Valia has talked to Feliu, and Lord Cansellarion, and Archmage Cotonnet, and the Archduchess d'Ravounel, and now she has a secretary and is going through correspondence with yet more people who want to talk to her. It's all kind of baffling. She is interrupted in her letter-reading by the latest set, and reluctantly sends the secretary out even though they're both men because they're both men with prominent Iomedaen holy symbols and the bearing that goes with them.

"Can I help you?"

"We're agents of Lastwall sent to write the incident report for the events of the last week. We were hoping we'd be able to interview you for the report."

"I don't know what an incident report is but you're welcome to, if it'd be helpful." There are so many people once it's too late to need them. 

He sits down at the small table so that he can take notes.

"How were you chosen to be a representative to the constitutional convention, and how did you learn of this?"

"I don't know how I was chosen. I was sent a letter from Westcrown. Two letters, actually, I think, one said it was from the Queen and had a long list of other important things about her on it and it said there was to be a convention, and the other was from the church in Westcrown saying there were not enough priests of Iomedae for all the seats - I can't read, I had them read to me. Archmage Cotonnet said that it was supposed to be my decision whether or not to attend, but that didn't really occur to me, when one gets a fancy letter with the list of a hundred places the Queen rules. When I got here I talked to some of the other delegates and they were in fact dragged here by force by the archmages, and there was a motion on the floor to let delegates go home that did not pass, so that left me more confident that one wasn't allowed to refuse, though I have since been informed that actually only the delegates chosen by sortition were forced to attend and the rest of us were free to leave if we chose.

- I shouldn't have come, of course, but I think I would have even if the letter had said it was entirely my own discretion, because I didn't know any of the reasons I shouldn't have come, and I didn't know I didn't know them either."

"What do you think those reasons are?"

"I can't read and a lot of the important - context and atmosphere of the convention, a lot of the things people were reacting to, happened in the pamphlets that are as a Galtan experiment circulating in the city. I didn't anticipate which pamphlets they would make out of my speech - I thought they might make pamphlets of my speech, but I was entirely wrong about what they would say, if they did that - and I tried having people read things aloud to me but it's much much slower, and I think importantly different anyway. In addition to not knowing how to read I'd - never left Pezzack. I knew how the revolution happened in Pezzack, and why, and how we govern ourselves now, and all of that, and all of that's very different elsewhere. People did warn me about that, that the capital was dangerous and that no one should ever - participate in politics - but I didn't take them seriously."

"I see. Can you tell me more about how the Goddess chose you? Was that during the revolution in Pezzack?"

"Yes. We'd been fighting for - a week, I think. A lot of people were injured. We were hiding in the hills and we could see the city burning and people were saying - things they knew weren't true - about how maybe we could give up, maybe they'd stop killing everybody if we did, and - we couldn't, and shouldn't even want to, because Hell wasn't better when it was killing us more slowly in an effort to damn us along the way, and I spoke to them all through the night, and in the morning I got spells, with the dawn, and channels, and patched everybody up and planned a counterattack."

"How long ago was this?"

"Kuthona - not the most recent one, the one before that. We attacked them from the hills all winter, made friends with the strix and had them do aerial raids, and the Asmodeans withdrew, eventually, having killed more or less everyone who hadn't fled, and then blockaded the port to starve us out. We were planning to break the blockade with more help from the strix when the Archmage Cotonnet and the Queen and their allies arrived."

"And when did you first meet with another priest of Iomedae? A Select or a lay priest, either one."

"Three days ago. My ship to Westcrown for the convention was delayed by the weather, and got in late at night, two days before the convention started. I slept on the boat in doubt the city was safe at night. In the morning I asked around and got instructions to the principal temple of Iomedae in the city and walked there and got in...early afternoon, I think? I met the priest Iustin, and he introduced me to Blai, who was also a delegate, and then they were desperately shorthanded so I helped them with water and channels."

"In the time since then, how have you spent your days, typically? We'll get to the day-to-day particulars later, but if there was any routine you usually followed...?"

"In the morning there were sermons right after prayers and I went to those, they were really useful. They explained about Iomedae having limited resources and it being important to preserve those. If there was time after sermons and before the convention I asked Blai to read me things. Acts, at first, and then a book about the Galtan revolution because I was advised to learn about the history of Galt. Then I'd do a channel and go to the convention. In the morning there's a general session. I was hoping they'd explain the rules but the Queen and Archmage Cotonnet both just gave speeches to the effect we should try to get this over with as quickly as possible because none of us wanted to be there. That reinforced my impression that they were busy and we should try to do this as fast as possible and also that we were required to be present.

I joined the committees on the judiciary, and on excising diabolism, and I sat for all the floor debate, and otherwise I went around talking to people, asking questions about things. And then in the evening I'd return home to the church and have people read me more things and then sleep."

"So you did not have very much time each day, outside of convention business, is that correct?

"Yes, very little. I didn't mind that, until it became clear how much I needed to know and how slow it was to have to get people to read it to me."

"If you had more hours in the day, how do you think you would spend them?"

"Assuming I was not yet aware of any of the other ways I was being foolish? I'd have tried to get more of the pamphlets read to me and more of the things people were proposing on the floor and at meetings, and more of the Galtan history, and more Acts, and maybe at some point I'd have thought to ask if it was worth going to sermons at any other churches since the ones here were wonderful but are only once a day."

"Tell me about the events in the Excising Diabolism committee."

"The first day was interesting and featured lots of argument but I think mostly in productive directions. We talked about whether it was desirable to remove Evil people from positions in which they exercised power over others, and whether there were good ways to tell if people in positions of power were Evil and debating whether most people are Evil and things like that. Archmage Blanxart told me that I was going to cause violence just like in Galt. I didn't listen to him. I'm aware that was by far the most stupid of the stupid things, but I didn't have any context like that Westcrown was on the brink of riots, and so I was mostly baffled by it. I did acquire and ask Blai to start reading me Galtan histories since he'd recommended it and thought it was important.

I spoke to the Inquisitor Shawil after the first day and asked him for guidance on the matters the committee had concerned itself with - telling if powerful people were Evil, mostly. He said that indeed lots of the people present were Evil and that on our committee alone two were Evil and concealing it. He counselled me to - be focused in who the committee targeted, to go after the most important enemies of peace and Law in Cheliax and not after everybody. I took that to heart and changed my plans off it, or - tried to, though I was ignorant enough that it didn't work, but that was when I decided that the committee needed to set a clear standard for who it was concerned with and publicize that so that everybody wouldn't be scared it would turn on them next. 

We confronted Delegate Ibarra. He was one of the people who was Evil and had been hiding it. He taunted us for being stupid and having taken a day to guess his identity, which he implied was widely known to everyone anyway. He said he was a Norgorber cultist. He said that he had burned children to death in their homes in the course of fighting his war, and implied that he could've saved them and hadn't bothered, and enjoyed telling us this because of the evident distress it caused us. 

Archduke Blanxart then insisted very aggressively that we shouldn't remove Ibarra from the committee on those grounds. I - given that he was right that advocating doing something about the Evil nobles was going to lead to an immediate outbreak of violence, I assume that he had some similarly reasonable justification for his convictions here, but he didn't explain it and it was fairly shocking to me. I thought that it was illegal to be a Norgorber cultist. I thought that the convention was - for trying to improve the country, and that everyone would have agreed at once that Ibarra was not the kind of person they wanted making its laws. For the Archduke to side with him-

- I started to reinterpret a bunch of the previous events of the convention. The Archmage Cotonnet had forbidden us from proposing that any delegate be removed. He was angry with people when they objected to the presence of Delegate Lebanel, who is a sworn priest of Erecura, Dispater's wife, on those grounds. He in fact chastised Lebanel for openly evangelizing for a power of Hell, but still imposed the rule against suggesting he shouldn't be present. 

And then the committee had also just discovered that many of the nobles were Evil, and that many of them were in fact Thrune appointments still in power. 

I started to feel - like the convention was not what I had been imagining. We were not present to make Good laws for Cheliax. We were present to - I don't know - I was worried that it was to lend our credibility, our appearance of support, to the country being run by Norgorber and Erecura cultists and supporters of Abrogail Thrune, to some kind of concerted campaign to convince everyone that this was what just and representative governance just is like - it's not. Pezzack makes its laws by election and we don't have any cultists or any holdover nobility. I felt scared that - that by my presence here, which Ibarra was so amused by, that I was making people think that I thought these men belonged in power. That since I was forbidden to say that they shouldn't be at the convention everyone would think that I thought they should be at it."

"And then you gave your speech on the floor? Did anything else influence your decisions there, that you know of?"

"- also we settled, after a fashion, our debate about whether most Chelish people are Evil by checking the committee's sortition member, who was not Evil which was consistent with my impression most Chelish peasants aren't, it's mostly the powerful people who are. I thought that 'everyone is Evil, if the committee were to condemn it they'd be condemning us all' was - a game the Evil people were playing, and one people would be damned by...

And I think that's everything that went into deciding to give the speech. I consulted with some other people who I don't want to name because I don't want them to be in trouble and we worked on it together. We consulted the things the Archmage had told us about not saying anyone should be removed from the convention or anything like that, and all of the Queen's decrees about speeches. I am aware that was stupid, too, thinking that it'd matter, but I was still thinking of it as - I don't know. I wasn't going to come here to this event I'd been invited to and break the law. So we worked out the speech, and then I gave it."

"Nobody is going to get in trouble as a result of this report. If you're willing to tell us who you consulted with, the report would probably benefit from a chance to interview them, and we could make sure their identities are not included in the public version of the final report. You are under no obligation to tell us, though."

She looks anxiously around the prison cell.