"The theatre should absolutely have to go through a censorship board, it having been not very long at all since it last incited a horrifically bloody rebellion, the very one in which Valia Wain rose to infamy."

Message, Xavier. The bill permits any play that is authorized in any of Lastwall, Molthune, or Osirion or any play that has been performed without incident for more than five years across the rest of the Inner Sea.

All right, rally. "I believe you must have misread the bill, Delegate Solandra? Unless you mean to claim that every play performed in Westcrown incites murders, thefts and riots that would make you liable for thousands of gold in damages, which I would be most surprised by. The vast majority of plays do no such thing, and to say that making someone liable for damages will outlaw a thing that does not cause damages seems rather strange. A driver of a cart is liable for the damages he does, and I have not yet noticed the drovers refraining from work."

"And yet if you wish to refrain from anything that will leave you liable, you have plenty of options. Perform scripts authorized in Molthune or Lastwall; no one will sue you if you speak in a Westcrown accent. Perform old scripts from Cheliax. Perform plays that are authorized elsewhere in the Inner Sea and have run for five years without incident. If you mean to say that not one of these options - neither lack of liability, nor old plays, nor plays proven to be safe - permits the theater, than I have a great deal of trouble understanding your position."

Laia - has to get back in line? This is terrible for the poor people trying to follow the debate that she can't just answer someone who directly addressed her?

"I hope that every person in this assembly is aware of whose pretty speech in defense of theatre we just heard. Solandra spoke in Wain's defense at trial. She told the court that she had asked Wain to do public performances of her speech before a large assembled crowd, and that Wain turned her down, fearing that it would cause riots. She never apologized for this. She has not come to meet the victims of the evil she diligently tried to participate in spreading. I had hoped that it had taught her something, but I see now it taught her nothing at all.

 It is only by the grace of Valia Wain that this woman did not herself incite hundreds of murders in her eagerness to put on a good show. She and her shows are the precise threat to public order we are here to address.

In a just society, the admission this woman made at trial would have seen her hung as well, not standing up here whining that there will be oversight of her radical incitement. I still hope to see justice done, but it will be some measure of comfort if in the meantime she is no longer permitted to exercise the judgment that she has so far demonstrated. The Archduke proposes, charitably, that she misread the bill. But I think she read it just fine, and is angry that she will be prohibited from hosting dramatic readings of Valia Wain's speech as she attempted to do four days ago, and 'read plays authorized in Molthune' is an unacceptable option to her not because they use different turns of phrase in Molthune but because they will not authorize any more incitement of the kind she loves so dearly."

wow what a dick Laia is a Shelynite and hopes that one day his broken heart is mended and he can experience joy again.

He will experience joy watching her die!! It will be a beautiful show, truly.

He wants to have Delegate Solandra murdered for thinking Valia's speech was good. Getting eaten by monsters is bad but it cannot possibly be worse than living under someone like that.

Okay, but Chelish plays are awful. 

....technically it's kind of ambiguous whether you can perform a play if it's entirely memorized. Nobody say that. Now she's imagining a law that bans quoting things from memory in full generality. Ugh.

Another Galtan radical! How many of the nobility are Galtan radicals?

They’re going after theatre? Oh that is a losing fight. A country that is five years behind on the opera will be a laughingstock. Good news is the guy speaking in favor just sided with the Thrunes, against rebels lead by Iomedae. People who are actually supposed to be here, get him. 

This is about the opera, now? That’s one of the things he cares about. More importantly, a chance to lay the groundwork for one of his ideas. To the line!

She very deliberately doesn't bother to look at Solpont as she takes the podium, with a faintly disgusted look on her face, which is all he really deserves. As she stands up to it and begins to speak, she allows herself the uncommon state of looking angry.

"Count Bellumar, you are entitled to make what arguments you see fit, but there is absolutely no call nor excuse for outright lies. You know perfectly well, as does everyone else who followed events in Pezzack before or after, that the play did not cause riots or rebellion. The play was authorized by the infernal board of censors! It was performed, to excited audiences and absolutely no disturbances of the peace. The rebellion was begun not by the play, but by the unlawful arrest and threatened execution of the cast by the Thrunes. Any play might have caused that, even a reading of accounts, because it was the actors, not the words, that Pezzack found worth dying for. Will you really go so far as to say the martyrs of the Four-Day War were the causes of their own deaths, and not the infernal tyrants who attacked them?"

"I said earlier in the convention that it was wrong for Pezzack to rebel when they did, but that is a matter of tactics and believing a better result could have been achieved at a lower cost in martyr's deaths had they waited. Every one of them was a true patriot of Cheliax as it ought to be, as was everyone who worked in shadows to prepare a future rebellion, as happened in Kintargo, many of whom died for it, including several performers much like the Songbird. Anyone who thinks they did not die nobly and in a righteous cause, I would invite to do better yourself before you criticize."

"To Songbird Solandra, I will apologize; I should have noticed that omission and suggested correcting it in committee. Some form of performance license which leaves the liability on the performers - actors, singers, musicians if they use sheet music - should be added, but I fear that is too complex to make as an amendment on the floor. The text allows for the addition of further Publication Statutes and this can be the Ninth, if the convention agrees to whatever Rights or another committee proposes."

...that's a great excuse to curtsey prettily and get out of line, sounds like Banilus has it handled.

That leaves him up next! "A convenient rewriting of history, Archduchess, and no one from Pezzack to correct it for either of us. I am grieved at your implication that my words were taken as criticism of the brave people of Pezzack. I said, 'What they do not have is the right to get everyone they know killed! Do not get your people burned to ashes in Hell to make yourself feel virtuous.' One might assume from my words that I meant theirs was not a righteous cause -

- but those are your words, Archduchess. You are the one who said their cause was not righteous, when that was the argument that supported your side. You are the one who leaps to their defense now, to score a win on their censorship bill. You speak out of both sides of your mouth, trying to please everyone; but you cannot do it too often before this body before someone starts to catch on."

Oh for the love of -

She will get in line. She does not want to. But she does not want this bill to die.

Fuckers. She'll get in line, too.

You know, when they get to this kind of verbal dueling, she actually starts to have something resembling fun. The politicking is irritating and exhausting, but verbally ripping each other to shreds in front of an audience? Yeah, she kind of wishes she had brought snacks. Oh! Wait! She did. She will munch a Goodberry and offer one to Tuimfane next to her as well. Munch, munch.

(She's still taking notes on what the clans are, just also actually having any amount of fun in the process.)

Mattin hopes interrupting the fighting with a different point will win more favors than enemies.

“I do not remember exactly who said what, and Pezzack is not my fight. I instead speak of the Opera!”

”It would be a great loss to Cheliax to see it banned! Or even to rely on foreign plays or trite plays with nothing to say. Yet under this current law there is a way Opera survives.”

“Like libraries, publications from the crown are always allowed. An office of the crown could hire playwrights to produce lawful and good works.”

”When voting on this is done, perhaps the task of creating this can be given to a committee.”

Message to Laia: The alternative to this bill is the establishment of a board of censorship with about three people in it that will license at most one play a year. If the bill passes, we can add another statute for theater exclusively while you go through your reserves of old plays. If it fails, the cause is lost.

Message is not a cleric spell but she can look approvingly at Jilia some more? - she can scribble a note and send Eloi to find him with it. Do you want me to speak again? I'm happy to have this bill if it's given a little more time and thought, it just doesn't seem to have had it yet.

Polite nod, smile, take note, read more, Message: That makes perfect sense, but If this censorship bill fails we will not get a second chance, the harsh bill will pass this afternoon if this doesn't this morning. You can respond by whispering.

Do you think I should get up again? Suggest passing this as an interim measure with a plan to pass additions to it as we become aware of more issues?

A shapeless and generic humanoid figure walks up to the podium.

"His Excellency the Count of Bellumar wishes a law which would have halted the Pezzack rebellion, he says. Perhaps they acted incorrectly! Perhaps they should have awaited the soon-to-come archmages. But in the abstract, we newly liberated people of Cheliax can acknowledge that, at least in most cases, when a war is not near its start, rebellion against the Thrunes was correct! Plays may incite the population to rebel against an evil ruler, even if they would not against a good and just queen.

"But even so, he would have us enable a censorship board not merely as aggressive as that of the Asmodean regime, but more so. He wishes the state to spend its gold not on food in this famine, not on judges to enforce whatever laws we produce, not even on supporting the churches which may then empower clerics to relieve the water and healing shortages across the land. No, he wishes to spend that gold on a censorship board which would read every play closely, find any hint that it could possibly give its audience sympathy for the performers, ensure the arbitrary and Asmodean arrest of any licensed play will be calmly accepted by its audience! For this is what it would take to avoid the chance of Pezzack come again. Will the queen who gives even Wain a fair trial do such a thing? It matters not! Are the people of Cheliax slower now to revolt than they were under Asmodean rule? It matters not! His Excellency's proposal would still require a board which would ensure the Thrunes need not fear a revolt. We need not accept his sympathy for the Thrunes' inability to control us.

"This proposal, as it stands, may be sufficient or may not. Perhaps it needs a clause permitting theater", a nod to Laia, "perhaps opera," a nod to Mattin, "and perhaps many other things I know not of. Perhaps it will not hold back the likes of Vidal-Espinoza who would mislead the Chelish people for their own ends, and must be tighter. But I and any other who would remember our new queen is not one of the damned Thrunes, and never will be again, should refuse to accept a law ensuring even the Thrunes could keep our heads bowed under the weight of Asmodeus's yoke."

The Archduke sees no reason to oppose the anonymous delegate!