Today is the day that they enshrine in the law 'no dragging random peasants here'! Or more likely the day Cotonnet stops them, but he's looking forward to that fight, honestly. Let the tyrant show his colors.

Today's the day when they finally get some sensible rules on Magic ensconced into law. 

Carlota does not love the reintroduction of unlanded titles but she will admit the crown needs money and anyway promised to speak in defense of Coeliaris's proposal if Coeliaris withdrew it yesterday so they could abolish slavery, so she has a speech prepared about the economics.

Nice, sensible, mining committee today. Doubtless there will be six emergencies from everyone else, but at least she's helping.

Feather has to tell Voshrelka about the undead awakened badgers!!! Where is she - 

Sleep deprived, but in her ordinary spot next to Tuimfane. Napping already, actually.

Professor Coeliaris prepared Dimension Door today, so as soon as the floor opened for speakers, she was just there.

"Nobles and Peasants, Mages and Clerics, Men and Women, Creatures of All Sapient Races under the Auspices of Man- I stand before you once again. Yesterday, the Committee of Magic, withdrew our Proposals to be further inspected by the many august members of this house. So we come before the Convention again with this Slate of Proposed Laws. It has been asked that we vote on these separately, and therefore we will start with the following Law. My apprentice Tillia will once again maintaining an illusory page, sufficiently large for all to see, above, with the text we have formulated."

PART I. — PRELIMINARY

1. Short Title

This Act may be cited as "The Magical Arts Regulation Act of ???."

2. Interpretation

In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires-

"Spell Lord" shall mean the office created herein for the regulation of magical affairs;

"Metatitle" shall mean a designation of magical achievement as established by this Act;

"Relevant Hellknight Order" shall mean any body of Hellknights specially charged with matters arcane;

"Major Magic University" shall mean such institutions as shall be designated by the Spell Lord;

"Spellbook" shall mean any personal associated tome or collection of magical formulae used in the practice of wizardry.

PART II. — OF THE SPELL LORD

3. Establishment of Office

(1) There shall be established the Office of Spell Lord

(2) The Spell Lord shall be a person of demonstrably Good alignment, as verified the Queen of Cheliax or her Agents. 

(3) The office should be offered to the President of the Constitutional Convention. Should he decline the office, subsequent appointments shall be made by majority vote of the Convention, any subsequent legislative body established by such, and failing that, the Queen of Cheliax.  

4. Powers and Duties

The Spell Lord shall have power and responsibility to

(a) To regulate the introduction of new created species 

(c) To investigate and suppress dangerous magical activities; 

(d) To grant and revoke Metatitles according to the law of cheliax 

(e) To superintend the relevant Hellknight order in all matters 

(f) To establish and maintain a voluntary registry of all practitioners of magic above the Third Circle

(g) To inspect and certify, on a voluntary basis, all new permanent magical constructions above the fifth circle

(h) To declare states of magical emergency when necessary

(i) To establish containment protocols for magical disasters

(j) To regulate the creation of extraplanar and extraterritorial portals

(k) To oversee royal magical research facilities

 (l) To establish standards for the safe disposal of magical materials

(m) To determine the expected income per circle.

Hopefully they actually get to vote, this time.

Time to fulfill her promise. "This is how Absalom does things. One might ask, why imitate Absalom in particular? The best answer, to my mind, is that Absalom like Cheliax has an enormous population of wizards. This is an enormous strategic advantage, one that has served them very well over the centuries, and it will serve Cheliax equally, once we figure out how to avoid having all our wizards underemployed. I do not expect that the President of this convention will accept this appointment but I do not think anyone can dispute that if he did it would be a great achievement of this convention and for this country."

"This says a lot about regulating, and establishing standards and protocols, and so on. But it doesn't say what is actually illegal or even what counts as dangerous or as an emergency. Could you - say some more about what they would actually stop from happening, and hopefully put it in the law?"

Actually she can just say the thing and hopefully everyone will agree, even Chelish don't like undead. "Apparently there's an undead wizard creating undead intelligent badgers living under the city. I very much hope that would be disallowed, and if everyone agrees I think the law should say so and not leave it up to the Spell Lord."

She has Estella with her today (primarily to send messages) so Thea can in hushed whispers try to confer with her if these proposed laws are good for wizards.  (With the events of yesterday, she forgot to confer with Estella the previous evening.) And Thea is also thinking of how it affects herself and other clerics and common people.

Estella seems really supportive of the proposal? Almost suspiciously so, but Thea can’t see any corrupt personal enrichment angle in it, so she’s wondering why Estella likes it so much.

An anonymized delegate gets on the podium: "Why should the spell lord be restricted to persons of Good alignment? Any candidate of sufficient prowess whose oath of office can be trusted should be eligible. On that note, does the convention possess the skill to sufficiently estimate candidates, if the President were to decline? One would think that our wizards and archwizards can very well arrive at a Spell Lord candidate by their own mind."

Estimating the skill of wizards is so easy a peasant could do it. Can you fly? Cool, can you Teleport? Cool, can you make your own extradimensional spaces? Cool, can you stop time? Done.

But can you awaken badgers, that's the really important question

Professor Coeliaris herself would be an excellent Spell Lord Candidate, obviously.  (And Estella will have briefly impressed and likely have a job offer from the spell lord herself).

She’ll have Estella’s Thea’s vote for the position at least.  Now how to convince Thea of this… 

"Shall the Spell Lord also regulate matters of divine magic, including keeping a registry of third-circle and above clergy? Are devil and demon calling cults practicing such activities as meant by section 4c: dangerous magical activities"

Alexandre thinks he'd do a pretty good job as spell lord, which is why nobody will remotely consider offering him the job.

Desnia is following along attentively, having both slept unusually soundly and succeeded at child handoff. This proposal (the same one as yesterday?) is still hard for her to follow, but the words at least coalesce into sentences, even if the thing as a whole is the kind of thing she's finding it hard to have an opinion about.

The last question catches her attention - she hadn't thought that this would maybe affect her too, she'd thought this was about wizards and maybe sorcerers. She'd... rather not have to register with the government, probably, though she's also not third circle yet so it doesn't actually matter for her. 

She doesn’t want to fall under the control of anyone, but especially not an institute aimed at wizards, she’ll oppose this hard if it isn’t clarified to exclude clerics.

'To take those in order:"

"Any good spell-lord will regulate the badger- but there are necromantic spells that do not create undead that are economically useful and good. Despite this, the country of Lastwall, at the Worldwound, prohibits the entire school. For a serious investigation, we'd need to look through every possible spell, and determine if it should be allowed or not, and nobody here- not me, and not the Archmages- know all spells. I think it's better to delegate this prohibititory activity to the spell lord, who can then be supervised by this august body, and its successors."

"We want a good man, because don't want a man that will enrich himself against his fellows. I don't know about the noble delegate, but I trust in the capability of our Great and Noble Queen to determine the worth of her officers!"

"I strongly believe that the noble Churches will be able to self-regulate, once they have gained a sufficiency of personnel in the country. We should not look at dear Iomedae's recent failings as an example of what the church is capable of when fully staffed."

Is this going to turn into a political battle for Spell Lord?  He bets the archmage refuses, so there is an obvious candidate to nominate.  He didn’t exactly impress her last night, but she didn’t outright humiliate him (despite a few small jibes) so he is still aligned with her and would benefit from her own rise in station.

“The position of Spell Lord will require political acumen and good sense in addition to at least decently high circle spells, so I think Professor Coeliaris herself is an excellent candidate for the position and nominate her should the archmage refuse.”

Ah, of course, this is about appointing ourselves to high office. Why not. Greed and dealing to enrich yourself isn't even Evil, it's Neutral, or Abadar wouldn't be, right.

You can't have a fourth-circle spell lord, that'd just be embarrassing. But Carlota has honorably fulfilled her obligations and is not going to speak further on this.

He didn’t actually clear this with Professor Coeliaris ahead of time, hopefully she graciously refuses in a way that makes her look good is she doesn’t want the position.

"Let us not begin any other nominations before our noble savior-archmage has had a chance to properly consider the offer. I personally believe that the holder of the office should have at least Fifth circle."