"Present, Your Excellency."

Elorri was pulled off peacekeeping duty with the Reclamation force in the city for this. He was pulled to the peacekeeping job from his vacation in Lladó, which he was on as mandatory downtime from the relentlessly unfortunate task of doing justice on circuit with his horse the only non-awful company he encountered for days at a time.

The point of retaking Cheliax is so that it can stop damning people. Abrogail Thrune no longer wearing a crown is only a means to that end. The work is not done. And apparently this process is involved, for some reason.

"Present."

He smiles warmly. "Present."

Narikopolus did ask Count-Regent Napaciza whether he wanted to be his pick for judiciary, mostly because Delegate Oriol - the lawyer one - invited him by name. But Napaciza didn't actually want it, and while the man's judgement is fine in general, not saying anything unwise on this specific committee during this specific week seems like kind of a lot to ask of him if he doesn't actually want to be here.

So he's here himself. He doesn't intend to say much, but it does actually seem important that the committee have someone besides Oriol who, uh, has lived in Cheliax for longer than a year and a half. And given the general state of Chelish justice, and Her Majesty's obvious interest, this one is probably actually fairly important.

"Present."

"Present." He too, is smiling; he hasn't been in a room that's mostly paladins since leaving Mendev, and there's something he didn't realize he missed about the feeling.

Marta Llovera is Chelish by descent, Lastfolk by culture, and has been with the Reclamation from quite early in its existence. Her brother has had their family's old status restored, and is a baron now, but this is really quite irrelevant to her. The loss that concerns her is not a loss of land, it is the loss of several million souls. If the last year and a half are any indication, reclaiming those will be the work of another lifetime. She will not see its end. But no one, she supposes, has yet seen the end of evil. 

"Present."

Hiding behind one of the paladins on the way in is Lluïsa, who will not enter the room without a paladin as witness at all times, or Bellumar can just claim anything, and will. And will anyway, and any recourse is forbidden, but maybe a paladin's sense of righteousness will at some point be offended.

If she looks like she's walking to her own execution it's because she is.

Saying you're present is slander, falsely impugning the Count's ability to tell who's in the room with him. "I am Ready."

"Present." They're here so nothing blatantly evil can happen on this committee. Angela is tired of things being blatantly evil. She started relying on Detect Fiendish Presence and preferentially using that instead of Detect Evil because since she's been in Cheliax almost anyone she met who had an aura at all and was not specifically a cleric of Erastil was evil, evil, evil, evil, and she emulates the goddess of triage.

"I hope that our few remaining members will arrive shortly, but we have limited time and I do not wish to waste it, so I want to go ahead and begin. The first matter is the trial yesterday in which the judge was geased to rule only in accordance with the law. I think the Queen intended to bring about justice, by this, and I think it sufficed to get the result Her Majesty desired from the trial, but I have witnessed it causing great chaos at this convention. If magistrates can be presumed to exercise reasonable judgment, then the laws need be written with clarity and reasonableness, and we can borrow from the laws of other Lawful and Good allied countries," if his committee is full of paladins he can absolutely cater to them, "or borrow from the laws of Old Cheliax. But if judges are bound by magic to be barred from considering context or precedent and using their judgment, then - well, I've seen many committees lost down in the caverns of the Underdark trying to specify every possible thing so that there's no way for a judge even if they possess no common sense at all to misunderstand the job. That doesn't work. There's a reason no legal system works that way. If that is how our judiciary works we cannot benefit from the wisdom of any existing legal system.

I think it is good if judges, especially in prominent cases, are geased not to accept bribes and to rule with wisdom and attention to the law. I do not think that the country's laws can possibly be written so well as to remove the role of common sense. 

And so I have proposed this advice to the Queen for this committee to consider:

The laws of Cheliax cannot be written so as to encompass perfectly every possible case or situation. For this reason we are judged by men, not by axiomites, and among the duties of those men is to apply discretion, tradition, context, and common sense. Where geases are employed, they should be employed to prevent bribery, or straightforward abuses of power, and not to restrain judges from making reasonable decisions informed by context, tradition and common sense. No one should be convicted who was doing something the law never intended to prohibit, nor acquitted for conduct that plainly was meant to be illegal, merely because enchantment bars the judge from employing his own judgment.

This might well be what the Queen is already doing - I hope it is - but it's not what people understand her to be doing, and people are desperately trying to write laws on the assumption that they'll be interpreted by hostile mind-controlled literalistic automata, so I think it's important to clarify."

"The Queen may at present be limited in her supply of men who possess common sense that has not been warped, with all else in Hell's influence, toward cruelty and corruption." It is absolutely amazing what people think is just normal, or just what anyone would do in their situation, if they're Chelish.

Marit is the son of a minor baron near Solscrene, near the border with Andoran. When Andoran was still part of Cheliax they got refugees from across the borders, sometimes, and as best as Marit could tell Cheliax was the second-biggest problem on Golarion after Nidal, and significantly more tractable. His parents provided aid to the refugees, but Marit always felt that that wasn't solving the actual problem — it was still Good, but as long as Cheliax was under infernal rule, they would never save more than a handful of souls that way.

His best guess is that Ser Cansellarion has chosen him for this committee on the grounds that he has more than a year and a half of experience interacting with Chelish people, but he didn't actually explain one way or the other.

He arrives just after Bellumar starts to give his speech. "Apologies for my tardiness."

He greets the new paladin with a slight nod and continues speaking. "I agree that the perspectives of the Chelish people have been warped by Asmodeus, and that's a dire emergency, but this particular attempted solution is doing enormous harm to the ability of this convention to do its work and to public confidence in the rule of law. Perhaps we can offer the Queen some better solution."

Bellumar wants more cover for his Mephistophelean interpretations of the slander law to have free reign, in order to carry out his bloody purges, as expected.

Well, there's a real Mephistophelean in the room. (Recovering.)

"Bribery and Self-Enrichment are True Concerns but they are Minor. Those carrying out Justice, Paladins being Excepted, know well how to, and are Inclined to, cause the Text of any Contract or Law not Ironclad to a High Standard to be Construed For or Against whosoever they Choose. Any Law was until the Enthronement of her Majesty a Trap for the Reader, unless he be a Lawyer or have Friends in High Places. But the Judiciary is not made for We Lawyers. They are correct to Fear Traps, her Reign being Young and the People accustomed to an Evil Reign still."

"Do you have thoughts on how without compulsions, which does not bring about justice, nor do the people of Cheliax interpret it as just, nor is it compatible with the writing of just laws, that confidence might be established?"

"I don't see a particular conflict between following the letter of the law and the dictates of common sense, except where the law has been written in defiance of common sense. A reasonable law should certainly contain some space for judicial discretion. But if justice and common sense require that a judge actually go against the text of the law, then something fairly inexcusable was done in asking the judge to rule by such a law in the first place."

Laws not written in defiance of common sense may be a lost cause, given the present state of the Chelish government, but giving Chelish courts the freedom to disregard the law entirely seems little better.

Well, yes, but how to phrase them non-slanderously.

"I cannot know the Mind of her Majesty the Queen. My belief is that, the Judges being selected chiefly for Qualification as Judges, their Association with the Former Legal Profession, and the Fruits of their Legal Training, may be Surmounted only with Great Difficulty, and in no wise Available to the Public. Ensorcellment is as ever a Crude Instrument used in Dire Need. I am Reasonably Confident that her Majesty does not mean to establish a Permanently Ensorcelled Judiciary. For one it is a Great Expense of Magecraft."

"The Dim Reputation of Judges and Lawyers is unfortunately Well-Earned. For my own small part I have endeavored to Invert it. Where Lawyers have in the past Consorted with Hell I have instead Consorted with Heaven. Where Lawyers have in the past served the Archdevil of Contracts I have endeavored to... there is no God or Power of Heaven of whom I am yet Aware that fits the need Precisely; my Personal Fondness for Erastil aside, He is no Lawyerly God. At any rate such an Inverse Reputation is the work of Years to Cultivate and no Judiciary will have Confidence on the Morrow. Ensorcellment may Confuse the Public but such leaves it Quite Clear that whatever the Judge may be, he is no Th... he is no Infernal Tool."

Which slanders the Queen, but that is, perversely, safe; slanders herself and the legal profession, but self-slander has some protection; slanders Erastil, but he's a reasonable guy; almost slanders Blanxart, who would certainly not prosecute but using 'Thrune' as an insult is something she should really stop for his sake.

"I don't think a judge should ever rule contrary to the law. But I think rule in the present circumstances, with laws written by this inexperienced body, requires judges to have discretion, and it is not clear whether the current mind control permits them that discretion."

"When you say it's 'not clear' — are you saying you've asked and haven't been told, or asked and got an unclear explanation, or haven't asked at all, or something else entirely?"

Thanks for slandering Bellumar for me, paladin! I really hope you don't get killed.

"Some of the assembled body seemed to find examples very useful, in the slander case. Perhaps it would be worth asking for an hour of a judge's time to see how the geas permits them to rule on example cases, if the magic will kick in at all for unreal or past situations."

"After the trial I wrote to the Queen's staff inquiring as to the precise details of the compulsions that she disclosed her judges were under, having heard a great many queries and a great deal of confusion and anger, and having encountered the widespread belief that the miscarriage of justice we witnessed was due to the Queen's mind control rather than to the inadequate state of the law. I have not received a return reply, but would not have expected to, as I imagine the only people who could answer my question are very busy, and less than a day has passed since I inquired.

I can send a followup inquiry asking if this committee may question a geased judge to determine the extent to which the magic impedes them in arriving at predictable or reasoned judgments."

That's Bellumar slandering her, the midwife of any purported miscarriage, though lightly. The real ones are yet to come.

Not that there's any recourse.

Oh, how to be polite to Chelish counts. She hears the judge made quite clear that he felt that the young lady's behavior ought to be illegal, but that he felt no law actually prohibited it. Perhaps he was right. But if the judges are to rule based not on what the law is, but what they feel it ought to be, then it means very little for a good queen to be writing the laws in the first place.

"Perhaps the convention would be reassured if the wording of the judge's compulsion were made public. And if there is indeed a problem with that wording, we will identify it much more easily when we see it."

"I agree that the clarity of the law is of great importance, and if geas is to be used, the wording should be public.

I can't speak to what the judge was thinking, but I suspect the outcome of that case turned on the prosecutor's decision to not bring a case of treason. I would be more interested in hearing Her Majesty's reasoning for considering this a high treason case, and dismissing it out of hand, instead of the simple treason case that it seemed to be."

Her Majesty's reasoning was that she wanted Wain to be acquitted. Obviously. "I am not sure it is in the power of this convention to ask the courts to enforce existing laws, but if this committee does consider it in scope for us to do that then it does seem to me that Wain should be charged on the counts of which she is guilty and has not yet been charged."