"...most of them. The higher nobility, yes."

"Did it go smoothly?" It didn't exactly go smoothly in Chelam but Chelam was simultaneously undergoing the approximately complete replacement of all of their leadership with new people with no context and no money.

"It did. I don't there were any issues at all, really, beyond the very minor. Most of them have retained their positions as paid servants."

"Depending on the mood of the house it may be valuable to say so tomorrow, when we vote on abolition. It was messier in many places, but I suspect that was frequently because of the - turnover and attendant lack of supervision - rather than because it is an inherently costly and damaging policy."

"I worry that's - misleading. Or, well, sufficiently misleading as to be effectively false. Menador had halfling slaves, but very few of them, and mostly working as domestic servants. It's not at all surprising that freeing them wasn't disruptive. But the bulk of slaves in Menador are orcs, and many of those have not been freed."

"I had been intending to ask the Baron Ramirez when I got a chance why, on committee, he'd opposed ending orc slavery, but then events got rather ahead of us. I have never particularly contemplated orc slavery in Menador. What would go wrong, were the convention to abolish it? - we're not doing so at this time, tomorrow's proposal is just halflings."

"The thing to understand is that all Chelish halflings were born into slavery, and have lived all their lives under Chelish rule, or occasionally in another relatively civilized land. There's no particular source of them, besides the ones who are already here having children, and all of them know how to live in Chelish lands. Menadorian orcs, on the other hand, are more complicated. Some are born into slavery. Some intermarry with free people, and eventually have free descendants, or are manumitted on a master's orders. Free people with orc ancestry are not terribly uncommon, in Menador."

"But no matter how many are integrated or freed, more orcs continually attack from the mountains. Attempts to wipe them out are frequently fatal and have never been wholly successful, and the mountain orcs have far more children than the mountains can support. So, inevitably, their stomachs lead them to raid Menadorian farmers. We can respond to this by killing indiscriminately, refusing to take surrenders, and wiping out mountain settlements whenever possible. The Iomedans don't particularly like that. We can also sometimes respond by enslaving them, when strategically and logistically feasible. Some of those slaves are kept in Menador, but many are sold in other parts of Cheliax, which is of course an industry that many of Menador's lords rely on to fund their defenses, as tax revenues are quite low. I would guess that most orc slaves in the rest of Cheliax are ultimately from Menador, although of course some of them are Varisian or have somehow made their way from Belkzen. The Iomedans at one point suggested we at least ban exports, but - banning it doesn't just remove a reason not to slaughter, it makes it slaughter very nearly the only option. Menador cannot actually support the number of orcs it captures, even if all of them were successfully turned to agriculture."

"So, banning it is effectively a ban on taking prisoners, and may lead to the deaths of many of those already living peacefully in Menador. I don't know how many will simply return to the mountains and go back to killing us next year, but - not none."

What options does that leave. "Death, slavery ...exile? I suppose there probably isn't anywhere that would take them. I can see why the Baron didn't think that a more general abolition bill would be a straightforward improvement. Do you think that there would be negative consequences to a ban on all hereditary slavery, or all slavery except as a punishment for a crime such as raiding?"

"I would guess, though not confidently, that we could do without hereditary slavery. Orcs who grow up in Chelish lands are capable of following the law often enough, and the change would be slower. 'Except as punishment for a crime' is - complicated, right, because it suggests that the cheapest thing to do is to capture the combatants and slaughter any women and children you encounter."

"You can't just let them flee?"

"I suppose we could. I think the most likely result of that is simply that they starve, or else come back as less competent raiders themselves very shortly, which I suppose then leaves one free to enslave them. But I worry that it forces more combat encounters and more deaths on both sides that could have been avoided. I'm hesitant to say that we should as a matter of policy refuse to go after settlements that we know can only sustain themselves by raiding. I don't know that it's wrong. It just seems like - the sort of thing that might sound cleaner and actually lead to much more protracted suffering."

"It very well might. Please don't take these questions in the spirit of - presuming there's some obvious solution you have all overlooked, just trying to understand the options and how the Slavery committee might be constructive instead of blindly making things worse. What would happen if you killed the raiders or took them prisoner, went back to the settlements, and offered them - well, slavery, but food and protection?"

"With a specific group of men under my direct command, including Menadorian orc members, and assuming you mean that we openly give them the option to run... I don't know. I'd expect them to almost always run, unless, perhaps, they were quite acutely starving to death. If we could adhere to stricter standards of treatment for slaves, and be utterly consistent about never killing people after they've surrendered - maybe, after enough years, it might work sometimes."

"In general? Taking noncombatants as slaves without further unnecessary atrocities in the process is - aspirational."

"That makes sense. I have some sensibility that if an option is in fact the merciful one then the people in question would be expected to prefer it, and that it seems - suspect to call it mercy if in fact they do not tend to. But - no one has very accurate expectations of anyone else, under these circumstances, so perhaps that's less true. 

What are the barriers for stricter standards of treatment for slaves? If the committee can't do more abolition it may want to do something in that direction."

"The main difficulty is enforcement, especially among the large number of other new standards that have been introduced. The Iomedans I've spoken with thought that reforms on that front were still a fairly straightforward good idea, but realistically, our ability to enforce particular standards of treatment is limited. Orc slaves have even less ability to report abuse by their lords than human commoners do. Many of them don't speak Taldane. Many have no concept of who they might report it to, and no reliable access to any such person. And, of course, they sometimes keep slaves themselves, and often have no particular sense that the things we might object to would be unexpected or wrong. I do still think it's worth trying, but - I want to think a bit about how many rules we're imposing at once, and how much enforcement we can commit to. It will have to be done very proactively."

"I made a policy that our slaves, indentures, conscripts and prisoners must be permitted to attend religious services weekly, unless there are security concerns. One of the aims was creating - ongoing external relationships through which in principle ill-treatment might eventually be reported, were there some body empowered to do anything about it. Also to save their souls, of course. That still has enforcement costs and is inconvenient to impose, of course, especially in areas that don't have enough priests."

"Right now most of the free people of Menador don't have consistent access to religious services. Half the lords don't. And even when there are enough priests that they do once again, there are concerns around safety of travel and risk of flight. I'm not saying never, or that I don't see the benefits, but - it doesn't do much good to pass a law that's impossible to follow."

"Indeed. A lot of good laws it's just too soon for - I like Ardiaca's proposal that we plan for our children to do this again in 40 years. I think they'll have a better shot at it."

"I should hope so."

"I do, in general, want to say anything I can honestly say that will help good policy pass. I hope I can help with something else. Or with this, if there's anything I can say that actually speaks to the issue. But I don't in fact have much insight into the expected effects of freeing all the halflings."

"I'm expecting tomorrow's significant fights to be over slavery, censorship, and various recriminations for the riots and for Wain's acquittal.

I think you have a valuable perspective on censorship - on how even true words can mislead very gravely and do immense harm by it - and were already planning to share it. We're hoping to have the first proposal to the floor, for that. For halfling slavery - well, I never think it does any harm to have people see that the archdukes are united in their support, but if your own example is not applicable I don't think you should pretend it is.

For the various recriminations - I think you could be positioned to see something useful come of all that, if anyone could, but I don't know what form to expect them to take. I think that is a matter where the wisdom of the Goddess, from Alexaera, sounds like defensiveness, but from Wain's victims it sounds meaningful."

"I see. I'll watch to see if I can determine what needs to be said there, if anything."

"I appreciate it." And at long last - there's a plan for censorship, there's a plan for slavery, there are a dozen plans-which-won't-survive-contact for everything else - she can make her excuses, and depart for her study, only a few hours later than usual.