"I had another idea that I forgot to suggest last time! We voted on the right not to be raped* and we also proposed no making people have children and no ordering people to do Evil things, but I think we should also say nobles and priests and soldiers and powerful wizards and so on shouldn't be allowed to order you to have sex with them, even if they don't use actual violence. We don't have to vote on it yet but I think it should be on the list."

(Victòria is pretty sure she's advocating for something controversial but that's not a good reason not to try.)

*specific subset thereof, you know the drill

"I think that's a good one."

"If they can order you to have sex with them, and refusal is a crime, and crimes are met with violence, that certainly seems like rape with more steps to me. But I'm not opposed to more clarity." Less dangerous than discussing torture, anyway.

"My intent with the right not to be made to have children was - there were nobles in some corners of the country who confiscated all young women who manifested sorcerous bloodlines, with the intent to create more sorcerers. This thing should be illegal."

Nod nod.

Wow, what the fuck. "That's messed up, that should definitely be illegal."

"Absolutely. The only issue I see with it is that banning it might conflict with laws about abortion, which we probably want to have some of, even if we don't ban it entirely like Andoran. Probably we can handle it with careful wording. We'd also need careful wording on Delegate Ferrer's proposal, to avoid banning powerful wizards from ever having sex at all."

"They can get married like everyone else."

"I'm not a particularly powerful wizard, but I've known a good many people who were trying to be, and I think a number of them would have been discouraged by the prospect of it being illegal to ever visit a brothel. Adventurers rarely settle down while they're adventuring, and they would avoid Cheliax if it was illegal to indulge themselves while they were here. I suppose brothels could be an exception as well?"

He looks at the Calistrian. This is supposed to be Her expertise, right?

~Ban siring bastards!~

But in political opinions likely to go anywhere -

"I don't see that we need to ban telling people to have sex with you if you're not someone whose word carries force of law. If you tell someone to have sex with you, and they say 'no, fuck you', then either they stop, and we have no problem, or they resort to rape, which we have already made illegal."

"Well, if they're a wizard they can ensorcel you."

"I don't think it should be illegal for powerful wizards to visit brothels. There's a difference between paying someone to have sex with you and ordering them to have sex with you, just like there's a difference between a powerful wizard saying 'I'll give you a silver for a copy of your committee notes' and the same wizard saying 'you have to give me the committee notes or else.'

"I think— if a powerful wizard goes up to a girl and says 'you have to have sex with me or else' she's not usually going to be thinking 'well, if I tell him no and he makes me do it anyway, that'll be rape, so I'll tell him no and he'll leave me alone.' She's going to be thinking 'I have to let him or he'll kill me.' Even if we make it illegal for him to order her she'll probably still be thinking that, but at least we'll be able to do something about him afterwards, and if we say it's not allowed then wizards might be less likely to try in the first place.

Probably some girls will still think 'I have to let him or he'll kill me' even if he doesn't order them at all, but I don't know a good way to stop that from happening."

"....this is all true, but we can't ban implied threats. As a practical matter, you can argue anything is an implied threat. We can ban ensorcelling people. Probably."

"I agree. If a man attempts to use threats of force to coerce a woman into sleeping with him, that should still be outlawed."

"I think— if a powerful wizard says 'have sex with me or else,' that's not really an implied threat, no one wouldn't think it was a threat. ...how hard is it for powerful wizards to fool truth magic? Delegate Ibarra said he could do it but I don't know if that was a him thing or an everyone thing."

"To fool Abadar's Truthtelling? Practically impossible. I wouldn't be surprised if he was bluffing."

“It’s not always violence or the force of law, though. There’s…” a pause to figure out how to say it, “Rich man hires a servant, buys an indenture with debt. Even if there’s no law saying she can’t refuse, it’s hard to stay an honest woman.”

”I don’t know if we can stop all that with a right. But I heard Lastwall has something about how you can’t have sex with anyone you’re in a position to give orders to, so maybe it can work?”

No one ask how he knows this random fact about Lastwall government, when he’s never as much as left his county before. A certain smuggling operation by the church of Shelyn is to blame for that detail being common knowledge. 

ABSOLUTELY NOT

Hmm, how to phrase this diplomatically...

"Well, if a girl says under Abadar's Truthtelling 'I thought he would kill me if I refused him,' and the powerful wizard can't say 'I didn't mean to threaten her,' then I think that regardless of what he did, it's not the sort of thing that should be allowed. But I don't think there are that many priests of Abadar so I don't think that would work for the whole country."

"What's the matter with marriage and, if you've really got to have it, a carveout for prostitutes in particular?"

" - wait, wait, wait, you can't have criminal penalties for making someone think you're going to kill them. I'm fine with the ban on explicit threats if the Archduke thinks it's workable."

"- You really can't," he says, agreeing with Korva. "A ban on explicit threats is practical. A matter of 'felt threatened' makes it impossible to draw a line between the legal and the illegal that a judge can rule on, even with knowledge of all the facts of the case."

"—just for clarity, if a powerful wizard that you know could definitely kill you says 'you have to have sex with me or else,' are you counting that as an explicit threat or an implicit threat?"

(The problem with limiting it to marriage is that he is sleeping with seven different adventurers, two of them female, whenever they happen to be in town and they both have time free. People who don't try to do interesting things aren't attractive, and people who do don't want to settle down.)

”I thought powerful wizards only have kids when they want to, so usually what they do doesn’t count as sex?”

"Sower, I think a ban on siring children outside marriage would cut to the heart of many of Cheliax's problems. But you'll never get it past that floor."

- wait, what the fuck, Enric? "- you can. Have sex that doesn't produce children. Though."

"That doesn't, sure, but that can't?"

"I think that if a powerful wizard forces himself on a girl, he's mistreating her even if he uses magic to make it so he can't get her pregnant!"

"Yes, that can't! Do we really have to define - "

"I agree that he is," Xavier agrees with Victoria. "Also, only female wizards don't conceive if they don't want to. Male wizards don't have the same advantage."

“It’s wrong to mistreat anyone, but we’re talking about a different thing if it’s not going to leave bastards or make it harder to get married after, or all those problems.”

The policy of ‘if a powerful wizard passing through  makes it happen, then it doesn’t count’ may also be tangled up in the fact that powerful wizards are a thing that just happens. Better for everyone if it’s agreed that you should just say there’s no consequence and it didn’t count. 

If it turns out that powerful wizards who are in the form of men do leave bastards, just like the fey sometimes do… okay that might explain some things about some people. 

"Okay, Ferrer is right. These are at least two different conversations. Porras, I have no idea what definition you're using and was certainly not imagining that when we voted to outlaw rape we were only outlawing forcing a woman to conceive. If those were the same thing I wouldn't have listed them separately. Also the wording literally includes men, so it's obviously not just about children."

"—also, if a woman hasn't started bleeding yet, it's still wrong to force yourself on her."

"Yes, yes it is."

"There are a number of acts considered sexual that do not involve the traditional methods of making children and could not do so even if unlucky. Some of them involve pain and control and were heavily encouraged as part of diabolist relationships, but not all of them, and many of the others - and supposedly some of the diabolist ones as well - are reportedly very popular, mostly but not exclusively in brothels. Some of them between members of the same sex. Ideally we would like those to be legal and forcing them on people to be illegal."

There, she avoided mentioning anything explicit. Please don't ask for details. And if you do, not to her.

"...why is it we want the diabolist sex to be legal?"

"They seem to enjoy it in Absalom, but if we ban it I won't shed many tears."

" - Because there are men who like having sex with men," Xavier tells him frankly. "Shelyn has no objections, and neither do I."

“I guess we can call forcing someone to do all of those the same wrong as rape, at least in the laws on rights. I’m not sure if that works but— I guess the parts where the difference matters are the job of the family committee then.”

"...okay, now I don't know what we're talking about. Why are we calling men having sex with men 'diabolist sex'."

“I don’t think the thing some men do with each other is the same either, they can only have kids doing that if they’re both wizards? I’m not sure about that. But it’s not diabolist, good people do that too.”

"They cannot," he says, "unless they are very, very powerful wizards."

"That was not what I intended to refer to as diabolist; I have no objections to it either, my apologies." She's not immediately sure whether he refers to himself or merely close friends, but it's not that subtle that he cares very personally.

"There are other somewhat sexual things that are often, but according to visitors to Absalom not exclusively, Asmodean in character, that are considered illicit enough not to be discussed politely even where they're legal and probably not Evil. Those are the things I wouldn't mind banning if it comes down to it."

Well what the fuck kind of sex is Asmodean but not evil????

(Look, there's a whole series of romance novels about this.)

...Victòria is pretty sure she's supposed to know more about this sort of thing than she does.

"- okay, look. I hold that to rape someone is to, by force or violence, penetrate the anus or vagina of another person, using any body part or implement. Would anyone like to contest this definition of the thing that we agreed to ban."

"No."

What a fool Enric was, spending last evening trying to learn more about mining and necromancy. Clearly he should have been talking to that guy at the lodging house who buys novels from the church of Shelyn and reads them out loud to everyone. 

Though Xavier seems to have that covered, knowing all about what wizards do for romance or sex, and what men who are romantic with other men do, and even how powerful wizards can have sex with men instead of just romance. 

…

Okay people are defining things. No objections, or looking up from the table.

There's one or two other things but she does not actually want to contest it. Look, Kintargo is a port city through and through, you can't avoid sailors.

"It's sufficient."

"We can very easily add 'or threat of violence' to this definition, or make that a lesser but criminal offense with the same wording. This does not outlaw all immoral sex acts, but that seems a matter either best addressed by the committee on family, or by switching gears from listing specific acts and digging into possible implementations of Ferrer's suggested right to your own person."

"Lesser but criminal," he proposes.

"'Force or violence, mundane or magical'? Dominate person is rare but I'd rather include it. 'Threat of violence to the victim or their family' as a lesser criminal charge seems right to me."

Jilia, as Archduke, deposed one of the more loathsome barons around Kintargo who had a habit of coercing young women to be his 'chambermaids' by threatening to conscript their brothers or fathers and assign them to some sewer cleaning duties which were widely considered death sentences. He lasted nine months after that before he committed a crime she could execute him for. She would like the next one like him to be more like three weeks, ideally.

He supports this program!

"Fine with that."

"...can someone clarify if a powerful wizard saying 'have sex with me or else' counts as a threat here?"

“If that isn’t a threat, I don’t know what is.”

Enric would prefer not to be talking out loud until the topic changes, but he’s processed some stuff from an earlier part of this conversation and is suddenly angry at powerful wizards. 

"If that sort of thing counts as a threat then I think that wording is fine. If we realize we forgot something important we can always have another vote. ...We should maybe say 'magical or mundane' both times, so people don't think only mundane threats count."

"Yes, that is a direct threat. I'm sure someone someday will argue they meant something innocent by 'or else' before a judge but a fair one will reject the argument as an obvious lie, and an unfair one there's not much we can do. I call a vote to approve this definition..." She pauses, and then recites the whole thing like it was oozing with mimic drippings and she was holding it with tongs at arm's length. She includes both Victòria's changes and the one she suggested herself, but not the 'threat' part.

"I vote in favor."

“Aye.”

"Aye." The question of spouses has not even slightly occurred to her.

"Aye."

Theopho notices there isn't an exception for spouses. Does he... care? He has heard enough of people's personal lives and what went on in Asmodean marriages to conclude that even if it's right to let husbands do what they like to their wives most places and times, Cheliax two years after liberation is not one of those times or places.

"Aye."

Korva only kind of knows what marriage is, doesn't understand marriages without associated contracts to currently have any legal standing, and is still figuring out what this means for hypothetical attempts to ban siring bastards. It has not occurred to her that one might want to write an exception for spouses. 

"Aye."

Xavier considers the marriage contract a promise to have sex with your spouse reasonably often, and has not remotely considered that this might ban that contract from continuing in force. "Aye."

Enric has never considered that you could deal with being mistreated in marriage by appealing to law and a constitution. You deal with that by talking to your family who talks to the other family and they all deal with whoever is doing wrong. 

"Passes. Ban on coercing sex, defined the same way, by threat of violence or force, to the victim or their family, as a serious but lesser charge? I vote in favor."

"Aye."

"Aye."

"Aye."

“Aye.”

Enric looks like he wants to add something, but threats that are about loans or jobs are probably a separate right from threats about violence, so he’ll ask about it after the vote. 

"Aye."

"Aye."

"Also passes. Right not to be ordered to have sex by a superior officer or any other person with legal authority to give you orders?"

Aha, the sanity gambit. "Aye."

"Aye."

“Aye.”

Covers at least some of it.

"Ayep."

"Aye."

"Aye." That's narrower than she'd like, but she doesn't want to accidentally ban sex or something ridiculous like that.

"Aye as well. Passes unanimously. Shall we return to the question of creating undead?"

"Last time our disagreements turned in large part on the economic feasibility of different mining systems, which none of us are experts on. Has anything changed there? Would it be more productive to move on to something else, and seek expert counsel before returning to it? There's got to be a dwarf somewhere in this city."

"There are some dwarves in Westcrown, but the local dwarves aren't mining experts. We might be able to get someone from Taggun Hold, ask the Menadorians if they can bring someone by teleport."

"If we're prepared to wait a month or spend two teleports I can get a response back from the Dwarf-led miners near Brastlewark."

“I tried find out more, so far I have a bit more on necromancy but nothing on other ways of mining. Most people I talk to haven’t been to other countries either. If we have time to wait and bring in a dwarf, or find one here, I think we should do that before deciding.”

"That seems sensible enough. I will be relieved if they present better options. Then I suppose... defining torture and under what terms we want to prohibit it. I think prohibiting torture, or even flogging, in interrogations is straightforward?"

He really should have tracked down an Evil delegate from Sirmium and gotten them to make all the sensible points for him, shouldn't he have.

"The system in Molthune used for minor crimes is that the accused are charged with whatever crimes they are believed to have committed, if they do not immediately admit this they are marched through a Zone of Truth and swear that not all the charges against them are true, they are only convicted if this is false and if they refuse to answer yea or nay under the spell they are beaten until they do. I do not know whether this would fall under this system."

"...what makes somebody decide not to say either way if it'll only get them beaten?"

"If they won't say they didn't do it under truthspell they're obviously guilty, I don't see what the point of beating them is. ...I mean, it might be fine depending on what they're guilty of, I just don't see why you need it to be part of questioning."

"Some people freeze up and have trouble talking in stressful situations, and everyone would pretend to be one of these people if we didn't have this rule, to run out the time on the Zone of Truth."

"I believe in Lastwall they simply permit the court to treat refusal to answer as an implicit admission of guilt, and bill the convict for the cost of the truth magic if they remain silent. This seems sufficient, and given the recent excesses of the system I think it is reasonable to err on the side of prohibiting too much."

Oh, that’s how you say ‘that sounds like giving them an easy excuse to drag away and beat anyone who seems quiet and scared’ in law-rights-language. Enric was wondering how to word it without being rude to  the archduke. 

“Seconded, that sounds like it would work. Saying someone is guilty for not talking is bad for anyone actually innocent, but I think a good  way of doing appeals should help with that.”

He thinks this is significantly less humane. "I will yield to the wisdom of the paladins of Lastwall."

"The described process for Lastwall seems to me like it would work, even if it isn't their actual rules." He seems reasonable enough, but she hasn't totally ruled out that he's a very good actor with some well-concealed diabolist plot. "I think I am comfortable calling the vote.  Right not to be tortured or attacked as part of criminal interrogations? I vote yes."

“Aye.”

"Aye."

"Aye."

"Aye."

"Aye."

"Aye."

"That passes. For punishments, we clearly need to have more specific boundaries; if we cannot inflict pain deliberately at all, then there is little we can do between a small fine and loss of a hand or hard labor."

"Isn't there any soft labor as needs doing?"

"If there was, say, a farmer's son, who started a fight with his neighbor while drinking and accidentally ruined the other boy's eye, what would we sentence him to do? Work in the fields for the Crown's benefit, rather than his own and his father's? That's just a fine of his father by a different name, and the boy might thank us for it, if he chafes at his family as many young men do. Certainly many city boys would say it was the worst fate imaginable, but I'm not inclined to believe them."

Well-raised boys don't do that but probably they're not making laws for those.

Enric doesn’t really see ‘it’s the same as a fine to the father’ as much of a problem. That’s whose job it is to keep the boy from getting into drunken fights. 

“If anything, make him do some work for the family of the boy who lost his eye. Unless working a field together gets them fighting again, instead of helping them put away the grudge. If that’s the case, maybe we have to send one of them away to find work somewhere else. I guess that’s why you need to pick someone wise to judge these things.”

It’s always sad when that happens though, when the only way to resolve a dispute is someone having to leave the village and look for work somewhere else. 

"I think there's a lot of crimes that are hard to punish fairly if you can't 'inflict pain deliberately' at all! Can't we just... not say 'no deliberately inflicting pain as punishment for a crime'? I don't think I've ever heard of a justice system that does that — to be fair, I don't know what the justice systems are like most other places, but that just sounds kind of insane?"

"I agree with Avenger Ferrer. Whipping is a necessary grade of punishment between maiming and humiliation for those incapable of paying fines." He hears Axis does everything on fines. He's sure that works very well when everyone is an axiomite.

"I don't see that maiming's much use anyway, as long as people can get their parts back for a dollar apiece. I agree it doesn't make sense to try to get by with no use of pain as punishment."

"Between execution and humiliation, then."

"It's only one of the archmages doing that, right? For anything where we'd normally want to do maiming, we could also brand the body part, or something, so that she knows she shouldn't put it back."

"I think there are things we would like to end. When we must execute a man, it should be clean and quick, not impalement on Asmodeus's spikes, nor drawing and quartering, nor being flogged with a cat for a hundred strokes until the arms come loose of the body. I don't think we can do without whipping, and maybe there is little we could ban and leave it, in which case we must leave it. But I would very much like to declare something that indicates to whoever can read our constitution that we are not choosing our punishments to be as cruel as we think we can get away with." And something that Jilia can read to reassure herself that she will never have to order one of those again.

"Agreed. 'All executions must be swift and conducted without torture?'" He's actually opposed to this one but it's worth Good points that can hopefully be spent on more important things.

"That seems good. Should we be giving everyone the option of the final blade? I guess there are probably difficulties with transit, there."

"When available," he says, nodding.

"Where I'm from they make executions worse for worse crimes. So that people don't just say, 'oh, well, I already did something that'll get me executed, anything else I do after that doesn't matter' and do a bunch more crimes. ...Do they do something different where you're from?"

Victòria thinks this is a genuinely hard problem! Obviously you've got to execute people who murder innocents but she's pretty sure it's hard to hurt someone twice as badly as executing them if they killed two people.

"—wait, why would we give them the Final Blade?"

"So they don't go to Hell!"

"Obviously if someone — I don't know, burned down a house full of innocent children because they got mad at their parents — they should go to Hell!!! Or, like, the Abyss if they're Chaotic, but same difference."

"No one deserves Hell. Even Abrogail Thrune and Aspexia Rugatonn don't deserve Hell, though I'm sure they are both there and Rugatonn may even be thanking Asmodeus for the service of tormenting her. There is nothing anyone can do in this life that earns them the eternal torment of Hell, or the total nonexistence of Abaddon, or the random chance of either of the Abyss. Even if Iomedae fulfills her ancient promise and frees every soul remaining in all three in a thousand years, it would still be more punishment than even the worst serial killer deserves. Pharasma may call it just, but the gods of Good call it Evil, to wish any of them on anyone."

Nod nod. "The hard cases belong in Nirvana where they can be butterflies and ladybugs and never hurt a soul."

Nod nod nod. "It is always better to conquer your enemies by making them your friends than by tormenting them."

Enric is still thinking over what Jilia said about not wanting something that looks like ‘trying to be as cruel as we can get away with’. He’s not an archduchess so he can’t say ‘why are you trying to let them do as much evil stuff as you can’ out loud, but he’s feeling it too.

As for hell, they’re the enemy. That part is obvious.

"—That makes no sense?? Like— let's say you died and went to Nirvana, right, I don't know where you're headed" and don't really expect you're Good "but hypothetically. And you're flapping around as a happy little songbird or whatever, and you're in a little songbird choir, singing nice little songbird songs with your songbird friends or whatever they do in Nirvana, and then — on your right side is someone who burned down a house full of innocent children, on your left side is someone who tortured innocent people to death for criticizing Asmodeus, in front of you is a rapist, behind you is someone who murdered your child — and they're all just happy, they're not getting what they deserve, they're having a great time in their songbird chorus and never mind the people they hurt, and you're supposed to like that they're there with you — that would be awful! Would you want to be sitting there in the middle, surrounded by people like that, even if they were birds and couldn't hurt you?"

"I hear more about the Summerlands from the other Erastilians than I do Nirvana but I would be pretty surprised if the ex-con songbird choir was required for anybody who didn't like it."

"—well, you brought up Nirvana earlier, but if you want to imagine the same thing but it's in the Summerlands instead I don't think it really makes a difference! Are you really okay with them just getting away with it—"

"I think I'd feel pretty proud, if I was in Nirvana, of knowing that we could turn even people like that to the side of Good, and that we were strong enough not to have to hurt them."

"They'll be very embarrassed about it when they've had a few hundred years to grow up in."

(To Xavier:)

"—but — if imagining the person who burned down the house full of kids you don't know isn't enough — do you not want to hurt people who hurt you???"

"Yes," he says. "That desire is Evil, and I hope that if I reach Heaven I will be cured of it."

???????

She's making a face rather like someone just told her in perfect seriousness that giving food to a starving person is Evil.

“I would want good neighbors in the summerlands, wouldn’t be much of a paradise if I’m living next to murderers and torturers. You’re right on that. But—“

“I’ve heard it said that keeping a soul out of hell is pulling a stone out from their castle, do it enough and it all collapses. The priest at school said hell would turn me into a stone too, so I think the saying is right. That one is just about trying to set people on the road to good instead of evil before they die, though. Don’t know about final blades.”

"If you want, I can summon a lantern archon who can say the same to you I have," Xavier says gently to Victoria. "I suspect the azata will say the same."

Wow this is a lot of moral philosophy. Korva was just thinking out loud about the state of the art in non-torturous executions.

"I already said I'd talk to the azata — are you saying you think Delegate Ibarra should just get away with everything forever, he — he was smiling about it, it was like a joke to him, he burned down a house full of children who'd done nothing wrong and he thought it was funny—"

Enric wishes he could just summon angels to back him up in arguments. 

It's one of the real perks of being third circle.

"I think that he should learn that what he did was wrong, and make amends. I understand that Nirvana causes the wicked in it to regret their evil actions and become better people. But we punish the wicked to protect society, not because it is Good in its own sake. There is tremendous suffering in the Evil afterlives, and some in the Neutral afterlives, and none in the Good, because hurting people is always an evil, even if it is often necessary."

"Nirvana is for everyone," she quotes at a whisper, and nods.

"He knows what he did was wrong! He said it was Evil! That's not — that doesn't — even if he decided today that he was never going to do anything Evil ever again that wouldn't make things right—"

"And would torturing him make things right? What would it take to make right the evil that he was tortured?"

"It would make things right if you did it right!!! Obviously you shouldn't, you shouldn't say that since he's Evil you can — kidnap his family and torture them too, if he has a family — that's the same kind of thing he did and it's not okay — but he shouldn't get to just be okay after doing something like that!"

"Would burning in the fires of Hell for a thousand years make things right?" It doesn't sound like a trick question, though of course it is.

... He thinks that this isn't working because clerics of Calistria are, usually, Evil, and practically never Good, and she's a cleric of Calistria and therefore probably Evil. He suspects an azata would have better odds but is not an azata, and is, indeed, about as far from being an azata as is possible. Maybe if more people join their voices to his again that will make this happen less?

So, we're all aware the Archmage Cottonnet has burned a thousand children in their homes, right? Yes? No? Talking about this wouldn't fix anything but it's honestly very distracting that people keep talking about children burning to death in their homes as the go-to example of something beyond the pale when they have, actually, all been kidnapped here by somebody who burned a thousand children to death in their homes.

Oh hey what if, when we’re summoning an angel to ask about good and evil, we see what it thinks about undead skeletons in the mines.

Not going to interrupt with that. If Xavier wants to switch teams and argue for less torture, that’s not the time to bring up a disagreement.

"—well, it would be better than him just going to the Good afterlives and having a great time? I guess — I guess a thousand years might be a little long but that's better than nothing and it's not like there's a secret afterlife that only punishes people the exact amount they deserve. I think." 

"If it is just for him to get a thousand years and you chose to give him a thousand and five, that choice is Evil. If he deserves a thousand years and you chose to give him nine hundred and ninety five, that choice, sparing him those five years, is Good. Because harming people is Evil, and saving people from harm is Good, even if they're awful people. They're still people. That's the point, of Nirvana. It's all people, in every plane. They would heal Asmodeus Himself, if they could, because it's the Good thing - the right thing - to do. There's a place for Calistria, I would be afraid of what happened to a society without her at all, but she's not Good."

"—she's not Evil either!! I think — Delegate Ibarra said he was a Calistrian, but it turned out what he meant was that he was willing to burn down houses full of children to get at their parents. And I think that's obviously Evil, the children didn't do anything wrong. But it's not wrong to give people what they deserve. —is this why you were saying Pezzack shouldn't have rebelled? Because you thought it was Evil to hurt Asmodean priests?? And instead you think people should... help them... even though they're Asmodean priests... or something??" She is not hiding her feelings particularly well; she clearly intends this as a serious question.

"No, sometimes we have to do lesser evils to prevent greater ones. None of those Asmodeans deserve what they'll get, but I won't weep for them anyway, not this side of death. Anyone who burned innocents, he should stand trial, and be executed, and if he got an amnesty, that's wrong, though a common wrong; many murderers and rapists got spared by the Queen's amnesty, who might have been caught, because the alternative was to keep all the Asmodean crimes not explicitly pardoned, and I have had to enforce some of those judgments and that would be much worse. Ibarra almost certainly deserves death. But he deserves no more than death; stasis in a Blade protects the world from him, and that's enough. It's not satisfying, because we are not Good by instinct, but it's enough."

"...the Queen's what?"

"After executing the majority of the Asmodean nobility and the worst of their supporters Her Majesty the Queen passed a general amnesty to forgive all crimes committed before the passing of the amnesty."

"Isn't the Queen supposed to be Good??" 

She was already pretty skeptical but she'd thought the Queen was trying harder to pretend than that.

"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'?"

"Against!!"

"I didn't mean to call a vote yet, Avenger, and yes, we're aware you are."

"—Sorry, I didn't realize we weren't voting yet."

"That seems a reasonable wording."

"Putting it that way means he can take his chances if he'd rather, yes?"

"And be killed on the spot and his soul sent to Judgment? I think so, but let's make it 'Right to have execution conducted by Final Blade by request of the convict', when available and so on, just to be sure. I'm sure there will be Caydenites who have good reason to think they're celestially bound even after committing major crimes." And Calistrians, but those will probably be wrong, most of the time.

“Would lords want to keep powerful evil people prisoner for months, waiting for a final blade to arrive? Seems like it would always be easier to kill them.”

"Usually not, but lords are people, who can have grudges. For example, I'm sure there will be Avengers of Calistria, someday, who take revenge for great wrongs that were technically legal, in ways that are very much not legal themselves, frequently against the local lords, and then are caught, duly convicted, and executed. Most Avengers like that will be bound for the Abyss, but not all. And if the lord thinks she will get the Maelstrom or even Elysium, he might Final Blade her out of spite."

“I could see that happening. Sounds like, even if we say people can choose final blade or judgement… either way, might get the opposite of what they wanted.”

She looks incredibly skeptical of the idea that Calistrians would generally end up Abyss-bound under the described circumstances but that's about the sort of take she'd expect from a noblewoman who thinks it was morally wrong for Pezzack to rebel and keeps trying to act like it's bad for bad things to happen to bad people.

"I definitely agree with not forcing anyone to be Final Bladed, if that wasn't obvious."

"Declaring a right isn't a promise we'll get it for you, Delegate Porras. I don't think any government in history can promise that, for most of these things. It's a promise that we'll try, and that if you don't get it, we'll do something about it."

"...well, if someone ends up trapped in a Final Blade against their will, the only thing we can do about it is punish the person responsible, you can't resurrect someone from one of them." She's pretty sure. She read a bunch of Galt-related pamphlets after yesterday and they seemed to mostly agree on that, though not on whether the soul was stuck or destroyed or something else. "So if we're allowing them at all, we should make forcing the Final Blade on someone against their will a capital crime, even — or especially, really — if it's a nobleman who's responsible."

"We can't free them yet."

Anyone who forces a final blade on someone gets the same final blade?

He’s spent too long listening to the Calistran…

"Yes, they were always meant to hold souls for the future, not annihilate them like a daemon. It's impossible to get souls out, they say, but I think it's the kind of impossible that archmages learn to do easily if they have the time to research it."

"I think we should have the vote. On the right to have execution conducted by Final Blade by request of the convict, when one is available or when the convict can be held and conveyed to one, safely for those around him? I vote aye."

"Still against!"

"In favor."

"In favor."

“Abstain.”

"In favor."

"Aye." It seems like the sort of rule that will be flagrantly broken sometimes and rarely be caught, but probably better having it than not.

"Five to one, one abstention. Passes. This has taken a while-" which is bad news for the topics she expected to be contentious "-so I think I'll call the session here. See you all tomorrow."