Recommendations To Her Majesty Aspexia III, Queen of Cheliax:
On conscription for the purposes of the Constitutional Convention:
The conscription of Her Majesty’s subjects for work in drafting laws and constitutions should follow best practices for conscription generally, in particular: the duration of said conscription should be known in advance and publicized, and conscription should not exceed the announced duration; there should exist an avenue of appeal for conscripts to plead hardship or to request reassignment to other duties on grounds of conscience1; pregnant women should not be conscripted, nor women with a child still nursing2; and conscripted persons should be informed of the supervising authority to whom they answer, the set of persons authorized to give them orders, the scope of orders they are obliged to obey, the laws and expectations of the jurisdiction to which they are relocated in any case where those different from the laws and expectations of their jurisdiction of origin, the set of authorities to which they can report violations of the law, and the manner in which they will be tried and sentenced should they violate the law. In the event that they are killed in action or executed, their families should be promptly notified, and pensioned unless the forfeiture of their pension was a part of their sentence.
It is recommended in Lastwall that conscripts witness the trial and execution of members of their unit to avoid confusion about how the law operates and under which circumstances they will themselves be put to death, and it is recommended that trials of conscripts be carried out by a judge trained in explaining the law and its processes, and which elements of a situation were operative in his decision, to that audience.
It is not believed that following these recommendations would have prevented or substantially mitigated the incident, as only a few of the deaths in the incident are believed to have been brought about by conscripts.
On the Convention’s impact on Westcrown:
Interviews with people on the streets of Westcrown reveal a wide range of attitudes about the convention, but there are some points of consensus: as many of the nobles arrived with substantial forces under their command, friction between these forces and the locals have been considerable. A number of people alleged misconduct by delegates, or by people impersonating delegates, which is apparently commonplace and likely ought to be illegal. Alleged misconduct generally took the form of intimidation, theft by intimidation, rape by intimidation, the use of magic in exploitative and disruptive ways, and drunken and reckless misconduct.
This report recommends informing delegates that they are not above the law (see ‘best practices for conscription’). This report recommends impressing on those delegates who brought large private security forces that they will be held accountable for those forces’ conduct. This report recommends creating better avenue for the reporting of crimes where the reporter fears retaliation, including potentially via partnerships with more-trusted institutions such as Good churches.3
It is assessed that following these recommendations would likely have been insufficient to prevent the incident but might have done so and might have mitigated its harms, in that tensions in Westcrown, resentment of the visiting nobility, rumors about the visiting nobility, and suspicion of the Convention were persistently underestimated in security planning.
On the freedom of the pen:
Should Cheliax continue in its policy of permitting the mass publication of unvetted anonymous political and religious literature, the risks of such a policy may be mitigated by having observers in the streets to identify publications of a particularly inflammatory nature, by tracking and identifying radical pamphlet authors to determine whether they are in the service of Cheliax’s enemies and particularly of powers of Hell, and by creating a system by which literature that is authorized, accurate, or represents the stance of a particular institution may distinguish itself to readers.
Also recommended are investigating the ultimate aims and capabilities of pamphlet-writing liches, funding valuable and accurate writings that they may compete with unreasonable ones, and making clearer the bounds of the bar on proselytization for infernal powers, as pamphlet writers seem to be endeavoring to learn by experimentation what commentary is permissible and while the penalties for incitement are lenient in the absence of further incident and permit this experimental learning, the penalties on proselytization are not (nor does this report recommend they be made more lenient).
Cheliax may instead desire to consider other policies, of which some candidates are 1) banning pamphlet writing by liches and other entities not subjects of Her Majesty 2) banning the publication of unvetted anonymous political and religious literature, in favor of requiring works be at least one of vetted or attributed 3) requiring that published literature be, to the best knowledge of the writers, true, 4) requiring that published literature which claims to speak for or represent the views of an institution or authority permit that institution or authority a response or clarification which must be published alongside the original literature 5) instituting a censorship board instructed to permit most political and religious commentary or 6) requiring some kind of delay on mass publication of unvetted anonymous political and religious literature.
Many of these proposals would preserve most of the social and political benefits of the so-called ‘freedom of the pen’, while substantially decreasing the ease with which dangerously mistaken and misleading information circulates to the detriment of Her Majesty’s subjects and making coordinated action against the state more difficult.
It is assessed that following these recommendations would have prevented the incident, though it is noted that the Person-T-authored publication which most directly incited the incident (see Appendix A) was illegal under existing Chelish laws; prevention would have required either more clarity about the legality and likely consequences of further distributing the publication4, more enforcement of existing law, faster and more responsive surveillance of the city, or a law or policy preventing the distribution of Person G’s initial speech which inspired Person T’s (or requiring its distribution with attached commentary.)
On coordination with allied churches:
The people of Cheliax having suffered greatly for the lack of adequate religious education and religious services, Her Majesty may wish to consider proactive outreach to the organized churches whose presence would be particularly welcome in Westcrown, as she knows better than church leadership in foreign countries which needs of her people are greatest and which forms of support and investment will be most welcome.
The engagement of the soldiers of the Glorious Reclamation in Westcrown to suppress riots carries significant costs elsewhere in Cheliax, where they are employed in providing essential services, adjudicating legal disputes, and advising local authorities in Iomedaen theology and practices and in the law of Cheliax. Her Majesty may wish to prioritize reform of the Chelish army to the point where it is adequate to keep order in Her Majesty’s cities, even if only with Glorious Reclamation officers and extensive magical supervision5. Should these reforms result in expanded Chelish capacity at the Worldwound, they would free up substantial resources among Her Majesty’s allies in Lastwall and Mendev, and Her Majesty’s allies in Lastwall would be eager to contribute to reform efforts were such an ultimate result negotiated.
It is assessed that following these recommendations would likely have prevented the incident. See recommendations for the leadership of the Church in Westcrown and recommendations for the Precentors Marshal of Lastwall re: resource allocation to the Church in Westcrown.
On abolition:
The decision to end halfling slavery by a republican vote should be reviewed with a mind to the questions: had the convention concluded that slavery ought to remain permitted as it was in Old Cheliax, would the convention have been superceded? Is the decision to abolish slavery lent that much legitimacy by occurring by the vote of a hand-selected body, compared to the legitimacy it would have from having being announced eighteen months earlier with the emphatic support of the Good churches and the appointed nobility? What harms resulted from the ongoing conditions of slavery and from the uncertainty about the legal status of slavery over the last eighteen months? Further discussion is included in the recommendations section for the Supreme Elect of Andoran.
Banning the export of slaves pending the vote of the convention on abolition would have had a much smaller economic impact on Cheliax than closing the ports entirely, as well as reducing the impression among the citizenry of Westcrown that large-scale political purges there are no way to flee are imminent6. This policy is recommended despite the acknowledged cost that it would have been taken as crown influence on the abolition vote; the convention having already voted to declare slavery an Asmodean institution, the costs to the convention’s perceived legitimacy from the crown acknowledging the same seem lessened, and in any event the port closures were by many people correctly interpreted as precisely such an indication of the stance of the crown.
The port closures were announced as being a response to the heavy rains, but almost no one interviewed in Westcrown understood that to be the justification for them. It is recommended that the justifications for government decisions be true, when they are given, and that policies be announced without justification if there are sufficient disadvantages to giving the true explanation. To do otherwise encourages the habit of doubt in the government and cynicism about its stated justifications for its actions.
It is not our assessment that following these recommendations would have prevented this incident, but they would have substantially mitigated the harms.
On oversight of the convention:
Her Majesty should contemplate having staff present at the convention, separate from those of the Archmage Cotonnet, with a mandate to intervene in unlawful conduct on the convention floor or at least testify to the unlawfulness of the conduct and describe the circumstances under which the speaker can expect to face criminal charges.
Attendees of the convention express a range of views about whether they can expect merely a reprimand and incapacitation by the Archmage or an arrest in cases including proselytization for infernal powers, challenging fellow delegates to a duel or drawing weapons on them, and other forms of prohibited conduct that have happened already in the first days of the convention.
Many attendees of the convention express the conviction they will be put to death if they comment, participate or vote in a manner the Queen finds displeasing; the presence of observers who speak for the Queen might worsen this, or might mitigate it to the extent they can be observed to be exclusively putting delegates to death with good reason.
These recommendations are not expected to have prevented the incident, as had staff of Her Majesty been present at the convention they would not have arrested Person G for her speech. These recommendations might have provided clarity on the legality of Person G’s speech in the aftermath of the incident.
1: Are there warranted objections to participating in law writing on grounds of conscience? None occur to the author, but if all such appeals are found unwarranted, so be it; in the absence of any process by which legitimate objections could be heard, none will be found, and this practice never having been observed in the past it is not obvious the range of objections that might be felt.
2: The general recommendation against conscripting pregnant women is of course written in the context of military service, where it is self-evident. We make the recommendation regardless because 1) writing a constitution in Westcrown is not obviously less dangerous than service as a conscript in Lastwall, with twelve delegates dead so far 2) other humane considerations beyond safety also inveigh against conscription of pregnant women, such as the common desire of expecting mothers to go through childbirth in a safe and familiar location, the desire to use a trusted midwife or priest for assistance in childbirth, and the desire to recover from childbirth and form bonds with a newborn child without concomitant obligations. Conscripts for the convention are permitted to bring a few people with them, but for many reasons (fear of the state, competing obligations on a midwife or priest's part, inability to find trustworthy childcare in an unfamiliar city, awareness that babies rarely survive cities) many of them may not have exercised this right in a way that protected their family.
If a child is to be breastfed by her mother and not a hired nurse the relationship with the mother may not be interrupted in the first weeks after birth, and in a case where the mother cannot afford a hired nurse such interruption condemns her child to death. Deprioritizing relationships between mothers and children in favor of obliging those mothers in service to the Crown seems particularly ill-advised in Cheliax’s present state, where conceptions of the obligations of family have been greatly damaged by Asmodean influence.
3: Trust in Good churches is also extraordinarily low in Cheliax, but interviews with citizens of Westcrown found some who believed that paladins would credibly intervene on their behalf in crimes that they were not willing to tell the watch about. Queen Aspexia III’s copy of this report will include reported crimes whose reporters did not request confidentiality, though many reporters did request it.
4: For example, the pamphlet was available to take in prominent public cafes and bookstores within the city, and the proprietors of these institutions asserted that they had not believed themselves to have any duty to check the legality of materials brought to their cafes and bookstores. A subsequent decree has clarified this.
5: Lastwall ensures the reliability of persons in trusted positions with the spell Mark of Justice. If agents of the law were so marked in Westcrown at a rate of 3 per day, and subsequently betrayed their vows only infrequently, then in the last eighteen months 1500 men could have been so marked and could now be trivially supervised. A Mark also achieves many of the benefits of a Geas while having fewer of the negative associations of mind-control magic and with its conditions more straightforward to verify as a paladin placed it.
6: This is not, in candid interviews, a majority opinion among the people of Westcrown but it is reasonably commonplace, and likely also held by many who would not voice it to an interviewer.
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