"Does Iomedae's church try to avoid disagreements escalating, then?" Blai will be able to tell this is more important to Silvia than she's trying to make it sound. 

"Yes. Very much so. It helps no one but the enemy if Iomedae's people are fighting amongst ourselves. There's a hierarchy but it's complicated and one isn't automatically in it even if selected by the Goddess - I'm not because I haven't learned enough to be competent to take meaningful vows, for instance, which means that I can get advice but not orders - but even within the hierarchy it's always permissible to go over one's superior's head and get a dispute settled, or ask for a reassignment, or complain of an illegal order."

Being able to go over a superior to resolve disputes is— wait, what?

"Illegal orders?"

"Illegal orders are an essential concept, at least to me - there are things that no one, not even the top levels of the church hierarchy or the commander of one's order or Iomedae Herself, is authorized to demand. Even from people sworn to obedience, even in wartime, even if they claim to have an exceptionally good reason. - sometimes you are allowed to volunteer for things no one is authorized to demand, but then it's not an order so it isn't an illegal order."

That's possible? She didn't think that was how things worked! Wasn't law supposed to be about being predictable and acting in exactly the way you're supposed to act?

"You can do that and still be lawful?"

"Yes! It's amazing, isn't it?"

Nod.

...but she's clearly off-topic at this point. Such as she had a topic, which admittedly wasn't much but still.

"I know Asmodeus's church tried to make sure nobody could appeal to anything but the Church, or maybe the Crown but we didn't have much of that, to settle disputes." Se's clearly understating things. "Is that also part of Hell, or is it just how churches work? If you know, at least, I guess this is more about how Iomedae's country works than how her church works."

"I've been to Lastwall briefly but did not study their handling of this while I was there. I think a Good church will not - seek to be your only recourse? It might in practice be your only recourse if the state is deficient, right now the justice system in most of Cheliax is paladins on loan from the Reclamation riding around, but I would not expect them to seek to prevent other systems you could appeal to from coming into existence."

Well that's good at least. She probably can't ask about Wain, even if this is supposed to be private. "Is the Convention more like the Asmodean church, or the Iomedaen?"

—why did she ask that. She should not have asked that. Thaaat... well. Nothing for it now. 

"...I wouldn't really say it's like a church at all. I guess there might be churches it's like, but - neither of those."

Oh good. Nothing too bad happened to her there. And she can get back to her planned questions.

"Like I said, I was a servant of a Chosen before the war. If I had been a servant of a Select instead, what generally would have been different?"

"I would expect - well, little to no torture, they use flogging in the military and I've never specifically asked about servants but it would surprise me a little if it happened in that context so more likely 'no torture' than 'little' but I'd need to check to be sure. ...probably more clearly specified duties or at least response to failure with clarification the first few times. You would not have been given illegal orders but I'm not sure if you'd have been required to take a class on recognizing them just in case. I can get you a list of what they are scrivened off from the Lastwall military discipline handbook if you would like, it's not long without all the edge cases and those are rare."

"That might help me understand how illegal orders work, yes. What about the rest of the village? You said a Select would probably not try to shut down other ways to resolve things, but how would you expect the actual judgements to differ? ...either a Select or a paladin, actually, I don't really know what the difference is. Maybe that's important."

"We have different powers and clerics have more alignment flexibility than paladins but we follow most of the same rules and guidance. You might want to talk to one of the paladins who's ridden assizes about how they're doing justice in that context, all my experience is military."

"That makes sense. Speaking of guidelines, what are the most important places where Asmodean teachings were wrong?" Or where we should now believe they were wrong, she doesn't say.

"Hell is bad and no one should go there even if they could somehow be assured of ranking highly, which they virtually always can't. There is no particular desirability about His preferred structure of tyranny besides that He likes it and that is not a good enough reason. Torturing people is basically always wrong and it would be licit to assiduously avoid situations where you might risk encountering exceptions like the military if it were a matter of conscience. - having a conscience is good and is not pathetic, that was a lie intended to prevent people from intuiting their way out of Hell's trap. There are limits to what can be licitly demanded of you and to what you can licitly demand of others. Murder is wrong, including of infants, and it is incumbent on mortals to avoid putting infants in harm's way such as by creating them in situations where infanticide would be appealing wherever this is possible to avoid. There is always a best thing to do; how good that thing is depends on a lot of factors but importantly one of them is the strategies you know of for how to think about it; it is accordingly important to put time into learning better such strategies."

That's a lot, but it does seem to fit together with what he was saying before? If Law is about things besides just playing the part you're given, if it's important to actually believe in what you're doing.... maybe that makes a system which doesn't have to et everything else to survive. Maybe she really can fit in without tearing herself apart trying to do contradictory things.

...and now she wants to thank him again. Maybe it's worth asking.

"And helping people like this, counseling them and actually trying to make them more correct even if they don't give you anything for it, is that something Iomedae wants her clerics to do?"

"Yes, I consider it my responsibility as Her cleric to find the most good that would go undone without my contribution and work on that within my constraints and responsibilities."

Another curtsey, deeper this time. "Then thank you for your time, Select."

And off she goes.

"You're welcome." And he can rejoin his bodyguard once the door is open.

A short while later, a woman wearing a colorful though somewhat tattered cloak and a child of under a year on her hip sweeps in into the temple. 

“Select Artigas?” 

"Yes, how can I help you?"

If Blai has a good enough memory for faces he might recognize her and her baby from the religious delegates section. She’s usually as near the exit as she can manage and has been ducking out with her baby whenever he’s gotten fussy enough. She’s not wearing her name tag though. 

“I came by because I was curious, when you came up during the floor speeches, and then I read your pamphlet saying you were talking to people here and thought I might come by. Nothing pressing, I’m happy to stand aside if a petitioner with more urgent reasons to speak arrives or if you’ve already had enough conversations for the day.”

"I expected when I produced the pamphlet to spend all evening on conversations and no one else appears to be waiting for me right now."

“Have you had a lot of people come by already?”