We'd take anyone at 13 or better; sometimes they grow into it a bit if you're getting them young. She Prestidigitates it back, not having Mage Hand prepped today.

Passing notes?  Well he'll keep an eye on Delegate Coeliaris.  Even if all of them reject his ideas, he'll want to know the ones to prioritize reporting for Asmodeanism.  Still, she encouraged him to continue, so she's safe for now.

"My proposals are are relevant to loans, apprenticeships, and indentures in general and I believe the application to wizard schools will be obvious."

"Firstly, tuitions, apprenticeship fees, similar costs of education and loans paying for such are automatically forgiven for, at minimum half the amount should the institution, educator, or apprentice-master fail to teach the subject the student or apprentice the subject they represented themselves as teaching.  In the case of gross negligent failure the amount may be judged to be fully forgiven.  In the event of partial success, for example, at least teaching cantrips in the case of wizard students, one-fourth of the amount is to be forgiven.  This likewise applies to indentures that claim to teach the indentured a skill."

"Secondly, loans may only charge a a total amount of interest equal to twice the amount of the principal (for a total repayment of three time the original principle).  Any amount in excess of this is herby abolished.  Thirdly, loans and indentures may not exceed 10 years in duration.  Any loans or indentures that have lasted longer than this are herby abolished.  My second and third points prevent schemes were loans are used to propagate a perpetual term of servitude, spreading the Asmodean principles of treacherous contracts, tyrannical hierarchy, and slavery."

"Fourthly, schools, educators, apprenticeship masters, and holders of indenturers are hereby liable for maiming and destruction of property on their students, apprentices, and indentures.  This includes destroying their in-progress spellbook upon expelling them, physical injury reducing their capacity to work, and even scarring that damages their public appearance and thereby their reputation, for a charming face can be quite valuable.  This amount can be assessed as people apply for damages but applies retroactively."

"In order to purge the infernal taint on the land, I believe making these terms fully retroactive is necessary.  I'm open to various schemes of partial retroactivity.  But these things are clear signs of Asmodeanism, so I think the best way of judging partial cases and such would be a commission, the setup and composition of which is to be recommended to the Queen by the Excising Diabolism Committee.  And of course, I am open to additional proposals on signs of Asmodeanism and Diabolism in our Nation's wizard schools and loans and indentures that we might purge them."

He's on fire... in a good way, speaking unhesitatingly with passion.  His fourth point was partly ad-libbed upon thinking of a way to appeal to the masked wizard.

"This body is not empowered to impose retroactive sentences for crimes."

Shit, he shouldn’t have ad libbed his fourth point.

“Oh yes, I wasn’t clear with the details. Uh oh-“

His stutter is back.

”For my fourth point, the amount would go towards reducing the tuition owed to the school or educator.  And it’s not a punishment, it’s due financial compensation being set, uh, right.  And for my other points, it’s not punishment, it is setting ongoing evils right using past conditions in assessing those Infernal Asmodean evils.”

"If you make something illegal, and then determine that the consequence for violating that new law is to be a fine, that is called 'punishment for a crime'." She might be speaking a little slowly and exaggeratedly.

Alexandre can't help it. He starts laughing. "Ladies! Gentlemen! Wizards! I believe everyone here excepting only the wise Professor Coeliaris may be working from a flawed understanding of contracts and what they are and can do specific to those who are used to Asmodean Cheliax and have never departed it. Namely, if you kidnap a man and force him to sign away his fortune to you through beatings, tortures and compulsion spells, that is a legal contract in Cheliax and not anywhere else. And that is the precise status of every student in wizard school in Cheliax. I do not agree with all of Fernando's points," he has taken wildly worse loans than that and paid them back on time and it was an excellent deal for both of them, "but what he sees and you, Carme Bonaventura, do not, is that under exactly normal laws as practiced everywhere in the world other than Cheliax, these contracts are invalid, and under exactly normal Chelish law excepting only the invalidation of these contracts, every beating, maiming, destruction of property and every other evil deed done to these students was therefore illegal and only our great queen's amnesty prevents these instructors from suffering the punishments they have brought down on themselves, those same punishments brought down on every kidnapper who forced children who wished to remain home, and alas more importantly under the relevant legal codes, whose parents wished them to remain home, far from home."

"Fernando: You are right. Every wizard school debt ought to be abolished. The schools have failed half of their students and killed the other half." His iron mask with its decorative acid scars is very, very obvious, right now. "Your general proposal for loans, however, is unsuited to this particular committee, and should be presented before the general or in a committee on finance - we have wildly more than enough such - or on education."

"Bonaventura: You are correct that we cannot seize property as a fine. But oh, how this committee is empowered to seize property as a nationalization! Slavery is to be abolished, and my little birds tell me it is to be abolished without compensation, two words that should send shivers down the spine of every person whose property is located inside this country. Who has property, at least. So while it might be a bad idea, we can certainly propose that any wizarding academy that injured more than, oh, five percent of its students should be abolished and its assets sold off to pay for whatever wildly impractical schemes the committees on education and war are planning."

What a blowhard. Is the chair going to put up with that?

A blowhard your last divination teacher bar one tried to torture to death!

He’ll take vengeance against the schools if he can’t see them fixed.  And it’s not like this loyalty test actually controls the fate of everything in the nation, he should remember it’s a test (at least when it’s unlikely he’s being mind-read).

He gives a smile and a nod at… what was that delegates name again?  He tries to recall it…

Delegate Aspex Ibarra.  Where had he heard the name Ibarra before?  This morning… during Select Wain’s massive denouncement of Evil!  He needs to report Bonaventura for Asmodeanism sooner rather than later to proactively counter any moves she makes against Ibarra.  It sounds like Ibarra is at least working against Asmodeanism, so cooperating with him should be less suspect than the clearly Asmodean Bonaventura. He works on keeping it straight in his head in case he is mind read or truth-spelled.

"Ah- some of the Delegate's proposals seem better than others.

- Should the school fail to teach even cantrips, it seems to me that a significant portion of the debt should be obviated. Half seems fair- it should not be much in any case - there's no use keeping people for very long if they can't do that. However, it is essential that any spellbooks in that situation be destroyed, otherwise we're simply asking our young wizards to cheat.

- Should the school fail to teach spells of the first level, that is still, to my mind, a failure of a Wizard school. It seems to me that we may need to separate teaching laundry wizards- the, pardon me, early teens, as one might say in regards to detect thoughts. One might track students into two tiers, for instance. Either way, one quarter seems fair.

- I tend to agree with Ibarra in regards to contacts, but we might well formulate a new standard contract for schools. I am hesitant to limit repayments based on time as you suggest, when we can just limit maximal repayments, perhaps based on circle reached. If loans are set for a maximal repayment for a percentage of the market value of the spell circle- an Abadarian would be useful here. Once we have reformulated such a contact, we could provide a legal option for existing contracts to be converted into the new standard non-Asmodean contract"

Wow… that actually sounds Lawful and Good!  He needs to remember not to let pretend revenge get in the way of maximizing his score of Lawfulness and Goodness.

He nods firmly at her words.

…And back to thinking how delegate Bonavenutra is obviously more Asmodean than delegate Ibarra.

"I have observed features other than raw Detectability to affect whether a student washes out or progresses; segregating them from the earliest days of school would be a disservice to wizardlings capable of one day hanging second- or even third-circle spells."

"Perhaps you're right. In either case, what are your thoughts on a two-tiered system, as a separate concept. There's nothing to say that we can't move students up and down based on performance?"

"At times my Academy has had a remedial track, if that's what you mean, which could be implemented as something cantrip-focused rather than as an intensive study with teachers specialized in classroom control over esoterica to get a student back on track."

In the meantime, Tillia has produced- by means of mage hand, the blackboard being quite tall- a table of proposals

-The establishment of a legally Good Spell Lord, to be offered to the President.

-The assignment of the relevant hellknights order to him for enforcement of such laws regarding magic as may be determined

-The establishment of a standard contract for magic schools to limit repayments based on percentage of expected income for each circle achieved

-The discounting of debts, past and future, for those who do not reach the first circle

-The division of schools into a supplemental and primary wizard track

"Well, then, we come the problem of funding for these academies. One proposal I have heard along those lines  is the reintroduction of Paratitles- not as a gift of the crown, but for Sale to the more successful Chelish wizards who have reached certain milestones among the Circles. I then suggest we discount these titles based on attendance at a legitimate school of Wizardry, and assign the profits thereby to the schools."

"Though the Practice may require a new Name. For the word 'Paracount' Evokes the Image* of a Lickspittle Lackey of Thrune."

* (Surprisingly, an accurate gloss of Lluïsa's weird-sounding Law Tome Taldane; for absolutely fascinating reasons this margin is too narrow to contain, the word for the Evocation school can be used more broadly than to describe things like Evocations proper, though it's an archaicism.)

"That is a fascinating idea," Aspex says, "and I wholly approve. Though I propose the discount should be based on teaching at one, not graduating from one; wizards hoarding knowledge is a problem as old as time, and this may lure them here with promise of honor and glory." 

"With what enticements do you intend to bundle the new era of paratitles?"

"Thank you, Aspex, that is also an enormously appealing idea. I would do both, with different weights, as we do want to somewhat  incentivize people to attend our greater academies. As to enticements- I would ideally offer none but the title, and merely appeal to vanity- but as we have nobles anyway, we should align the titles to them, like perhaps metabaron, and merely assign similar privileges to what they get?" 

"I'm still hoping for a Senate! We could grant a vote in the Senate for the metacounts and above?"

He dips his head to Coeliaris in response to the thanks. "The senatorial vote seems reasonable, though there I might wish to tie it to responsibilities just as for the lords. That, though, would take it far from the initial proposal. Simple precedence, perhaps, equivalent to a lord of the same rank whose title had been created at the date the metalord was appointed?"

"Seems reasonable. Shall we have a little indicative vote, to see how these proposals stand? 

Tillia has made a little table on the blackboard, and you may each go and make your mark accordingly."

This committee is clearly one for showing off with one's arcane mark! At any rate, the proposals are sensible.

Proposal	Oriol
The establishment of a legally Good Spell Lord, to be offered to the President.
The assignment of the relevant hellknights order to him for enforcement of such laws regarding magic as may be determined
The establishment of a standard contract for magic schools to limit repayments based on percentage of expected income for each circle achieved
The discounting of debts, past and future, for those who do not reach the first circle
The division of schools into a supplemental and primary wizard track
The establishment of Metatitles (to replace paratitles), to be sold