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remedial goodness for Chelish archdukes
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The next morning - very early in the morning, she hopes before the priests are awake, Queralt shows up to the training grounds. She takes aim at the far target, and doesn't hit it once. 

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"Mmm. I hope the whoring's going well, because you still can't shoot for shit."

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"There's wind today."

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“There’s wind,” he repeats, sarcastically. He draws his own bow and hits the target only very slightly left of center. “Thank fuck nobody ever raids when it’s windy, Queralt. Go get your arrows and try on the baby target, see if you can correct for it.”

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She makes a frustrated sound, but she gathers them up again and tries on the closer one. Still bad, but at least she can do a little more seeing how bad she is, now.

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"They can't channel at all, you know. Their goddess doesn't want them, I don't see why you should."

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"I like them," she says, and misses entirely again. "Montserrat is with you because she likes you. I don't see what's wrong with that."

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"Oh yeah? Which one do you like?"

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"I'm working on that."

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"You're an archduke's daughter. As long as the house survives, you'll do fine."

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"You're an archduke's son."

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"And I'm doing fine.

Helps that I can shoot, though. Your form is shit, you need to keep your elbow directly behind the arrow. Like this, see -"

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She goes to see the lay priests after breakfast. Would they like to head out into the town today and see the old temple? It's bad, but it's not getting any better not being looked at.

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They would! (They're at this point kind of curious what exactly is so bad about the town temple.)

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Queralt can take them there!

 

The outside contains two massive bloodstained spikes on either side of the entryway, not currently in use. The little shrines to other gods are all outside, now, hanging out in the same general area. There's an improvised one for Iomedae, not in the style of the others, done in wood instead of stone. 

The inside still has pews, and still has bloodstained spiked metal cages hanging from the ceiling. All of the stained glass has been shattered, but mostly not properly removed, so the edges of scenes remain. Mostly pictures of flames and devils torturing people, although the central cicular window at the front still has the edges of a red star. The two walls at the sides of the sanctuary are plain black stone, but the front bears an impressive and terrifying mural. Someone's tried to scrape away bits of the paint, but not with much success. You can still see the petitioners being tortured, disassembled, twisted into impossible shapes, and melted down into devils in the forges of Phlegethon. An inscription above reads WEAKNESS SHALL BE BURNED AWAY. There is an odd central area of the floor with a red and black star on it that interrupts the pattern of the front pews, but there's nothing else there now.

"It's not nearly so bad as it was," she says, mildly. "They already took out the altar and most of the decorations, so it's just the mural. But it's only paint, so we can just paint something else over it. Or just go over it in enough coats of white, so you couldn't see it, but there was a painter around for redecorating the house. The interrogation rooms are off to the side, that way."

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"I see why we'd thought they'd want to make changes."

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Why does the church have interrogation rooms. It's a church. Wouldn't that be the responsibility of the civil authorities.

 



"I think I am confused about what responsibilities the Church of Asmodeus had. Did they do...law enforcement?"

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"Not for regular crime, usually, but for heresy and such. And they worked with the the schools, I guess, and we had a cleric for signaling."

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"I see. Well. I guess we had better look at the....interrogation rooms, and see if they can be repurposed for something not Evil."

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The primary interrogation room has hardly been touched. The archmage didn't need it cleared when she visited, and whoever did rifle through it knocked some chests open but evidently wasn't interested in repurposing most of the torture devices. There's a cat, and a saw, and some brands by the fireplace, and some other recognizable things. Then there are some that are either weirder or broken, and whose function is not immediately obvious.

"I think the table's bolted to the floor," she observes, shoving it a bit. "Could probably rip it up somehow."

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"Conference rooms can be useful," he says, a bit dubiously.

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"...the Church of Iomedae does not employ torture during interrogations. And also heresy is legal in Cheliax right now. If there was any confusion about that."

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"I guess that's sensible, since there's no one to enforce it right now anyway. I hear there's only twelve or so official laws in the first place, right now."

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"And because ideally we do not want people to think that everything is - just as it was, with a new god they must fear having the wrong opinions about."

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"Of course not." It would be kind of stupid to enforce it before they'd gotten around to telling anyone what the rules were. Even if they are going about that process agonizingly slowly. "You can't proselytize for hell, which is sort of like a heresy law. But that's the only one I know about."

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