we write, probably."

“Hard to tell which ones are good or evil, too. Sometimes they even change. Heard of a good one that started poisoning people, then went back to healing the next year like nothing happened. Neutral ones might turn evil if the queen tries to ban them, too…”

”Maybe say that if a fey seems like it might be evil, send a cleric to check?”

"They're full of enchantments, it's not going to seem evil. Unless it poisons people, I guess!"

“The book implied they were an alien kind of Chaotic Neutral… but it overall wasn’t very informative.  I can look for a better book on Fey.  But we might need to leave this issue in particular to whatever institution the Queen develops if we can’t find an authoritative source of information on Fey.”

“Maybe the druids know more about how to tell the difference. Hope forests committee can keep the new one happy with us.”

"It is at the least Ill-Advised to consort with a Chaotic Power, unless tempered with Good."

“That’s true but, for a while, all you had to be to get worship was better than hell. Fey you can’t predict might do good or bad; you can predict a devil but it’ll always do bad things.”

”We have good gods now, but it’s hard for a village to to break things off with the fey.”

"I'm city-raised myself, how common is the fey situation?"

Enric replies carefully, sometimes pausing to figure out how much to say and how much not to say. Some things aren’t for city-raised folk to know, even good ones.

“Most people I know do little things, like leaving a bit of extra food outside when we hear of a fey passing through. My house does too, if there’s some to spare. One family has a fey they know by name and a little shrine, they have some deal where she watches out for them. There’s all kinds of rumors about what they give in offering but I won’t say any.”

”Out closer to the forests, I hear it’s more common and more intense. A fey that can bless fields and enchant anyone who comes in to cause trouble and keep the monsters away… gets more offerings and songs than any god. Evil ones can get worship too even if they don’t help, make a village sends one into the woods every summer.”

”Some places it’s the opposite, where people don’t like the fey at all. Pobably had to deal with too many evil ones. When a baron goes riding out with iron weapons to hunt one, they’ll help out.”

"Gracious. I suppose that sort of blurs the line between a trade relationship and a religion, doesn't it? Maybe none of these fey belong on a list of benign gods, really... they don't necessarily belong on the list of bad ones either, but what a thing to do."

"It would be well not to oblige Villages to invite the Ire of such Beings already Bargained with; perhaps a Provision that Fey Bargains already Established and not Unconscionable, e.g. the Sacrifice of a Maiden each Harvest, may continue in Maintenance until such time as a Goodly Priest arrive to make a Specific Recommendation, coupled with the Decree that no new Bargains be made without such Goodly Priest's consultation?"

Looking toward Porras on this one.

Enric nods. Lluisa gets it. 

"I for one would not know the first thing about what to advise about such a fey bargain, are we assuming Erastil's freer with that sort of knowledge or...?"

“A Sower sometimes knows the local fey and how do deal with them. Don’t know how much of that is Erastil sharing, how much is another cleric teaching, and how much is just spending time in the forest.”

"Well, if you think it won't founder for lack of knowledgeable priests it sounds like a fine proposal to me. All in favor?"

“Aye.”

"In favor, Aye."

"Aye."

“Aye.”

“Aye.”

"Aye."

"And the ayes have it! Looking at the rest of the list... we should maybe have a joint session with the education committee at some point about whether the churches should take on educational responsibilities, are any of you on that one?"

"I am; the involvement of Churches may prove a Boon to Education, in my view, though I am unclear which Priesthoods are most comprised of the Lettered."

Not Cayden Cailean's! (She guesses.)

"Can you let them know next time you meet that we'd like to coordinate on that whenever they've gotten to a point where it makes sense? And... let's see, I wonder if we have time to hammer out a floor-ready version of the tithe idea."

They do not have time to hammer out a floor-ready version of the tithe idea, but maybe tomorrow.