"Hi! I don't think I actually got your name, sorry, when we left the convention hall earlier? I'm Liushna." 

"I'm Victòria! Nice to meet you."

"Good to meet you too. ...Especially since I suspect a committee like this is going to," the itarii equivalent of wrinkling your nose is thinning your nostril-slits, "attract the kind of people one would like allies in handling." 

Nod nod.

Remei's going to have a sudden problem with her bootlaces and not go into that room right away actually.

Xavi had a theory. It went like this: on the one hand drawing attention to himself is terrible. On the other hand, would anyone at the present time notice, if he died? Maybe he should spend more time in a room with roughly 10 people who don't all know each other, and less in the room with hundreds of people where his body might literally get lost underfoot if all the people clapping at the cleric's speech started attacking the people arguing with her.

This theory seemed plausible up until there were two people in the room and he recognised one of them. So... now he is awkwardly adjusting his pockets and hopefully not freaking out the important woman who is also outside of the room.

"Oh, hello. Remei Petit."

Aaaah it's fine, Xavi has said words to multiple other speaking beings in the last 18 months and this sentence you can just say the same thing back to. Right? It's fine.

"Hello... Xavi." That was probably audible.

This guy does not look equipped to manage a situation where the strix and the Calistrian go mad and attack people. Remei's other boot needs relacing too.

"You know, if people who don't like us respond by leaving us alone, I think that's pretty much the best-case scenario," Liushna says quietly to Victoria. 

This guy agrees. Pockets.

She laughs. "Yeah, I mean, no complaints here."

Oh hey a bird person! He's not sure which type of bird person, exactly, but bird people don't scare him so he'll just walk right in.

"Hello! This is the committee for the judiciary?"

"Yes, that's right!"

"Yep! We're still waiting on a few people, though."

"It is."

In for a copper, in for a dollar gold. The committee on magic isn't meeting until later, and he might as well join a committee where he knows the subject matter better to practice for that one.

"I'm Alonso, elected from Vyre," he says to the gathering delegates. "I have some experience with, well, at least how one prison is run in Cheliax. Deepmar receives prisoners from all over Cheliax, and so I have a passing familiarity with the varieties of justice in the country. I've spent some time dealing with the records system, as part of our Queen's attempt to release political prisoners."

Xavi follows the other two people in and... listens quietly to Alonso.

"I'm Liushna, elected delegate of the--" ugh "--strix tribes near Pezzack." 

Once there's a quorum Remei finishes her lacing and comes in and takes a seat. "Remei Petit, elected."

"Victòria, priestess of Calistria."

"Taldaris Ventura, elected -" oh he really should have kept with the other elections, if only for the bragging rights " - by the good people of Blava."

“Enric Porras, I’m a sortition.”

He gives a friendly nod to Victoria and Liushna, he knows them!

Enric is with some people he knows, in a committee he proposed making. (Even though one of the nobles proposed it again when there was almost a mob, and is probably getting the credit.) Almost feels like a room he should be in, instead of one he just ended up in.

Taldaris, huh...isn't there a country called Taldor? Is there some connection here? Nah, she's probably just making up links that don't exist. 

She waves at Enric. 

Waving back, of course. 

Why does that perfectly normal looking man know a strix. Is he from Pezzack.

A normal man from the plains of Sirmium, actually. But you see, he has… been to a café.

(Xavi does not draw attention to himself unprompted.)

He is uneasy around the Strix, but he's Chelish, and so it barely shows. In the lull of introductions, he turns to Victòria.

"Forgive me, but like many my religious education was... narrow. Who is Calistria?"

"Mine was pretty narrow too, I'm not an expert or anything. Calistria is the goddess of— if someone thinks they can get away with hurting you, because you're weaker than them, or because they're a noble and you aren't, you make them pay for it. Even if no one else cares, even if everyone else is too afraid to stand up to whoever it was, even if the easy thing to do is to say nothing and just let them get away with it. Like the opposite of Asmodeus.

...Also she's the goddess of lust, but I don't know as much about that."

Why would you need a goddess for lust? Everyone is just going to do it anyway. 

...On the other hand, the world turns regardless, and humans think Gozreh is a god. Hm. 

Lluïsa walks over to Liushna first, catching the tail end of that exchange but not having any comments on lust.

"Delegate Liushna, before this Committee has fully assembled, would you care to review this List pertaining to your earlier Proposal on the Floor, regarding Permissible Terms for members of Species?"

It looks like this:

And she takes a seat nearby.

"...This mostly looks right to me but I haven't talked extensively with anyone who wasn't a halfling about what terms are preferable. Also, the list of acceptable terms for my species should include itarii; it's our word for ourselves." 

...After seeing how things went on the Family committee she's going to wait until Valia is here before pointing out the Evil committee member. She is Learning Things about Political Strategy.

He smiles at the description of Calistria, feeling its resonance in his chest. "Thank you, delegate." Better preparation than he thought, indeed. 

Ah, the lawyer! He hoped she would be here; he is only experienced with the outputs of courts, not their process, having never stepped foot inside one himself.

"Itarii" goes on the list, with a nod of thanks!

He squints at the list. This bird person is a strix! This doesn't actually tell him anything new because he's never heard of a strix before.

"You forgot about dwarves."

Valia's here! She waves at Liushna and Victoria and seats herself next to them. "What about dwarves?"

What a pleasant and reasonable person Delegate Cornellà is! Liushna waves back at Valia.

Alonso is not going to admit how many slurs he knows in front of the committee, even if it would be helpful in completing this list!!

"I shall investigate Offensive Terms for Dwarves as well," she agrees. "I have not seen a Dwarvish Delegate, but at the least a Dwarf may be likely to be found on Business within the City."

Oh the Iomedan! "There's a list of kinds of people and what to call them and what not to call them, but she forgot to put dwarves on the list. I liked your speech! It was very inspiring."

Valia thinks that making rules about what you're allowed to call different kinds of people is an absolutely awful idea but she's worried now that Feliu would say that actually you have to do that to stop people killing each other in the streets and that if she is opposed to it then people will think the Church of Iomedae wants them to kill all strix or something. "Thank you," she says tiredly to Ventura.

It's her, up close! He can't get shy now. "I also was inspired by it; I likely wouldn't be on this committee without it."

"Before we get started, there's something everyone here should know."

She looks directly at Lluïsa.

"This morning, the Diabolism Committee checked everyone when they arrived to see if they were Evil. We won't catch everyone that way, only powerful Evil people will show up to it and there's ways for them to hide it, but we figured we'd get some of them. We also checked a normal person on our own committee, like Delegate Wain mentioned during her speech, and she was fine.

Delegate Cornellà is Evil, and powerful enough to show it. On one of my other committees people were saying it was a good idea to have Evil people on the committee but I don't want her — sneakily trying to make it easier to get away with hurting innocent people."

Valia smiles encouragingly at Victoria. "Indeed. For this committee it seems particularly important that we fulfill our duties to make a court system that's not Evil."

Enric isn’t really paying attention to the list of things to call different peoples. He’s a bit out of it… 

someone thinks they can get away with hurting you, because you're weaker than them, or because they're a noble and you aren't, you make them pay for it

rejoice that those who tortured their children and humiliated their wives and tormented them over minor slights will not have the power to do that any longer

You should be afraid of the people of Cheliax.

But Lluisa still hasn’t tried to hurt him or turn any of the committees to evil…

He's torn. He likes both of them, and yet...

"She also may have the most experience of any of us of how Chelish law has operated so far. Even if we don't want her to be able to vote, I think she should be invited to remain as an expert witness."

"That seems reasonable to me. Evil people may still have specialized knowledge. We just wouldn't want to take her suggestions too credulously."

"An unsurprising Finding; I have lived thirty-six Years under Hell's Yoke and one Year free of it, and have some small but considerable amount of Wizardry. Though rejoicing to be free of the Monstrous Thrunes, the balance of my Life may yet stain my Soul with Hell's Mark; what of it? Were this a Convention of Pharasma the Judge, perhaps such Divination would have merit, but this is a Convention of her Majesty the Queen. Had you been attentive to my Remarks on the General Floor, you would know my first Proposal, to discard as Infernally Tainted all Law accumulating under the former Regime, looking to the Laws under holy Aroden, a Codified Corpus spanning many Centuries, for Guidance."

And good luck trying to murder a wizard in the middle of a committee meeting.

"...Well, Delegate Ibarra was Evil and it turned out it was because he burned down a house full of innocent children. I'm fine with you staying on to give your specialized law knowledge if the other committee members" by which she means Valia "think it's a good idea, but your response is really not reassuring!!!"

Oh shit he hopes they don't ask him about the laws of holy Aroden. 

"I attended to your remarks on the floor and I think the Duchess Carlota said that your rules proposals were Asmodean. I will still listen to them but I do not think this committee owes it to you to assume you are not participating Evilly for personal gain."

“If you don’t want to just assume, I’ll say that Delegate Oriol is on the Virtuous Churches committee with me, and she hasn’t tried anything asmodean. Even if she was before, I don’t think she’s doing evil lawyer things anymore.”

She also looks too small and has acted too strange-but-helpful for Enric to really see her as a threat. He feels like he might become friends and doesn’t want to think about how she likely used to do all the things he’s heard of lawyers doing to people.

"I don't think it's necessary to deny her the ability to vote, anything where her vote would be decisive, half of the non-evil people also think is fine?"

"I didn't even say anything about taking away her vote, I just want to be sure everyone knows she's Evil! I mean, I think it's probably a good idea to take it away, but the most important thing is that we keep in mind that she's Evil in case she tries to sneak anything past us.

...Anyways, the rules that got passed today say we're supposed to vote on a chair, and that we can't nominate ourselves. Does anyone want to be chair?"

"Sorry, I must have misunderstood. Anyway, I nominate Valia Wain."

"I am willing to chair but I don't know much about judges and justice where it's not just Evil people killing anyone who annoys them. I suppose we can start by learning more about how that's supposed to work."

Well they definitely wouldn't accept a nomination for Lluisa and she thinks Taldaris is a fancy person like the nobles who keep causing problems, so who exactly could they get who does know much about judges and justice?

"I second Valia for chair."

"Valia sounds good to me!"

"Aye." Valia is at least on the right side of history.

“… aye.”

The scary faction is in charge, looks like, but at least they’ll probably like his ideas about appealing trials to good churches.

Why is she the scary faction? She wants perfectly reasonable things here, like laws that don't explicitly favor the nobility and safeguards to protect the interests of the vulnerable and a legally enshrined right to take vengeance on rapists and batterers!

None of his other committees started with an inquisition…

...he picked the wrong committee.

He can't quite get his mouth to say "yes, that person who probably wants me dead should be more important here" but since she clearly is he can manage a nod and affirmative-sounding noise when people are looking at him anyway.

"Select Wain is acceptable."

She has nothing like a mass abjuration prepared; fleeing the scene should the Calistrian escalate to open violence is probably the best option, even though it may end with other members dead or injured, which would be a pity. The best scenario would be the Calistrian lunging with a knife, rather than employing whatever unknown magic she may have of her god.

Valia might, one hopes, be able to moderate the rabid dog; though her track record isn't promising, she's of a Lawful god.

"All right, I guess that's unanimous?" Well she'll track down Feliu and Blai later and make sure she doesn't have wildly controversial opinions about the judiciary. "In that case I accept as chair and call this meeting to order." Some other committees say 'call this meeting to order' and it sounds very official. "We are concerned, I think, with ensuring that people can report crimes against their persons, and also that those trials won't be judged by Asmodeans and will be fair and give people who are innocent the chance to prove it. Does anyone wish to speak to the current state of the judiciary in their area?"

"Before he was killed, grievances were generally brought to the baron's office directly; he had a few people who he empowered to assign fines and lashes on his behalf, and then if a complainant came back again and said it hadn't been sorted out properly, and the staff didn't think they were being nuisances for no real cause, the accused'd go on a list and now and then he'd run through the list and deal with them himself, or sometimes toss a few to the cleric - I believe as some combination of distraction and appeasement. Obviously that's not a satisfactory system at all, but I think people did at least feel that they could go to that office if something happened."

"Has he been replaced or have you just got no baron now?" Pezzack has not replaced its nobility, and good riddance.

"No baron at the moment, no, but I have some claim and would love to be able to bring home a good judicial system to go with it."

Aha.

"That of Westcrown is physically destroyed, a loss largely unlamented; her Majesty has maintained Public Order, but Directly and by Ad-Hoc administration, and the opportunity for civil Suits has remained largely absent. Though the Courts of this City were of great Antiquity, established under Aspex, they had in past Decades been Rife with Devilry. The appointment of Judges is pressing, there being a considerable Backlog of Disputes."

A healthy city is full of burghers suing one another; it keeps the gold flowing.

“In my area— meaning anywhere close enough to our house that we don’t need a travel pass— it goes something like this. The baron and his guards sometimes said it was the law when they do things to people. Only when the priest of asmodeus or someone from town was around, the rest of the time they didn’t pretend. The priest sometimes visits for a few days and inquisitions, talking to people alone until someone turns on a neighbor.”

“The town has a magistrate who judges, when there’s a dispute or if someone causes trouble inside the town boundary. I don’t think she’s ever ruled for a farmer against a burgher, though. There’s also a lawyer, if you bribe him then he bribes the magistrate and they give you something light enough that you can walk home instead of being carried. He also sometimes tries to make you put your name on papers, when you’re dealing with someone in town and there’s a lot of money involved, says the papers will protect you if the other guy takes you to court. It’s usually a trick, in court the other guy can pay the lawyer more and then he sits on their side and says the paper actually means something different.”

“Baron and priest of asmodeus are dead now, magistrate is still there. Not that it matters much, no one decent has anything to do with the judiciary anyway. We just solve things ourselves.”

That's really just unsporting, they're probably just having the unlettered peasants sign "I admit all fault", imagine being a country lawyer and practically unlettered yourself, how embarrassing.

"In theory I think things were supposed to work basically like Delegate Porras just said, except that the official court was in the biggest town in the area, which was pretty far from where I lived. I think it was technically supposed to cover part of our barony and part of the barony next door. In practice if someone did something the lord or someone in his family or the priest didn't like — not the baron, a less important lord than that — they would just order them to be punished, and everyone would listen. Obviously they'd never, I don't know, punish someone in the lord's family for hurting a normal person, and sometimes they'd play favorites among the normal people too.

I think most of the things people went to the lord about were, like, theft, and I don't think he ever ordered anyone killed over it. I only remember one really serious case where it wasn't obvious what had happened, not counting all the times when it was obvious and the lord just didn't care. That time he ended up having a slave tortured to death over it, but even if everyone had been following the procedure with the courts he wouldn't have needed to go through them for that. ...He got it wrong, she admitted to it when she was getting tortured to death but it turned out later she was actually innocent." It didn't strike her as very important at the time but now that she thinks about it it's pretty fucked up how the lord just had an innocent slave tortured to death because he couldn't figure out what had actually happened.

"...I'd been assuming we were going to make a lot of changes to that, we were talking about some on some of my other committees but we mostly didn't get anywhere."

"Delegate Porras, how is this magistrate chosen?"

Enric shrugs. “They sent her from the city, I think?”

Lluïsa nods thoughtfully. "I have a suspicion that Appointment by the Local Lord would not much improve Matters, either. Perhaps with a Superior Queen the Quality might increase, but should we rely on this overmuch? If local Residents could have training in Law, they might select a trusted Judge. Though I am only Idly Musing, and have not considered the Matter deeply."

(i.e., they should send someone to be apprenticed to a smart city lawyer, but she's not just saying that with these lunatics on the committee.)

"I think it would probably depend a lot on how the judge was supposed to be selected. When we checked this morning there were loads of elected delegates who were Evil, and probably a lot more than that who were Evil but not strong enough to show it. I think maybe it's easier for Evil people to get chosen for that sort of thing, because they can just threaten everyone else into picking them?

...I kind of think it would help if we just said that nobles aren't allowed to judge cases at all, even if it's a really minor noble or a case that wouldn't normally be brought before a court or their town votes for them to judge. I bet almost all of them would abuse that kind of power, even if we get rid of all the nobles who are outright Evil."

"I like the idea of local residents picking, actually. The way we do it in Pezzack is after we drove the Asmodeans out we just had respected elders hear complaints, and it worked much much better than having the Asmodeans do it. They knew everyone, so they knew - things a judge from far away wouldn't know even if they weren't Evil. And nobles will always be self-interested but your neighbors grandmother mostly isn't trying to get rich."

"How did you decide which elders were respected and which one would get each case?"

"...it was not very formal. There were problems and we went for advice to the people you'd think of going to for advice, because they're wise, and then we started doing that as a matter of course."

"That might work in a city like Pezzack, but in a smaller community, everyone will have attachments, and trust in their impartiality will not last long. The grandmother might not be trying to get rich, but she probably isn't going to be sympathetic to claims that her grandson was the one that started a brawl."

"And even if you can find somebody who's not anybody's grandmother, they might have other biases - predictable ones somebody could exploit or unpredictable ones that could startle everybody and not be just."

"No one's perfect, but I think a person from far away is more likely to be biased towards - power, important people, money - than a person the villagers chose because they respected them."

"I think — one of the big problems for basically any way to do a justice system is that powerful important people get favored over normal people who are weaker than them. Sometimes that looks like, the judge's grandson gets accused of forcing himself on a woman, the judge isn't going to say he did it. But it also looks like — let's say you have two people, and one is, I don't know, a rich minor nobleman, and the other one is just a random servant, and somehow even though he's a noble it's gotten to the point of going to court — if the judge isn't absolutely positive it's the noble's fault they're just obviously going to rule in favor of the noble, because the noble can ruin their life a lot more than the servant can. I don't know how to fix this but I don't think just picking respected elders is necessarily enough, I think a lot of grandmothers aren't going to be brave enough to go up against the nobleman, even if they're not actually taking bribes or anything. ...Maybe that's not a problem in Pezzack because the powerful Evil people died trying to defend Asmodeus?

If we could get lots of Pharasmins everywhere we could check the judges every so often to see if they're Evil, but you'd need Pharasmins, most people aren't strong enough for a normal priest to check."

"I think maybe people from far away could be more impartial if they go back to being far away after not too long. So they can't take favors that rely on being in the same area. A minor lord can't really do much to somebody who's moving on in the next week."

“Choosing an elder works in my village, and it’s pretty small. Each time there’s a problem that needs judging, the two families involved have to agree on which elder. Usually there’s at least one man or woman that both families involved trust to be fair, not favor anyone. Or, if they can’t agree on one, the Sower comes around a few times a year and everyone trusts him to judge fairly because Erastil says he’s wise and good.”

”Victoria is right, it might not work with nobles. If we caught someone trying to mess with an elder for how she judged, no one would have anything to do with him. But a noble doesn’t really care about that; he’s not going to need another family to help when times are bad for him.”

”Judges who don’t know anyone and leave soon might be safer from that, but I don’t see how a stranger can judge right— someone making these decisions needs to know the people and their families and the history.”

"Can you give an example of when that context made an important difference?"

“Okay. This might be confusing because I’m not going to say anyone’s name, sorry about that.”

Brief flinch at bringing up the specifics of trouble that happened years ago. That’s usually a bad thing to do, might remind people of a grudge they’ve forgotten and bring it back. Nevermind that no one in this room knows anyone back home.  

”A few years ago, two boys got into a fight and one hurt the other bad enough that his family might have held a grudge over it. The elder they picked to decide made the one at fault go stay with the other family and help them. For however long it took the other boy to recover, and then an extra week.”

“It was a good decision, the family felt like that was enough to make it even. The two also got along better after a bit of time living in the same house and working together, stopped getting into fights with each other.”

”But it could have been a bad decision. The elder knew that the family would treat him fairly and that the boy was sorry and wouldn’t start another fight. But with a different family or a different fight, making that same decision might end with someone getting hurt.”

Wow, the family must have worked the other boy really hard if they all felt it was fair payback for hurting their kid. 

"If I were a far-away judge and this idea occurred to me at all I could just... ask the families if they thought it would work?"

“Usually asking the two families in a dispute  about each other won’t get you as much as you get by actually knowing them. Being in a dispute can make good memories into bad ones. Though it’s usually better than not asking at all.”

"I wonder if it'd be a good idea to have a statement of purpose, here, like some of the other committees have, for everybody to vote that we're on the right track. Things like - judges should be fair, they shouldn't favor someone over someone else just because they're rich or important or a noble. The Evil nobles will hate that but I think we outnumber them. Judges should not be possible to bribe or bully."

"I'm not sure there's more than a dozen people across all Cheliax who are impossible to bribe or bully. You can make it illegal to try, you can see about making it scarier to succumb than not to, but..."

"I think those are good ideas, and we should also say the laws should be fair. Right now there's a lot of laws where, even if they were enforced exactly the way they're written, they say that a noble should be punished less than a normal person for the same crime. That's unjust, nobles should be punished more, or at least it should be the same for nobles and normal people."

"I'm not entirely sure why we even have nobles but that's for another committee, I think....you can't make anyone impossible to bribe and bully but you can make it very hard, and illegal, instead of just how everything's supposed to work. Or you could do it with paladins. I think they can't be scared and can't be corrupted."

“I don’t know if anyone can get away with proposing a committee on alternatives to the nobility, especially since the queen personally picked them. My home had been doing okay without a baron or any other lords, so far, though…”

“Lastwall does it all with paladins, I hear, but I don’t think we have enough of them to do that here. Do we have enough clerics to put magistrates in a truth spell every year, ask if they’ve been bribed or threatened?”

It hadn't even occurred to her that they could just not have nobles at all! What a great idea.

"The Itarii don't have nobles and it works fine for us. The Rokoa--our leaders--are usually the previous Rokoa's daughters, but not always, and any other children the Rokoa has aren't treated any differently from anyone else." 

"I feel the general Sense of this Committee is that a Judiciary independent of the Nobility is desirable. The Churches may perhaps have a useful Role; I agree that a Truthtelling at least may ensure Integrity."

Thanks Lluisa, bringing this back to the actual topic. Which is also a safer one.

”I had an idea in another committee, letting people go to good churches to appeal a judgment. I think that would stop anything obviously evil and unfair.”

"What would it mean to have a judiciary independent of the nobility? The nobles have the power to both make the law and enforce it. ad what magistrates there are more servants of those nobles than their masters. If we want to check the power of those nobles, we need stronger nobles to do it, and we should think about how to make that happen. Maybe we require them to send records of all their judgments to their superior and an archive in Westcrown, where the Queen might review them, and the fear of what she thinks of their judgment will cause them to be fair."

He looks at Enric. "I don't know the good churches well enough to trust them all. Isn't one of them a drunkard?"

Lluïsa is nothing if not a centralizing hyper-royalist.

"Cailean the Drunk is a Chaotic deity and perhaps unsuited. Yet perhaps not; it turns on whether he would wish Justice over Drunken Violence or instead Approve of it."

"The Independent Judiciary would, in my view, study the Queen's Law, beginning with the very Constitution itself, and swear to the Queen, and be answerable to Royal Oversight. The unrighteous Nobility should quake in fear at the Justice of the Queen's Judiciary, and if they exceed Lawful Authority, be made to Answer before her Majesty's representative the same as before her own Person."

"That sounds good if the Queen is good and terrible when the Queen is Evil, like she's been for the last seventy years."

"I think probably even if Cheliax gets a bad queen she won't be as bad as the Thrunes? Not that that means you don't need safeguards or anything."