Gemma says this one is really important! For!

They'll replace them all with orcs in ten years.

He's not gonna vote.

That was so much fancy verbiage. Are a lot of halflings even doing farm work? That seems stupid, you need to be strong to plow or reap or wrangle a cow or anything like that. They could pick fruit but they'd have to make so many trips to bring in full tiny halfling sized baskets. Lluc's confused. Abstain.

Against. She's not so heartless that she wants her neighbors who make their living off the slips picking grapes to starve, even though she'd make a ton of money off her not-halfling-based dairy if that happened.

Is food not expensive enough already? Against.

Will this make the Andoren pirates cut it out? For.

Why bother? Anyone who doesn't like being ground to bits by civilization can just leave. The druid even claims they often do, like that's an argument for abolishing just the parts of civilization she doesn't like and not the whole system.

Abstain.

The only person in Ester's area who uses halflings on the farm is a rich prick who mostly grows tobacco, fuck him. For.

All the little guys should be free! For!

Man, fuck slavery. For.

Ramirez seems fine with this? For.

For.

They're trying to be Good now, for.

Halflings are kobold sized and do not seem to like tallfolk too much. If they can do whatever they want, maybe they will want to do stuff with kobolds and that could be neat! For.

Well, the only ones against it are some idiots and Duke Kill One Third Of Men. Oh, and the sensible Abadaran, right? The economic effects are probably really important, and she has no idea what they are. She fucking hates goats and wants the orcs back, but this is not actually related to the bill at all.

....she doesn't, actually, give any particular shits about halflings. They'll do domestic service for less money (for less food), but domestic service work sucks anyway. They're not actually any good at childcare, because the average six-year-old can bully them, so maybe the human maids will be forced to turn to orphanage work, but the orphanages are barely even hiring anyway.

It's not actually going to affect her, personally, at all.

Eh, fuck it. If she can't have slave labor because they're being virtuous now, why should anybody else get to. It's not gonna hit any orphanages still using orcs.

For.

For!

They are going to thoroughly run this country into the ground, with these ridiculous ideals. Every country old enough to marry has slaves. Against. 

In heaven, no one is a slave, anyone who wants to can farm his own plot of summerland. For.

He’s a bit angry about making halflings free before orcs, even though he’s only half orc and never been a slave. What’s next, letting halflings buy orcs? Look how tiny the halflings are, the orcs should be enslaving them. But good is all about the big and strong being slaves to the weak and pathetic. At least his boss is impressive and worth taking orders from. Which means he doesn’t have to care about the others. Abstain. 

Gerard knows Pride and Tyranny are Asmodeus's things; he heard the old priest saying that often enough.  So he guesses they aren't supposed to be proud and tyrannical anymore.  Which means that they really shouldn't be having slaves.

But - Gerard likes slaves.  Not that he has any himself, but he likes looking down his nose at them and telling himself how he's more important than them.  Maybe that's Pride - he never bothered asking the old priest - but he likes it.

And some of the smart important people were saying that slavery isn't all Asmodean, that other countries have it too.  So there must be some other way they can still have slaves.

Against.

These people's Law is hopeless so she might as well vote the Good ticket. For.

The wizard still technically didn’t tell him what political opinion to have on this, but they did talk about it before making their deal. Well, he thinks ending slavery is fine. Doesn’t care about the halflings, or own any, so no personal stake. But he always secretly cheered when the Andorani pirates took down a ship. Because he doesn’t like sailors. Which means he’s for ending slavery. 

The wizard made a face when he explained it like that. Look, not everyone can afford to buy reasons for political opinions from pamphlets. Sometimes you have to make your own.

For.

At the height of the harvest when absolutely everyone is down in the fields, Xavi keeps getting shunted over next to the halflings. If they can't be slaves he's further away from being a slave. For.

He has been watching the debate with some interest, though without speaking. He has a— you might say aesthetic distaste— for slavery, and his own apprenticeship taught him to at least sympathize with the slaves. He knows there are things he doesn’t understand, about what this will mean for society, but enough nobles are in favor its probably fine. 

For.

She’s already freed all her slaves, hoping to get ahead of any punishment for holding them when the time came. Lastwall doesn’t have slavery, nor does Andoran, so of course the archmages would do the same in Cheliax.

Apparently there won’t be any retroactive punishments, so the only question here is; should she continue to endure a disadvantage other mines don’t?

For, obviously.