"Not in Nidal. Iomedae herself and the whole Shining Crusade asked about Nidal and were told they'd fail and it wouldn't be worth it. The Everwar was the whole Chelish Empire at its height trying, and the best they could do was forcing them to terms after a century even without their undead sorcerer-priest-kings intervening in their defense. Which they didn't, very suspiciously, and then the culture of Chelish nobility got slowly more tolerant of Evil until the Age of Glory failed and Nidal came in as a Thrune ally. And for once I believe their church when they say that was the intended result."

"Everywhere else, well, gods can elevate new ninth-circles. Also powerful wizards have ways of cheating death without those spells, at least the archmages and probably some seventh-circles."

Enric notices that this is a very different reason to make undead than because people want cheaper metal weapons. He suspects trickery. 

Victòria has also noticed this. 

"I think probably I need to learn more about magic before I can say for sure what we should do about Evil wizards." It'll be easier to persuade people not to do the skeletons thing if she has a non-skeletons proposal that isn't stupid. Maybe she can ask Lluïsa, Lluïsa is a wizard, and Lluïsa was defending her against the people who thought she was a murderous radical so hopefully she won't assume Victòria wants to know so that she can do murders. 

"But even if we can't come up with any other way to stop Evil wizards for good, I don't think — last week we were arguing about whether everyone should have a right not to be turned into a skeleton, or everyone except criminals, and even if we can't figure out another way to stop powerful spellcasters we should say 'no skeletons unless they're really powerful Evil spellcaster criminals,' not 'no skeletons unless they're criminals.' Most criminals are not Evil spellcasters. ...Also I still think we should try to find something else to do with the Evil spellcasters before we just assume it has to be skeletons."

He brought it up last time!

"For a moment, let me see if I understand your arguments correctly - am I correct that you are viewing this from the perspective of assuming that magistrates will seek to do evil because of the inherent wickedness of people in power, and must be restrained by the law?"

Well, almost everyone is wicked, so probably, but getting useful resources out of finding people guilty probably doesn't help things.

Not picking fights about this at this moment.

Wickedness is a nice way for him to phrase it, it covers the people who have done a lot of horrible things but technically don't count as Evil for some stupid reason. She frowns thoughtfully.

"...I think a week ago I'd have said that was exactly right, about people with power being wicked, or at least some kinds of power, whether or not they started out that way. But I think I was wrong about that, I don't think that's true of everyone anymore. Like, it turns out the Queen is Good, not just in the sense that it was really good to kick Asmodeus out of the country but in the sense that — she won't have people executed just for making her life inconvenient, even if they aren't powerful or important and even if no one would blame her or think she did anything wrong.

But — I don't know how to say this right, but — I think magistrates under Asmodeus tended to be a lot worse than normal people? Because they were all appointed by people who sucked a lot, and they were enforcing Evil laws, and obviously they were Asmodeans, and also if you take the sort of person who gets chosen to be a magistrate and give them the power to hurt innocent people if they want they're... just obviously going to hurt a lot of innocent people. And probably there's a way to find different magistrates that suck less? But I don't know how you'd make sure you didn't get anyone who sucked, apart from paladins or mind control or those sorts of thing.

And, like, ideally we wouldn't just want magistrates who aren't as wicked as actual Asmodeans, we'd want magistrates who won't take bribes, and won't automatically rule one way just because a nobleman or someone else powerful wants them to, and won't just make up reasons to convict people even if they really don't like them. All of which are also wicked, even if they're not as wicked as just deciding to have someone tortured to death for fun even though you know for sure they're innocent, but I think they're... the kind of wicked thing some people will do whether or not they're in power? If that makes sense? And — I don't want to have any magistrates who'd do that sort of thing, but I don't want to assume the Judiciary Committee will definitely come up with a plan that stops that from happening." The paladins wouldn't do it on purpose but they might not manage to stop it from happening by accident.

"...and no matter what kind of magistrates you have, I still think the law should — I mean, I don't know what kinds of rules you're thinking of when you say 'restrain' — but there should be some things they aren't allowed to do. But you'd need them even if the magistrates were basically just normal, you'd just need more if some of them might really suck. ...Does that answer your question?"

"Yes, I think so. And - I think I agree with you of today and disagree of the you of the week ago," he says, "but I think that you may still be underestimating the level of decency among normal people outside Cheliax; I for one am hardly a paragon among the nobility, and Asmodeus deliberately appointing wicked magistrates to damn his populace seems to me one case where experience in Cheliax may serve as a poor guide for experience where Asmodeus is not attempting to damn the entire population."

"...Maybe. How does Molthune stop magistrates from doing that sort of thing? What happens if a nobleman or a priest or a powerful wizard commits a crime, or accuses someone else of a crime that they didn't actually do, or if someone tries to bribe the magistrate?"

"Zone of Truth is the standard means to determine if someone is lying. In isolated enough territories it won't always be used in court cases because we don't have enough priests for the entire realm, but the magistrates who judge them are put through Zone themselves once every four years when their term comes up for renewal, and if they're found to have accepted bribes, or overlooked crimes, or perverted the law, or ruled unjustly for personal or political reasons they're sentenced to hang, unless they plead off to the mines. The spell is beatable, but not if you do it regularly and they watch for people trying to cheat it with magic. You can't stop a powerful evil wizard or sorcerer from enchanting the magistrate, but the government tries to keep enough of an eye on all the powerful wizards to know if they try something."

"I think I lost track of what you were arguing. I think we both want there to be some rules about what magistrates can do, saying they can't take bribes is a rule, and you just... think there don't need to be as many? Because you don't need as many if the magistrates aren't Evil?"

Enric wants to let Victoria do her thing, but also he is now confused and a bit worried. "Are we arguing about whether there should be things they can't do to people, just in general? I thought that was the whole idea behind rights?"

Honestly Jilia is not sure Xavier is right about the 'not a paragon' thing, she's met ordinary Taldane nobles on trips to try to arrange more shipping trade with Oppara. She's had negotiations with Nidalese recaptors which were more pleasant. Not a paragon of their current, hand-picked high nobility? Maybe. But she's not going to joggle his elbow.

Xavier continues to live in ignorance arguably blissful and arguably self-deluded about how unusually moral a nobleman he is! 

"Of course it is," he says. "No, there should be things that can't be done, and I wouldn't have volunteered for this committee if I didn't think so. As I said, I don't support the practice of necromancy for mining.

"But there are two things we need to balance, and this is true in any policy. One is the evil we prevent, and the other is the good that we do. For any topic, this is the case. A magistrate who can be condemned by his superiors for ruling unjustly against his enemies can be condemned by his superiors for ruling justly against their friends. A lord who can protect his people from abuse by bandits has the might to abuse them himself. We should seek ways to minimize the harm caused by these tradeoffs, but that tradeoffs exist cannot be avoided. Transport criminals to the Final Blade or hang them and lose their souls? Everything must be paid from tax money and tax money comes off the dinner-table of Enric Porras and all the other farmers like him. Some things shouldn't be done, but everything we agree has a cost, and that cost, ultimately, must be paid in lives and souls. Every rule one mask ask not only what evil it prevents, but also what good it prevents as well."

"And I think there is more than this. We do not stand alone, but at the head of an army reaching back into history. The people of Cheliax were saved from Hell, and they were not saved from Hell by any one man, or any ten. They were saved by Civilization. It was not only Her Majesty the Queen or the Archmage Cotonnet, it was the smith who forged Her Majesty's first training sword and the bookmaker who wrote Archmage Cotonnet's first spellbook, by the logger who cleared the land that would one day house the libraries they learned and by the farmer who grew the food that fed in them in their infancy, the fencer who first practiced the light sword and the man who taught him speed, Aroden who saved the knowledge of Azlant from the wreck of the world and all the Azlanti before him who first devised the spellbook and the spells that would allow the rebirth of the world, and before them the elves and dwarves who first broke the earth for the plow and that early man who first tamed cattle. All these people worked to save us, to forge the might that could stand against the devil-hosts of the Thrunes and their fiendish sorcery, and I think there is a duty and it is a duty to continue this work, to build up the works of civilization until, in the end, we can destroy Hell and all it has done.

"The battle is not yet over. Cheliax held the Worldwound for seventy years before an archmage finally arose who could close it, and the demons it brought forth are still there. Tar-Baphon was stopped by the Empire united, Cheliax and Taldor and Andoran and Galt in unison, and the Empire held it until it could produce and aim Iomedae to defeat him. Should he reemerge from Gallowspire in a hundred years when the archmages have passed on to greater things, who will stop him? I would have it be Cheliax as it was before, and every law I ask - does this help the birth of an Iomedae, or harm it?

"I want to outlaw arbitrary acts of wickedness and cruelty - If I did not, I would not be here - but there is a price for every law we pass without careful forethought, and it is that all we do which delays the rescue of the souls of Hell who await liberation. The Chelish state exists to protect its people from evils, and I want it to do that, but it is also the latest champion of civilization, an engine to use to build up the prosperity of our people and to throw down all the evils of this world and the next and that is needed as much as it ever was. We have beaten Asmodeus. We have not destroyed him. And if he tries for another land than Cheliax, next time, they are not less in need of defense against devils than we are here."

That's a very pretty speech, somewhat undercut by the fact that half of those people were employed by hell in the pursuit of hell's aims. If the smith forged a weapon for her majesty, well, he forged many more for Cheliax's armies, or for other Chelish nobles who used them to peel the skin from children. If the bookmaker wrote a spellbook for Cotonnet, well, he did so in the act of shaping Cotonnet to be a Chelish soldier, alongside a hundred other children who were ripped from their homes to serve the state and have their consciences torn to shreds. The logger - was probably a slave, forced to serve by the lash, and those who first curated the library were quite possibly literally devils. Perhaps the farmer was only an ordinary sort of person, but the reason Cheliax tolerated ordinary sorts of farmers was because the mortal armies of hell must eat.

The things before that point, you might think were not evil, but... well, who was the first fencer, or the first to develop magic? Not a human, and not a dwarf or an elf, either. The devils had swords and magic long before humanity.

You can say a lot of things about civilization and its benefits. But civilization, as a whole, does not oppose Hell. Hell is, of all places, the very most civilized of all.

....there's really no good way to ever observe that to anyone.

"I don't have an answer to the question of whether it's ever a good decision to turn people undead. But I've been thinking about the mining part of this question. I think regardless of what we decide about the right not to be made undead, mining is actually a pretty specialized topic. There are probably a lot of other concerns related to it that none of us know enough to comment on, or notice in the first place. If no one thinks it's a terrible idea, I'm considering suggesting a committee devoted to natural resources tomorrow, especially metals. I don't know how much they'll have to contribute to the constitution directly, but they'd also be useful for submitting questions, too. I've got a potential chair, but I know you were also looking into this question, Archduke.”

"I think this is a sensible idea," he says, "and I would support it, though I doubt I would have the time to join such a committee."

That is kind of a lot of different arguments all at once and she is not sure she's managing to keep them all in her head at once. She is really pretty sure that there are lots and lots of topics where you don't have to make tradeoffs, you can just decide not to allow people to do super Evil things. Maybe that's not true in Molthune, it's not like she's ever been, but if you make rules against torturing innocent people in the name of Asmodeus the only people it hurts are Asmodean torturers. (Like Chosen Artigas — that's not relevant to Delegate Requena i Cortes's point but somehow that doesn't help at all—)

(—it is kind of hard to focus on what everyone is saying when she's thinking about how she might never be able to avenge what Chosen Artigas did, he might just get away with it forever — she really really wishes she could find out exactly what he did to his victims and force him to undergo the same thing but since she doesn't know she is mostly imagining doing some of the things her priest used to do to people, probably it wasn't that different — she is not going to think about that right now, she needs to focus — okay, her chest is still burning but she's pretty sure she's managing to follow the speech—)

She doesn't think it's okay to do things that are super Evil just because they might let you do other things that are Good, but maybe she's misunderstanding and he's talking about things more like passing the writing law to stop other people from passing a worse one than like the skeletons thing.

Also she's pretty sure that if you start saying that it's sometimes okay to do things that are super Evil, people will take it as an excuse to do way more things that are super Evil. People should just not do things that are super Evil.

Also she's not sure how a country full of humans is supposed to destroy Asmodeus, the only time she's ever heard of a god being destroyed is when Asmodeus killed Aroden, and Asmodeus was himself a god. For that matter she's not sure about "rescuing" people from Hell, lots of the people in Hell deserve it — or, maybe they don't deserve to be tortured forever, but they haven't gotten what they deserve yet. Maybe it would be okay if you stole them from Asmodeus so he couldn't turn them into devils and then gave everyone exactly what they deserved? That sounds hard but maybe not as hard as killing a god.

Also she's not really sure what any of that has to do with making more Iomedaes? If you want more Iomedaes you don't need spellbooks and land and civilization, you need... she's not actually sure. You need to not kill everyone who gets picked as a priest of a god that doesn't suck, and you need to teach women how to defend themselves even if lots of them won't be any good at fighting, and you need people to realize undead are bad so that she thinks to actually go fight them rather than just deciding raising people as undead is fine sometimes. And you need the Starstone but she's pretty sure the Starstone is still around, isn't that what Razmir used?

Also she still feels angry at Chosen Artigas. This doesn't actually have anything to do with what Delegate Requena i Cortes was saying.

...Probably she doesn't actually need to figure this all out right now.

"Having a committee for natural resources sounds reasonable to me. ...Someone should make sure the committee knows that it's Evil to raise people as undead. The azata said sometimes people don't know things are Evil even if they're really really obviously Evil."

"There's a cleric of a minor dwarven goddess who's here formally representing the church of Torag. She owns a spell silver mine, so I doubt we'll do better for a combination of good judgement and relevant expertise. I'm going to recommend her for chair, and then assume people can join if they have something useful to say. I don't think I will, but I certainly intend to submit some questions for them to discuss, and I think anyone else who wants to should also be able to send notes without needing to actually join." She mostly wants to know what banning both orphan indentures and undead would do to the metal supply.

"Anyway, that's all I've got."

Enric is now more confused, because if no one here wants to use skeletons for mining, where did several days of arguing about it come from?

The speech was a good one, very Aroden, but also being careful about what actually happens when someone makes a rule. That’s respectable. Though he still thinks theres some evils a decent man never does, or allows if he can stop them. 

One more tradeoff. The stronger civilization is, the more good things it can do, but also the more evil things it can do. The things Aroden built in Cheliax, Asmodeus then used to hurt people. Thats why Erastil gives everything new a suspicious look and makes you ask if the good is really worth the ways it could hurt you. Like cities, they probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but then they made people forget how to have families and love each other, and now the streets are full of abandoned children. Enric wants to just trust that Aroden will stay in control this time, and not worry, but he did listen those speeches about how rights and a constitution protect the commoners from civilization. It’s complicated, and he needs to think more.

As for a committee on mining, that sounds good. “It’s sensible, agreed. I still don’t understand most of what goes into mining; your cleric who owns a mine will. Might want to invite a paladin too, if we have enough.”

Well, meeting having technically been over for quite some time, she'll in that case begin getting up to leave.

Oh they're allowed to leave now? Oh good.

"It's a good idea. Get people with more knowledge to debate the tradeoffs. ...Would you stay a few minutes more, Miss Tallandria? There's some unofficial business you should hear about."

Wow, they sure are doing a lot of unofficial business today. Maybe that's just an all the time thing.

"Oh. Sure."

Xavier can bow his way out.

"The nobility in the convention are organized, as I think everyone could see this morning. Just before the committee, Delegates Porras, Ferrer, and Barrister Oriol approached me, asking me to lead the 'radicals', those who would rather the non-nobles are able to live their lives in peace without fear of the law being enforced on them capriciously or the noble's privileges crushing them, that Republicanism might not be a terrible idea and bringing sortition delegates was probably unfair to them but good for the country. I turned them down, Miss Tallandria. I think it ought to be done, but I'm not the one to lead it."

(Victòria had not actually realized at the time that Enric was planning to ask Delegate Bainilus about leading a faction, but by the time he'd started the conversation she hadn't been sure how to say "actually, I was wondering about the thing where you thought Pezzack should keep being Asmodean? Enric thinks you meant something less awful than it sounded like you meant?"

In any case, Korva seems mostly reasonable, isn't even slightly a noble, and presumably doesn't think Pezzack should have just kept being Asmodean, and she's good at making speeches.)