Desnia also leaves services heading the same way, carrying Pere. She’ll drop him off along the way. 

She recognizes the other religious delegate, though she doesn’t remember her name. A Calistrian, she thinks? 

She rushes a bit to catch up. 

“Good morning! I recognize you from the convention. I think we’re headed the same way, though I need to swing by the park before going in. How did you find morning services?”

She's wearing a handmade holy symbol of Calistria, it's definitely the obvious guess.

"They were fine, I guess. Lots of singing. What did you think?"

"They were nice? I liked the singing but not enough to want to come listen to it again tomorrow." 

"I'm not sure that I care as much about places being nice to look at as the Songbirds do - though I appreciate that this temple looks least like an Asmodean one out of the ones I've seen in this city." 

"I think I like some of the other types of art they help people with better than the singing, and I bet most of them are harder to do at a service like this. Singing is okay but this was kind of a lot of it."

“What are the types of art you like better than singing? Have you been spending a lot of time at Shelyn’s temple? I’ve spent spare channels there before but it was my first service.” 

"Painting is fun, and I've been seeing if I can pick up drawing, although I wouldn't say I'm any good at it. And a couple weeks ago I went to see a street-play, that was nice, I don't think I'd like acting but it was fun to watch."

She holds up her new holy symbol, carved from wood and freshly painted. 

"One of the Songbirds helped make this, he had some good tips for getting the balance right." Her old one always hung a little crooked. She hasn't really gotten used to the way the new one feels.

"Oh, I like whittling, and it probably makes sense to have a more open holy symbol." 

She flashes her bracelet from underneath her sleeve, on which a small butterfly dangles. 

"Can I just go at any time or do they have specific times that they help people with crafts?" 

"Sometimes they run group activities, but if there's nothing scheduled I think you can usually find a Songbird to help you out. Or, like, not any time, they do sleep, but if you went after the convention you could probably find someone to help you."

She nods, walks in silence for a minute still carrying Pere. Tries to remember what the Calistrian had said on the floor so that she can make conversation about it. She vaguely remembers approving of the things said, but no specifics are coming to mind. She was friends with Valia? 

Oh, she can do introductions, that’s a thing she can say and maybe she’ll eventually be able to keep all the names straight. 

“I don’t think I’ve introduced myself - I’m Voyager Desnia. I remember that you spoke a few times, but I’m afraid I don’t remember the details and I don’t recall your name - I wasn’t able to figure out childcare I trusted the first few days, so some of the things so went by in a blur. I’m looking forward to being able to participate more today.”

Pere gurgles happily from his mothers arms. He liked the pastries and the singing. 

"I'm Victòria! I've spoken about... uh, lots of different things, I guess. What're you hoping to get done at the convention?"

She spends a moment trying to spin up a more polished version, and then decides that clerics of Calistria are probably not the type of person she needs to sound more put together to. Possibly this cleric is evil because Calistria doesn't rule it out and because Cheliax. But that's a different sort of problem then the one where she doesn't order her words nicely enough. 

She shrugs. 

"I want Cheliax to be... less Asmodean. I think I expected people to be better faster, when Hell's rule was overthrown. And - I'm not sure what things get things going well, because things that sound good and seem like they should be good like Valia's speech end up with hundreds of innocent people dying and more people becoming murderers than before." 

Another shrug. 

"I want to tell people to please do Good things and not Evil things, whether or not whatever laws or rules or orders there are point at Good, but people are worse than I would have thought at telling which is which and I don't think I'm particularly good at telling them how to tell them apart?" 

That maybe was sharing too much? Or not answering the right question?

"Probably I'm going to join the Trade and Travel committee and push for something better with the internal passports and whatever else they're doing there. How about yourself?" 

"I don't want anyone to be able to just hurt innocent people for no good reason, just because the people they're hurting are weaker or less powerful. When powerful people try to hurt people anyway, I want them to get what they deserve, I don't want them to just be able to get away with it because they're nobles, or priests, or powerful wizards, or people who work for the Crown, or anything. I want all the leftover Evil nobles, and people like that, to be replaced with — adventurers, or something, decent people who can still fight monsters like the nobles are supposed to but who haven't done a bunch of awful things to the people they rule." Actually she wants the leftover Evil nobles dead, along with all the leftover Asmodean priests, but she doesn't think the archmage will let the convention overrule the amnesty, he wouldn't even let them kick out the actual priests of Hell.

"...and the Convention is talking about lots of things, and it turns out that I have opinions on those things too, but that's why I came here. Getting rid of the passports would be good, there's not really a good way to stop nobles from hurting innocent people if the people they're hurting aren't even allowed to leave and tell the Queen."

She starts smiling brightly at the beginning of Victoria’s impassioned speech against innocent people not being hurt, and her smile only slightly dims at the mention of deserts. She’s good enough at reading people that she’s pretty confident that Victoria is sincere about it - and it’s so nice when people care about weaker or less powerful people not getting hurt - and it’s upsettingly rare! 

“Yeah, lots of people do want to hurt the people less powerful than they are, and they shouldn’t do that. I’m glad you care about that, too many people don’t!”

Bright smile. 

“I came here because I like Desna and I wanted all of the seats that were Hers to be filled by Her, and they weren’t all taken yet when I got here. I maybe will have more opinions about things today? Sometimes the proposals seem tricky or confusing and I don’t like that. But we banned slavery yesterday and I’m so relieved that people here are at least good enough to do that! And the slaves are free now, unless maybe that’s not how fast things go into effect?” 

"I don't know how long it'll take everyone to find out, there's lots of things the new Queen did that I didn't even know about until I got to the convention, but — I really hope they find out quickly."

She thinks for a moment. The law says that anyone who keeps trying to own slaves will be punished, but a lot of them are probably powerful nobles who'll just never even let their slips find out they're supposed to be free. "Maybe we should suggest to the Slavery Committee that they pass another rule sending people out to check whether there are still people trying to keep slaves and putting a stop to them if so — or just ask the paladins to do it, apparently lots of places have paladins riding around handling the courts." 

"I meant, I'm not even sure if the it's the law yet, or if there's a step where the Queen needs to approve the things we pass? I thought it was the law right away but then last night the Songbird... Laia, I think - said that the decree might have been premature? I know that sometimes when we pass things the Archmage adds extra rules like with the slander, or sometimes before we pass things like with removing other delegates or retroactive punishments so maybe there's a step before something is a law where they need to approve what we pass and it's not the law right away. But I heard the Queen and the Archmage wanted slavery banned so I'm hoping they were fast about it."

Another shrug. 

"But you're right that if it is the law there's still a lot of places that don't know about it yet, that's a good idea about the Slavery Committee. And that's right about the paladins, I've met a few." 

"When the guy with the scroll tried to read it on the floor, the archmage told him to go outside and read it there, but he also said the Queen was announcing the law as a decree? So I think it's definitely approved now. But I think probably if the convention tried to do something really awful, like if people voted to bring back Asmodeus or something, the Queen would say we couldn't do that."

"Oh, good! I stepped out right away when the vote total was called, Pere was fussing, so I missed whatever happened then, and then what Laia said made me worry that it wasn't in effect properly yet. And that makes sense but also I wish they'd tell us more clearly what kinds of things the Queen would think were or weren't awful. Like if we voted to become a Republic like Andorran the Queen would say no? Andorran seems pretty great to me but a lot of people seem to not like it very much but I don't understand exactly why. I don't think I'd even want a Republic here, the Queen and the archmages overthrew Hell so they're more Good than most people in Cheliax anyway, just, that was the first example of a thing that isn't obviously really awful but probably isn't allowed that I thought of."

"Yeah, I'm kind of confused about the things we aren't allowed to vote for. Like, we aren't allowed to vote that there shouldn't be Hell-priests at the convention, even though everyone knows it's bad to be a priest of a Hell-god, like, that's up there with 'don't murder innocent people.' I was confused about the thing about retroactive punishments too but I think that one might just be because the Queen is Lawful and doesn't want to break the amnesty." 

Yet another way that being Lawful is just worse than being Chaotic. Though actually, now that she thinks about it, the rule against retroactive punishments was probably good for Valia? But if they'd been allowed to pass laws that gave the Evil nobles everything they deserved they wouldn't have even needed the speech, and then Valia would never have been arrested.

"I think retroactive punishments isn't just about the amnesty - I think we also can't do things like punish slaveowners for having being slaveowners even if they did that after the amnesty. Because it wasn't illegal yet even if it was evil. Which... I don't know, maybe that's fine, it's not the worst Lawful thing - I just want to stop people from doing more bad things now because they still aren't choosing to be good even when it's a much easier choice and no one is trying to make them not be good. Even if they should have been good all along. But I want to know the things like that in case it changes what I want to work on because they're hard for me to guess?"

She shifts how she's holding Pere. 

"The Hell-priest is... the one who is a priest of Erecura? I think he said he wasn't Evil and neither was his goddess. I haven't actually - checked - to see if he channels positive but if that's true then it seems okay that he's at the convention? I don't care about whether someone is in Hell, I care about if they're Evil, and those aren't the same thing." 

"Well, I don't know if he's technically Evil or not, and I don't know if his goddess is either, but even if he's technically not Evil I don't think there's a way to work for a Hell-god without helping Hell. It's not like his goddess is a Maledicted paladin getting tortured, she's a goddess, if she weren't helping Hell Asmodeus would just kill her. And maybe Delegate Lebanel's just really stupid, or something, and not trying to help Hell, but — if a devil offered you a contract, and it seemed like a good safe contract that wasn't going to take your soul or anything, it would still be a bad idea to sign it."

She's not sure why this is abruptly stressful but it somehow it is. She doesn't actually know enough about how gods work to know if Erecura being in Hell means she's helping Asmodeus or what else it could mean and she suddenly can't really think about it or try to remember what was said in the conversation on the floor on the first day and - why is she like this?

Detect Fiendish Presence, it's fine if it makes Victoria wonder what's up with that, it's not like she hasn't done it a bunch at the convention already and Victoria seems like she cares about the right kinds of things mostly. 

Non-committal shrug. Focus.

"It does seem like a bad idea." 

Why does this feel as bad as the conversation with the formerly Asmodean priest yesterday, Victoria is way better than he is! Probably it's because she went into that conversation - prepared for it? 

Besides the casting of the spell, it'd be hard to guess what's running through her head. 

Victòria is not an Evil outsider, nor under lingering magical effects from an Evil outsider's gifts, presence, or spells, nor a cleric or paladin of a fiendish deity! (Nor are any of the other random people on this particular street.)

"—Huh, what's that spell do?" She is glancing at her bodyguard a little bit.

She can manage to be not pathetic about this, probably. One slightly deeper breath and then: 

"Oh, you don't know the cantrip? It's Detect Fiendish Presence. It lets you detect clerics of Evil gods and also devils and demons and things like that. It was really useful before the war, less so since all the Asmodean priests lost their spells, but I - sometimes cast it when the topic comes up, just in case. The Erecuran priest doesn't show up to it, but it was nice to be able to check. I don't know what I'd do if there was someone who showed up to the spell and they still were allowed to stay!" 

"Oh, that sounds really useful! Do you know how it works with Undetectable Alignment and other spells like that? He didn't show up to Detect Evil either, the Diabolism Committee checked everyone on the second day, but neither did Delegate Ibarra or Delegate del Mar and it turned out they were both just using magic to hide it."