“I agree that slavery is an Asmodean Evil.  I earlier heard a defense of slavery and rebuke of the proposal under the discussion comparing slavery with serfdom.  If they are really so comparable, then banning serfdom should be considered by the antislavery committee as well!  Indentures and serfdom are a tool of abuse and domination and tyranny and should not be tolerated in this country!  Perhaps some who have come from Taldor at the Queen’s invitation or ressurected by the archhealer from the Arodenite past misunderstand me, imagining some other more merciful institution.  I’ve seen indenture contracts with absurd terms: decades in duration, additional years tacked on for pregnancy (which, I’ll make clear, they had no recourse to protect themselves from), additional years tacked on by other cruel Asmodean treacherous terms.  I don’t imagine serfdom is any better.  As to the notion that slave owners systematically care for their elderly or sick or orphaned slaves beyond brutal economic pragmatism… it’s absurd.  I won’t claim there aren’t rare examples of slave owners with some trace of mercy that Asmodeanism failed to stamp out, but if so, they can exercise their mercy just as well on freed people.  And if you are currently benefiting from such Evils… you had better watch out.”

His voice is filled with passionate vitriol towards the middle of his speech, but he stutters at the very end as he remembers the example lesson made with Valia Wain as its leading actor.

“To be clear, you had better watch out that our Lawful And Good Queen doesn’t take notice of your Asmodeanism and see fit to carry out lawful, orderly, righteous justice against it.  I am uh, not advocating for mobs or riots or uh lone nongovernmental agents to carry out such justice, except uh by lawfully petitioning the Queen.”

He’s starting to stammer now, so he ends his speech there.

(Feliu thought she was believing people about bad things that didn't actually happen. Maybe the nobleman really was just lying about Delegate Artigas, maybe Iomedae didn't pick one of the Evilest men in Cheliax as her priest, maybe the Worldwound thing was just — she doesn't actually have an explanation for that. But Delegate Artigas isn't getting up in front of everyone to brag about being Evil so she shouldn't assume he is just because a nobleman said so.)

She doesn't really believe it but it lets her pull herself together enough to catch "serfdom is a tool of abuse" and "people who are benefitting from Evil should watch out." Clap clap clap.

Ouch, they're going to try and go after him really hard for that. Good on him to say it anyway.

She gets in line, in the vain hope that there's something she'll be able to help argue against between now and then.

Jaume would actually not have a particular problem with abolishing serfdom. Serfs are owned-ish in a sort of implicit sense but not bought and sold except insofar as they make land more valuable, and making all land in Cheliax less valuable at the same time is obviously a little harmful but it's not a catastrophe, or at least not clearly one.

They should probably abolish serfdom and several exciting varieties of indenture but one thing at a time.

Okay this is going to be hard. And complicated. He would just explain that dividing up the local lord’s land and giving the halflings half shares worked fine. But if the nobles find out about that, they’re going to look into it. Bringing that kind of attention is always a betrayal, and he’s not betraying his home. So he’ll have to argue this just from truths, no examples. 

To Fernando. “You said part of what I was going to say, about how making people serfs and indentures isn’t fair. So thank you. Back during the wizard committee, people said the loans and contracts forced onto people under the Thrunes weren’t fair, and we should start over. Well that isn’t just true for wizards.”

“We should make halflings into free men, not serfs. If I tell a halfling he’s free, but he still has to work for his master and he’s still not allowed to leave, he would tell me that’s just word trickery. If I said that it’s because he’s nothing without a master, he’d call me an asmodean. If we’re going to keep slavery and serfdom until after the harvest, we tell them that. But it’s lying to say all halflings are free, that all people are free, until we actually do it.”

”Now I hear people worried about the harvest. I see that. I’m from the villages. If the harvest doesn’t come in right, we lose friends and neighbors, elders and children. Not just that, it makes people more evil. Winter comes with no harvest, men rob their neighbors and women leave children in the woods. Don’t think I’m expecting the gods to send food from the sky, or sacrificing our food for nice words. I’ve seen what that costs, and by the good gods, if I thought any of this would make us starve, I’d say nothing.”

”But we don’t need slaves or serfs to have a harvest. I don’t know a lot about most of the things we talk about here, but I know how to run a farm. So I’ll tell you this. A free man works better than a slave. A slave makes sure he’s working whenever someone is around to watch him and beat him if he’s lazy. There’s no reason to do anything more. But a free man works as hard as he can, because the fruits of the work go to feed his family. Or, once his family is fed, traded for things in town. Then to the city, and so all of you city types get fed too. Whether he’s a smallholder who keeps all of it, or a renter who gives part of it for rent, a man works harder if working harder actually helps himself and his family.”

He claps, of course. It's very useful to let someone know which side the archdukes are on.

She has mostly calmed down enough to focus. She claps loudly.

There's a solid fellow. Applause.

She'll clap for Enric, too, only half out of Rights Committee solidarity.

(She didn't for Ibarra, but not because he wasn't right. Terrifying Norgorberite murderers can be right about things.)

Hell - er, Heaven yeah! These guys know what they're talking about.

That's one that'll go in the new extremely circumscribed newspapers that they're hoping to get back up and running tomorrow, along with Tallandria's speech about books. 

Enric! Clap clap. What a great explanation. Down with serfdom.

Vigorous clapping from her seat as well.

Okay it’s over. They’re clapping. No one is accusing him and all his friends of treason yet. So better than last time he said something on the floor. He can breathe.

Forgot to say the part about how stealing halflings and leaving them in cities probably just make them start stealing to survive. It’s better than leaving them as slaves, but it’s even better to find them land to own or just to rent. But now he realizes that, to the Norgorber wizard, stealing people and then making them turn into thieves was probably the point?

Well, that probably would have distracted from the real point. Or gotten him kidnapped by an evil wizard. For now he’ll stand near his friends and hope someone else can make a speech if there’s more arguing about serfs.

Theopho smiles and nods to Enric as he takes the podium. It's a little redundant with his own, but not so much he needs to make big changes. Then he lets up on the part of his mind that is always, always suppressing a simmering well of anger, and starts to talk.

"I think the Count of Cerdanya made a good point, but he understated it. Heaven rejects slavery. So do, obviously, Elysium and the Maelstrom, and more significantly Nirvana. But most importantly, so does Axis. To take away a man's right to choose his work and his home, not even due to his own actions as in an indenture or punishment for a crime but due to those of his fathers, is anathema to all planes that express opinions except the planes of Evil. I do not know if Delegate Ibarra is correct that the Count misunderstands Cheliax's people, but I can vouch for his claim that halfling slaves, once freed, can do very well for themselves; all those I have freed in the last eighteen months are, in skilled professions here in Westcrown."

He started at a measured volume, but as he finishes that thought and starts the next one, he raises his voice further and further.

"The Duke de Fraga, on the other hand, I am quite certain misunderstands Cheliax's people. He speaks of the 'bonds between the people of Cheliax', but if those bonds are those of serfdom and slavery, then to Hell with them, as from Hell they came! There were a dozen flavors of unfreedom, at least, which a man, halfling, orc, or kobold could be held to have under the Asmodeans, and likely more. Slavery, serfdom, indenture, in their many variations, even before we reach the status of Crown subject which was emphatically not free. Many bonds, Your Grace, all of which tied Cheliax together. All of them Hell's will and nothing other."

"I am sure some of these had analogues under Aroden, but even as an unusually well-educated and well-informed subject of the Thrunes, I did not know which, and today, as a citizen of Her Majesty Aspexia, I do not care. I see no difference, nor do my countrymen. Ask a serf how much it matters to him that he is not, technically, a slave! I am sure we have some in this room, freed by the sortition. Ask a man on an indenture worth twenty year's wages with seven percent interest, who will never pay it back no matter how well he does! Ask anyone who was compelled to take a loan to enter wizard's school! They do not care! It is all slavery by degrees, and if we wish the citizens of Cheliax to believe they are truly free of Asmodeus's yoke, they must see we have removed all of it. If a bond connects men which they did not choose, that is a bond of Hell, not one of Axis or Heaven, and we should no more preserve it than we preserved the tormentuous wizard's schools and mandatory public executions."

He pauses a moment, catches his breath, and drops back to a more reasonable volume.

"This proposal is not intended to abolish such things, as I understand it. But it rightly refuses to perpetuate them. I am sure some things will, by the end of the convention, remain permitted. As Cerdanya says, a gradual approach is desirable, at least in cases which are not emergencies, and most things are not. Indenture under fair terms without coercion is permitted virtually everywhere, and this seems fair and just to me. So does bound labor as punishment for a crime, paying back society for damage done. A gradual approach in which new generations are born free while existing ones remain partially bound seems likely to be both wise and fair. But we absolutely must remove all those forms which Infernal Cheliax possessed, if those who survived it are to believe that they are any freer than they were two years ago. Anything less will be seen as a mere change of names, and not even wrongly."

Clap clap clap even though he's a servant of Hell. It's honestly really weird that he's giving a speech like that when he's a servant of Hell but it's a good speech.

It's a shame that such a reasonable fellow is a cleric of an infernal power.

It matters quite a lot to Taís that she isn't a slave, but she's not going to get up in front of everyone and say so.

Bold words, from a worshipper of an infernal power, and devoid of wisdom. Cerdanya already said the problem with assuming that abolishing hereditary slavery would gradually solve the problem.

If seven percent is too much interest, set a maximum allowed rate. But the speakers are arguing against the existence of debt at all, and must be checked accordingly.

Felip stands up, and returns to the line.

It's unreasonable to expect better of these people, but Jonatan is privately getting a bit annoyed at everyone acting like freed slaves being apprenticed off to learn useful trades is a counterargument to his position. Helping freed slaves find useful apprenticeships seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do with them, and he wholly supports it.

It really should be blatantly obvious how Theopho isn’t evil, but Thea doesn’t expect anyone to actually change their minds about that.

What is this guy talking about? Being a serf sucks but that doesn't mean he'd be fine being a slave instead. 

Well, every village has its idiot.

Hm. Possibly she should have coordinated with that fellow before her, as well. Oh well. Even if her point doesn't tidily flow with his, they are of a like mind on this topic. She expects that a few more people down the queue, there will be a similar wave of annoyed slaveowners and nobles refuting these points. The downside of queues. Hopefully they won't be clever enough to, you know. Speak to each other while in the stupid queue. She does, after all, want them to lose, for more than one reason.

Anyway, her turn now.

"I have spoken before of the culling of the druids of the Barrowood, but I have not mentioned how we worked to replenish our numbers. So, let me be clear: most of the potential druid recruits of the Barrowood under Infernal Cheliax were halflings fleeing slavery. So, if famine is your true concern, then as a druid who has watched over these lands for centuries, I recommend that you win their favor by freeing their kin.

"Furthermore, I would also like to point out that, in the absolute worst case scenario for the newly freed halfling, there's nothing stopping them from taking up the work they'd had before, for food and boarding. Their former masters can afford that much, it's what they paid already. You balk at the mere possibility they'd do something different, not the certainty of it. If they, who have lived their lives for all of it, think that leaving this certainty for the fickle whims of chance is a worthy risk to take, who are you, who has never lived as a slave, to tell them they are foolish? They know the fate that awaits them, should they stay. They are the ones who should choose if it is worth leaving. That is all."

Hah! Excellent point, least-unreasonable druid, have some applause from the path back to his seat.