"It's a mess. A lot of people died yesterday. Nobody's really happy about it... Still. Hope for the best, plan for the worst, right?"

Blai nods. "If you don't need anything from me I will go retrieve my mace and see if there's anything to be done about the possibility of summary acquittal."

"-Listen. I'm not sure June and Nuts would say the same but I don't think your duty to us, by word and party, is unbounded in scale. I want to emphasize that. Good luck and thank you."

"Understood. Good luck to you as well."

He's certainly not going to walk off without them today, though. Who else is there to talk to who looks like part of this system? (After he's got his mace back.)

The mace is still there.

There's an immigration office, and a bunch of sharply dressed people with badges running around measuring things, and laborers clearing debris, and more constructions going up, and someone giving out thin soup if you have a Food Card (from the immigration office) and someone proselytizing on a soapbox with a prominent holy symbol, similar but not identical to the Generator Tower, and a bunch of medics going around treating people and gathering bodies- Two perpendicular red lines appears to be the 'healer' symbol.

He just... watches, from a polite distance so he's not in the way, all the proceedings for a while. It's a remarkably orderly and swift tiny conquest. What's the sermon about?

"Humankind has rightful dominion over nature! The power of the MACHINE is our salvation! Industry is the beating heart of our god, and automation will preserve us all from the ravages of the frost! We shall conquer this cold and rise higher than ever before! The fools in the council would deny you this truth, like they denied you decent homes, entry into the city, and the necessities of life- Our foes, the Evolvers, are the ones who require bribes at each turn, who deny you your rightful due as a member of humanity! Join us, the true Faithkeepers, vote with us, and make the voice of TRUTH known!"

And so on and so on.

Sounds maybe Arodenite? Maybe they just didn't get the memo that Aroden died here on this negligibly magical planet, maybe he visited it thousands of years ago and this is what the intellectual descendants of those he influenced sound like now. At any rate Blai does not find it particularly stirring.

Can he find out by asking people who is in charge of processing summary acquittals?

The bureaucracy puts up a pretty decent fight against this.

He is not trying to fight the bureaucracy, he is trying to talk to it. He is always happy to go away and stop bothering whoever he's talking to if they will tell him who he should be bothering instead.

These people are overworked and stressed and are pretty sure they'll get more shit from their boss for kicking things upstairs than his questions are annoying. They pass him around in a circle with occasional hinting for bribes.

"I have been reluctant to bring this up, as the riots yesterday were in part over the suggestion that someone might be in possession of food," Blai finally says to a bribewanter. "But if there is someone whose schedule would open up with a supply of food I have an avenue to go and get some."