Thea nods along.  She has actually always found training and getting stronger all the fun she needed, but she is aware she is an outlier.

"Right, that make sense.  I think some Gods just like normal common things about humans.  I wasn't sure if there was any special about hedonism to Calistria or particular teachings about it... by the way have you managed to find a copy of The Book of Joy or Blood for Wine, (Calistria's holy texts)?  I've been occasionally asking around ever since I figured out what her holy texts were called, but I haven't actually managed to get a hold of a copy yet.  If you have one, I'll pay you to make a copy, I've been trying to fill out a small library of all the major non-evil Gods' holy books.  Oh, and if you have any other book recommendations I would appreciate it and probably want a copy for my library.  Whether it is a book you find that summarizes your outlook or philosophy well or just a generally good book."

Blink. Calistria has a holy book? Two holy books? Do the holy books cover everything she's supposed to know about sex???

"I haven't found one, sorry. I think a lot of places don't want to copy anything that might seem like it's saying Chaos is fine. Uh, I can't think of any other book recommendations but I could give you pamphlet recommendations, and they'd be faster to read anyways?"

Thea takes a moment to figure out a polite way to say ‘pamphlets are Geryon’s playground’.

“If you have any pamphlets that you can vouch for all the details accuracy I will take that recommendation.  And I suppose I will consider the sentiment in any other pamphlet recommendation you have that you can’t vouch for, if not the factual details.”

She will consider and discard the sentiment for being based on unfounded statements that are likely absurd lies.

“I feel obligated to warn you, almost every pamphlet I’ve had the means to check the factual accuracy of had had errors ranging from minor to absurdly blatant.  For example, pamphlets on Iomedae and her faith often contradict a basic reading of the Acts of Iomedae for factual details.  Very recently, I read a pamphlet claiming Valia Wain was a ‘Calistran whore’ who ‘laughed and cackled quite merrily as the city was put to the torch’.”

She starts rifling through the pamphlets she has with her while Delegate Iroria is talking. Pamphlet on land reform, pamphlet denouncing it as unjust that a murderer and a mass-murderer face the same punishment under the new laws, pamphlet on travel passes, pamphlet on the right to worship Good and Neutral gods even if they're Chaotic, pamphlet on how every rapist in the city watch should be executed even if it means not having a watch anymore, scrupulously legal pamphlet about how Goodness requires being willing to break unjust laws. (She skips the pamphlets that are outright illegal, even the really good ones.)

"I don't know if they're all totally accurate, but sometimes they still have good points even if they get some of the details wrong — wait, they're saying what about Valia???"

Did someone somehow notice her and Raimon and mistake her for Valia? They don't even look anything alike! Is that part of why Valia was arrested, is she getting blamed for arson she didn't do just like she's getting blamed for riots she didn't do? (Her face does not betray any of this.)

That doesn’t sound at all like the reaction of a guilty person, so that narrows it down to Victoria being innocent of arson or her being a canny callous liar with no tells.

“I’ve only seen one pamphlet claiming it.  It had a lot of sensational claims.  Let’s see… it claimed the Calistrian Whore Valia Wain led a mob, started fires, killed a Select of Iomedae… and she’s already been arrested, quartered, and even maledicted… and Iomedae herself appeared to carry out the punishment.  In other words, complete fantastical nonsense.  I may be missing some more nonsense details, even as short and sensational as the pamphlets was.  Anyway even if the government wasn’t trying at being Good now, I don’t think they would tolerate a cleric of an Evil God to get maledictions cast.”

“My default assumption is pamphlets aren’t true, even if sometimes have some tiny grain of truth.  I was wondering if that pamphlet confused you and Valia somehow, but even though you are a Calistrian I take it from other things you’ve said you aren’t a prostitute, so even allowing for that confusion the pamphlet is still complete garbage.”

Thea takes a moment to look for any tell in Victoria.

On to more important topics… the pamphlets Victoria favors makes sense of her and some of them even seem reasonable.  Thea notes the titles so she can find the copies she already has in her library back at the monastery.

If her tells were consistently that obvious she'd've been tortured to death when she was fifteen. Maybe younger, really, it's not like they'd've needed a real reason. 

"I didn't do any of that, and Valia wouldn't either!" she says indignantly. "I spent most of that evening talking to an azata. ...and I'm not a prostitute, either, not that that's stopped the men here from assuming."

An Outsider!  Eumenes was underwhelming but maybe an Azata would be different!

“Was it summoned or called?  But that I mean to ask, was it there for a minute or a long stretch of time?  Did you learn anything interesting from it?”

Thea is visibly excited.

There's no reason at all for her stomach to turn over on itself at the prospect of answering some questions about the azata, and it's kind of absurd that it keeps happening.

"Called, I think, it was there for a while. We talked about a lot of different things, is there anything you were wondering about? —also, are you married, one of the things it said was pretty important to know if you're married."

“I’m not married and not planning on marrying, but maybe some of my younger Sisters might, so it would be good to know.  In general, I suppose I’m interested in how Outsiders get the way they are.  Outsiders are, in general, perfect embodiments of the ideals of their alignment, and reaching a state of perfection is an interest of mine as a student of Irori.”

"...Oh, I didn't really ask it that many questions about how it became... perfect?" She doesn't think it was perfect! "I think there's not really one way that Chaotic Good outsiders end up being, it told me that they didn't always all agree about everything — which makes sense when you think about it, they're Chaotic. Uh... it used to be mortal, it was from the First World? And it said that there's a lot of things from its mortal life where it thinks it was being kind of silly, in hindsight. But I didn't ask it that much about how it all happened.

...uh, the marriage thing is — apparently it's Evil for a husband to force himself on his wife, even though they're married."

“I’m… surprised people don’t already know that that is at least somewhat Evil?  Not that I had thought about the issue before, but hurting people is usually at least somewhat Evil.  It being a husband might make it Lawful I assume, but it wouldn’t make a man forcing a woman not Evil.”

Thea takes a moment to think.

“Are there other Evil things that people overlook because they are Lawful or normal?  Like beating children?  I’ve been hoping to figure out a way to instill discipline without beatings.  All my younger sisters are already disciplined, so it was easy figuring out ways to teach them without beatings, but if I was working on teaching and training a child from scratch I don’t know the things I’ve figured out would work.”

Wow, she really doesn't want to — doesn't really want to try to explain all that to the Evil assassin. ...She's going to skip over the confusing parts of the conversation and focus on the parts that — don't require working through a bunch of complicated thoughts.

"Uh, let me think. It said it wasn't normal to have the students who did the best whip the students who did the worst but it sounds like you know that already. And that it's Evil to raise criminals as undead to force them to work in the mines, but I think basically everyone knows that who isn't a noble. And that it was Evil to kidnap the sortition delegates, I wasn't sure either way, but probably you're not at risk of... accidentally doing that... anyways. That's everything I can think of."

(and it said — you can't balance things out, that's not really a thing, there's just helping and hurting — it is Evil to want to hurt him, and if you call it Good, you're wrong, and if you act on this you're going to do a lot of Evil yourself — you're walking the path to the Abyss, and you should keep your eyes open while you walk it — and that can't be right, it can't be, she hasn't done anything wrong — even the azata admitted it was fine to hurt Evildoers if they were going to just keep on being Evil, and they were, all of them were — it was worried she was going to start hurting innocent people, and she can just not do that—)

Thea nods along.  Most of those make sense.

“Is conscription Evil?  I think I’ve heard a comparison of the sortitions to conscripts.  And I read something that sounded like Lastwall conscripts every man for a few years?  I’m not completely sure I understood what the book was saying, and I’m completely not sure the book was true, but if it was that means there is some tradeoff that makes the Good the conscripts can do worth the Evil of conscripting them?  I think Delegate Tallandria has proven an impressive voice that may make the whole sortition thing worth it on net, and I’ve seen good work from a few of the other sortitions I’ve interacted with.  And they are an important counterbalance to the nobility.  If you want to send them home, you should think of a way to let the best ones stay if they want?”

Thea thinks a moment…

“Maybe let the leavers transfer their votes to the remaining sortitions as well.”

They are back to politics, but this idea is good enough Thea wants to finish developing it.

"Oh, I didn't even think to ask about conscription. And I definitely wouldn't want to make the delegates by lot go home, if they want to stay. ...The idea about letting them transfer their vote to other sortition delegates might be good," if a bit suspect, considering who it's coming from, "I definitely wouldn't want the nobles to just take advantage of letting people leave to make a bunch of laws that favor the nobility over normal people."

“I’m not sure of the best wording for it, or how likely it is to pass the floor.  I guess if either of us manages to find Delegate Tallandria this is another idea to run by her, as she would likely be a major beneficiary of it as other sortition delegates transfer their votes to her.  Oh, and if we’re doing this, we would want to get this done sooner rather than later, before the nobility start buying out or bribing or offering generous jobs in the future or such to the sortition delegates.  Hopefully those that stay and get votes transferred to them will be the sort of people principled enough not to sell out.”

Victòria is honestly having trouble imagining being the kind of person who would sell her vote to a nobleman. Even if she were Evil, she still wouldn't want noblemen to just be able to do whatever they wanted, there's no amount of money that would make it worth conceding that they should be allowed to force themselves on their subjects.

"I was planning to bring it up at the start of next session, but then everything with Valia happened, and I kind of got distracted thinking about whether there's something there that I needed to do. Probably it would still be a good idea to let them leave sooner rather than later, though, like if we keep them another week that's still a week when they're being kidnapped?"

Oh right, there is the moral reason to let them leave early in addition to the political game.

“Right.  Do you think a proposal letting them leave would fit any of the committees well?  You could try just directly bringing it up on the floor, but I think it adds something if a committee chair says there committee support it.  And same for my earlier idea about a proposal protecting delegate floor speech.  It might add an extra day going through a committee so I don’t know if it is worth it?”

"I'm honestly pretty new to politics. The best committee would probably be Rights, saying people have a right to not be kidnapped, but I think we were planning to spend a while working on them before we brought them all to the floor. We'd been discussing some speech ideas too but we hadn't managed to agree yet... but part of why we couldn't agree was that Delegate Requena i Cortes was saying he thought people should be allowed to try to talk people into worshipping Asmodeus, so even though he's a nobleman I'm sure he wouldn't want to punish people like Valia just for speaking up on the floor. ...Depending on when her trial's going to be, we might want to get that one passed as soon as possible too, though."

“It sounds like there is a lot that needs to be done as soon as the convention resumes, which means the groundwork needs to be laid before it resumes.  I’ll be on my way then, I’ve thought of a few other people to talk to in addition to Delegate Nuria, so I’ll see how many I can visit and speak with today.”

"Best of luck."

And she heads back to her inn to start working on a pamphlet about why it would be Evil and Asmodean to execute Valia.