"I prepared spells aimed at nonlethally escaping violence derived from the denouncement, but had already used my Calm Emotions earlier that day on an unrelated incident. Everyone who knew the context of the denouncement was too busy."

"Did you consider hiring security?"

"I thought about it after I'd been murdered, not before, and have come to the conclusion that I probably can't afford it because I don't have the ability to personally vet an inexpensive person's trustworthiness with my safety, being as the reasons someone might want to see me unsafe are so complicated."

"Do you think that you'd have handled the riots substantially differently if you'd had more information that you have learned since then?"

"I have been told that I ought to have been willing to use lethal force. Then Valia said that didn't sound right to her and I haven't been able to catch the fellow who told me so to clarify if that was doctrinal or personal opinion or complicated in any way."

Valia Wain really needs to stop venturing theological opinions. He makes a note, actually, of the fact that she is still apparently venturing them and someone is apparently taking them seriously. "It is certainly permissible to use lethal force to prevent your murder by a mob, though better not to have to, and permissible to adopt a reasonable range of tradeoffs between efficacy and lethality of the methods available to you. Even if one in some sense deserves it mobs rarely disperse and go home having murdered the deserving, and of course priests of Asmodeus even without any intervening complications deserve the rule of law the same as anyone else. I would observe also that an unwillingness to use lethal force may be substantially more limiting than a strong preference not to kill anyone; were I attacked by a mob I would endeavor not to kill anyone, but I wouldn't rule out actions that might kill someone, it'd just be a consideration when comparing them to other options."

Blai mulls that over, nodding slowly.

"I believe the plan is to urgently get you at least a lay priest advisor, though I don't make personnel commitments and so cannot make promises about them. Myself and Sir Cantes are charged here with assisting however we can, with the incident report as a secondary priority."

"Oh, I had been under the impression that you were here only for that with anything else you found time to do being incidental, that's good to know though I do expect to be departing with Ser Cansellarion before I have any further opportunities to take advantage of your presence."

"Other countries tend to find it objectionable if we show up only to do incident reports so we are directed to be generally useful enough they are glad of our presence, and secondarily about our own work, particularly in a case where much of the fault evidently lies with the Church."

"I hadn't been speculating about what might have been otherwise requiring Church officials' attention - though I had begun to suspect my letter was lost en route."

"Everyone's very busy but I think more importantly did not know what in the world the Archmage Cotonnet intended to do here and therefore how much might be at stake in it. I do suspect that your letter was lost en route because receiving no reply to such a letter would be highly unusual and because postal routes at the Worldwound are not reliable. You'll be able to read the final report, once it's written."

And he has more questions nailing down the exact timeline of everything, and questions about Blai's day to day at the convention, and questions about Blai's impression of the availability of Lord Cansellarion, of Iustin, of Feliu Tauler, of the Iomedaen lay priests assigned to the Archduke Narikopolus...

Feliu actually did a great job of not seeming like talking to him was keeping him from fourteen other urgent appointments but he's mostly staying with the guy he's bodyguarding and doing healing out of a different smaller building so it wasn't easy to find him on an incidental basis. Cansellarion does not receive this compliment specifically though he was receptive to taking Blai along on a boots trip. Blai hasn't really talked to the lay priests and now supposes he never will. Iustin tries to be available and as a result is at all times harried by people who really want to convert to Iomedaeanism and have been trying to get an appointment to talk about it every day for the last six months and Blai is hoping that once he's capable of taking some of those people off Iustin's plate it'll be a little easier but he doesn't even know how long the classes take.

Does Blai have questions about the whole situation, or his own takes on where mistakes were made?

"I should probably have sent an additional copy of the letter from Taggun Hold - sending two in the first place would have had them in the same bag the whole way, not much more likely to get through, but one from Taggun Hold might have worked fine. I am... beginning to wonder if I should have been more upfront about my history..."

"It seems like it might have been productive and might also have seemed very dangerous, in a situation as precarious as this one. I do not see any immediate counsel on it. Any errors you see that other people were making?"

"...I think Valia should not have made the speech without managing to get five minutes of Iustin or someone's attention."

"That is definitely true. Though a habit of ours, in these matters, is especially if a catastrophic mistake is made by an inexperienced person to ask why an inexperienced person was even able to make a catastrophic mistake. If you give guard duty for an important prisoner to a drunken fool, and he lets the prisoner escape, he has erred, but it is often more productive to figure out why he was there to err than to advise him in sturdier character."

"I assume there is a very good reason to consider uncatechized Selects to be outside of the command chain such that we could not be given orders."

"I think that the main advantage of your being inside the chain of command is that there would have been someone specifically responsible for you who considered it their job to make sure you were able to do yours, and it would have been possible to assign such a person even without them having any authority to give you orders. To join the Church one takes oaths, and it is a great evil and injustice to coerce people into oaths, among other methods by telling them that they are expected to do it automatically and without particular reflection or obvious alternative courses."

"...are there meant to be obvious alternative courses?"

"Yes! Some people make the choice on reflection to not join the Church, but to work independently, or to join some other order or organization or the service of some specific person. If your desire was to continue to serve in the Chelish military at the Worldwound without joining the Church, or to join the Reclamation which is in good standing with the Church but organizationally independent, or to go off as an independent adventurer, or to sign up as the Queen's bodyguard, all of those would be perfectly reasonable courses which a person might on reflection decide was right for them. And it is, in fact, your duty and not anyone else's to decide what you want to accomplish with your life and in which capacity you'll be able to get it done."

Thanks, he hates it. "Understood."

"I would generally recommend to a new Select that they join the Church, or at least do the training to join. But -" the way he usually makes this point is "if you just obey Iomedae because She chose you how do you know you wouldn't obey Asmodeus if He did" and he should....avoid saying that, here. "In the early part of Acts Iomedae declines to join a number of paladin orders because She doesn't think that the vows capture what she wants to dedicate her life to. And that's very commendable, but also very unusual. Most Good and Lawful people, if they're presented with a course, and it's not too far off, and no specific effort has been made to inculcate the virtue of using your own will and picking the actual best course, will just swear themselves to a good reasonable one that presented itself as the thing they were supposed to do. And if Iomedae had done that the whole world would be ruled by Tar-Baphon now. ...and if Alexaera Cansellarion had there'd be no Reclamation."

Nod.