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"Honored delegates,
It should be clear to all of you that I have greatly erred. I did not predict the results of Valia Wain’s speech. I did not intend for the city to be seized by unrest, nor for any of you to have cause to fear for your lives.These things were within my power to prevent. I have spent the past four days thinking about what I ought to have done to prevent them.
In the first place: I failed to protect you. I brought you here, and your safety is my responsibility. The Queen has made arrangements to improve security in the city; I have arranged for personal bodyguards to be available to any delegate who requests them. We will resurrect you as many times as it is required, if you die under any circumstances other than being duly executed for a crime. I certainly hope it won’t be necessary.
If you want to speak before the whole body you may do so anonymously. Just ask Kagiso – the tall gentleman with the blue feathers – he’ll use magic to conceal your identity before you speak. Of course, this measure won’t work in committees, and it’s come to my attention that several of you have the practice of sending secretaries and amanuenses to observe committees of which you are not yourselves members. Every committee is perfectly within their rights to expel these observers and conduct their meeting in privacy, and if you vote to do it, I’ll see that it’s done. If you don’t, I’ve taken the liberty of installing permanent secretaries in every committee to provide minutes of public sessions to all the delegates who may wish to read them. They’re lay acolytes of the church of Abadar in Absalom. You may also consult the secretaries on questions of Chelish law as it now stands, or ask them to contact me.
From this time forward, votes will be secret. We are well aware that many of you have been offering, or accepting, bribes. You may continue to do that. But no one has to vote the way you bribed them to, and attempting to by magical means verify the way another delegate voted is now prohibited.
Next, because it needs to be said: the laws of this convention are the laws of Cheliax. Just as every Chelish citizen can speak freely so long as he does not incite crimes or proselytize for infernal powers, so may all of you. If you’re worried about the potential consequences – is within my power to conceal all the proceedings of this convention from all but the most determined observers. I’ll do this if you vote in favor, though I would advise against it.
I’ve avoided giving you advice before now. This was also a mistake. I know what it is to live under Infernal rule, how difficult it is to break the habit of cringing obedience – and how little I have done to earn your trust. I feared that you would treat anything I said as an order. I hope you’ll believe me when I say that this is the last thing I wanted: if I wished to dictate the form of the constitution this convention will produce, I’m more than capable of writing it myself. I’ve chosen not to, not because I don’t think I could write better laws, but because it is not my place to do so.
All my life, I’ve fought to free Cheliax and her territories from Asmodeus. Expelling his servants is a fine and important start to this work. Nothing could make me more proud than to have twice played some small part in it. But it is not enough to replace one master with another. I don’t hate tyranny and slavery because they are of Asmodeus – I hate Asmodeus because he is the god of tyranny and slavery, and wherever they remain, the work will not be finished.
It is not a coincidence that every movement which has successfully expelled the infernal tyrant from their homes – in Galt, in Andoran, in Rahadoum, and even in Pezzack – has been Republican. Some of them have been more successful than others, but all of them understood one important principle: Hell cannot be defeated with its own weapons. It can be conquered – it only ever has been conquered – by men and women who believed that those entrusted with the awesome power of government must be accountable to those they rule.
Every reasoning being in Cheliax deserves this right. Since it would be impractical to bring them all together in this room, it’s your task to represent them. I do not suffer from the delusion that the process by which you were selected was perfect, or even that it grants the vast majority of people in Cheliax a meaningful voice in their own government. I’d like to say that it was the best I could have done in a nation so scarred by the rule of Hell. At the time, I believed it was, but I’m sure that there, too, I have erred. All I can do is apologize for my mistakes and do my best to not to repeat them, in the interests of Cheliax and all free people.
Now, I ask the same of you. No one here is fully prepared for the task before us, but if Cheliax is to be governed by the Chelish people, it cannot find some different, better Chelish people to be governed by.”
And – because a little more preparation clearly can’t hurt – he will try through many different avenues to describe to them what a Constitution is. He will read excerpts from Andoran’s constitution, and Galt’s. He will read them speeches by political theorists. He will explain it from as many angles as he and his staff, spending a month on it, were able to come up with.
