"I'm Raimon Pages, cleric of Calistria and a splash of sorcerer, which I was for some reason under the impression qualified me to be here even though I'm not a wizard nor raring to be one and certainly not a god."

"Carme Bonaventura. Conjurer. Kintargo Academy."

"Alonso. I am not a mage of any sort." He turns his head towards Raimon. "This convention is for the citizens of Cheliax, wizard or no, magical or no; its laws should be shaped according to the opinions of all of us."

"I jest. I was invited in advance."

She turns to Alonso. "Most certainly it is, Delegate. All are welcome."

“I’m Fernando, elected delegate.  Conjurer.”

Hopefully they don’t ask what circle he is.

“Uh, good afternoon everyone. My name is, uh, Molochio. I’m a cleric of Nethys and an alchemist of the first circle.”

"Aspex Ibarra," he says, hopefully making everyone else tremendously uncomfortable. "Elected delegate, enchanter."

Raimon's never had an opinion about enchanters or assholes who make people uncomfortable on purpose in his life.

"And I am Condesa Lucía Velacruz i Montemayor, lightning sorceress!", Lucía says, arriving on her usual cloud.

Pity the room has chairs. It was a nice sittable cloud.

"Lluïsa Oriol i Cornellà, of Westcrown, graduate of its Academy under the Unlamented Former Regime, and of the Lodge now Crushed and Demolished, during the same Diabolical Regime."

She smiles. "Welcome all! If there is anything you wish to say or interrupt, or bring onto the agenda, do not hesitate to bring it to my attention with a shout or cantrip- my apprentice Tillia will write it on the blackboard." 

"First on our agenda, and near to many hearts, is the laws of magic themselves. It was the case under the Cheliax of Hell, that no teacher of magic teach another without a license from the Queen and Church, and that many were taught who did not desire it. I move tell the floor that the sense of the committee is for magic to be taught freely across all Cheliax to all who desire it, and none who don't, as part the new Constitution of Cheliax."

"It will put the schools underwater."

Alonso raises his hand. "The licenses came with reporting requirements useful in the detection and punishment of illicit use of magic. I don't think we should abandon those requirements, even if we hope to broaden access to magical education, and any proposal to do away with educational licenses should view that as a constraint." 

The wizards schools collapsing would be great.  Having to suck up to a single master as an apprentice would be better than all the teachers and older students abusing you as a student.

He’s aware revenge isn’t good or even exactly lawful, so he’ll avoid voicing his hatred for now.

"No country outside the smoking ruins of the Asmodean state has these reporting requirements, recognizing as they do that they ban apprenticeships, that method by which wizards across the world are taught. They are a relic of Asmodeanism, pure and simple, and of an attempt by the corrupt church of Asmodeus and of the wicked crown that served it to exercise a level of control over wizards that nearly every wizard in Cheliax with the option of refusing it did. An attempt to make every wizard regularly report to a government official will lead to every powerful wizard leaving the country unless first offered truly tremendous incentives to remain, ones that the state will ill wish to pay."

Alonso narrows his eyes at Ibarra. "The licensing regime might have banned apprenticeships, but the reporting requirements do not. If anything, apprenticeships are better, as they more clearly identify who is responsible for a wizard gone mad."

He steels himself, then plows on. "And I do not believe for a moment that wizards do not need to be controlled, or that we should not try because they might find it inconvenient. It is one thing to rebel against Hell's petty rules, but our current queen seems to be wise and just."

"A response to the first part of my claim, and one I could respond to this, but one that neglects the second. If I am here it is for my expertise as a Chelish wizard, born and raised in this colony of Hell, so let me explain my knowledge of the wizarding kind thus:

 "If you attempt to control wizards - powerful wizards - in a way they dislike, they will move, and then you cannot tax them or recruit them or profit by the spells they sell or the items they craft, because they are not peasants, and so can pick up and leave. There are therefore three kinds of wizards - those who can't move, those who live in the place they most prefer and so must be lured, and those who need to be assassinated. Wizards do not want to have their workshops and training mechanisms surveilled by Crown auditors, and so every time you impose such a cost on them, some of them prefer to live somewhere else and your country grows weaker, while Absalom and Korvosa grow stronger. Cheliax attempted to keep its wizards in place by close confinement, dire threats, patriotic lectures, constant surveillance, and forcing them to sell their souls. Then it was defeated by three archmages, one of whom was formerly Chelish before seceding and one of whom studied in the tiny city-state just across the Chelish border to which Chelish wizards who don't want to be Chelish wizards so often escape. Absalom -" he nods to the Professor "- instead practically headhunts wizards, luring them to its gates with promises of autonomy and freedom of practice. It has also never been conquered in all the history of the world. These are not coincidences."

"As Aspex says- those we wish to keep, we must want to desire to stay.

Our wizard schools have to be attractive to the student.  Likewise, the country has to be attractive to the wizard.

Note that this does not mean that we do not want to control what evil wizards do, or what miscreant students do- it is clear that many things that a evil wizard or miscreant student might do is wrong and evil by the reckoning of both druids and paladins"

"In fact, are the Schools of Wizardry not most qualified to govern in Matters pertaining to Wizardry? Of other Forms of Magic I can say less, being only a Wizard, but there are Natural Organizations of each major Form of Magic, not even excepting those Sorcerous persons, who belong each to his own Family."

"This being noted, the idea of the Regulation of Magic qua Magic is Dubious; Magic is a power Fearful only in that it is a Power. Consider even the Vilest Necromancy; to raise an Army of Putrid Corpses is not an offense of Magic, it is an offense of raising an Unlawful Army, of defiling the Land with Vile Undeath, of Desecration of Peaceful Graves."

"Rather, the question of Magic as it pertains to Foul Crimes is merely the Difficulty of performing an Arrest upon any Mage, and again I ask, who but the Schools of Wizardry and other such Institutions is more qualified?"

"Defiling the Land with Vile Undeath seems to me a regulation of Magic qua Magic. I do not know the present laws against unlawful armies. Likewise, as a professor of magic, I would not wish to arrest any adventurer such as Aspex- he is ten times the fighting mage that I am, and a century ago I was second circle, whereas he was not yet a even a smile on his mother's lips-"

Are elves just like this? No wonder humans are the dominant species. "I doubt you'll have to personally enforce all the laws."

"There is at present a Surfeit of Archmages," with a little smile. "Though such Luminaries are hardly to be relied upon."

"Our legal delegate says that schools of Wizardry are most qualified to govern in Matters pertaining to Wizardry, so Govern, perhaps yes, but enforce- that is as difficult as Aspex says. Absalom has a force of special guards, the Varlokkur, to enforce their laws on magic, but they are not many, and are generally of the third circle and below, and they answer to the spell lord. Perhaps there should be a spell-lord of Cheliax? That does bring us to the restoration of the paratitles, which a great many wizards have brought to me as their foremost concern."