Naima and Elie both have that quality Iomedae is in her histories sometimes depicted as having, where she keeps doing entirely impossible and novel things and then casually presuming that lots of other people did do them or will do them, as they weren't that hard and were plainly worth the trouble. Perhaps what it takes to become great is not just the tendency to do things but a deep felt sense that the things are obvious and that it's kind of odd no one's gotten around to them. "Maybe in the long run a great many fruitful enterprises will turn out to be possible when a state has as many wizards as Cheliax does, though I admit I can't think what exactly would be even partly as valuable as laundry and copying."

"Oh, in the future I hope that a significant percentage of the children who would have been wizards in Infernal Cheliax will instead become remedy alchemists, but that rather depends on how the next several years of research turn out. The hope is to cut childhood illness deaths by half, but I shouldn't brag before anyone has demonstrated the possibility.

I do think that lots of people are being excessively dismissive of general education as a worthy goal. I suppose I understand it, if people are thinking of Chelish schools and not Osirian ones, but it's really much easier to communicate things if everyone can read."

"I don't think it's an unworthy goal in principle, it's just a very expensive one. Lastwall tries to do two years' education in Vellumis, so that more children pick up their letters and the teachings of the Good gods, but outside the cities I don't see how it'd be done at all."

"Osirion does the whole Sphinx river valley, but of course Osirion is very dense and very, mm, geographically organized. And even then, four years to Cheliax's ten, and only for boys. Government schools, anyway - as I said, we're experimenting with private schools for girls and boys in the Junira, and interest is relatively high so far. I think that as fabricate obviates a great deal of women's work, we'll find ourselves with a female workforce quite suited to instructing young children, if we can give the first generation the basic instruction needed to maintain it in the future.

I really think that educated people are capable of quite a lot of things that are economically valuable, and that particularly in urban areas, basic instruction likely pays for itself. It's just that Chelish people mostly do not exemplify this at all, because the vast majority of them do not yet have a functional conscience, and therefore can't be trusted with any work that requires one. But this is fixable. I think."

"It seems to have much improved already in the other formerly-Asmodean states, though I do think the damage was most intense nearest Egorian."

"The cities in general, I think, though Egorian is probably the worst. But certainly I have met Andoren and Galtan people with functional consciences.

Admittedly, the idea of women who used to do weaving being freed up to teach small children works much better in Osirion than in Cheliax, which had already hired large numbers of women for various things and which may literally have been getting large amounts of clothing from hell? I'm not clear on this. In any case, we probably can't tackle educating the children very well until we have tackled raising them.

- which reminds me! I meant to ask you about your conscription recommendations. And argue with you about them, but if you have suggestions for making the situation less inconvenient for pregnant and nursing women that don't prevent them from participating, I'd certainly like to hear them."

" - well, I don't think you should forbid their participation, but I don't think you should oblige it. I would expect that many of the factors which affect how gravely they are harmed by it - or whether they benefit by it - to be very individual, so if you make it their choice you will entirely avoid egregiously wronging any of them."

"Now, see, there I do not agree with you at all. If we were working with Osirians I probably would! But - one of the first nursing mothers we picked up literally stabbed Elie with a knife. I come to calm her down, and it turns out that she's been made to bear five children before the age of twenty. All but the last of them dead, because her employer keeps forcing himself on her and then won't give her time to feed the children he creates. Can't leave, she has an indenture that gets a year added to it every time she gives birth. Doesn't have enough milk to keep the child alive on her own anymore. There's simply no sense in which leaving the girl in that house is a favor to her, no matter how intensely she insists that she doesn't want to leave it. And maybe it's also unfair to make her attend the convention! But I don't see that the convention ought to have dozens of men just like her employer, and none of the people they hurt.

I don't want to claim we're not harming anyone. I think that we certainly are, and that it's part of why the stipend is so high. But I don't think that the people who are being harmed correspond very well at all to the ones who would have agreed to go if we had asked permission."

"- I think you should certainly get that woman out of that house and to some place that can help her. But I worry that you are - setting, in Cheliax's laws and customs, a horrendous abuse of people, the evil of which is presently disguised because no one knows how things are supposed to work when they're not evil. 

It is often very important to women in Lastwall to have their mother or their sister present for labor, and a midwife they trust, not a hired stranger. It's a very intimate, frightening, difficult matter, childbirth, and especially if the baby dies it is a great comfort to know that everything was done that could be done. I think it is a great evil to oblige someone to endure childbirth in an unfamiliar place and among strangers. I know that you permitted the sortitions to bring some people with them, but - if my wife were conscripted she wouldn't ask for her sister to come along too, as she'd be expecting her sister to watch the children at home and she can't bring all of both of their children, they have twelve between them. And she could hardly ask the village priest to come along without leaving the village without a priest. She would go alone, and labor alone, and if there were any complications be touched and prodded by strangers at the most vulnerable moment of her life, and then care for the baby alone, and obviously in the haze of caring alone for a newborn contribute absolutely nothing to the legal arguments, and reasonably likely she'd never bring the baby home as cities are pits of plague - all towards absolutely no gain of the state - not that, in fact, I think the state has any right to do that to its people even if it does gain by it."

"It is easier to find an empowered Pharasmin cleric in Westcrown this month than it is almost anywhere else in the world. And I dispute that women who can pay are more likely to lose a baby in Westcrown than they are in most villages. I don't have complete record coverage of Westcrown, but I have it for Sothis and Katheer and nearly have it for Oppara, and they're not, not when I'm doing my job. This is not to say that some of the babies won't die - they will - but I don't expect them to die at elevated rates.

I don't dispute that taking a woman away from familiar surroundings when she gives birth is a harm to her, in most although probably not all cases. I probably wouldn't forbid someone from bringing their sister and twelve kids, honestly - the stipend is enough to cover it, for people without very expensive tastes - but most people insisted they didn't want family members, because most people thought we were going to kill them.

I do dispute that there is no benefit to the state. The benefit is that while I think you are qualified to speak for your wife's interests, I have mindread a lot of Chelish people, and I broadly do not believe that Chelish men are qualified to speak for the interests of Chelish women, even in those cases where they're married or raising children together.

And I think that now that they're here, a significant number of sortitions who would have refused to come if given the option are now beginning to contribute and find that they do care quite a lot about what the government is allowed to do to them. I think my primary objection is that there's - simply no way, with our current skills, to communicate to those people beforehand what a constitutional convention is, or what it means that they've been chosen to attend one.

I admit that perhaps this means that we ought to require a relatively short trial period and then re-draw sortitions to replace the people who want to go home in a month, or something."

"I think you would reduce the harm very greatly if you insisted they try it for a week and then permit them to leave if it is very terrible for them.  A month is - long enough your young children won't recognize you, long enough you'll no longer be able to nurse them. 

It makes sense to me to want the population of Chelish mothers represented by Chelish mothers, not their husbands. Or their non-husbands, in many cases. I agree that the state has an interest in that and that the mothers do too. But I think that Chelish mothers who chose to be there will do a better job representing their interests than Chelish mothers dragged there unwillingly."

" - yes, but it throws everything off, statistically, if you allow women to refuse and don't allow men to, or you decide that you're only accepting people who agree to go before going across both sexes. That's a very selected group! Most people either refuse, or appear to be too terrified to refuse! And a much larger number of people seem to be okay with it now that it's happening. I think filtering for people who wanted to be here before they saw it mostly filters for people who trusted the Asmodean regime, which is a ridiculous anti-filter that defeats the entire point."

"That seems like a good reason to have them try it for a week, and if who refuses to keep going after a week is skewed by sex and position, then you can draw more from the sex and position you want to represent more. If there should be seventy Chelish mothers at the convention you can keep selecting them until you have seventy."

Sigh.

"This is admittedly what we did with slaves. I worry about what doing it with more categories does to the numbers, but it's not fundamentally ridiculous. We can't easily check whether someone is a mother ahead of time, though, just guess at sex from the name, which itself isn't always reliable.

I think a week might have worked in the hypothetical case where we hadn't shut the convention down for half of the first week. I know you're going to say that the interruption is evidence that Westcrown is very dangerous and that pregnant sortitions ought not be asked to endure it, but none of the pregnant sortitions died, and I don't think this is coincidental."

"I do think it's coincidental and you got very lucky! Several of the halfling sortitions were killed, yes? What share of the halfling sortitions are pregnant?"

"I don't know that any of them are, there aren't that many! I suppose I expect that some of their hangers on are. The halflings are a bad example because I think they're the single most enthusiastic demographic we have, and most of them did ask to bring their whole families and a couple friends besides, because it came with free freedom."

"And that is their chance to take - and I'm glad so many of them took it - but that none of them were expecting children seems a matter of coincidence, unless halflings have different patterns of pregnancy than I imagine."

"Less than a coin flip - there are just not that many halfling sortitions - but I suppose I agree that part is fundamentally down to chance. I do think that offering everyone housing in the palace to everyone who wants it going forward makes things safer."

"It seems likely to, as will the censorship and slander laws. I also expect some retaliation against delegates after the convention, but still - it is probably possible to make reasonably physically safe."

"I'm a little worried that it's not entirely possible to protect them from each other while allowing them to wander the city and get away from us at any point. But at least they have the option of a fairly secure location. We did start using your anonymity suggestion, and it is seeing lots of use, although I'm not sure I expect it to actually be enough to prevent retaliation between delegates entirely."

"I don't think it is inherently a wrong to people to put them in danger for the benefit of their state. I suppose I think that a state which puts its most vulnerable members into danger is doing it wrong, but I acknowledge that you are ultimately doing it in an attempted defense of people like them."

"Mmm. I really did like the report, you know. And I know the entire project seems insane on the face of it, and you're being very helpful in making suggestions about how to make our insane project less destructive. It's probably just that I'm a former conscripted nursing peasant mother."

"I am aware that it worked out exceptionally well in your case. I think some people would say that that makes up for all the other cases, and I don't myself believe that exactly, but - it is an important fact, that it can work out that exceptionally."

"I think some people very much need to be in a context other than the one they fell into, for a while. Maybe not most people, and maybe not most of the contexts that monarchs and archmagi and even well-intentioned Abadaran law enforcement officers drag them into, and maybe the people of Cheliax have only ever experienced it under positively awful circumstances that dragged them away from any of the remaining good in their lives, but - I would not have gone with the Inquisitor Shawil, if he'd asked me without blowing my life up first.

Will it lessen your ethical concerns, if I convince Elie to agree to cycle the sortitions who don't want to be here at the end of the month? A weekly basis really is quite logistically challenging, and wouldn't be much time to get their bearings at the convention even in the best case."

"It would certainly lessen my concerns."