Victòria rises at dawn, prays for her spells in her room, and then steps out into the common area for breakfast. 

...The Evildoer from the Diabolism Committee is here. Why do Evildoers keep showing up at her inn. Does she need to find a new inn. Is the Evildoer mad that she never bothered to track her down after the committee meeting? That wasn't even on purpose, she was just busy.

Thea puts on her least intimidating smile.

"I hope I'm not too forward showing up directly!  I was hoping we could have that conversation about Calistria I asked for earlier.  I can meet for lunch or dinner at a place of your choosing if you don't want to talk now!"

Thea was also thinking about doing some probing to see if Victoria committed arson after seeing a pamphlet claim Valia did arson... but pamphlets are bullshit so she'll only probe in the most oblique and deniable way possible.

For some reason the prospect of explaining Calistria's teachings to her is stressful and scary even though she's done it plenty of times before. Probably because she's Evil and Evil people keep deciding to, like, edit Valia's speech to talk about why you should murder innocent people.

"Now's fine but I haven't eaten breakfast yet. There's a bakery down the block that also sells really good cheese croquettes, I can show you."

“That sounds great, I haven’t had a full breakfast yet either!”

Then she can show her to the bakery.

"So, what specifically did you want to know? I haven't been a priestess for that long so I don't know if I'll be able to answer your questions, but I'll do my best." (This is straightforwardly a lie. She is absolutely planning on giving bad answers if she thinks giving good ones will make Delegate Iroria decide to go murder innocent people.)

She's thought some about how to frame her questions less offensively than 'Why isn't Calistria Chaotic Evil'.

"So I guess a fundamental question that would help me put things together is, why is Calistria Chaotic Neutral, and what does, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral, and Chaotic Evil mean to Calistria?  Or to yourself personally, if you still aren't sure about the orthodox teaching.  To contextualize this question... I've noticed a lot of confusing and contradictory things about alignment.  For instance, a common assumption is that Lawfulness means obeying mortal Law.  But the cult I was raised in was of a Lawful Evil hellish power, but explicitly disassociated society's rules and laws, even Asmodean ones, from their sense of Lawfulness.  And Irori's sense of lawfulness is more about personal discipline than anything related to society.  And Select Valia is a cleric of Iomedae but led a rebellion in Pezzack!  And I've been told Lawful is more disciplined and Evil is more ambitious, but one of the most determined and ambitious people I know is Delegate Nuria and she's a cleric of Desna!  And I've met a new Cayden cleric who was diligently trying to understand Cayden's will.  So I'm trying to understand alignment in general, and if you have your own conceptions that may help me."

Hopefully this framing will provoke an informative answer.  Thea has more examples of possibly confusing and contradictory things on the Good-Evil axis, but that may draw out Victoria's paranoia.

Wow. She really does not want to be having this conversation with Delegate Iroria of all people. She knows all the right things to say but when she tries to make them all line up together it makes her chest hurt.

"So, there's a few different things going on here. I don't know for sure what makes gods the alignments that they are, there's some I think are confusing, but if I had to guess — there's Good and Evil reasons to take vengeance, and Good and Evil ways to do it, and Calistria cares about both. Also about lust but I don't know as much about lust— anyways. So like, one of the gods you were telling us about during the committee meeting said people should 'avenge all insults' — if a nobleman gets mad that someone lower-ranking than him isn't being all deferential, and he has them tortured to death, that's an Evil reason to take vengeance, because they didn't actually do anything wrong. But then, on the other hand, if someone goes and murders a bunch of innocent people, it would be wrong to say 'well, they murdered a bunch of innocent people, but I think that's fine and I'm not going to do anything about it.'

But then there's also how you actually do it, that's important too. Like, Delegate Ibarra told us about how he burned down houses of innocent children because their parents were Asmodeans, and even though Asmodeus is Evil, and the people whose kids he killed were probably super Evil, it was still Evil for him to kill a bunch of kids who hadn't done anything wrong, even though he was doing it to take vengeance. Whereas—"

Her voice catches. Which is pathetic, really, there's no reason this should be hard to explain. It's just — it's nothing. She hasn't done anything wrong, not by the azata's standards and not by her own.

"—Whereas, going back to my earlier example of a guy that murdered a bunch of innocent people, if he were... an Asmodean priest," that's a safe example, right, it's not like nobility, the Crown didn't care enough to execute all the priests but that doesn't mean they support them "or something like that, and you were still living under Asmodeus, so reporting him wouldn't even work, it would obviously be Good to put a stop to him. You shouldn't let him get away with something like that and you shouldn't let him keep hurting people. But you should find a way to do that that doesn't hurt innocent people, like it would be Good to poison just his food but Evil to poison an entire banquet hall just to get him if most of the people there were innocent. I don't know where the exact line is between Good and Neutral, or Neutral and Evil, I think it probably depends a lot on the circumstances.

...I don't know as much about Law and Chaos, where I grew up the emphasis was on following the law, which is obvious, and on — accepting your 'rightful place' and letting anyone with more power than you do whatever they wanted, which I don't think is required to be Lawful if you're not an Asmodean. I honestly didn't realize a Chelish person could be Lawful and Good at the same time until I met Valia."

That's all very interesting.  And the show of emotion... is there someone Victoria chose to spare because it killing them wasn't Good and she feels upset about it?  Or someone she killed she now regrets killing?  Thea tries not to react to the emotional display. 

Victoria's emphasis on not harming bystanders does rule her out as  the author of the pamphlet that sent a mob Thea's way.  Or as a reckless arsonist.  Well, unless Victoria is a very skilled actress.

"That generally makes sense.  It seems like there are a lot of ways particular alignments can actually be expressed.  And I don't plan to personally seek vengeance anyway so I don't really need to know the exact line on killing.  As to Law and Chaos... well technically Valia could be Neutral Good.  Clerics can be one step from their Gods, and they only show their God's alignment at first circle.  Cleric don't show their own alignment also until they reach they equivalent of third circle in power... I say equivalent, I'm first circle, but I was already intensively trained for combat before Irori chose me, so that's why you could see my Evil, but my Law shows up much stronger because of Irori.  And actually, for a corner alignment like Lawful Good, I think that would mask Valia's own aura?  So I'm not sure how you could ever tell her alignment for sure?  Maybe with Protection from Law and Protection from Good cast in succession on a volunteer you could see if one of them or both of them deflected her punches?"

Speaking of Valia reminds Thea of the confusing response she initially got at the palace when she inquired about Valia.  Maybe Victoria knows what happened?  They apparently resurrected the dead delegates, so Valia should be okay by now?

She knew you didn't have to be exactly the same as your god. She's Chaotic Good, probably. But she'd heard Iomedae cared way more than Erastil about being Lawful — actually, maybe that was false, it was from a pamphlet.

"I guess that makes sense. Still, if Iomedae chose her, that means she has to be pretty close to what Iomedae wants, Iomedae wouldn't just pick a random Neutral Good person who didn't have anything in common with her. ...There's ways to check, the Diabolism Committee spent half the first day trying to figure out how, but I don't want to spread them around too much so that people don't figure out ways to fool them."

“Hmm… interesting.”

Ways to check… Thea wonders what they are?  Treating it like a riddle…  The diabolism committee had two cleric of Pharasma, a song sorcerer lay priest of Shelyn, and clerics of Calistria and Iomedae to work with.  Putting it like that, it brings to mind a spell unique to Pharasma Thea has read about, one that gives the touched target a vision of hell.  Perhaps it gives a different vision to non-hellbound people and the Asmodean author of the book she read didn’t know or care to mention that part?

“I think I’ve guessed one way of telling alignments you have, but you have my word I won’t spread it around the other delegates.  If the Pharasmins have spell slots to spare I’m curious whether Valia is Neutral or Lawful Good?  Speaking of Valia, did she get resurrected okay?  I saw a royal decree mentioning priests of Iomedae were killed in the rioting, and when I inquired about her at the palace when I reported in I got confused responses.  But I also heard the killed delegates were getting resurrected.”

Thea doesn’t actually know if the Pharasmin spell will distinguish between Lawful and Neutral Good, but maybe Victoria will correct her if she’s wrong.

"They arrested her. Even though she didn't do anything wrong, even though she didn't say anything illegal, just because they're mad about what happened."

(She's not ignoring the other question on purpose, she just got distracted, but the difference might not be obvious.)

“It seems… questionable in lawfulness to arrest her in response to the riots.  If her speech was genuinely illegal they should have said so or acted during the convention itself immediately after she gave it.  Instead, making the choice to arrest her based on the actions of other people seems… arbitrary.  I guess Asmodean lawfulness can do whatever, but I thought the new regime would be better than that.”

Thea isn’t actually a completely sure about her reasoning, but she wants to reassure Victoria.  And if they could arrest Valia like that…

“When the convention resumes we should pass a resolution protecting our ability to say what we need to on the floor and immunizing us from prosecution based on the actions of others.  And maybe something making it illegal to copy blatantly inaccurate accounts of the convention.”

After already saying her idea it occurs to Thea this could put the Queen and Archmage against each other, which seems like a really dangerous scenario, but being arrested because a noble didn’t like her floor speech seems more immediate as a danger.

"I'm worried that if you did that someone would try to take advantage of it to... tell us that we should all worship Asmodeus, or something horrible like that, probably not literally that since that would be really stupid. But if you have a way to make it so that people don't get prosecuted for saying things that aren't, like, incredibly Evil, I think that would be good. ...Do you know if the rule about not being able to do things retroactively applies to everything, or just to not being able to retroactively punish people for crimes?" (Not that that rule is stopping the Queen.)

"Maybe we could word the rule like: 'The President and agents appointed by him shall immediately inform delegates if their speech is crossing into illegality and they are immune to prosecution if they correct their speech in response at the warning?'  So if someone is proselytizing for an infernal power, he or maybe a representative he appoints from the Queen can stop that immediately.  And the Archmage already has de facto power over the convention, this is just formally recognizing the power he already has and using it to shield us delegates."

She doesn't want to remind Victoria that she has a strong incentive to vote against anything that gets around retroactive punishment.  Oh wait, Victoria is asking for a way to get Valia free.

"Are you asking about a way to retroactively protect Valia?  Maybe the resolution could emphasize it is a formalization of the existing arrangement.  So I don't know if a magistrate would accept it fully, but they could recognize it is indicative of the circumstances?  So the rule would be 'To formalize and recognize the role the President is has served and continues to serve in the Chelish Constitutional Convention, the President and agents appointed by him shall immediately inform delegates if their speech is crossing into illegality and they are immune to prosecution if they correct their speech in response at the warning?'.  So we get that passed as soon as possible, and then when Valia is on trial our resolution can be brought up as evidence, even if it isn't binding law per se?  Does Valia have a lawyer or advocate?  The Friend of the True People and most of the accused brought to trial didn't have lawyer or advocates, but a few accused have had one.  I hear it mostly doesn't help much, but the magistrates at least give acknowledgment to the role."

Dia has recently been attending as many trials as she can to try to form a picture of the new regime in practice.

She nods. "I can't think of any obvious issues with that." Though she'll certainly be paying close attention to the counterarguments, what with how Delegate Iroria is an Evil murderer. "I don't know when Valia's trial is, though. She does have a lawyer but I think I'm maybe not supposed to say who it is? I didn't totally understand that part, though, maybe it would be okay."

“I don’t actually need to know any details about the lawyer, I was just going to say you should run my idea by her lawyer before we propose it on the convention floor in case the lawyer has any ideas for making it better able to help Valia or sees any problems with it.”

She nods. "I'll try and do that if I get the chance."

Thea takes a moment to think carefully.  Given Victoria's level of paranoia, Thea can't propose they talk to Theopho (who comes to mind a 'politically adept person' that is at least somewhat trustworthy).  But someone else comes to mind.

"If we are serious about getting a proposal passed on the floor... do you know how to find Sortition Delegate Korva Tallandria?  Given both her propensity towards and skill with speeches, I think she would be a good person to run the proposal by, maybe she should even be the one to actually make it?  She has an obvious interest in keeping floor speech safe for non-nobles, she can deliver the proposal with an excellent speech, and I think she has at least some political instinct, more than myself anyway."

She takes another moment to think.

"Oh right, she is on the excising diabolism committee with you." 

And Korva was unusually quiet during it... maybe Thea should have taken that as warning sign given Delegate Tallandria's political instincts.  Thea makes a mental note to pay more attention and take cues from Korva and anyone else that stands out like her... well, Thea would have formally put Valia on the list of people to take cues from, so maybe that strategy isn't actually safe.

"Yeah, and Rights and Family, but I don't actually know where she lives. I guess we could try asking around once we're done here."

"I've figured out a few of the areas of Westcrown with relatively more sortition delegates staying at them-" Thea lists off a few streets and neighborhoods. "-but I don't have a better guess than that.  I suppose I will arrive early when the convention starts back to try to have time for any important conversations."

"I can't think of anyone quite as significant as Korva we would want to talk to."  Because Victoria won't want to talk to Theopho. "But I can think of at least one other person that should be aligned with us, even if she isn't quite as amazing an orator as Delegate Tallandria, Delegate Nuria Tosta is a cleric of Desna and is staying at my monastery for the convention.  I think Nuri would want to make sure Delegates are able to speak without fear." Whether from a mob coming after them or from being accused of triggering a mob.  "I should easily be able to find time to talk to her before the convention resumes.  Is there anything you want me to ask her or tell her?  Or I could try to arrange a meeting?"  Thea assumes Victoria doesn't want to come to her monastery given the concerns she expressed about meeting Thea in a public place.

(Yeah, good assumption. "Come visit me in my 'monastery' that used to be a crematorium and also the headquarters of a cult of diabolist assassins" is the sort of thing that goes beyond "obvious trick" into "not even subtle enough to be a trick.")

"Uh, I don't know her, and I can't think of any specific questions I have for a Desnan, but I guess probably it would be good to meet with her when we talk about whether there are problems with your idea."

"Okay, I'll talk with her tonight, and if the convention starts again soon, we can plan on arriving early before the open floor starts to have an informal meeting between anyone interested in protecting our ability to speak as delegates.  If it goes on longer before starting again... I can tell Nuria where your inn is so she can come meet you, maybe come with her if she wants more input from me."

"Sure, that's fine with me. Anything else you wanted to talk about?" For a conversation theoretically about Calistria they've spent awfully little of it talking about Calistria.

"Oh right, I've gotten distracted with all this political conversation instead of trying to learn like I originally meant to do.  You mentioned you didn't really know much about lust... what about hedonism more generally?  I've read that is a Calistria thing?"

Uh. Wow. She doesn't know very much about that either. Probably she should try to learn more, if people are going to want to know about hedonism as often as they want to know about sex it would be good to have any idea what they're talking about.

"Well... if I had some free time, that I wasn't using for the convention or anything, I'd generally use it for something fun, and not randomly go make myself miserable for no reason? Like, a week or so ago, I went to see a play, that was fun, I wouldn't have instead spent that time dancing since I'm not really into dancing. But I think probably most people are like that when they have the choice, I don't think that's just a Calistria thing."

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.