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. 

"I do not believe we are being observed but can make no guarantee of it."

"I don't think they'd want me to tell you on that assurance. I'm sorry."

"There's no need to apologize. Did you intend the speech to be repeated outside the halls of the convention?"

"Yes. Or - it's hard to keep track of in my head now because I didn't intend what happened, but - I did intend that people would know what I thought about the convention, and about the people of Cheliax. Because half of what I was scared of was that we were being - used to say that the government was all right when it might not be, so I wanted people to know what I thought of that - we talked about distributing the speech as a pamphlet, and I would probably have done that if not for Feliu, who found me after it to say he thought it'd cause riots if it was repeated in the streets. That hadn't occurred to me. So when Laia asked if I'd give it to a crowd at her church - she does pamphlet readings - I told her no, not until we had a version that the Church was sure wouldn't cause riots.

But I did expect - people would hear about it, and trust the convention less, and be right to, and know that they couldn't expect Norgorber cultists or nobles appointed by Abrogail Thrune to be solved for them by someone else."

"Do you know anything about how it did in fact wind up repeated in the streets?"

"Well, lots of people in the room had copies, and lots of them presumably had assistants and so on. I assume someone thought it ought to be a pamphlet and went out and started selling it without any leave from me, nor would I ordinarily have assumed I had any grounds to object except for - then some other people turned it into an even more inflammatory version that just said everyone should go kill all the evildoers right away and they'd go to Heaven for it. I....really didn't expect that. I made a point in the speech of - carefully distinguishing various things - thinking it'd matter."

"So you did distribute some copies to the room, or do you just think people were writing it down as you spoke?"

"We did distribute copies in the room. The other speakers had done that and I liked the idea even though it doesn't help me personally because there was always so much happening at the convention. If you could read it seemed really convenient to have it for your records already."

"After you finished the speech, what happened?"

"- a lot of things that were incredibly confusing at the time and are somewhat less so in hindsight. Ibarra said that when he burned children to death in their homes it was not murder, because it was war. I think that excuse only counts if you couldn't have avoided burning children in their homes, it's not like it just becomes okay to kill people if you declare war first, but other people spoke first so we didn't get back into it. The Hellknights said they were reforming and becoming Iomedaen. - I don't know if that's true but I thought it was encouraging that they said so. The Archduchess came and spoke and said - well I hardly remember most of what she said because one thing she said was that Pezzack rebelling was wrong and we should have just let the Asmodeans rule us and it was our fault everyone had died because we'd rebelled when we shouldn't have and I was so angry at her I didn't even hear anything else she said. I handled that badly enough it would probably have been a major disaster even if the riots hadn't happened, I called her a coward and a collaborator.

Then the Duchess of Chelam said that we should rebel against Asmodeus but not against our Lawful Good queen which was the first I'd heard anyone take what I said as 'we should rebel against the Lawful Good queen' but I was just confused and didn't take her meaning. Then some other nobles took the floor and insisted we stop debating the speech and talk about tax policy, and they did that before Lord Cansellarion could say that the Menador nobles appointed by Abrogail Thrune have supervision from the church and are trying to reform, which was by far the most important thing anyone could've said.

Then I left the floor and Feliu found me and explained that he was worried about riots if the speech was distributed, and that the speech was calling for rebellion against the Queen."

"You mentioned that you decided not to try to publish the speech as a pamphlet after speaking to Feliu. Did you change any of your other plans then?"

"Well, I also told Laia that I wouldn't give it as a speech. And in the committee on excising diabolism I told everyone that if we did find any people engaged in worship of Evil gods and so on we had to tell the Queen before trying to deal with it ourselves. I was still confused about how - say Ibarra, he said in front of half a dozen people that he was a Norgorber cultist, he bragged about how the whole city knew, it seemed implausible the Queen didn't. But I was following Feliu's advice and Feliu thought it was important. So I told the committee that. 

If I'd thought there'd have been riots of course I'd have done something to try to stop them. But I didn't. Maybe just because everything felt very ordinary. I stayed late at the convention getting the judiciary committee's notes read back to me. And by the time I left - 

- I guess it was cowardly not to try to stop the riots? But it didn't seem like it'd work. I wasn't armed and it was so loud that when I did try to get peoples' attention to ask what was going on no one could hear me. So I just followed them and healed injured people."

"What time did you leave the convention?"

"I don't know. I know I looked outside and saw it was already starting to get dark and was angry with myself, because I don't think the city's safe to be out in after dark, and started running home. And found Blai's body, halfway between the convention hall and the temple."

"When did you first become aware of the riots?"

"After I found Blai's body there were a couple other injured people in the streets, who I healed, and then I followed the sound of shouting in the distance and saw a whole crowd of people. From where I was you couldn't really see anything about what was going on. I tried to get someone's attention and ask, but it was too loud and also - obviously a very dangerous situation. I doubled back to get to the temple another way and found more injured people in the streets, and dying ones, and dead ones. Then there was an announcement by magic, that everyone should disperse and go home - I guess I should have obeyed that but there were more dying people, and some of them were in the gutters and when it started raining I was worried they'd drown. So instead of dispersing I started trying to drag the dying people out of the gutters."

"And then?"

"Some other people showed up to help. The Archduke of Sirmium, I learned later, and his men. We walked most of the island to make sure we hadn't missed anyone still breathing. Then Feliu said I was being arrested for the riots, and took me here."

"What has happened to you since being brought here?" Probably not relevant for the report but worth asking anyways, especially if anything bad has happened.

"Feliu stayed to keep watch, as the guards - well, no one has harmed me. The Archmage Cotonnet and the Archduchess d'Ravounel came by to speak to me."

"Alright. I think that covers the events. Is there anything you can think of that any agent of the church of Iomedae, or yourself or Select Artigas, or Archmage Cotonnet, or the queen, should have done, which would have led to better outcomes?" Including the queen on that list is wildly optimistic but Vittorio Cantes is sometimes a wildly optimistic man. "To be clear, it's good to suggest things that would have helped even if you're not sure they'd be worth the cost, or think they definitely wouldn't be worth the cost, or things that might have helped or might have done nothing, or even things that might have helped or might have made things worse, especially if you can point out when you're uncertain about the effects or the costs."

Anything that anyone could have done? That's just....all possible things, really. "Well, if the Church had told me not to go to the convention, or alternatively to come a month early so I could learn more about the world, or if I'd talked to Feliu earlier, that would have done it. If I had listened to the people who told me not to go to the convention, or if I'd arrived earlier to get more of a sense of what was going on - I tried to arrive earlier but I didn't want to leave Pezzack without a priest and then there were summer storms that delayed the ship - if I'd noticed sooner obviously that a bunch of things didn't make sense to me and that in war you've got to keep going anyway but in politics you don't, you can just go do something else - if I'd learned to read - also if I'd just been right about what was going on and not missing anything important but I'm not sure if that counts since it's not as if you can tell someone to just be right instead of being wrong. I was trying. I told the Archmage Cotonnet I should have not come to the convention and focused on learning to read and learning about Iomedae and the world instead, and I think that's the most straightforward thing I could've figured out.

It would have been very easy for the archmages or the Queen to prevent this. They could just have warned us when the convention started that the situation in Westcrown was fragile and that it was important not to say things indelicately, or in a way calculated to anger anyone. They could have not let people go publish hundreds of copies of the speech, if they thought it was a bad speech. The Archmage Cotonnet was right there, and if he had thought the speech was going to cause problems he could have just stopped me in the middle of saying it. Or called on Lord Canselllarion to come up and speak next, because he was planning to explain that the speech was wrong, but he didn't get the chance to. Or they could have given security to the people who the speech placed in danger. Or they could have done...magic? I don't know if there's magic that would've helped. Or they could have held the Constitutional Convention in a city that was not on the brink of a riot, or not in a city at all, so that our debates couldn't - spill over. Or they could have not held it. Or they could have let actual priests of Iomedae attend it."

"If the church had assigned you a staff of five people when you'd arrived in Westcrown, what would you have had them doing?"

" - I guess figuring out why there were so many Norgorber cultists and Erecura priests and Evil nobles running around and whether there were any good routes to do anything about that and whether it was a good idea to make a speech saying that it was a bad thing, and reading a bunch of history books and all of the pamphlets so we knew how things were getting distorted in the city and knew that it wasn't - in a very stable place and that lots of terrible lies were spreading, and teaching me about Iomedae, and doing the thing the nobles do where they have people who work for them listening to the committees they're not on so nothing surprises them."

"Thank you, I think that is all the questions I have... Do you have any questions for us?"

"Not...not good ones, I don't think. I - I'm sorry. I know I could have and should have figured things out faster and been more careful, and I didn't understand - I harmed the Church, in addition to getting hundreds of people killed, and I didn't mean to. I do not suppose there is anything useful I can do at this point but - if there is I would of course -"

"Right now I think your priority should be your trial. After that - depends on the outcome.

...Do you have any bad questions for us?"

"I asked Feliu if it costs Iomedae something for me to prepare spells and if given that I shouldn't do it, while I'm here, and he said he expected I'd have the chance to use them at some point, so I have been. But does that stop being true at some point? The day they put me to death I shouldn't prepare spells, presumably?"

"I think the marginal cost to the goddess of you preparing your spells most days is low, but - if you believe you're going to die before you have a chance to use them, and there's no way they would help you survive, then yes, it saves Her something for you to not request spells. I don't know very much myself about whether you're likely to die, but it does seem like your spells wouldn't help much with that so if you choose not to request spells, or to request fewer spells than you could, until your trial is over one way or the other - I can't say that would be unreasonable."

"Do you happen to know if it is legal to defend myself if the guards let themselves in here?"

"I believe it is, but I haven't read the new Chelish laws myself. It's definitely permissible by Iomedae's teachings whether it's legal or not. Do you want us to assign someone from the Church to stand guard here, if we can?"

"No. I appreciated Feliu but I told him to leave because there's lots of better places for people to be. 

....before the archmages came in to save us, I had a plan to break the Asmodeans' naval blockade of Pezzack but it involved doing Evil and I wasn't sure if Iomedae would renounce me for it or not."

"It...depends on the evil? If you want advice on that you will need to give your plan in more detail... If you're nervous about explaining and want it, de Luna has the paladin aura of courage."

"So the strix were willing to do a night raid for us, fly out over the sea and drop a whole ton of flaming sticks coated in special tar so they burn very fast and can't be put out by water.

But they wanted to do it from very high up so as not to get themselves killed, and it was impossible to make out the warships against the sea by night, we'd done raids before and they weren't stupid and took care not to have uncovered fires. And I figured, if I could get on the warships I could touch a plank with my Light spell and make the whole ship glow. I tested on a smaller fishing boat and it worked. But I didn't have a good way to sneak out to the ship. 

The soldiers would come ashore to get water, sometimes, and the last time they'd done that they kidnapped a girl from the nearest house, took her back to the ship with them, to share her around. And so the way I could think of to get on the ship was to approach them when they came ashore for water, and say I was starving, and ask if they'd pay me in food, and figure they'd take me back with them. But I was worried that if Iomedae renounced me for that then I wouldn't have the spell anymore to light up the ship."

"...Lying to your enemies outside of negotiations where you've represented yourself as a priest of Iomedae is permitted, except to paladins who've sworn to never lie. And a matter of Law, rather than of Evil, technically. Suicide is evil, but taking on a dangerous mission, or sacrificing yourself to achieve some good, is not. Iomedae would not renounce you for either of those."

"...but what about for letting men sleep with me?"

"...Oh. That's not evil either? It's, uh -" he looks to de Luna for a moment before remembering that de Luna is not answering Valia's questions in this interview as a matter of policy, "Having sex outside of marriage is irresponsible, and can lead to evil, but is not evil in itself, and the Goddess does not renounce people for it... unless those people have sworn vows of chastity or the like."

It really seems pretty evil to Valia! "Oh. All right. Thank you. I can't think of any other questions I had."

"Then I think we're done here. Please send word if you can if anything else should come up or come to mind."