So that was the trick. The liberals were distracting them earlier with those stupid arguments so they could sneak this through committee, and support half the radicals under the banner of stamping down on them. He’s suddenly furious with himself for having not seen it coming, but in Taldor it would be impossible to pass a bill in an hour no matter the importance.

"I wholeheartedly support this bill," he says, "as the best rule that could be established to crush the radical pamphleteers and moreover one that does this without retroactively declaring every bookstore in Cheliax illegal, and therefore second it."

... Well, it sounds all right. She supposes.

All these people are kind of weird. When will they stop doing stupid stuff and get rid of devils.

Nethys, let us know things.

No idea. This one makes even less sense than the other things; they... seem to just be arguing about what it's okay to write down?? Because some people are idiots and believe anything they read? Here's a hint, guys: don't have a society that leads most of your population to be desperately unhappy with their living situation, and furthermore teach them media literacy*, and you won't have this problem.

(*While Voshrelka does not precisely have the term ‘media literacy,’ the concept she has is that, when you teach creatures to read and write, you should also be teaching them the wisdom to understand and think for themselves about whether or not it’s true, or whether or not it’s motivated by manipulation, or if the idea benefits the reader in the short or in the long term, and how one would verify that information. Her opinion is essentially that wisdom should be taught with literacy, as a survival strategy. After three hundred years alive, it’s very obvious that writing is incredibly useful for sapient beings, especially ones as short lived as humans.)

Good to know what's in the law he voted for. 

He should second this one! No, he should wait to let someone more important show support by saying second. He should clap and glare at the other sortitions near him so they clap too.

Well, the Archduke of Sirmium is in favor, so he thinks he should clap too.

He got bored before the Archduke even started reading the bill but now an orc is glaring at him and clapping loudly. He claps too. Clap clap clap.

Lluïsa likes the pamphlets. And the bad ones are already unlawful.

Yet, this has clearly gone through a few rounds of drafts, and not had the seams smoothed over. She'll... trust in the Archduchess whose committee it came from? And in Enric, if he was alive for this?

This is troubling.

Is this actually the most permissive set of censorship that still decisively ends the pamphlets?  Does she care if it’s maximally permissive as long as it doesn’t get in her way?  Thea supposes she doesn’t.  Irori might care, but Irori also probably doesn’t like pamphlets filled with lies so that is a toss up.

Does it get in her way?  If she wants to take up serious writing to a large scale audience, it seems to.  But keeping it private within her monastery seems fine?  She lost track of which restrictions were conjunctive and which were interchangeable.

She’ll see if the reactionary-radical nobles (as Dia has dubbed one faction of nobles) want something even more restrictive, then vote in favor of this proposal if they do.

Also when did they have time to write and pass this… they would need to get the committee members together… thinking over that puzzle, that explains what Korva was doing this morning.

"With all due respect, Archduke, this is a half measure in a time when full measures are desperately needed. I understand that, grieved by the obvious necessity of banning pamphlets, you wanted to do as much as you could to ban nothing else. But the result is a document riddled with loopholes, when we have just discovered our courts constrained to a tenuous and legalistic role where they are obliged to exonerate anyone the law could technically be interpreted as not covering. The mad radicals can claim that they published somewhere else and brought their document across the border, or that they found it in an old book, or they can just spread it systematically in private salons, and leave the courts to prove how many people were in the room at the time. It is not sufficient. It is too complicated.

There is a much simpler approach, the one adopted by every reasonable and lawful country. Have a board of censors. Give them the responsibility for deciding what should be said. And do not permit the publication of things they do not permit. That is how we achieve peace and order."

"Count Bellumar, I am afraid you must have misread the bill. They cannot claim that, since only works approved by a board of censors by one of our allies are approved. They cannot claim they found it in an old book, because old books may not be copied if amended, such as by excerpting them. They may spread it in private salons exactly as much as they may speak in private salons, because if they do more than that, Zone of Truth will find it out, and we will hang them.

"Your proposal, meanwhile, is not sufficient. Andoran has a board of censors. Andoran forbids the publication of all it does not permit. Andoran is riddled with pamphlets, and if it has achieved peace and order that would be news to me. The same is true of Taldor, and of the princes of Ustalav. Your proposal would either fail as those lands have failed, or impose great costs on Her Majesty without giving her the funds to pay them. Make them answerable for their crimes. Those answerable may publish. Those not - may not. And if a man is wrong, his wealth will go to Her Majesty's treasury to pay for the costs of his words."

What a detailed and well-crafted proposal, Bellumar. Maybe radicals like you should take some time off polishing your Final Blades and learn the rudiments of drafting.

"A Disastrous Assembly," she grumbles so that only her cloak can hear.

I dunno, No New Taxes is a pretty tempting program.

He will message Elias. Will six thousand gold pieces be enough? How does it compare to the recent damages?

"And when, exactly, did this meeting of the Rights Committee happen? And why is this a matter for the committee on rights, when it properly belongs in the hands of safe cities? A secret meeting of the wrong group rushed through before more sober minds could create a real solution, because your aim would not stand up to comparison with a proper declaration - this is, I think, emblematic of your entire project. The convention must act decisively to end the spread of radical pamphlets - this law will not do that, and I have faith that our esteemed colleagues on the committee for safe cities will. I propose that we throw out this illegitimate bill, and leave room for a law with actual teeth to solve the problem. " 

Message: No one but a lord or rich church or a great merchant or a powerful adventurer could afford it, Your Grace, but it is not quite half of the damage done directly and a small fraction of what was lost in port closures.

grr

Tough words for someone who tried to duel a man with no sword and as soon as he asked for one, needed the archmage to intervene. 

glaring

"Your Excellency," says Archduke Xavier, looking down at him, "I wonder what I have done to offend you, that you speak in such ungentle fashion. This bill is the fair preserve of the committee on rights, for it establishes limits to the rights of the citizens of Cheliax. And it was swiftly passed by the Rights committee this morning because it was urgently needed, and we had no intention of waiting for another man to try to solve the problem when we could instead solve it ourselves."

He knows full well what he's done! Acevedo doesn't look over to Iker, because it's beneath his dignity, but this really should be obvious here.

No, Xavier wasn't in the room when that happened. He's not actually telepathic, you blithering idiot.

“I am gladdened that the Archduke Requeña i Cortes recognizes the problems we face, and seeks to solve them. This proposal clearly does not go far enough - among much else, a royal censors board must be created - but it is a good start and takes us in the right direction.”

"Marquis, with what money do you propose to fund a censor's board? I am sure Her Majesty will create one befitting the statute as soon as she has the funds with which to do so, but this is a literate country and will quickly grow restive if we wait for that. If nothing is legal, as we can see in Taldor, printers will ignore legality because their bellies and intact roofs take precedence over their loyalty to a law which has made no attempt to respect their needs. I am sure the criminality and riots that resulted could be crushed, which is Evil but often necessary, but foreign examples teach us that this does not even work. This proposal, which I of course saw in committee, both requires very little of the Crown in terms of expenses and permits the thriving businesses of booksellers, none of whom were responsible for any of the chaos of the last week, and which produce tax money to their local governments. They are also popular in their towns and if ruined there is a not-insubstantial chance that will itself incite riots, in places far from Westcrown which have not witnessed the greatest excesses of the free pen."

"In fact, in my expert opinion, I believe we could allow more latitude in certain ways without reducing the necessary effect, and have amendments to that effect to propose, but if those amendments are rejected by the floor I will then gladly support the bill as it stands; Count Bellumar's I would refuse as both unacceptably expensive and chokingly restrictive of legitimate writing."

"My proposed amendments are two, and as follows:

First, that the bond of surety required be lowered from six thousand gold to five hundred. This would put it within reach of moderately successful professionals such as existing booksellers and allow the smaller towns to produce their own books, while remaining well high enough to prevent reckless and malicious pamphleteers.

Second, that Andoran be added to the list of friendly countries with similar laws. I do not claim that they are an allied country with strong rule of law; that is not true, and if we pretended it was, a flood of nonsense, little of it vetted in any way and much of it malicious, would flow into Cheliax. But while they publish a great deal of rot, they also publish a good deal of wisdom, and five years is sufficient for the rot to be caught and prosecuted and the good preserved. They are the most successful nation at throwing off Asmodeus and we are in great need of the wisdom they have produced."

"These are separate proposals and should have separate votes, and as I said I will accept their failure if the convention disagrees and vote for the main bill."

?????

Delegate Bainilus kept insisting on keeping the bond the same in committee, and now she's trying to lower it to... still an absurd sum of money, but a smaller one? Noble politics makes no sense.

...At least now she knows that the nobles on the Rights Committee were telling the truth about the diabolist nobility who'd want to stop people from printing almost anything?

"I recognize the wisdom and experience of Archduke Bainilus, and thank her for her support," Xavier says, "but I do not support these amendments on the grounds of their radicalism. A merchant or adventurer needs some degree of sense to become rich enough to raise six thousand gold which he does not to raise five hundred, and five hundred will not pay any significant fraction of the damages of a crisis such as the Third. And Andoran possesses many virtues, but I would not consider Andorani pamphlets to be among them." Thank you so much, Jilia, you're really wonderfully helpful.

"With all due respect, Your Highness Archduke Requena i Cortez de Sirmium, I welcome the spirit in which these regulations were proposed, but I must agree that they seem wholly inadequate.

We have all seen how a handful of inflammatory pamphlets can send a city into uproar. Hundreds of people died, on the night of the third, and thousands came to lesser harm. Would you value their lives so cheaply, that you treat six thousand pounds as sufficient to make such a riot's architect answer for his crimes? A wealthy anarchic adventurer, were he so inclined, could fund a press himself, and so long as he remained carefully within the boundaries of incitement he could freely sow seeds that will one day blossom into destruction — and should he be executed for it, in the end, he could see himself returned to life in a neighboring country for a similar cost.

Moreover, even setting aside the risk of loopholes in the law, such varied exemptions seem to me to leave the men of the Watch with little to do save read through pamphlets for compliance. If they are forced to waste their time reviewing books of recipes to ensure that they don't begin halfway through to instead advocate cannibalism, as some pamphlets have seen fit to do, we will render it impossible for them to identify truly dangerous literature in time to respond. Better to require all works to be approved before publication, and thereby render it simpler, if not simple, to judge whether a work is lawful.

As for your concerns about the laws of Andoran, men who knowingly violate the law are as yet an unsolved problem, except insofar as the law sees fit to punish them; I see little reason why the same sort of men who ignore Andoran's censors to unlawfully spread radical pamphlets in Andoran would not ignore the licensing requirements of this law just the same.

Perhaps when our children reconvene for the next constitutional convention, our country may be ready for laws so loose as these. But it is not ready yet."

He would, in fact, be happy to live in a world where the judgment and character of men are sufficient to prevent rebellion. It's the sort of thing he'd have liked to build, in the Age of Glory. But they are farther from such a world now than they were when he died, and they weren't especially close to begin with.

Only nobles are speaking. He wants to change that, stand up and say something, now that he recognizes the pattern of controlling the room. But the President's speech has him all confused.

He doesn't know how book business works, or how merchant houses do. Six thousand crowns is an unfathomable amount of money, and the other options are all sort of limited? He's taking notes but he's not very fast at it and misses a lot of things.

...Yeah, he's mostly just very confused. 

"I think I speak for a lot of delegates," he says after politely waiting his turn, "When I say that the fine details of a policy's future effects seem as impossible to divine as the weather a year from now. We can guess if it'll be good or bad by experience of those who have seen and done such things, like the nobles for matters of order, the clergy of Abadar for matters of trade... But if such august persons disagree on bonds and taxes and funds, what are we to look to? I was sortioned, and in many ways, I'm not fit to stand here among the learned, but as one fellow soritioned delegate said on the first day- We are the people of cheliax. We are the people these laws shall rule. The cities don't exist without farms to feed them, just as farms don't exist without soldiers to protect them. But the farms still matter, and so do the farmers. So I beg pardon, and know that oversimplifying a thing makes it nonsense, but I ask those proposing laws to please explain to me and all the other barely lettered or unlettered farmers what this proposed law actually means for us in our little villages. It won't stop us from sending letters? Will it make getting the news or holy books more expensive? Will I have to worry about posting a wedding invitation in the village square without the proper stamps?"

Ravounel’s proposals are just insanity. She’s an archduchess so he can’t say it but looking around the room it’s obvious how many recognize that. Jonatan is being more reasonable.

If this proposal is a starting point to be negotiated down from, rather than up, he seriously misjudged speaking in support. 

Ruben, welcome to the uppity peasants willing to speak. This is what going to a cafe does, you’re one of us now. 

Lluïsa likes Delegate Oriol (the other one, no relation).

Are peasants just all secretly really great?

To the front.

"The rights committee met as soon as humanly possible because the matter facing this city deserves no less than the swiftest possible response, and because this is a decision to limit and narrow a basic right - that of freedom of the pen. This law will halt nearly all domestic publishing of new works for quite some time. It will most likely utterly cripple anyone's ability to make political arguments pertaining to the government of Cheliax of any kind, and hit many other things with it, until a censorship board can devise more careful guidelines. If I am wrong, I expect it to be because the Church of Abadar has more love for political debate than I imagine. This is harsh, but it is necessary; the need to prevent politically motivated lies is too great."

"It allows foreign and existing books because Cheliax contains quite literally millions of existing books, together very likely worth millions of gold in value. Many foreign books describing true history, the teachings of the good gods, or simple acts of human kindness, were once smuggled into Cheliax by brave men and women who were not just killed, but maledicted when the government discovered their activities. In the past eighteen months, an even larger number of wizards have diligently copied a far larger number of foreign books for the people of Cheliax to learn from. In many places, these books are the only window that the common people have into any way of life that is not built on evil. While the restored nobles and the foreign priests are wonderful, almost no common people have the privilege of speaking to one for more than a few moments. It was from a foreign book that I first learned that sometimes men in other nations love their children, and are unashamed to say so openly. So rare is this, in Egorian of today, that if I had not read it in a book, I would not know it. But I do know it, because someone thought to preserve an old book."

"We do not have a board of censors, and may or may not be able to staff and train one this year. We do hope to have one in the future, and have left a place for them in the law. But to ban all books we already have until they pass such a board would be to halt a huge portion of the moral development of the people of Cheliax, not for a moment, but for years. It would be to deprive many people of their most cherished possessions - possessions that their dear friends gave up their eternity to give to them, so important are the words contained inside. And it would be to ruin a huge number of honest businessmen, at a time when far too many men are already out of work."

"This law will end the spread ephemera, periodicals, and pamphlets - all of them - immediately. None of them will return, after the first crop of unlicensed pamphleteers are likely jailed en masse, unless a man of very much wealth indeed stakes his life on a particular pamphlet being safe. If he is wrong, or willingly negligent? He will die for it, as he would die for any other crime. Others will, I imagine, learn to be more careful in the future. But it will not deprive of us of the right to share that information we have about what life is like in places like Lastwall and Osirion, which the people of Cheliax desperately thirst for, and cannot obtain any other way. To lose that information would be a massive step backwards, towards the evil we were raised with."

"In answer to Delegate Oriol's excellent question: this law does not ban letters, invitations to events, or materials not distributed to more than one person. It will, as a matter of fact, make the news from anything besides a private letter more expensive to obtain, and probably arrive later, in exchange for likely making the news more reliable when it arrives. It will not make it harder to obtain holy books, or any other book which exists legally in the same form in another civilized and lawful allied country. Perhaps most importantly, you will not need to hold your breath while law enforcement ransacks your home, waiting to see whether they declare that a book you purchased legally last year is now illegal, which I know was a common experience for many of us before. Unless a work is specifically banned, such as the Disciplines, you cannot be punished for merely for keeping it in your home. Nor can you be punished for possessing an illegally copied work. The wizard who copied it may be liable for damages up to and including death, but anyone who merely owns an unmarked book cannot be. It will end the dangerous lies, but as long as you don't publish unauthorized books or pamphlets within your community, it will do so without placing the peasantry in any danger."

.....aaaaaaaah, please let that have been helpful.

The part about men loving their children really hurts, unexpectedly, but all in all Tallandria is quite the persuasive orator.

"Well said, Delegate Tallandria," he says firmly.

Clapclapclapclapclap.

Loud claps. Damn, she's a good speaker.

The convention should vote to dissolve all the cities and let everyone in them go home. Enric remembers only a bit about his parents and more about the loose coalition of grandparents, aunts and uncles, and ambiguous relations that actually raised him. But he knows they’re all of them family and love each other. How could it even be possible to make so many people forget that, and the only one who says it is a book. A book! What did they do to people? 

...okay, he guesses he'll hire the Inquirer as a scribe if the fellow's put out of work.

Ha! The girl thinks those books about happy families are real. Wants to protect the smuggled romances and adventure stories too. That’s all good nonsense, like kids stories about cute little animals in paradise. Pathetic. Libraries are for making wizards, and not much else. 

It is not the first time she has made the observation but the sortitions really turned out remarkably well. The natural assumption would be that they were cheating but if they were competent to find people like Oriol and Tallandria in order to pretend they found them randomly the entire government would look remarkably different.

Maybe he will have a heart attack and die. That wouldn't be his fault, and he'd be dead. ....nnnno then he'll still go to Hell. Fuck. Fuck.

"Fine oratory from a child of Egorian," Berenguer-Aspex says. "But let us ask if we want to preserve Chelish books. A handful of fairy-tales gotten from smugglers on the one hand, and on the other - on the other evey book printed in Cheliax for the past eighty years, all filled with all the lies of the Thrunes. The Disciplines. Books of "religion" for every devil in Hell. Their lying false histories. Stories of murder and deceit that exalt every sin the gods condemn. All these poison the minds of the people, and the people, as we saw less than a week ago, are fools who can be invited to riot with a few lying quotes. Legalize good books, well enough, and let the schools have their libraries. To the pyre with everything copied under the Thrunes."

"You say that this will end the crimes of the pen, and ask that we vote for it thereby. It will not, and as such voting for it would be a grave abandonment of the responsibility of this convention towards the stewardship of Cheliax. When we must accept the decision of every other censorship board in the inner sea, we are committed to permitting the worst of their excesses - no man can in truth speak of the wisdom of the censors of Absalom, for there men may advocate for the worship of anarchic powers. If dozens of legal publishers exist, each with their own standard and no oversight, then illegal publications will be free to pass illicitly into the hands of her majesty's subjects, buried under the weight of other works, until their damage is done. And if we legalize all works from before the convention, then every anarchic work created under the Thrunes that we have not explicitly banned may continue to spread throughout the country. Now is not a time, as Delegate Tellandria suggests, to tread lightly around the core freedom of the pen. No, His Grace has the right of it - now is the time to pull this ill-wrought freedom out by the roots."

Nethys, let us know. She can't speak again, she doesn't think - though part of her really wants to ask if he really means to claim that men all over the world only love their children in fairy tales - but she thinks the Archduke knows what he's doing, and can see this through. Hopes.

(The saga was not a good book, of course, not in the way that he means. There's a sense in which it could not have meant anything to her if it was. She hopes, though she is sure she'll never see it again, that a copy exists somewhere in Absalom.)

Almost everywhere men may advocate for the worship of (at least some) anarchic powers. Desna's an anarchic power. Osirion and Molthune are practically alone there, Molthune because of the internal revolt and Osirion because they seem to have been under the impression that the way to be maximally Lawful was to abhor all things of Chaos. Lastwall has a week of lessons and prayers for conscripts concerning Desna because if She picks someone once they're introduced to her worship, free Good cleric Iomedae's not paying for. 

She isn't going to say any of this, even though she put a lot of work into learning the censorship regimes of many different countries for this floor debate. She owes Xavier a favor which will not be hard to repay, and she stays out of it entirely, and it still passes and no one gets the impression she is a many-tentacled monstrosity steering the whole convention, much less that the Geryon cultist pamphlets had inside info. 

Acevedo... realizes Milani and Desna are anarchic powers, doesn't he?

Gotcha.

"You know, Your Excellency, I believe we have priests of Milani and Cayden Cailean in the audience," Joan-Pau says drily, "to say nothing of great Desna. Will you pry the Virtuous Placards from every tavern wall in Cheliax, burn the Eight Scrolls, throw the Light of Hope onto the blaze yourself? I think the worshippers of every Chaotic Good god in Cheliax would be very interested in hearing that this is what your proposal means, when you say that permitting the worship of anarchic powers is sufficient to dismiss a proposal from consideration. The man who pulls a rose out by the roots will tear his hand, and the man who tries to swat a wasp will have a worse day than that. Before you commit Her Majesty to a war with a third of her clergy, do kindly tell us all that this is what you propose."

Of course the oathbreaker would defend, not just the worthy anarchic gods, but the unworthy as well.

Ha! Look who just made a mistake and is losing at politics? The noble who could be eaten by three halflings, that’s who. Hope Acevedo enjoys a smug half orc sneering at him every time this happens. 

The Calistrians were invited, why are you not listing - oh, okay, fine, the wasp reference will do, but still.

Go, Noble Fucker!

....Ardiaca. His name is Ardiaca. She's gotta stop doing that. It's not even remotely helpful as a description.

Why is the interesting star-god Chaotic, anyway? Anyway hurrah for (sigh) Anarchic Powers.

(Internally.)

Oh oops he didn't actually mean to ban Milani. He may not condone her methods, of course, but in her own way she has done more than any saint save the Inheritor in casting out the usurpers of Aroden's legacy. 

"Your Excellency, Milani and Desna's faith are not my concerns here. I have always supported the work of the Everbloom in casting down the servants of hell. But her church is not my concern with Absalom, for it is already legal to advocate for those anarchic powers compatible with civilization in Lastwall. But in Absalom, they do not limit themselves thereby - there it is entirely legal to freely proclaim one's service to the likes of Calistria and Norgorber, and while the latter is thankfully already banned from this nation, we have already seen the dangers Calistria's venom seeks to do to this convention firsthand from Victoria Ferrer. If we must be stung by a wasp to avoid swallowing poison, so be it, and all future generations will thank us for it. And those are not the only dangers of Absalom's press either."

"Oh, I certainly support keeping the worship of Norgorber outlawed." Fine line here. "But Norgorber is already illegal to advocate for by order of the Queen, and Her commands supercede this bill. I certainly did not think that His Highness legalized the worship of Norgorber no more than it legalized that of Asmodeus, no more than it legalized calling for murder. Let the laws already written handle that which we know is illegal - unless you do propose to obviate Our Queen's commands with your legislation, and outlaw Cayden Cailean?" 

It's incredibly unsurprising that the Evil nobles think it should be illegal to advocate for the goddess who says that they shouldn't be allowed to just hurt anyone they want for being weaker than them, and even less surprising that they're specifically going after her when she just gave a speech about how they shouldn't be allowed to get away with things like that. That doesn't, actually, make it any less annoying.

Calistria, I don't know who Delegate Curto has hurt, but I'm sure it has to be someone. Please, whoever it is, help them realize that no matter how strong he is that doesn't make it right, realize they don't have to accept what happened, find the courage they need to take vengeance on him, protect them from anyone who'd say afterwards they should have just let him keep doing it. —I'm sorry I can't do it myself right now, I'm pretty sure if I try the guards watching me will just have me killed and the archmage will bring him back and it won't even help. But I don't want him to get away with it even if I can't stop him.

"Virtuous churches committee is working on a list of gods. Which ones to promulgate and which ones to ban. Or leaving some alone without banning or promulgating them. We can debate the specific gods once the committee is ready."

If Acevedo had his way, he probably would put some limitations on the prosletization of Cayden. While the lucky drunk is not wholly devoid of virtue, his example and priests often inspire men to unwise deeds. But it is not the fight he wants to have now, and he's far more annoyed of Count Ardiaca dodging the problems of his law.

"This sophistry is beneath us both, your excellency. I would outlaw Calistria, as all civilized lands ought, and her followers. My objection to the list is not the inclusion of Lastwall or Osirion, but that it seeks to forbid us to do better than any of the other nations that fall short of their standards."

He's particularly suspicious of the Thuvian city states, but he's been avoiding bringing them up since he doesn't know as much about them as he does Absalom and he doesn't want to give Ardiaca another technicality to dance around.

He's been reading through the section on censorship, and it's quite long. This might work?

"Gentles! I am but a simple peasant, but it does not make sense to me to ban the good pamphlets of Westcrown- the truthful interviews that merely educate the masses, for instance- in favor of the products of foreign book merchants."

"Sorry, did I hear that right, you want to ban whorehouses? Take that nonsense back to Osirion where it belongs."

But he was about to tear Acevedo a new asshole with his words! Fine, fine, queue up...

Hey, there's a third political opinion! Don't do that! Jordi isn't in line but he can give some positive sounding muttering about taking that nonsense back to Osirion.

Three is enough political opinions, right?

Better than zero, but keep working. Now that you have opinions, your next assignment is to vote for one of them.

But... none of his opinions are up for a vote? Maybe when it seems like they're about to call a vote, he can have an opinion on it real quick.

Okay, she's actually going to get in line again about the foreign vs domestic books thing. It's actually important that people understand that the money will be going to Chelish businesses, not foreign ones.

He's also queued up, but behind Ardiaca. If there was a better argument in favor of being rid of the sortition delegates he has yet to encounter it.

Queue queue queue queue queue "If you wish to outlaw Calistria without consulting the Committee on Virtuous Churches, than say so plainly; propose it as a public-safety measure and put it to a vote. If your objection to the legislation is simply that it permits books to be published in lands that permit her worship and copied in Cheliax - why, then, be opposed to it. I'll watch the vote with great interest." And watch you get assassinated with greater interest! "But for myself this is hardly a reason to put every bookseller in Cheliax out of work, in spite of His Grace the Duke of Tendrui's opinions on the matter."

Dolca gets in line behind Acevedo. She's wearing one of her more revealing dresses.

"My objection to this bill is that it allows for a repeat of the bloody third. When it permits publishing the preaching of rabble-rousers like Ferrer, who spurred the very madness of that night, then no amount of high minded appeals to the bottom line of merchants will make it acceptable - such publications have no place in the empire, no matter what nonsense faraway Absalom permits."

He's also not entirely certain he'll survive Calistria's ire, but if that's the price he has to pay to keep her from tearing Cheliax down he will go to Axis with a smile.

"The bill does not allow a repeat of the bloody third, your Excellency, and if you can find a man worth six thousand gold who will publish rabble-rousing after this bill passes I will walk from Ostenso to Laekastel barefoot." Archduke status: club!

Enric does not care about freedom of the pen, but he's already lost one committee. Didn't want to let them step on another, leave banning gods to Virtuous Churches. He set up that Joan Arcadia noble to get the last word too. Hope the guy is an ally not an enemy, hard to keep track of the factions. Joan is the one who took the judiciary committee idea, but he did it to try to stop the– the argument with Valia. So probably a good one?

Being a radical who says things on the floor is hard. 

Dolça struts to the podium. "I would be sad to see whoredom banned, for there are more than fifty men in this room that I have befriended, here and in the royal palace, and I would be sorrowful to not be able to meet with them again!"

Blackmail! Crude, but effective.

Oh hey it's someone with the same political opinion as him! That means it's time to... form a caucus? Yeah, just walk up after the convention and ask, 'hey, how about you and me form a caucus, if you know what I mean?'

No. Why. I cannot stop you, in the spirit of free political association, but.

He wants to castigate the liberals for sinking this low in their desperation, but he is in fact pretty sure they're more dignified than this and had nothing to do with it; this strikes him as more of the consequence of encouraging the commons to get ideas. A pox on the galtan archmage.

Yup, you've got it. Blackmail is just crude.

Sigh.

"Delegate Ferrer actually recognized in committee that she should not be allowed to publish anything, as she lacks the judgement and experience necessary to determine which works are dangerous, and that indeed it is a strength of this law that it will prevent others like her from doing so."

"Beyond that, I would like to clarify for anyone who is concerned about enriching foreign publishers at the expense of our own: this bill does not do so. Generally speaking, a Chelish bookseller will buy one copy of an approved foreign work. From this original, he can make and sell as many copies as he wishes; therefore, almost all the profits go to the Chelish bookseller, who in turn goes on to buy things from the rest of his community. I am not an expert in finance, but if the economic effects do make the difference for anyone, I would ask if any of the clerics of Abadar among us are willing to estimate the loss of value we would incur by burning every book in Cheliax which is more than two years old, and of throwing every existing bookseller out of business."

Send to Silvia, write down the rant while dodging the flying spittle and tears of wrath, get it edited and published someone actually at the convention can do that much faster than he can.

That proposal was so long and complex that Feather gave up halfway through. Probably she could figure out, given a wtitten copy, what it would permit, but she's expected to vote on it? And there are proposed amendments to vote on, too? .

..and competing proposals, and long arguments about possible future effects, complete with multiple people saying they don't understand what it will do, and others saying somebody else misunderstood what it would do, and...

Didn't someone say simplicity was a virtue, and the meaning of a law should be obvious to the people who live by it? And that Asmodean law was only complex because it was Evil? She's sure she heard that before somewhere.

Anyway, she is Very Firmly Abstaining from this one.

(Are they still going to redo all this in forty years? Feather is optimistic about understanding Chelish humans forty years from now!)

Overall, the arguments are very helpful, more data on the noble factions!  Also, Victoria is apparently on the rights committee, so Dia can track her down and get her to say what Jillia and Xavier said there.  It will help her triangulate which opinions are real and which are intended to shift the fringes of the conversation to make their allies’ proposals seem moderate.  (Dia still isn’t sure if Jillia is trying to shift the fringes to aide her allies proposals in favor of moderate censorship, proposing her own real opinions, or trying to sabotage the moderate censorship).

Dia is aware the reactionary-radical noble faction will probably accidentally (or on purpose) ban all written communication by non-nobles if this “moderate” censorship is beaten… but doesn’t see the big deal (for the abbey), they’ll just ignore that shit anyway.  It might actually be beneficial to the abbey, it would get Thea to give up on treating mortal society’s shit as part of her Lawfulness.  Well, maybe Thea should step up aiding beggars and such, Irori can empower True Neutral if it actually does cost Thea her Law. It feels stupid that this of all things would risk Thea’s Lawfulness, the Sisterhood of Eiseth made lawful even murdering random beggars and engaged in constant simmering conflict with the more mainstream Asmodean institutions!

She figured anything stopping the riots would be good, but Oriol has a better point, these nobles might ban completely innocent writing of normal people and not care because they know they are above the law in the first place.  And the riots take place in the cities, so as soon as she’s back home she and everyone she cares about is safe… unless the nobles start trying to end writing altogether.  So she’ll vote against anything and everything that might give the nobles the right to interfere with her everyday life.  Lucky for her the vote is secret now, that is the only thing that might stop her.

He’s lost track of what the Lawful and Good options are.  How much will abstaining be penalized?  

Good thing he has someone else telling him how to vote!

How is this going? He can't tell. Some of the backwards nobles are sounding deranged, but to different ears so was the Archduchess, though he's pretty sure she was doing that on purpose. (Both her amendments will fail. That part's obvious.) Mister Oriol's question wouldn't get a good answer from the blunt instrument 'Law and Order' is going to try, which is probably significantly helpful. Hmm. Maybe he should put them on the spot about it? No, they might change the proposal.

Raimon's not going to assassinate a guy for talking shit. Some guys get off on talking shit, it's whatever. But he's watching. With a politely incredulous expression.

Laia wants to get in line to talk about censorship actually, but she's also chairing Virtuous Churches so she can plan to say something about that too if they're still on that topic when she gets to the podium.

Ricard would rather like to be able to keep reading foreign books.  Xavier seems to know his stuff about riots, so he trusts him to know how much literature can be allowed without causing another Third.

Didac gets in line, as instructed. His wife shifts seamlessly into talking via [Message]

(Carlota has Tallandria's comments scribed and will submit them to Westcrown's first Publishing House, the existence of which she spent this weekend negotiating with a grumpy nervous merchant who disapproved of the unbounded liability but approved of the 'you will have a monopoly on a new industry'. Greed won out eventually.)

In an uncharacteristic display of political awareness, Lluïsa realized this was beyond her around the time the Archduchess proposed amendments to her own bill, and is just listening anxiously.

????????????????

It's still mad over people angrily denouncing its pet Mephistophelean as a Mephistophelean earlier. That is not how you deprogram recovering Mephistopheleans!

But over the current debate, it's ????????????????.

Though mortals should probably ban Asmodeus's holy book, it's dreck but it's dreck that sends people to Hell. Then again if you have a really principled free speech standard... well, in no event do mortals have it easy.

She’s scared out of her wits, but she got the Archmage’s assistant to disguise her, and she really doesn’t want to have people arresting her neighbors over a wedding invitation.

“I think, I think everyone is upset about the third.  I thought I was going to die myself, but I made it out of town okay.  But it’s a city problem, so everyone living outside the cities should think twice about any law that’s going to affect you in countryside once you go back when this convention ends.  Do you want to be harassed by the law over a wedding invitation that mentioned Erastil?  And that’s a risk with the current proposal, which apparently some are complaining is too loose!  Just, just…”

She loses her nerve for a moment and has to take a few deep breaths.

“I haven’t ever known the law to show restraint, at least before Valia Wain’s trial.  I don’t know how I feel about that.  So I don’t trust this proposal, but if it’s more lenient than what others are asking for… I don’t know.  Could we hear the current proposal read off slowly one more time before the vote?”

She realizes she didn’t really think about this proposal as a compromise with even worse ideas.  Why can’t they just ban the bad pamphlets and let everything else go unchanged?

After a few moments of silence, she hurries off the stage, embarrassed.  At least no one will know who she was.

"Of course," he says, voice smooth and calm and reassuring, and reads it off point-by-point with short explanations in simple words of what it all means.

She feels a lot better after hearing it like that, she was confused by some of the terms and thought some of them had to be combined instead of each being separate options.  If it’s this or something worse she guesses she’ll take this. And the riots were pretty terrible also.

"I have many remaining reservations about this bill but the most important one that we can address here on the floor is that the penalties are not strict enough. If a man makes a broadsheet which falsely names you, Archduke, as a diabolist and a traitor, and posts it in the city square, he spends thirty days in prison where he is fed, and pays a fine of a single gold piece. That is outrageously insufficient."

"It is certainly a matter of high priority to institute laws against slander and libel, Your Excellency, which would impose a harsher penalty for such deeds, but I did not consider this as part of the task of this bill and so left it for a topic of its own, when it could receive the full consideration such a weighty matter deserves."

"Ladies and gentlemen, this bill outlaws the theater.

"There is absolutely no production of play or opera that is immune to the assertion that it has social commentary if it has words in it at all, and rather few productions of wordless music or dance that meet that standard. Wizards may be patrons of the arts but seldom are they practiced at identifying all the themes of a work and guessing how the public will receive it, and then of course a play is not just the script - what wizard will want to sign off on even an innocuous play if he fears the understudy for the villain may raise his eyebrow in just the wrong way and leave him ruined?

"Theater is an entertainment for the full range of people in a city and must be presented in the local dialect. Can we understand our Molthuni and Lastwaller friends when they speak? Yes, of course! Is it as easy as understanding Chelish in the accent of your own city? Is the theater any good to you if you can't make out half the words because I had to read off the lines as they were written in Sothis, not even permitted to swap out Osiriani words that may creep into a Taldane script?

The sixth statute cannot help the theater at all, as it has no affordance for performance. The fifth? Well, maybe someone would watch me read out the Queen's decrees! Maybe I should! But I fear it would pall quickly. The seventh - a stage is not a library. Eighth? If her majesty wants a command performance, perhaps! I'd be honored! But I must sell tickets at times when she has other demands on her schedule!

In Infernal Cheliax the censors were harsh and stifling, but they existed, and playwrights and actors like myself knew how to navigate them. If this law only authorized some person or some sort of person to serve in that role - other than the petty censors it hopes to make of every laundry wizard who has no training in literature or art - perhaps it would be a good law. But friends, I speak of the theater because that is what I know. There are things I do not know, and in my ignorance I have likely missed other good and essential things that this law would ban. Someone thought of the booksellers, but no one has thought of the actors: what else have they missed? If you must ban pamphlets in Westcrown on an emergency basis please don't let me stop you! That can be done narrowly and instantly, with a broader censorship bill given time and attention and staffing before it kills a dozen fields like my own.

Thank you."

Oh dear, Shensen will never forgive her. Even her version would have had trouble.

Well, that's a disaster nobody anticipated.

"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!

I think we're past that point, but I thank you kindly for the offer.

"The Delegate Solandra spoke to a question that I imagine many of us have, which is - why not just do a censorship board? Many countries have a censorship board. It is widely believed to work tolerably. It is reassuringly simple. This bill is more complicated, and its complexity means it might have oversights, and for this reason Delegate Solandra bids you to kill it, and speaks in favor by comparison of the censorship boards she is familiar with from Asmodean days.

I think that would be one of the most devastating mistakes this body could make. Countries with censorship boards tend to produce one of two results. One is that the boards are ignored and forbidden literature circulates widely. This is the way of things in Andoran or in Absalom; the state made a law it lacked the strength to enforce, and so the law is merrily ignored. If we err in that way it will be catastrophic. We have seen already the harm done by widely circulating pamphlets; if they are known to be illegal, and the state known to lack the strength to stop them, it will be much worse. 

The other result is that the state does have the strength to maintain the rule of law, and underground writings circulate very rarely, and at very real risk. The cost is merely - everything. Every cookbook that would have been written, but for the delays and costs imposed by needing to go to the nearest city with a censorship apparatus and interact with it, something most people will fear to do. Every book of woodworking lessons compiled by a particularly diligent student, which they want to share with their fellow students, which they must instead submit to a board that knows nothing about woodworking and whose members gain nothing by saying 'yes' instead of 'no', or by answering promptly. Every old book that someone would treasure but that no one would bother with the expense of shepherding through a censorship process, so limited would its readership be. 

And every thought that people believe the government might not want them to think. In Chelam the greatest challenge I have faced has been learning what the problems in Chelam are. People do not want to tell me. They are afraid of me. If I had a censorship board, they would not submit to it any accounts of the flaws of my rule of Chelam. If their petitions are permitted by law, as this law provides for, maybe they will make them. Probably not, though, not until years have passed. But if they need only submit to a publishing house, of which there are many, of which not all are controlled by nobles or by the state - if the publishing house will take anonymous letters - there are complaints they will make, to an independent body, that they will not make directly to their government. 

There must be oversight to ensure that incitement, slander, lies and delusions are not widely circulated. But it is best if not all of that oversight is conducted by the state, because people are terrified of the state. And - perhaps more important - because the state is busy. Her Majesty does not have enough honorable and decent men to carry out her will in Westcrown, let alone nationwide. How many of them should she reassign to a censorship board? It would take hundreds, to keep up with all the people of Cheliax want to say. That will not happen. Instead a few people will be appointed, and they will accept bribes to review things that are very important, and almost nothing else will be approved. The damage will be invisible, but it will be everywhere. 

The task before us is a very difficult one. We absolutely must end the horrendous situation in Westcrown. The freedom of the pen was a grave mistake and has proven a great evil, even in the eyes of those who started out with the highest of hopes for it. But we cannot take the road of adopting Lastwall's approach to censorship or Old Cheliax's, because we do not have hundreds of trained Lawful Good administrators to implement it. We cannot take the road of adopting Absalom's approach to censorship, as it only drives the pamphleteers underground, and turns thousands of lawful men into fugitives from the law. We have to chart our own course. This is such a course: to demand accountability for all written works, but to open five different doors by which that accountability may be demonstrated. A man can be liable for his words, or find someone else willing to be, or show that some trustworthy censorship board has approved his words, or show that they have long endured without causing harm, or keep them private. Enough avenues that that which can be published will be published, and a mess of underground publications will not be encouraged; few enough avenues that none of them will permit Valia Wain's speech."

Aaaand this part tips her hand but if it gets the bill through: 

"I had the pleasure of speaking this Starday with the wise and well-regarded Llorenç Casals, a merchant of Corentyn who relocated his business to the capital when it was liberated, and who mentioned his intent to open Westcrown's first publishing house should censorship laws enable such a thing. I will personally see to it that the best of the Chelish opera and theatre gets prompt and fair consideration from the publishing house, though of course Mssr. Casals abhors the riots and everything to do with them, and would never approve incendiary performances; were Valia's speech brought to him the only thing his house would print would be a prompt and thorough explanation of its errors and evils, and a reminder to the Chelish people that they are damned by riotous rebellion against their Good government.

Should there be subsequent adjustments to this bill? Assuredly. The Archduke Requena and the Archduchess Bainlius are good and diligent people, but they cannot have thought of everything. But I cannot think of a better foundation for Cheliax's censorship laws than this one, and a law is urgently desperately needed. Vote for this, and then as we witness its effects we will improve on it."

Well, she'll clap for the duchess, at least, at the part about the amendments, in case anyone's watching her for cues.

Fuckers. Fuckers. Fuckers. Her heart is in her throat.

Nethys, let us know.

"All right, I’m going to explain this one more time for everyone who's still confused, and then I promise I'll be done. Last week, Valia Wain gave an ill-considered speech, in this hall, intending to call for repentance. Someone else copied and butchered those words, and gave people the impression that they must rise up and burn the devil, not where they had found him, but anywhere that anyone thought he might be. As a result, more than three hundred people died, and much of the city was burnt."

"Under the proposed law, if anyone were to, say, copy down the words 'to the pyre with every book copied under the Thrunes', sign the speaker's name to them, and add inflammatory commentary about stealing these books from private homes and burning them in large piles within a city not noted for its fire resistance - he may do so, for the sake of remembering who he heard say what, and remembering his own thoughts on the matter. But he may not display it, read it aloud in public, or distribute copies, unless he finds a man with six thousand gold pieces who is willing to stake his fortune and his life on the pamphlet being safe to distribute. If he cannot find such a man, he must take it to the censorship board of Lastwall, Osirion, or Molthune - those are his only options, if he wishes to see the pamphlet in print before five years have passed. If they will not allow it, that's it. He's out of luck, and the city, happily, stays unburnt."

"The reason the law is long and complicated is partly that it lays out penalties, but mostly that it says that to prevent that butcher from copying those words, we don't also need to go through your homes and local shops and burn all the words that we know haven't caused riots. We don't need to ban private correspondence, business records, or wedding invitations, either. We don’t need to keep you from reading books from countries with excellent, longstanding censorship boards. I’m not going to stand here and lie to you that the bill doesn’t inconvenience anyone; there would be no point in passing one that did nothing. Many writers and artists will be inconvenienced, until a board of censors can be created to allow new works without a bond, which we will have, when we can. But we are the most literate country in the world, and no human censorship board can possibly work through the backlog of books we now have without taking many, many years about it. This bill says that while we fully intend that Cheliax should eventually have such a board, those things you already have will not be taken from you while you wait for them to do their jobs."

“Some in this room take issue with this, and say that the devil is yet hiding among us - and so we should go through and burn your grandmother's recipes, your child's sewing primer, the letters you sent to your lover while shivering at the worldwound, and every novel and manual you own. Not because they found the devil in any of them, or even because they intend to look for him there. Just because they know the devil hides in some books, as Valia knew he hides in some men, and it is tempting to call to burn them all in an effort to be sure we get the devil with them."

"But while 'burn all books not approved by newly appointed Chelish censors' certainly takes fewer words to say, the Archduke Requeña and the Duchess de Chelam rightly point out that it is a much worse thing to say. I think we do not need to burn your property in the name of preventing further property damage. I think we do not need to ban you from writing letters to your family while you are at the convention. I think we do not need to force you to prove to the watch that the book of Shelynite poetry you bought last year is not secretly Asmodean propaganda, or that your child's sewing primer is not, particularly, associated with hell. If you find the devil in your child's sewing primer, by all means, be a patriot and send him to the Queen. I am certain none of you need the watch's help to subdue a piece of paper, and will win the fight easily when you do find him."

"But for tonight, I think it would be tragic, but also just - really, incredibly, unspeakably embarrassing, for absolutely everyone here, if someone were to copy the words 'to the pyre with every book copied under the Thrunes', butcher their context, distribute them throughout Westcrown, or throughout another city without reclamation troops and convenient storms, and that city were to turn to rampant arson in another ill-considered attempt to root out the devil - not where we found him, but where we thought he might be, reasoning that burning absolutely everything to ash must be enough to catch him. So let's not! Let's skip that. Let's make doing that illegal, right now, and not watch another city burn."

"If you would like to keep your letters, your sewing primers, the right to keep a diary or business accounts, every book you already own, new books from Lastwall and Molthune, and proven classics from a handful of other countries, but you would like to see an immediate end to all writing that spreads dangerous words like wildfires, and leaves real fires in its wake - vote for, and let's see that it doesn't happen again tonight."

Maybe she's a good noble? Is there such a thing? And the girl braver than he is, to keep standing up, continues to make good points.

Surely someone else has already offered Tallandria a job post-convention but Carlota will leave a staffer a note to do so just in case somehow they haven't.

She’ll start clapping once Korva finishes.  Thea may be too cowardly pragmatic to speak on such a controversial issue she herself is divided on, but she approves of Korva.  

That's so much less irritating than what the duchess said and she will clap louder.

Lisandro makes a note to himself, if things go bad he really should try to extradite that Tallandria to a better city. 

Okay Enric is pretty sure he now understands whatever it was he voted for in the rights committee, with Korva explaining it. He isn’t sure why they want to let anyone keep writing pamphlets, even if some people like books and plays. But it doesn’t sound too bad. 

He needs to try to hire her again.

"Well, said, Delegate. Now, we've got a lot of other work to get done today and I think we've said what needs to be said, so I'd like to call for a vote to cloture."

Yes. Stop on a high note; none of the people still in line to talk can improve things.

De Guiomar is leading the liberal nobles, De Fraga the conservatives. Jilia's not sure whether it's the commoners or the radicals, but it's clear Tallandria is leading someone.

...If she's noticed that.

"I second the Archduke's motion for cloture."

Cloture votes never fail because no one wants to be here.

And then the bill! Xavier's for it, of course, and he hopes all his vassals are. (Though he can't check, any more.)

She can't check either, but everyone near the city will, she's pretty sure. It would have been nice to hear from Cansellarion but it was a good place to stop.

In favor, of course. Let it pass, let it pass, let it pass. If it fails she'll still vote for the 'just ban everything' proposal because she does not want to know what one more day does to the mad rumors on the streets (she doesn't know if the instigators have been intimidated into fleeing or are still alive at all, but she does not want to chance it).

He's in favor because he thinks the Queen probably supports it and he's her loyal subject.

Taís is confused about what she's supposed to think on this one. Lots of people have been abstaining so probably she can abstain just this once without getting in trouble?

Munch on a goodberry. He has no opinions on this bill and has not been given any reason to have any.

There's no reason they can't pass this bill and one that says they should censor everything harder, right? For, she guesses.

For, it outlaws pamphlets and is better for the economy. (He will, of course, do his best to remember voting against.)

For, with inchoate misgivings, but she really wants to find out what's going on. From Enric, probably.

As goes hot boy...

She will vote for the bill but they had BETTER put in another statute for theater soon.

Against. In a month, when this has failed disastrously, people will doubtless vote for a more sensible set of regulations, but Jonatan isn't, actually, vindictive enough to find that reassuring. Letting Westcrown burn to prove the radicals wrong is Evil, pure and simple.

Against, obviously. All the radicals are for it.

Enric votes for, he already voted on this one and it's for his committee. Feels good, even if he missed the part of the meeting for actually planning this one. Hopefully proposals from his other committees will make it up here too someday. If the nobles don't just steal them all.

Against. The pamphlets are funny. 

For, obviously. Let's hope.

For. She still doesn't really like it, but as far as she can tell the diabolist nobles want to hang anyone who dares to speak a word against the idea of people being ruled by diabolist nobles who get to hurt whoever they want.

Liushna isn't convinced that censorship isn't a deeply stupid human idea, but she is capable of grasping concepts like "the other nobles' ideas are worse" and "Korva Tallandria is deeply cool and has a good head on her shoulders" and "everybody is convinced that censorship would have stopped what happened on the Third so it is definitely going to happen." She will vote for the proposal that is only moderately suspicious, because that is, apparently, how Human Politics works. 

For.

Iker hates this anonymous voting and anonymous speaking thing. Boss proposing a bill would have been an easy way to see who he is supposed to be with and who he is supposed to be against. But no, it can't be easy.

He's so torn. On the one hand it'd be better to have a stronger law. On the other hand, he has never in his life before last Toilday wanted anything as badly as he wants to see the smug actress and the smug Calistrian whore and the smug song-sorceress burn in Hell eternally, and while he can't have that he can at least watch the actress lose her precious theatre-of-having-children-murdered-for-amusement. In favor.

For. He'd been leaning against, but the Duchess of Chelam is in favor, and even on an anonymous ballot that's not something he'd set aside lightly.

He's not convinced that this decentralized approval scheme is superior to a centralized one. But it has the most important feature, that untraceable pamphlets will be banned and what is left will be easily traceable, and then Her Majesty's scryers can go back to finding murderers. He tentatively votes for.

Against. If you can't get the Queen's men to approve your book, you shouldn't be publishing it.

That was wildly uncomfortable, and the bill has definitely gotten more permissive since the last time he saw it, but... he does not actually want to go through and burn all the books in Taggun Hold, and this should still chill things enough that they stop catching fire. For.

Plays are way more interesting than this and the actor lady said it would ban them. Against. They should just ban the pamphlets and not the plays.

The guy bribing him didn't say anything! But two archdukes said they liked it so probably that's what's safest. For.

This is being pushed through by the same radicals who've made it clear they don't respect people's authority over their own property; it's no wonder it's so lenient. Against.

The asshole who wants to ban whorehouses is against it, so he's in favor.

Maybe if all the pamphlets stop people will stop learning incorrect meanings for "Fiducia". For.

Abstain. Again.

Kicharchu can't read. Abstain.

For.

In favor. Obviously. This is the one that is not blatantly opposed to her life's work, although likewise she's definitely going to vote in favor of the Archduchess's proposed amendments if at any point those come to the point of a vote. 

She's keeping a list of nobles who spoke up in favor of the more draconian versions, and also banning Calistria. She's not going to take the piss out of all of them in her book, of course, and even the ones she does should probably not be mostly recognizable, but it does help to keep track of who's being just the absolute worst at any given time. 

Against, of course. And he signals the sortitions he's bribed to do the same but he has no certainty they'll actually follow through now that the archmage is putting his thumb on the scales.

Pamphlets didn't burn down the halfling house. Abstain.

Against. It's wildly too permissive of this sort of nonsense, and she prefers Berenguer and Cansellarion's faction anyway.

He has no strong opinions (or, well, he does, but - the Friend of the True People is dead for laws that existed already, what does this help really) and if he needs to oppose his generous hostess on some measure later he'll have this one in the bank, so to speak; for.

With great reluctance, she votes for it. It's wildly too restrictive, but stopping the conservative momentum before it gets going is more important, they'll be able to ram a worse bill through after if it fails.

Alonso hates most of the arguments he's heard against this bill, and the arguments he doesn't hate against it mostly came from commoners and not nobles, and he does care about giving a big old fuck you to the worst nobles, so he'll vote in favor. 

The family book collection got him through almost 2 decades of Asmodean rule; the new ones he got were so much a part of what made the last year and a half actively enjoyable.  Xavier explained the risks excellently, and that Tallandra girl couldn't have defended the bill better.

For, For, For.

Too bad the Archduke can't see he's voting with him.

The system going forward sounds frankly absurd, but far be it from her to vote against keeping valuable books in the libraries that an Iomedan censorship board would throw out, and either vote seems safe enough for the moment. For.

How about we only vote for things that are actually good and not just for things that could be worse. Against.

Abstain.

See, a couple hours ago she'd have agreed with Raimon, but then a bunch of diabolist nobles got up and started talking about how they wanted to hang her and everyone she cares about. 

Josep finds it extremely suspicious that all the radicals are arguing in favor of this, but he can't actually see much of anything wrong with the bill? Sober, responsible men of means are far more equipped to make such decisions than overworked government clerks. And it sounds like the radicals aren't actually happy with it... he'll vote in favor. But reluctantly.

For, because his wife says so.

Well, he totally failed to give that speech about the riots. Oh well. He hates giving speeches anyway.

For.

For.

She’d accept worse to stop pamphlet trash, as long as it didn’t outright demand she burn her library… which was apparently on the table, so better this proposal than another.

He can't figure out these instructions. For. 

She's with the radicals. For. 

He’s confused, but he knows Valia is a cleric of Iomedae, even if she volunteered for one of the trickery loyalty tests, so he’ll vote against the people speaking against her.

For.

Against. Once it dies they can bring in "just have a royal censorship board" and end all the nonsense.

Jofre is still not really clear on how any of this could have prevented the riots. Rioting is a different thing from publishing and in fact is also a different thing from reading. Against.

For; it sounds like anything they're publishing in Lastwall can propagate here no problem and they're probably doing it right in Lastwall.

For.  

The second slower repetition really helped, and Tallandria addressed the concerns Oriol raised.  She would probably have voted for something more restrictive before she heard Oriol’s complaints.

Higini is abstaining from everything now that he can do that without anyone noticing.

For.

Meritxell likes books. For.

Protecting the libraries is smart. For.

Lucia wasn't paying a lot of attention. "For!"

     "As near as I can tell it can't possibly hurt you if you never write anything at all," says Gemma.

"It's just to stop people from writing?"

     "It stops them from writing most things. They said the next one would be for a censorship board, and censors would write more books, but Chelish censors are hellknights."

"Ohhh. Which shape do we draw, if we don't want more hellknights?"

Abstain. This is all nonsense, and if they want to ban pamphlets, they should just ban pamphlets. Instead of whatever this civilized madness is. Also, with anonymous voting, she doesn't actually gain anything from obviously favoring anyone, so. Meh.

For, on the thought that it stops a harsher one. Cities.

Books are the work of Asmodeus, which so far as this man can tell serve little purpose save to damn people to Hell. Through the power of Mephistophelean wordings they are now voting on a proposal that will damn people to both Hell and the Abyss. Against.

It’s too confusing for anyone to understand. Against.

If the people who object to this proposal think they can come up with a better one, then they can just do so and we can vote again on replacing the law. Why would anyone vote against this unless they favored the status quo? For.

Against. The men who want to burn all the Infernal books have the right of it.

Oh, this is very very complicated....

...well, if you don't know what's right, you ought not pretend. Abstain.

And so it passes, with an enormous number of abstentions because the floor is confused, 183-169.

The vote totals just keep dropping. Add another thing to the pile of confusions.

Abadar and Iomedae, Sarenrae and Desna, thank you for guiding our delegate's hearts. May they stay wise in the future.

He overestimated the intelligence of the convention, overestimated the ability of his allies to know they were his allies...

... He needs to talk to Carlota about the formation of some sort of organization, explicitly, in response to the people who want to drag them into Taldane tyranny. Something that the people who hate the Galtans and the people who hate the Asmodeans and the people who hate the Taldanes won't hate alike. Molthune had clubs but they were only for gentlemen, and they can't win with only half the votes...

Wow, that was a fight. That's only a fourteen vote margin! It's entirely possible she personally swung it!

....and the Archduke and Archduchess were not lying at all, about what they had to give away to keep books. Good to know about them, for sure.

Ugly. A win they should treat, in terms of the lessons from it, as a loss, because it probably would have been without a random sortition they hadn't planned around. 

Joan-Pau absolutely considered Delegate Tallandria one of their key allies! Now if only she could believe that.