Feather already knows Professor Coeliaris thinks the badger should be illegal! That's why she doesn't understand why she won't put explicit instructions in the law and wants to leave everything up to every future Spell Lord! Giving someone authority over all use of magic in the country without any actual laws saying what they should and shouldn't forbid sounds - not very Lawful? And not very Good or Wise either, when they don't know who the Spell Lord is going to be? None of the other laws of the conventions just - gave someone incredible power with no limits stipulated! 

...She can't get to the podium to say all that, though, or at least not right away.

"I think we should decide the new Spell Lord by having public wizard duels between everyone who wants to be Spell Lord. How else will we know who the strongest wizard is?"

(Plus, this way he'll get to watch a bunch of cool wizard duels.)

Hell! Yeah!

"Perhaps an exception for the wizards of noble birth and title. The duty to regulate their conduct falls to their liege, surely. This new office should not usurp the traditional rights of a lord over his vassals."

“If the president doesn’t want the role, we should send this bill back to committee. Either there is no backup planned, in which case it could use more thought instead of being hastily thrown together, or there is a backup plan and the fact that they aren’t willing to outright say who it is is very concerning. If they think we would not vote for the law if we knew who they had in mind, I see no reason to doubt them.”

"A noble wizard may have tools at their disposal to neutralize their liege; it is those situations that most call out for the Spell Lord's intervention. Additional watchers will lighten their liege's burden, not increase it. The bill is about how the government should be arranged; we agree that the army should have generals without knowing who all the generals will be, and I hope we agree that there should be someone charged with enforcing magical laws, even if we do not know who it will be. Because of the nature of magic, powerful wizardry is as much a requirement as upright character."

Carlota glances around the room to try to get a sense of how the vote'll go. Most of the room looks...indifferent. Note to self, you can accomplish a lot with process and appointments that no one cares that much about.

....also, the Duke de Fraga looks thirty years older. She thinks Alexaera would've mentioned if one of the party got hit with an undispellable terrible aging curse? Maybe it happened after he left.

She studies him. There's a spell up but not a familiar one and she can't guess what it'd do.

Duke de Fraga! We were relieved last night to learn that things had gone so well. Are you well?

He looks back at Carlota, catches her eye. Duchess de Chelam, I appreciate your concern, but I'm as well as I can be, given the circumstances. 

For a few seconds, he looks as young as his son did, from across the room.

But you prefer older men, don't you?

He's back to his aged appearance.

What an odd spell. She assumes also a useful one, he's a little too old to be purely showing off. 

With age comes wisdom and gravitas, she responds in the same half-joking tone. Does your spell do those?

It is the crowning achievement of my bloodline. He means that literally; but with his newfound wisdom, he doesn't believe the house annals until he gives them a careful reread. It is a strange thing, to suddenly remember the lessons of a lifetime without having learned them the hard way.

Congratulations, in that case. Wisdom is not wasted even on the already very wise.

Thank you, and thank you again for the invite.

He looks back to the lectern, smiling. She's being polite, of course; he hardly would have called himself very wise, before, and now can see many more of his mistakes.

She gets up. She directs her question at Coeliaris. 

"You said that for clerics, Churches would be able to self-regulate, but not all gods have churches that are organized such that They try to regulate Their clerics.  Could you clarify that this law would not apply to clerics in full generality?" 

She hopes that made any sense and also that she's right about Desna not having an organized church that regulates Her clerics and she hasn't just missed hearing about it. 

"I would gladly so clarify by the addition of 'Arcane' at the suitable place." She does so.

She sits back down. Maybe that was a stupid thing to say or maybe it was a selfish thing to say but she feels better about the law now that it says Arcane. 

She... probably will abstain from voting on it, if there aren't more arguments that make whether it's good or bad clearer to her? Maybe that she doesn't want to be registered means that she should be against the registration of all the third circle wizards, but... she doesn't think she's against all rules, she's just against bad ones, and this isn't an obviously bad rule. It's not obviously a good rule either, and she can't tell if something better or something worse will happen if this doesn't pass. So it's probably fine if she leaves it up to everyone else? 

"So! I call for Cloture for this proposed law. "

Passes!

"So, I call for a vote for this first part of our proposed law of magic, which does, if nothing else, recognize the great things that our Savior-Archmage has done for Cheliax."

In favor. She's not sure how she'd come down if she hadn't traded favors here, but she did, so. 

Has the archmage shown the slightest sign of wanting the title? But sure, why not.

Against, she already said why.

In favor, he’s hitched to Coeliaris one way or another other.

For! She wants to be a Spell Lord!