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This shit. She'd meant to focus on the beginnings of an actual school system proposal, and she can still do that, but now there are three other things she has to do that she's not prepared for. Firstly, she has to patch things up with the fancy elf professor.

She agonizes for a while about whether to apologize privately or in the committee itself, and ultimately decides it will probably be more awkward to leave the committee waiting on the chair if it turns into a whole conversation. So she's here.

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In a manner like unto an Undead Abomination sits Lluïsa. She doesn't look okay! But stoically.

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Ysabet is here. 

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She’s surprised Korva didn’t cancel.  The floor ran long and isn’t Korva on multiple other committees?  Thea isn’t complaining, she’s sure Korva can handle it if she decided not to cancel.

She gives a nod of reassurance at Korva, she bets Korva can thread the needle and find a compromise that doesn’t leave the country illiterate.

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She's here. And also quietly judging everyone who is flagging, anyone who tries should be able to keep functioning all day.

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If Lluïsa were reading minds she'd be tempted to duel the Hellknight washout or whatever she is, then we'd see who's "flagging". (It would not be flirting.)

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Thea has plenty of physical endurance and even endurance at focused mental activity, but the convention requires constant awareness of tricks and angles and possible speeches.

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Coeliaris is here, and is correcting tests while she waits for the meeting to start.

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He's here. It feels a bit surreal; so much has happened since the last time he attended a committee meeting.

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Present.

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"Hello everyone. It's been a long day, so I doubt we'll get through everything I wanted to talk about, but I'm going to ask some of you for homework, so we should at least try to get through that much. First of all, as a procedural matter, I'd like to formally vote on whether we want to keep the convention secretaries here to take notes to distribute to everyone else, or whether we'd like to expel the secretaries and speak privately. I don't know anyone else to have expelled theirs, so I'd lean against expelling them, but I think it's worth making an explicit decision about it, now that we know we can."

She'll first ask them to raise their hands if they want to keep the secretaries, and then raise their hands if they want to remove them.

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She doesn't care either way. Abstain.

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Keep. If anyone wants real secrecy they'll have to go to much more effort than having conversations here, and half-secrecy is merely an annoyance.

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Keep.  She’d rather an accurate account available to everyone than partial accounts which will leak anyway.

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He arrives just as Korva starts speaking, and raises his hand in favor of keeping the secretaries.

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Definitely keep. This- among other reasons- is why she has an apprentice. 

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She thinks about it. Is she going to say anything here she would rather not be repeated to the floor? Does she expect that to change? 

Well. In a sense it limits what arguments she can make, because she cannot argue against spending on education in a way that will make enemies of people she needs to instead have onside for fixing the army. But it would be foolish to do that anyway, in a room with 11 other people in it, and she’s not good enough at politics for dancing around the edges of a line to be a good strategy in expectation.

In favor.

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Keep 'em.

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She reminds everyone that her own notes are freely available to fellow Committee members, but votes for keeping the official scribes too.

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It’s a good sign to Thea that Lluisa found the assurance that the convention is private (for the purposes of the censorship law) convincing enough to offer copies of her own notes!

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"All right, passes. Second of all - Professor Coeliaris, I'd like to apologize for trying to shoot down your bill on the floor today. I don't actually think it's a bad idea. I do think that it assumes a school system that we don't presently have, and that if our resources for that school system are very limited, we should figure out what they are and what we most need before committing to implement any specific thing. But - I would much rather have those discussions between committees than on the floor in front of everyone, especially with the new prohibition on introducing the same bill twice."

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"Madam, think nothing of it. Likewise, I apologize if, in my zeal for the Cause, you felt excluded. And I certainly agree that if we can get any kind of educational system at all out of the mess our predecessor institutions left us, it will be quite a victory. However, you're mistaken if you think there is no school system running at all. Many of the younger children are not being taught by past extant institutions, but my colleagues and I are certainly attempting to run the Westcrown College of Wizardry."

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"I do understand that the academies are open. It's possible that there's a place solely within the academies for tracking. I suspect that once education is voluntary the academies won't see very many people who are interested in taking on large amounts of debt to learn only basic wizardry, and in the old system this was - well, in theory you can have a system where children graduate from wizard prep and don't get at all penalized for not going on to an academy. Many of those will already have enough wizardry skills for another profession, and - that's the sort of thing that will inform how the academies are structured going forward, too."

"On the subject of the academies - this morning we passed a censorship law, among other things providing for the future possibility of a censorship board and current protections for libraries run by the crown. This makes all of the library stuff we were considering last time suddenly much more important. Cheliax doesn't have anyone qualified to run a censorship board at present, but the people who still work for the government and have the most relevant skills are quite possibly the academy librarians. I don't know exactly what sorts of proposals we should be considering for using libraries and existing library staff as a means of curating or approving works of particular academic value, or of expanding access to such works in cities that don't have an academy, or of ensuring that the academy libraries are open to a larger portion of the public than just students, but I think all of that is at least worth thinking about. Delegates Oriol and Coeliaris, and obviously anyone else who's decided that this matters to you, if you could think about it and come back to us later with some ideas worth considering, I would be grateful."

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"I shall. I have also a Professional Librarian in my Employ to consult with, though it is an Outsider and may not necessarily be able to Opine on Material Libraries."

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"How splendid! Which species of outsider, might I ask? Your own work?"

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