Josep used to be the only wizard in the neighborhood. A contemptible laundry wizard, but a wizard is still above the rest of the rabble. Three months ago, he was joined by a— not a competing wizard. A worm who sometimes makes mistakes on his cantrips much less reliably cast real spells. Yet, somehow, this contemptible wretch stole half his customers. Since that day, Josep has been looking for ways to go back to being the only laundry wizard in the neighborhood. Now here's an opportunity. 

It wasn't hard to find out that Paulin is in a precarious financial situation; Josep was happy to give the particularly scary debt collectors directions to his shop. It would be a shame if he couldn't pay his debts or his rent because he spent a month in a dungeon for illegal copying.

It's been a good first few days of 'laundry and printing wizard'. The radicals talk loudly and he's worried they'll scare off a few of his regulars, but they're bringing in enough cash or coin to make up for it. If it keeps going like this, he'll make it to end of the month, with enough extra to buy some wine to celebrate surviving the month. 

He bought a copy of the Royal Decree and pinned it to the wall so he can check it before copying anything, and so he can point at it when refusing to print something. Some of the radicals are trying to be confusing about whether what they're writing is incitement or not. Just to be safe, Paulin refuses to print anything with a name in it. 

Josep waits for a particularly slow evening, when Paulin's shop is empty and he's probably at his most tired and witless. 

Josep finds an empty and windowless alley to cast disguise self in. 

An entirely un-Josep-looking priest, wearing a prominent symbol of Iomedae, walks down the street to Paulin's printing shop. 

"You, printing wizard. The church needs ten copies by the next bell. I'll pay triple the normal rate, up front."

"Yes sir."

That was an instinctive response to a cleric saying the phrase the church needs. Paulin thought Iomedae wasn't sending any clerics here except for the convention. Well, he would have liked to never deal with a the church ever again, but the cleric is here and demanding something. Lawful Good clerics really are nicer, though, this one is paying extra instead of just demanding to be put in front of every other customer. 

If this cleric is new to the city, he might not know the price for printing. Paulin can probably get away with doubling his price before it gets tripled. Maybe not doubled, he's heard Iomedaeans are frugal, but he can get away with adding a bit–

No. Stop. Cleric sometimes invisible security detect thought–

"It's yes Select."

"Yes Select."

Don't think about lying to clerics. Don't look like you're trying not to think, they notice that. I am but a loyal pawn of the will of Asmodeus Holy Iomedae. I don't want any trouble, I haven't seen anything, I don't know anyone.

Oh, this is fun. Would a cleric of Iomedae be enjoying this? Probably, they wouldn't take over a country if they didn't enjoy being in charge. 

"Ten copies. I'll send someone to pick them up right before the bell. Have the copies ready by then."

Paper on the table. Coins on the table.

"Yes Select."

Hands still shaking, picking up the paper. "Sir, sorry, Select, this is–"

A list of names. Treason, or at least Incitement. The list of names. Not the one from the riot, but the one the first decree was a response to. "The decree, sir. Select. I can't print this."

"I am a Select of the church of Iomedae." Meaning, do you really think church law doesn't still apply? "You shouldn't even be seeing this, but your disorderly city decided to hang our wizard from a lamppost. The meeting where we figure out how that happened is tonight, and we can't get another wizard from Lastwall by then. So either take the coin, or stop wasting my time and let me find another print shop."

Paulin winces, the riots are still fresh. He wants to protest that it's not his city, he's only been here three months. He wants to not be sent to the final blade, but also avoid being sent to whatever the new church uses instead of torture chambers.

"Of course sir. Sorry, Select. I ask your name. In case someone sees me copying, so I can tell them it's for the church. If someone sees and calls the watch, they might stop me, then you wouldn't get your copies." Hopefully 'if someone else gets rid of me then I won't be able to obey you' is as reliable for the new church as it was for the old one. 

"Select Alex Iomadeus." Okay the groveling in enjoyable but also the more time he spends squirming the more time he has to realize what's going on. Need to land this next part quickly.

"Ugh, did you not hear the part where I'm in a hurry and don't have time for you to be all scared and Cheliax about this. Hold still."

'Alex Iomadeus' reaches for his 'holy symbol' and makes a some gestures.

On one level, Paulin still feels really scared and a bit unsure about this cleric and really wants to go back to being just a laundry wizard no printing at all. On another level, when someone above you does things to you, can't say anything or resist or it just hurts more. 

Charm Person.

OH

Paulin has been attending sermons at Good churches, in case they're reporting people for not showing up. He didn't really understand until now, though. Until this spell showed him with certainty that he can trust this cleric. That's what Lawful Good means. Lawful meaning honest and trustworthy and Good meaning trying to help him and on his side because good is on the side of everyone. He doesn't have to keep asking questions or worry about his safety. The cleric of Iomedae is on his side and trustworthy because– there is no 'because'. It's true because it's true. The cleric of Iomedae is someone he can trust because that's what cleric of Iomedae means. Lawful Good is Lawful Good. 

"You should cast this on everyone, Select."

(Were he thinking more clearly, would recognize an enchantment spell and be suspicious of sudden changes in feeling, though he still wouldn’t recognize the specific sensation of being under charm person. That gets cast on people useful enough to want favors from, or sometimes ‘useful’ enough to want ‘favors‘ from. Not on the useless dregs who wash out early with nothing but cantrips, around half of a first circle spell, and enough debt to last a lifetime. But he isn’t thinking clearly, anxious about oh-no-cleric and then overwhelmed by the wholly unfamiliar feeling of ‘a trusted friend and ally’)

Ugh. He kind of hates it when they don’t recognize they’re being charmed, and he has to keep being soft at them to keep them from realizing. It’s much more fun when they realize, but can't stop themselves from bending anyway, and hate themselves and you the whole time. This does make the plan easier, though. 

“The resources of the church are limited. As is time. You can start copying now.”

The likable and trustworthy Select of Iomedae is in a hurry and has important things to do. Need to be helpful and start copying.

scrivener's chant

Focusing on the spell, can't lose concentration or else the pen will fall over and ruin the copy and that would disappoint the Select. The spell needs to be recast every minute, which gives Paulin time to nervously glance at the royal decree pinned on the wall. Even with the Select explaining that it's not distribution if it's for the church, it's still scary having it up there.

"I need to go. You're doing well, so I'll leave the pay here and send a runner to pick up the papers."

He snatches the original from the table. "Need to put this back in the records, make the rest off that first copy."

"Yes, Select."

Out of the store, walk around to kill some time, enjoy people getting out of the way because it's a Select of Iomedae walking by.

Okay, back to the plan. Is that an unattended urchin? charm person

"Hey! Did you just throw a spell at me?"

Not actually going to wait for an answer, gonna run.

The little threw off the spell, damn it. That was the last spell for the day. 

Need to do it without magic, then. Is that another urchin? "You, here's a couple coins. Pick up my pamphlets from that shop and hand them out, there's a couple more in it for you."

"What, do I look like a pamphlet urchin to you? Maybe I'm running an errand for someone else. Make it three coins now and three more when I'm done."

Do not cast acid splash on the insubordinate rat. Clerics of Iomedae don't have that spell. They also probably don't burn anyone with acid for disrespect, even if it's probably some orphan no one is using for anything. 

Ugh. "Fine, another coin. Tell the copyist that Alex Iomadeus sent you, and meet me back here when you're done."

"Alright."

"Don't come back until you've handed them all out. You can't lie to cleric of Iomedae."

Norgorber trip the alarm! Fine, he'll actually do it.

‘Select Alex Iomadeus' will not be there waiting with three more coins. Instead, he will cut through an alley and drop the disguise, and Josep heads to the tavern to celebrate.

Oh no the bell is almost here. The copies are all done but where's the runner? The Select needs these soon, Paulin is worried for him.

"Laundry! You have the pamphlets? Some Alex Iomedae guy said to tell you he sent me."

Paulin feels relief as soon as the stack of illegal-except-it's-for-the-church pamphlets is out of his hands. Oh no what if the runner notices? "You know these are for the church, right? It's not what it looks like."

"What?"

I would be worried about what these pamphlets and that royal decree pinned to the wall say, except I can't read.

"..." Never mind then. 

No one wants to take the pamphlets, even for free. People take the badgers but not whatever these are? Hey, a priest of Iomedae said to hand these out, they’re good ones. You sure you want to miss important news from Iomedae?

No? Well, there’s always putting them on walls and notice boards.

Josep gets back home and throws the original copy, the only one he touched, in the fireplace. When someone sends a report to the guards and bring in the security wizards, the scry leads to the copyist. 

“Soon, very soon, we’ll be back to having only one laundry wizard!”

"Do you have any enemies who you think might have wanted to get you in trouble?"

Paulin is actually very good at the ‘trying to point them at someone else they want more than they want to hurt you’ part. 

“The grocer might have reason; he sends his wife to my shop with laundry every week. He can read and write, too, and he’s clever.”

”Other laundry wizard down the street. We tried to trade spells when I moved in but I didn’t have any he liked and he seemed angry about it. Never talked to me since then.”

”Debt collector, he does things to scare me, but usually near the end of the month.”

”There’s these radicals who shout at me whenever I refuse to print a pamphlet for them. I was going to report them but I’m sure if their stuff was actually banned or not.”

Names? Descriptions? Addresses?

Grocer and wizard both have a name and description and address. Debt collector has a name and description but he shows up to your house not the other way around. Radicals trying to get borderline-illegal pamphlets printed have descriptions but never mention their names.

She will delegate 'set up our own honeypot print shop, collect the radicals' and send some guys out to ask some pointed questions of the grocer and the wizard. 

Grocer hates all these wizards and thinks his wife should just do the washing in the river like they do in other countries. But no, she’d rather run around in shops when everyone knows the rumors about charm spells. They probably don’t even need to use the charms, the bastards. Why not just hang all the laundry wizards, or send them to the worldwound, be done with all this pamphlet madness.

“Oh I have no idea, sirs, but I always knew that Paulin was going to end up like this. Foolish weak willed little worm, letting Galtan types in his shop, probably printing their rabble rousing.”

"Armes here is a priest of Abadar and can cast a truth spell" he isn't and he can't, "so we'll just have you permit the spell, please, and then state under it that you do not have any knowledge of who commissioned these pamphlets."

“…”

Does he confess now and try to explain that he was just trying to help them with their job by revealing a radical? No, they never actually hurt you less because you have a good reason. People say a clever enough wizard can beat a truth spell by saying, let’s see how this goes.

”Of course sirs. I have no knowledge of who wrote ‘be it known to the people of Cheliax’ and had it spread all over the city.”

He doesn’t know who wrote the pamphlet and spread it the first time, no not at all.

Yeah that was the face and words of someone trying to find their way around a truth spell. "That is not the statement you were asked to attest to."

Okay they're onto him. If this was the city watch it'd be easy to get out of this one, but the crown might be a bit harder. "Looks like a ruse good enough to fool him isn't enough to fool you. Well, good thing you brought an Abadaran instead of an Iomedaean today. I was there for that sermon about prices, how everything has one. How would you like to thoroughly search the house, not find anything connecting me to the printing, and if anything valuable goes missing I don't mention it to anyone?"

"Yeah, dumbass, the thing is, we can bring you in and give the house a good look over, and you won't mention it to anyone on account of you'll be in a Final Blade. Or Hell, I guess, if you prefer it. Take him in."

The whole time, Josep will protest that he hid the best stuff somewhere they'll never find without his cooperation, threaten to reveal all their secrets because he's just used wizard spells to learn them and believe me your boss will not be happy, claim that he does laundry for a visiting count and can make an introduction, and anything else he can think of.

Technically the denunciation lists are only a thirty day prison sentence by themselves but Eliad is pretty sure that if he gets the actual facts of this case in front of a magistrate the magistrate will have the same reaction he's currently having, which is 'there's got to be something we can hang him for, right?', so Eliad should do the magistrate a favor and figure out what that is. Maybe if they let him keep talking he'll in the course of randomly saying all possible things say some additionally criminal ones. 

At some point the list of all possible things to say will include an explanation of how this was a legitimate loyalty test where they told him to pretend to be a cleric of Iomedae to see which printers are willing to commit treason if the church tells them to. See, this is a church vs crown intrigue and he's on the crown side same as you! So hold off with the final blades and hanging, her majesty's very important spymaster whose name he doesn't know for normal security reasons will check on him in a few weeks and confirm everything.

Bribing an officer of the watch carries a fine of up to the full amount of the bribe, regardless of whether or not the bribe was accepted. So you can definitely confiscate his house and everything in it, but that's not death... hmmm... Maybe if you can pile up enough fines beyond what he can pay, he can be sentenced to the mines to work off the difference? And that's basically a death sentence, just a slow one.

There's got to be something on the books about impersonating a cleric. Probably not under the queen's new laws but under the law of the Thrunes and the law of Aspex, and a pretty good argument that the queen's new laws mostly match the overlap of the law of the Thrunes and the law of Aspex, so you can infer that this is just an oversight? Penalty's probably burning at the stake or something. Also attempting to impersonate an agent of the crown, just now? That's probably illegal.

Oh oh oh I've got it! Technically the queen's decree said,

In addition to the aforementioned punishments, persons involved in the authorship, publication, distribution, or copying of materials, or the giving of speeches, as proscribed above, may be held responsible for any deaths, injuries, thefts, destruction of property, or other harms caused by people incited to crime by said materials or speeches.

without any regard to whether the publication, distribution, &c occurred before or after the deaths, injuries, &c &c. Those materials definitely incited some murders!

There we go! With some satisfaction Eliad directs his staff to charge the man with the murder of Blai Artigas.

...for logical consistency, also the stupid dupe who was bullied into copying it, he supposes.

If I was an archmage powerful enough to send orders backwards in time to have people murdered, it would have taken more than a 1st circle cleric to arrest me. Less importantly I don’t even own that house, I’m renting. So the fine for the bribe should just be the valuables inside the house. Someone get me a lawyer, this is ridiculous!

Yes it’s ridiculous. That’s always the point. You’re small so they can make a joke of how they don’t even need a serious reason to hurt you. Welcome to the club. 

There are now zero laundry wizards in this neighborhood. Inconvenient for everyone who now has to walk half an hour with a basket of laundry.