"Yes. Amnesties are encouraged by the Church of Sarenrae and broadly, though not universally or at all times, considered both Good and Chaotic."

"...I don't think it was Good to pardon Delegate Ibarra for what he did. If it were just — people who didn't do anything wrong, who broke Evil Asmodean laws — that would be Good." (Wait, does the amnesty apply to her? That's... she would probably be happy about it if it weren't for the whole "letting people get away with burning children to death" thing.)

"But doing it like this is just saying... it doesn't matter that he burned innocent children to death, it doesn't matter if someone else was a murderer or a rapist or an Asmodean priest, we don't care about the people they hurt. And I think that's Evil." Probably she shouldn't have kind of called the Queen Evil but it's too late now.

"Nobody has comprehensively ruled on which things are wrong, yet."

"I think — there are some things that used to be illegal that are basically always fine, like worshipping Iomedae, and obviously it's Good to pardon people for that. And there are some things that used to be illegal — well, a lot of them are still illegal, but still — that are sometimes fine and sometimes not, and maybe it would be too hard to go through every possible case and say which things are and aren't fine. But there are also some things that aren't okay ever, like murdering innocent children or rape or torturing people because they didn't worship Asmodeus properly, and I don't think it would be hard to say that if you did one of those you don't get pardoned for it."

"Torturing people because they didn't worship Asmodeus wasn't a crime, it was mandatory, in many positions. Nobody could know if anything they'd done was going to be retroactively declared a death penalty offense."

"It's not okay to do really obviously Evil things just because they're not against the law!"

"And if it's against the law not to? If you'll receive the same punishment yourself and worse, if you don't inflict it on another? That's a small evil to do, I expect, to refuse to be a martyr, and someone is committing a much greater evil, every time that happens, but it's not the one holding the brand or thumbscrews who's doing something unforgivable, it's the ones whose orders demanded it. And there are thousands of cases like it. If we flogged everyone who was ever ordered to torture another and complied, we would not finish for a decade. We purged the ones giving the orders, to the extent a Queen, an arch-inquisitor, and three archmages could manage, and that's an end to it. If you want to understand why she, and they, chose that, ask the President. I suspect he would be very much willing to explain to you why continuing with the purges would create a new Chelish Terror, and, having both started and survived the Galtan Terror himself, why that is an awful idea. He is Chaotic Good and the most qualified person in all the world on that subject."

"You didn't purge all the priests of Asmodeus, which is who I was mainly thinking of, and they can't be decent people or Asmodeus wouldn't have chosen them. I'm not saying we should become Galt, I don't know much about Galt but as far as I know they killed a bunch of basically innocent people? I don't want to kill innocent people! I don't even want to kill all the guilty ones, there's plenty of things that are bad but not so bad that you deserve to die for them!"

"Ferrer, as a practical matter, Chelish nobles are not archons. If we tell them to make others suffer as much as they believe they deserve, with no other guidance, the result will not be justice."

Anyone who has ever been in a school goes on the list of ‘everyone who was ever ordered to torture another and complied’. It’s the first lesson they teach. 

"Asmodeus can choose Neutral priests," Xavier points out. "They just rarely stay that way."

"I think the gods mostly choose people who agree with them, right, like Calistria wouldn't choose someone who thought vengeance was bad. And I don't think there's any way to agree with Asmodeus without being Evil."

"And yet there are former clerics of Asmodeus in Axis. I would even guess there are some in Heaven, who repented of their evil."

"...well, I think that's bad. If I were Lawful I wouldn't want to have to share Heaven with someone who — had innocent people burnt alive or Maledicted for heresy, even if they felt bad about it afterwards. ...Also I think I've forgotten what proposal we were actually arguing about to begin with, though if we're hoping to find things we all agree on whatever it was definitely wasn't."

"Ending execution by torture. And possibly using final blades. But I think the logistics may be more problematic than the morals."

"In Elysium, Avenger, if you don't like someone's presence you can leave whenever you like and never see them again, and Good Calistrians go there, not Nirvana or Heaven. But ultimately I think this argument is going in circles, and not affecting the outcome of any vote we will take, and so the committee's time is best spent cutting it short."

"There is, actually, one thing I want to mention before we proceed to a vote. You mentioned that allowing worse executions for worse crimes prevents the case where someone, say, commits serial rape, and murders the victims because the sentence will not be any worse for serial killing and rape than serial rape along. This is a good point, and if we ban torturous execution we will need to keep it in mind when considering what lesser penalties are permitted. I think it is not enough, weighed against the Good of a ban, but it is worth considering."

"That said, unless there are objections, I call for a vote. On the right for all executions to be swift and conducted without torture? I vote Aye."

"Aye."

Not something he wants to vote against. "Aye."

"Against, for the reasons I already said." Maybe she can bring it up to the Judiciary Committee next time they meet, she bets they'll be more reasonable.

"For."

“Aye.”

Glad that argument is over. It seemed like those two might be making progress but, on the other hand, Enric is a bit scared of what they might end up with if their ideas about ‘good’ combine together. ‘good is horrible executions that leave enough of a body to turn into undead and send to the mines’

"Aye."

Hey, she doesn't think making undead is Good, she just thinks it might, pragmatically, be worth doing a little of it, for the good of society.

"Passes, six to one. I would like to enshrine a right to the Final Blade if the convict desires it, but as Delegate Tallandria said, the logistical issues are tricky. Does anyone have suggestions there?"

"...well, any situation where you're offering an option of deadly hard labor is a situation where it's been judged safe to transport a criminal somewhere. You could require the Final Blade as the alternative in those situations, and not necessarily mean that people can't execute powerful bandits as needed."

"That's true. If it's safe to transport the convict to the Blade, or the Blade to the convict, there's no excuse. 'Right to have execution conducted by Final Blade, when one is available or when the convict can be held and conveyed to one, safely for those around him'?"