And who are these fellows if you look at them up close?

Also does Valentí count? He's shown up and made no issue of his presence.

Well, at least today he's not on tense and confusing terms with the chair over accidentally almost wresting the position from her. Could be worse. Could also be better, but what couldn't be.

One of them is the guy who just argued on the floor they should outlaw Calistria’s church!

Fuck that guy.

Also this guy, who has been feeling much more sympathy for Calistria than usual. On the floor he was mostly agreeing with Acevedo though.

And this guy, who was invited, and naively assumes that means he won't be voted on.

"So are they to be voted about as a group or one at a time?" Raimon asks Carlota.

"As I understand it, we have to vote individually on them or we can ask the floor to reconstitute the committee and add all the new members. I'd prefer not to do that, but I will if necessary, having already on the floor suggested that they join our committee for it. Can our new potential representatives introduce yourselves and give a brief account of what your experience relevant to this committee is?"

"Felip III, Duke of Fraga. I was previously the captain of a Mendevian mercenary band, and before that a wandering adventurer through Galt and the Broken Lands. Fraga is mostly rural, and I have spent much of the last year on the road, inspecting the duchy and its villages."

"Marquis Vidal Puig de Almenar. Almenar borders the Barrowood - I've spent my life keeping my roads and villages safe from the forest. I fell in battle at the outbreak of the civil war and was returned from Axis by the grace of the Archmage Naima."

"Francisco, Count of Acevedo. I was an adventurer and baron in Taldor, near the Verduran forest, before I abdicated my title and returned to Cheliax. The Acevedo county was never the home of any great cities, but it has lessened under infernal rule and I've been working on righting that - repairing bridges, patrolling roads, protecting the harvest, and ensuring my vassals rule ably and justly."

"I vote against Conde d'Acevedo."

Of course he does, there's a reason Calistrians are incompatible with civilized countries. Fortunately his opinion doesn't matter.

Probably they're going to get nothing done today but a fight over adding people, aren't they.

"I also vote against the Conde. "

Him, Carlota, Aniol, the peasant, and the hellknight left. It's fine if either the hellknight or the peasant votes against, as long as all others vote in favor. If the peasant and the hellknight both vote against, Acevedo is out. If they bring anyone else in first, Acevedo is in, assuming the others are all in this together. But the Calistrian has selected this fight, now, and trying to challenge him on procedure will be very transparent, and the Calistrian will be angry. He's not actually sure whether anything bad happens if they let in the other two and not Acevedo. Reconstituting the committee probably wouldn't make it less reasonable, although it's possible they'll end up with a new chair and in that case almost anything could happen.

Ugh.

"I don't see why we need any extra people at all."

"Since it seems we are voting on the Count de Acevedo first, I am inclined in favor. Unless anyone has a pertinent objection? Count-Regent? Marquis?"

Menador doesn't produce many Hellknights, in Valentí's experience, and fewer of the Chain, but this is because they keep all their good candidates at home. Frequently with titles.

"Are you in the committee? That's not the same voice and not the same armor."

.....that's a different hellknight, isn't it. Abyss.

He supposes the worst possibility is that the committee is reconstituted without him, in which case he won't need to deal with this, but the questions this committee handles are important ones, and he does, in fact, want to see that they are settled reasonably.

"More people with defensive experience will generate a greater number of reasonable ideas, and leave us to take the best of everyone's," he says, more to Arlet than to anyone else. "I think a Mendevian mercenary captain is certainly welcome company, and will, for instance, have very useful things to say about our ongoing discussion of limits on the use of foreign mercenaries. The others likely will as well, though perhaps on different specific topics."

(Actually, a Mendevian is pretty likely to hate him in particular, but it's the kind of hating him in particular that only gets worse if he doesn't do anything. It's dimly possible that he can bring people around by consistently saying reasonable things, though it usually takes him longer than the convention has so far allowed.)

"I believe it's up to the chair to determine what order the votes are called in, and that we've all found her to be extremely fair with everyone's concerns thus far."

"I think a smaller committee's better. If we wanted all the ideas there are to be had we'd just hash everything out in the giant room with everyone in it."

He's not going to be so gauche as to raise an eyebrow at Carlota. Especially not when her committee is doing such a great job of making any point he'd want to for him.

"I am the delegate from the Order of the Chain and have taken on my predecessor's duties. But you are correct, Delegate Séfora. I am Knight Valentí Vallvé, previously stationed in Egorian. The paralictor's considerable skills in investigation and combat were needed elsewhere, and our Lictor judged me a suitable replacement. His reasons for being present on this committee, namely the Chain's experience in law enforcement and particularly in operating the most secure and largest prison in mainland Cheliax, remain in my case."

"As a procedural matter I believe I am treated as a noble dying unrecoverably during the convention and being replaced by their heir would be, though I will allow that this has not yet been tested and so we would be setting a precedent rather than following one."

"The Hellknights are entitled to replace their delegate just as Chelam could replace ours. I am going to call the vote first on the Duke de Fraga.


I want to be clear, Delegate Ginel, that 'this committee remains small' is not going to happen. The work this committee does is important, and so more people are interested in it, and we will either add people or someone will call a floor vote tomorrow to reconstitute the committee with more people. You may veto all of these people if you'd like, but that will lead to the dissolution of the committee, not to the committee remaining in its current form."

"That'll be fun to hash out on the floor."

"I think your contributions to this committee are valuable and that you're here for the right reasons. I think that this committee is doing good and productive work, and realistically, now that there's so much more interest in that work this committee will have to either grow and incorporate more perspectives or be dissolved and lose all its present members, like Judiciary. Does anyone have questions for Duke de Fraga, before we vote on adding him?"

"Are you planning to vote on further committee additions today if added to the committee?" Raimon asks the Duke de Fraga.

"I think that for propriety's sake the new members should abstain on votes for additional members, so the order of the votes is not of enormous importance."

"I have been told that Mendevian law and its enforcement is rather anarchic, which would make it a source of poor examples rather than good ones, though they might be examples of Good regardless. Do you have a few words on your experience with the law there, and whether what I was told was correct?"

That's kind of odd. Adding the conservatives to the committee will make it more Lawful, compared to its current composition; they see more eye to eye with the Hellknights than any of the current delegates do. And separately, Fraga's presence here is part of a floor conversation in which Carlota proposed it as a compromise, and while (since Urban Order did get founded) she's not particularly going to fight for Acevedo she does have to fight for Fraga, and the Hellknight presumably knows that, and also presumably knows that the current state of the agreement between Carlota and the Hellknights is 'do not throw your weight into wrecking her committee unless you want her to throw hers into wrecking you'. 

Hopefully she's just reading too much into it and the Hellknight is not trying to pick a fight with her. The Hellknight does not even have any incentive to do that. On the other hand the other Hellknight didn't have incentive to do it either, and did it anyway.

Hm. He had been hoping to vote on further additions to the committee.

"I think there is a clear precedence order," meaning that counts follow marquises who follow dukes, "and that I would join this committee as a full member, entitled to vote on any issue that comes up. I presume this is our first constitutional convention for all of us, and so we are not practiced in the proper forms. I would hear the Duchess de Chelam's argument for my recusal from additional votes to add members."

He turns to the Hellknight. "Of the countries besides Cheliax that I had direct experience of, I would say Mendev's law enforcement had the hardest job and yet managed to succeed. Proximity to the Worldwound meant there were always demon cultists to be rooted out, the safety of villages was constantly at risk, and yet the country has survived and its Queen remains a paladin. I think few places will match the discipline of the Hellknights, and did not understand that to be the standard our realm desires."

"I fear that, if the first new members to vote can vote on subsequent members, that will inspire the committee to consider the new candidates as a single bloc, instead of as individuals with individual expertise and perspective they can bring to our discussions. I believe there's a great deal to be learned from your experience in Mendev, which faced resource constraints even more grave and tragic than those of modern Cheliax, and of course from your experience restoring order in Fraga, and I would be grieved for this referendum to become a referendum on the Conde Acevedo, who I do not know as well and to whom I can hardly offer as warm and firm a recommendation."

He nods, and removes his helmet (it did its job already).

"Certainly Mendev has one of the best of all possible excuses for what failings it has. Reports were likely exaggerated; I asked principally because I was curious what a resident would say firsthand, and if you had said it was just as bad as rumored I would still have been satisfied, as examples to avoid can be equally valuable. I vote in favor of Duke de Fraga."

Oh good. The committee really will be improved by his presence. As the chair she will vote last.

"In favor."

"Abstain."

"I'd like to hear the Duke's opinion on the Duchess's opinion about whether he is voting on other new members."

(Abstention should be good enough if it's 4-2 otherwise.)

"In favor."

Wisdom from a Calistrian. He might even snarkily acknowledge it, if that wasn't half of how Rosa offended the Duchess before.

They did game the math out, ahead of the committee meeting, but not this stage of it. If both he and Vidal get on, then there would need to be four votes against Acevedo for him to not get on. He trusted that Carlota will made the trades she needs to make to get him on the committee and Acevedo off it, if that's what needs to happen. Was her suggestion cover for a trade she's already made, and Raimon checking whether or not he's going to hold up his side of the deal?

Well, if so, he wishes Carlota had warned him before the session. Just now, he was worried about votes against from Sefora, Raimon, and Arlet; but as one of the three has abstained, he thinks he's safe.

"I hope your fear is misplaced, and do not think it is sufficient grounds to establish a new procedure. I think it would be simplest if I vote on other new members."

"Oh, well, that's sneaky, I'm against now."

"What do you find sneaky about membership being effective immediately?"

Arlet folds her arms and doesn't answer him.

"The vote's a little farcical if you can troop three people in here who all want each other on the committee and get the first one on to help the second one on to help the third one on."

"Your grace, I invited you to join us because I think you have an important perspective to bring to our work. I think it is very understandable for the membership of this committee, who do not know you as well as I and might wrongly suspect a stealthy takeover of their committee, to be surprised at the number of people who arrived with you to join, and to want to ensure they can consider each individually. This is a simple way to assuage their worries."

Valentí has worked in Egorian for years and that means he has developed a significant tolerance for this bullshit.

It is still, however, Mephistophelean bullshit. He will consider abstaining to balance out the vote. If the Duchess seems to favor it.

The Duchess is indeed trying to indicate, inasmuch as people can read her body language, that she's deeply unimpressed with the Duke's refusal and is not going to be annoyed if other people say they are too.

"Given that it seems we are block voting, perhaps we could trade these two, rather more sensible sounding men here, for the Conde's absence and a single person not from the noble party acceptable to all present?"

Thank you, Séfora, for saying something that will sound perfectly reasonable if the minutes are read. "I was thinking of asking one of the Glorious Reclamation paladins to join, as they have extensive experience with the road safety problem from the work they are doing to provide justice."

Well, that might just be a way to make it so Raimon can't explode the committee by walking out and letting the floor hash out whether hellknights are "religious" (religious of fucking whom? good question!) but she doesn't seem to be going to bat for Conde Abolish-Calistria, so he doesn't make a fuss about it at once.

"Agreement between a Hellknight and a Chosen of Calistria on a subject other than the Worldwound would be very nearly unprecedented," he says dryly, "However, I would happily agree to the Duchess's suggestion, so if Delegate Pages agrees also, then it can be achieved here."

"I am a nay on the Conde and not so firmly decided on anyone else; in his absence I would be happy to admit these other two fellows and a paladin."

(Carlota thinks you should probably ban the Church of Calistria but she's not going to say so in any situation where she lacks the power to immediately do it, because she is not an idiot.)

"I'll send to the Glorious Reclamation to ask if there is one among their number who would be qualified to join us and can spare their time." And she'll hand a note to this effect to an aide.

"While I am of course chiefly interested in this committee being well run for the good of Cheliax, I cannot help but think that several of its members do not belong on such a commitee. Perhaps a broader restructuring in general would not go amiss?"

Or, your grace, I had been under the impression that you had this commitee under control, not that you were held hostage by bandits and whores.

Well, there goes his ability to make this vote about him, instead of Acevedo.

"Conde, I bear you no ill will, and should this committee vote to have you as a member I would happily join my vote to theirs. But I remind you that this is a Republican body, with many of its members drawn from the commons, and if you are to ask the floor to reconstitute this committee I believe you'll have to put forward an objection stronger than that there are people in this room who 'don't belong', like that their actual contributions have been counterproductive. I do not believe that the minutes of this session, read on the floor, would support you in such a claim. The Delegate Ginel and the Delegate Séfora may not wear fine silks, but no one can read the minutes and doubt that they have proposed reasonable compromises and voted as their conscience and wisdom demands." Sèfora please please take a hint and keep it that way. "The Delegate Pages works for the mail service, work I think we can all acknowledge as crucial and as relevant to this committee whatever our opinions of Calistria. Does our committee need more expertise? Yes, and we have sought it out. What expertise do you worry we would still be missing, if we adopt the proposed compromise and add the Duke and the Marquis and a Glorious Reclamation representative?"

He'll try anyway. "I trust in the committee's ability to consider us as separate candidates." Hopefully that strikes the balance between agreeing with Sefora's deal and not selling out Acevedo.

"I note that even with three new members, the committee will only be at ten, and have room for a paladin of the Glorious Reclamation, who I would be happy to vote for." He really doesn't think it makes sense to agree to be a second class committee member! Imagine having to explain to a paladin why he abstained instead of voting in favor of him.

"Perhaps those committee minutes would indeed assuage my doubts. Do you happen to have them on hand?"

He flatly doesn't believe the Calistrian managed to make it two sessions without saying something Carlota doesn't want to defend to the open floor, and the other one doesn't seem smart enough to have kept their mouth shut either.

The Duke should accept standing aside for a single set of votes, because otherwise the peasant won't vote for any of them and the committee will explode, and there's no reason to believe that the the reconstituted committee will be less insane rather than more insane. The only real problem with the current one on a policy level is the bandit queen.

At this point Llei is also pretty unimpressed, but he's going to try very hard not to show it, because he doesn't need more enemies.

"Do you?" she asks the aide. The aide won't; Carlota did not have copies of those minutes made. 

        "No, your grace."

"If you have some specific concern, Conde, this committee will hear it. Here's my impression of the present situation: this committee will on my recommendation welcome the Duke and the Marquis, if they do the courtesy of abstaining from today's additional membership votes, but will reject both if they refuse to abstain because in that case the new arrivals are all a block and should be evaluated as such.

Delegate Séfora has recommended that, since the Duke is not willing to consider abstaining, we instead accept the Duke, the Marquis, and a mutually agreeable member, and reject the Conde. I think this is a sensible compromise, but will hear out the Conde if he wants to make the case that he offers this body some expertise which will otherwise be absent even with our new members, or if he has some specific concern about the present members. We are in private; any truthful allegation can be heard, here."

So it completely undermines her argument, got it. Both the Calistrian and the bandit have no business here. He can't actually force his way onto the committee right now if she's going to fight it but if she's going to keep trying to play the game in bad faith he'll make her tie her name to them.

"I expect both His Grace of Fraga and Marquis Almenar will do a fine job for their own parts, and sought to join merely because I believed that sharing my expertise was the best method to serve Cheliax. I have no interest in impugning your word, though, and if you tell me the delegates here have your endorsement I won't insist on seeing the minutes you said would support them."

How confident is she that neither of them will say anything in front of De Fraga or Almenar that would ruin her to endorse?

"I have profound disagreements with every man and woman in this room, but we are commanded by our Queen to serve alongside one another nonetheless, and I do not think she selected any of them for this convention in error, and I would not back a motion for their removal in the absence of a specific allegation they are unfit for their duties.

A vote, then, on the addition as a single motion of the Duke de Fraga, the Marquis Vidal, and a representative of the Glorious Reclamation?"

"In favor."

"Yes"

"Aye."

"In favor."

"Abstain."

"In favor."

"And I am also in favor. Welcome, new members. I have copies of the measures I introduced to this body for consideration on the first day." She'll pass them out. She will now have to prevent Acevedo from being furiously angry with her, which is annoying, but she can't actually really bring herself to blame her committee for it; they had no reason to vote for the man and were only given less and less of one as the interaction went on. 

The aide comes back with a paladin.

"Welcome to Safe Roads, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?"

"My name is Angela Jornet and I am a paladin of the Reclamation, originally from Molthune; I've spent the better part of my time in Cheliax since the war riding assizes in the province known as the Hellcoast."

"Thank you for joining us. This committee when it last convened was contemplating this proposal:

Cheliax's roads and rivers should be free of violence. It is the duty of each lord who has been entrusted with Chelish territory that he maintain the rule of law within his territory and further his duty to ensure that he not permit the escape through his territory of those who have done violence in the territory of his neighbor. No person acts wrongly, or may be punished, should he, having failed to secure redress for lawlessness in a specific Chelish territory from the lord of those lands, speak or write to that lord's liege to make him aware of the problem yet unredressed, presuming he speaks truthfully, or speaks or writes to the lord of a nearby territory to the same effect.

I think this is of particular importance given the slander laws, and should be written to provide specific assurance that it is not slander for a person to truthfully complain of a specific failure to maintain order to anyone empowered to redress it."

"Overall this proposal seems sensible, but why include the lord of a nearby territory? They would not have standing to intervene, whereas the liege does. If I received a complaint about the Duchess of Chelam, my primary peaceable option would be raising it to our mutual liege, and I would be reluctant to pass on reports I could not verify. Perhaps we should instead specify those orders or churches who may have standing to investigate misbehavior on the part of nobility." In Mendev, it's not your liege's job to investigate claims of hidden demon-worship.

"My expectation is that many people do not know which authorities are legitimately empowered to address a problem, and I would rather protect those people in reports that are ultimately futile than count on successfully communicating all of that. And a neighboring lord can be much easier to reach than the liege. I think we should also protect reports to orders or churches with standing to investigate, though I also think the existing law protects those at least if there is suspicion of a crime."

He nods thanks to Carlota and takes a seat to look through those proposals. What have the radicals been trying here?

Carlota's four are fine, mostly. He doesn't like the limit on mercenaries, there's no reason to take away nobles' right and ability to defend themselves and their lands. In the last one "labor for his benefit" needs to be more tightly construed - he should still be able to gather a workforce for something that benefits all, bridges and roads and the like.

Sefora's are the insanity he expected.

"My subjects, and those of any upright noble, should not need this - but given the times it may be necessary. I understand the difficulty of reaching your lord's liege, but I also would not see this becoming a way for one rival to interfere with his neighbor. Protecting reports to churches in good standing, along with that liege, seems reasonable and wide enough."

"Cheliax is large, as are its archduchies. If, hypothetically, the Marquis de Juncosa's eastern neighbor should fail to deal with a matter of safety, their liege is hundreds of miles away, almost all of the distance over dangerous territory. Even if everyone else acts rightly, reaching the Archduke Narikopolus before many more deaths have occurred may be impossible. Aniol himself would be much better positioned to intervene, simply as a matter of location. If we give people reason to believe that reports of danger can only be safely given to an extremely limited number of people, all of whom may be unreachable, we will simply not receive reports, and peasants will die needlessly."

"I consider getting along with my neighbors to be one of my responsibilities as a marquis. Adding to that relationship dealing with one another's inconveniently placed or timed monsters seems reasonable enough to me."

"I agree with that, and it is what I do in Almenar and with my neighbors. I rather wanted to avoid encouraging people to go to nearby lords over every issue they have with their own lord, beyond monsters and bandits, which seemed to me a recipe for strife between neighbors."

"I think the people of Cheliax more likely to fail to alert their own lords of a problem unless they fear for their lives."

"My order is primarily urban and myself moreso than most, but I believe the Count-Regent's assessment of the behavior of the Chelish commons is generally accurate. Certainly in the old regime they would, for the vast majority of lords, be correct to fear reporting minor problems more than the consequences of those problems."

"My own experience has been that people will repeatedly hesitate to raise to my attention problems which are obviously going to get worse over time - ghouls, say, or a breeding pair of forest beasts - until those problems get bad enough that they are sure they won't survive them. It would do a great deal of good if they were willing to alert me - or their priest, or a neighboring lord, or the mail-carrier, or anyone else - of those problems while they are simple to solve. I have had no experience of problems being raised to my attention that were not extremely serious."

"I'd be happy to pass on complaints - maybe anonymized - from anyone I pass by in my deliveries, sure."

"What does everyone think of this:

It is a service to Her Majesty, to the honorable and noble lords of Cheliax, and to the common good for monsters, bandits, corrupt or incompetent leadership, and other sources of danger to Her Majesty's subjects to be reported to those empowered to investigate and address them. As a consequence of the damage done by Asmodean rule, Her Majesty's subjects hesitate to make even necessary reports, and are ignorant of who those reports are safely addressed to. Much work must be done to foster the bonds of mutual respect and obligation which ought to exist between lords and their subjects, and the protection of the law can serve to foster those bonds.

The right to petition Her Majesty is protected by decree of Her Majesty, and petitions to the local lords obliged in public safety ought to be similarly protected. The right to report a crime to appropriate authorities is justly protected, and the right to report a danger ought to be protected similarly.

Towards that end:

If a man reports to any agent of the Crown, of any authorized Church, or any lord of Cheliax or their staff a problem with monsters or bandits or similar threats to public safety and law and order in Cheliax, or reports a specific failure of a local lord, a local priest, or of Her Majesty's appointed leadership in addressing public safety and law and order in Cheliax, believing his report to be true and not misleading, his actions do not constitute slander or libel and are protected by law. He may not be punished unless it is demonstrated that his intent was to incite a crime or that he knew his report to be false or misleading.

"Very well, you have convinced me. I still worry it will create confusion and encourage disputes over where boundary lines should be drawn, but I would vote in favor of this draft."

He is not looking forward to fielding the complaints about the other lords in his region, but maybe he should think about this as lending them his credibility until they can establish their own.

"I think a lot of crime reports could be construed as slander or libel if someone with the opportunity to make that call wanted them to. That's not really something we can deal with from here, just noting it."

"While my order and the others like it made compromises to operate in Infernal Cheliax, one valuable service we provided the state nonetheless, and have continued to so far, is law enforcement which is uniform across the country and disconnected from the personal politics of the more venal lords, of which there remain many at the lower ranks the Queen could not inspect closely. I would prefer if the provisions for reports to churches also have explicit mention of orders trusted and empowered by the Crown to enforce Law. Whether the existing orders are so empowered or new ones organized can be a matter for Her Majesty, or considered as a separate proposal if the committee or convention wishes to take it up. I would suggest 'of any Crown-authorized Church or order' as the wording."

He's not going to make a fight of it but it's worth trying.

"Perhaps we should word it 'orders chartered by the Crown to aid in the provision of justice'. Which brings to my attention another potential deficiency in wording; the entire staff of a lord of Cheliax might include many who would not be useful recipients of such a complaint, but I don't immediately see how to clearly distinguish informing a guardsman of a potential manticore and informing a cook."

"I could imagine someone reporting a manticore to the cook if the cook is, say, their cousin, and I'd find it exasperating but I don't actually think it ought to be illegal. Delegate Pages, the slander law protects reports of crimes to appropriate authorities already; we are just expanding it to allow reports of conduct that is noncriminal but relevant to public safety. I would break no laws if I sat in my castle letting manticores eat people but it would be appropriate to notify the Archduke Blanxart that I had so abdicated my duties."

She adds 'orders chartered by the Crown to aid in the provision of justice'. The other side of the deal where the Hellknights support her is that she supports them, where it's reasonable.

Carlota does have point about earlier reports of spawning monsters or undead. "Any of my staff should know well to pass along manticore reports, Your Grace, and if this proposal is adopted I expect each lord will need to decide how best to handle it within their own household." And specifying how nobles should run their houses is not something he wants more of from this convention.

He'll nod to the duke and duchess to make his acceptance clear.

"Indeed. I think we're all managing perfectly well internally, and it's just a matter of getting the populace in the habit of petitioning for, and receiving, the aid they require until they understand how civilization is meant to function. If there is no further comment on this proposal, I would like to call a vote on it."

"In favor."

"Aye."

"In favor."

"Aye."

"Aye."

"In favor."

"In favor."

Llei frankly sees no reason to criminalize informing anyone at all of a manticore or its activities, but there's admittedly no completely clean line between manticores and mountain orcs and bandit orcs and bandit non-orcs and regular people who may or may not have committed crimes. ...except that all but the last are pretty unlikely to prosecute someone for slander.

"In favor."

Fine. "Yes."

"Thank you all. We can continue through the matters introduced last week, but none of those are time-sensitive except in that the peace and stability of Cheliax is always measured in lives, so if any member has their own proposal which is time-sensitive I would pause here for the committee to entertain it."

"I have no proposals so pressing that we cannot finish the committee's old business first."

"One part of the committee's old business was considering how to ensure the independence of the judiciary from the nobles. I'm seeing- with great pleasure- the paladin circuits coming to administer justice, and they are certainly welcome in the Western Hills. On that note, I would like to move that we retain this process- paladins, circuits and all, as well as enshrining the principle of an independent judiciary- in the future laws of Cheliax. Indeed, being from outside the county, and being expected to return to their base at a certain point, should give petty tyrants something to think about."

"I would advise against trying to make paladin assizes a long term feature of justice in Cheliax for several reasons. The Glorious Reclamation forces will no longer be recruiting at nearly the clip that we did when Cheliax's rule by Hell was an ongoing atrocity, and our funding sources are likewise expected to dwindle; I wouldn't be surprised if we were dissolved as an order entirely within the decade, though I am not aware of any specific plan for this. Iomedae is not choosing new paladins or clerics at anything remotely resembling her usual rate and we do not expect Her to resume doing so for the foreseeable future, so even if the Reclamation itself was unaffected by the completion of its driving mission, the paladin supply will diminish to normal attrition. The job is not, from a paladin-maintenance perspective, a good one; part of why we are trustworthy to perform high-stakes morally difficult work like itinerant justice is that we will stop and reassess after making one catastrophic mistake rather than a string of dozens of them, but that one mistake is still how you lose a paladin and many of us would function more sustainably in a less ethically compromising line of work. Cheliax is presently operating under very few and simple laws, but as the number of them mounts it is likely to become difficult to conscionably swear to uphold them in our circuits, as they become more likely to contradict each other, our vows, or the concerns of Law and Good."

"Do you think these 'Assizes' could be done by good clerics, or perhaps even mortal men, with a yearly administered battery of truth spells?"

"I have no objection to the assizes structure, per se, and truth spells might suffice to keep a judge's incentives aligned."

"Some countries manage assizes well enough without divine enforcement of the decency of the judges, and with a great deal of gratitude to the Reclamation I imagine that's the direction we ought to be headed in. Though I also think having stable non-travelling courts authorized at least to handle straightforward and urgent cases is important. On several different occasions I have learned of murders on my roads, tracked down the bandits, and then had to divert an enormous number of resources to feeding and guarding them while we sent around for someone authorized to try them; I think a good many people are under the circumstances just not accepting surrenders, and that isn't ideal either."

"With all due respect, Duchess, it would be very easy for a noble (perhaps a holdover from the previous regime) to call an inconvenient person a murderer and to subsequently have them tried and killed. Their family and friends might appeal, if they had such, but it certainly seems to me to misalign incentives."

"I think that Her Majesty decided very wisely not to devolve authority wholly to the local nobility, and with insufficient manpower there will be great costs paid somewhere no matter what we do. But - ultimately every defender of the people of Cheliax against monsters makes life-and-death decisions on a regular basis, and has to be trustworthy to do so, and the more distant the judges the more that discretion will inevitably be employed."

"Ah, well, men are a very different thing than monsters." Séfora shrugs back her cowl, letting her brass skin shine. "Very different."

She sighs. "I myself have killed many monsters. It is a thing that must be done. The difference is that when killed monsters, I became a beacon of good, and when I killed men, I lost that. From that I learn that it is a different thing, and should have different rules." 

"I assume the Judiciary committee is contemplating what to replace the assizes with, and it's out of scope for us?" she asks the paladin.

"It seems within the Judiciary committee's remit though it has not come up in specific."

"Even beyond the issues with a growing number of laws, not all of which might be approved of by paladins, I understand that in the sparser parts of the country, justice and taxation were often the responsibility of the same person, appointed by the distant Crown. I would be reluctant to ask a paladin to collect the Queen's taxes, once the tax holiday comes to an end.

When I spoke to peasants about it, they hoped the 'Egorian man' would never return, and I am not convinced replacing him with a Westcrown man will do much better. Perhaps we should gratefully acknowledge the Glorious Reclamation assizes as a temporary measure, and require their permanent replacements to be selected by the local lord from the residents of the region they will judge?"

"I like this word, 'Incentives', that the Paladins use. That is poor incentives. Good nobles-" If they exist, outside Quirze- "will certainly not abuse the power that our new member suggests, but a generation from now, their children will perhaps not have been selected for virtue by an archmage.  If trusted with such a responsibility, some will abuse it to place in charge their cronies, as was done in the Western Hills, and which caused a rebellion with some loss of life."

Thiiiis seems like it probably mostly has to do with how completely horrible in every way the men from Egorian are. Menadorians actually have the privilege of dispensing local justice - unique in the modern empire, he thinks, and mostly because travel is so dangerous - but he's not sure he really wants to call attention to that, since in the current context it's kind of a concerning place for nobles to have retained the ancient right to hear cases. Even though the Archduke Narikopolus has suspended it for kind of a lot of people, right now. Probably they will lose it soon, but it'll be kind of fair, as long as they lose it to someone capable of moving.

"I agree that this seems very centrally like a question for the judiciary committee."