Carme's least favorite thing about being on a committee is that it makes it look more likely than not that she voted for each of these, even the silly ones. She can clarify if someone asks, but people aren't going to ask before forming opinions.

Alonso applauds, hoping that it will catch on around him.

Aspexia-Isona thinks all of this is very silly, but it's probably worth taking a break from all the fighting earlier, right?

Personal apprentices! Hear, hear!

“Most interesting” he mutters to himself, at what his peer has proposed. Figure she’d go for the Absalom model over the Nex model, of the only two governments with reasonable takes on the role of wizards.

Lisandro doesn’t think archmage Cottonet wants to be spell lord. The ‘arch has a full time job revolutionizing the economy, and won’t want another one herding all the lesser wizards. From how haphazard it was, this constitutional convention is probably a side project, sort of like how it is for Lisandro. 

Or— Coeliaris probably knows Cottonet will refuse. Is she angling for the position herself? That would explain the legitimacy speech about how she belongs here, and why she’s drawing all this attention now. He should have seen it coming, that’s the ambition of an old school Arodenite right there!

(Impressed. Feeling a bit small, she’s playing the game seriously and with a goal, while he’s just reacting. But mostly just— good for her!!)

Oh, and fixing the wizard schools. That’s important too. 

Carlota mostly wants this to end as quickly as possible so they can do censorship but they can't give the Archmage a position in their government.  "I propose that the Spell Lord must be a subject of Her Majesty. ....and I propose that all of this go through more revision in committee, truthfully. It does not seem urgent, and there is urgent work before this convention today."

Oh, someone like a certain elf who just showed off her 'being a subject of the queen' credentials? Either she planned this with the noble already, or she's just always playing two moves ahead like a proper wizard. 

Yeah, he really doesn't think this is a good time for it.

After some of the Archmage’s words this morning, he is starting to doubt that the Archmage would want to be Spell Lord (or even appreciate the symbolic gesture, since that is what it really is) so a chance for more revisions to remove the ‘Spell Lord’ idea seem would be nice.

"Duchess! While riots and worldwounds and conventions go on, the truly essential work- the work of building a better world- of teaching the next generation, of crafting spells to make a paradise- must still go on. We must still make an age of glory." 

"No improvement to the condition of Man has come but from magic, though generations of statesmen have attempted their perfection."

"As it stands today, it is not clear which acts of magic are legal or illegal. Nearly all chelish wizards are in chains of debt. A woman was justly, charged for casting fireballs within city limits. A lich occupies the sewers. I hear that a wizard's new species spreading widely in Longmarch. I have heard differing opinions as to the legality of Animate Dead for mining. An portal to the lower planes exists within the borders, or so I understand. The President is changing the face of cheliax with his new spells, and building gates across continents. The legitimacy of the orders of hellknights are on shaky ground. I could see Certainly see accepting that the spell-lord must be a subject of her Majesty, and the committee on magic would certainly be willing to, if so instructed by this house, revise these proposals. The fact is, all these passed in committee, according to all the rules and regulations set forth by the convention."

Wizards. 

(Yes, she's a wizard. But she's not a wizard.)

"These are many of them proposals to bar men from selling their services to other men at the price they both choose, and so anathema to Abadar, and generally understood to produce a world with less of the thing so regulated, not more of it." Eulàlia is a very bad Iomedaen but Abadarans often make satisfying sense. "Precisely because magic is so important they should all -" be voted against, she'd say usually, but her allies want the censorship bill not a big argument - "be revised to not do that."

The Professor's not very good at politics, is she. Well, maybe she's better at academic politics, that's a pretty different beast from this kind.

Most of these aren't specific enough to know whether anyone should vote on them, and half of them belong in education. Looks kind of power grabby to say so, though...

- oh, no, wait, the text in the air is different from what Coeliaris is saying. That's got to be some kind of procedural issue, anyway; it prevents the illiterate from fully participating or knowing what they vote for. She squints at it, trying to quickly puzzle through it.

No improvement to the condition of Man has come but from magic, she says. 

There’s a story they like to tell, back home, on one of Erastil’s holy days. The story of the time before Aroden, how Erastil and his first followers laid the groundwork. Men did not always hunt with bow and arrow. It’s the story of how someone— in some tellings, Erastil himself as a mortal— made the first one. Of the covenant with dogs, humanity’s oldest friend. Of the men and women who brought cow and horse and sheep all into the fold, who first negotiated with the animals to take humans as their keepers. 

Of the first man to clear the land of trees, the first woman to plant grain in the soil. Of how generation after generation cleared the land and worked the land, families living and working and dying. All that before humanity was ready for Aroden to be born and invent wizardry and build the age of glory. 

But no, only magic has ever done anything important. Wizards.

Does the convention want the full text of the law? She can read the full text of the law! She loves reading out loud!

“What of enterprising men with no wizardry? Surely, spell circles are not the only mark of those worthy of a metatitle?”

"It's a matter of exclusivity, isn't it? Will the Crown make more money from wizards if it's only available for wizards, wizards being as a rule a prideful breed who look down on businessmen no matter how skilled, or will it make more money by allowing those exceptional businessmen to buy them? I suppose as an intermediate position we might allow non-casting adventurers but not civilians, but I think that can safely be discarded as not worthwhile; they usually prefer to marry into the traditional nobility, except the priests, who are unlikely to be interested at all."

The Judiciary vote was scary because she didn't know what the right answers were, but this one is just confusing. She doesn't understand what half of these even actually mean.

She’s so confused. Are they trying to say she can become a noble by spending money. Or, she could if she had one more circle? She doesn’t think she really wants to but it’s baffling that they’d make the offer.

She's suspicious of metatitles. And nervous about potentially really expensive stuff going through non-education committees. Actually, now that she thinks about it, she's kind of annoyed with Coeliaris for trying to ram though education legislation without talking to her at any point; if she weren't on education that would just be politics, but she is???

Well. Guess she's heading up.

"Creating a whole class of new titles does not seem obviously within the remit of the committee on magic, and deserves more deliberation than we should spare for it this morning. I would also ask to wait to pass anything about the specifics of how the education system ought to work; it is at present deeply unclear what funds we have now or can expect to have in the future, what rules of conduct we can expect to hold teachers to, who our teachers will be, or what our schools will teach. We should not pass specialized education measures before we know anything about the basics of our school system, or the laws which schools will be subject to. As a set, then, whether these laws are good or bad depends on other laws that haven't been written yet. I agree with the Duchess of Chelam. We are in a state of near-emergency, and while important, these proposals are not urgent on a scale of days. I'd like to wait on at least the education proposals until we know to what extent we are to continue having an education system, and for now move on to more pressing business. If we must vote, I suppose I ask people to vote the proposal down, not because I know it is bad, but because it contains a roof for a house that currently has no floor. We can easily return to it when the floor is complete."

(The Metatitles are plainly selling the dignity of the country for money. But the country needs money, and she can't hiss 'with what money' at every other proposal and then be irritated at this one for having an answer, even if it's an undignified answer.)

"Most of these laws only make sense if we keep the schools open. I think we should close them, and I don't think the Magic Committee should be trying to make that decision for everyone else."

"I think ninth circle casters who purchase a meta-title should be a meta-archduke, for completeness."

Lisandro is also in favor of taking a couple more days to discuss things. So a certain wizard and his pet delegate can worm their way into the committee and participate.