Good! Now there are only the other broken parts, everything that resembles Taldor, to fix before it would make a fine law. Sadly that consists of the entire proposal, except maybe the amendment to allow Lastwalls previously censored works here.

Perhaps there is general merit to the idea of only allowing retro- and not proactive censorship from allied countries, mainly to avoid a diplomatic crisis.

Of course it would be preferable to address problematic publications mainly by prosecuting indictment. But that path is now a political sinkhole.

He’s one of those Allies! 

“Delegate Tallandria asks us to think of the sheer volume of the Egorian library, and speaks of preserving places like it as an advantage of yesterday’s law over todays. To my ears, however, that sounds like a strong reason why we need to make a change. Many of the books in such libraries should not go uncensored, and hearing the magnitude of the task does not change my mind about its necessity. By this bill, the convention is empowered to appoint censors to the board - if our concern is that our boards will move too slowly, let us appoint more good men to the task, not give it up as impossible.”

Damn it, she should have picked a different tack. Or, like, it's good that people won't be required to be whipped to death for buying sewing primers, and will just be sold to people who are probably allowed to use cats on them anyway, but - 

- they're going to outlaw books. All of them, except maybe the ones from Lastwall.

She gets in line again, but - it's not going to work, she doesn't think.

Xavier is next in line, and so after some polite applause - 

"Duchess Carlota made excellent points, and so did Delegate Tallandria. This is an unnecessary law for the protection of order, one destructive to Chelish industry and to Chelish prosperity, but to list all of the reasons they have given why this law should never be passed would be superfluous. Instead, I wish to note one point that they did not make."

"In Molthune, which preserves many aspects of Arodenite law, there is a censorship board. In many respects it proceeds along the lines they suggest, as all works it does not approve are illegal.

"The penalty for obtaining an illegal work is fifteen lashes - with a whip, not a cat, as the Count de Cerdanya clarified - which may be waived if the judge deems it inappropriate, and one copper signo per page.

"There are one hundred and twenty signoi to every Molthuni crown and, at the latest rate of exchange, one hundred and thirty-two signoi to every Absalom pound.

He will let that settle in for a moment.

"There is, in Sirmium as well as Menador, Shelynite romance novel smuggling rings. I'm not a Shelynite, myself, but I understand that these books gave the people of Cheliax some intuitive understanding of what a person not born in a land ruled by Hell thought the world looked like, and so gave them a window into something that was not cruelty and terror. Several of the barons under me needed to be removed for burning men alive, or feeding them to ravenous ants or gluttongrass, as a punishment for possessing these books, which they seemed to believe were a threat to law and order, and yet in spite of that quite a few people had them as prized possessions." If only a tiny, tiny fraction of the populace of Sirmium. "If, in Molthune, you happened to have one of these books that wasn't cleared by the censorship board, and were found with it, the penalty would be that you would be fined an amount you could probably pay, especially if your friends and family chipped in. Under this proposed law you would die in the the mines, because the censorship board will not get to old poorly written romance novels this decade."

"I have no doubt that the law was drawn from the example of Taldor, where it has served them excellently over the past six hundred years of their history." All of which, as every patriotic Chelish or Molthuni person lettered or unlettered knows, were a steady collapse punctuated by occasional civil wars. "It is not the law of Aroden and it is not the law of Aspex, and I for one stand opposed."  We have two archdukes speaking against it and no archdukes speaking for it. Take note, people who respect your lords.

He doesn’t know that much about Taldor other than Asmodean propaganda mocking it, but apparently that propaganda is actually accurate!  Taldor’s terrible!

So… that was a pretty direct attack on the Taldor nobility faction?  It seems in general the nobles drawn from Taldor are going to be a problem.

"Your Highness, I believe you when you say that Molthune's laws serve Molthune well. But I fear that those members of this body less familiar with Molthuni law" such as himself, last week "may misunderstand you, when you describe those laws. It is true that Molthune has relatively small penalties for simple possession, but Molthune is among the Lawful polities, as I mentioned earlier, with much stricter penalties for possessing certain classes of literature. There are benefits to this approach — it is clearly much more dangerous for men to purchase unapproved pamphlets encouraging riots than to purchase an unapproved recipe book — but many of yesterday's speakers raised concerns about the difficulty of distinguishing between different categories of material, and it seems to me that we wrong our people if our laws lead them to mistakenly believe they will be fined only a few copper for a forbidden work, when in fact the penalty is far greater. With that being said, I do see the merits of both approaches, and should this body reject this law, preferring us to revise it after the example of Molthune, I will gladly do so.

I would also clarify, in case this element of the law has been misunderstood, that this law does not criminalize men for continuing to possess those books they already owned, if they obtained them before the statute and keep them private. It merely criminalizes obtaining forbidden texts, and would not oblige our courts to punish men for Shelynite romance novels they obtained under Asmodeus." 

Jonatan is honestly fine with either the Molthuni model or the Taldan one, given that they aren't simply returning to the law of Aroden, but if Conde Acevedo thinks Taldor's law is more appropriate for Cheliax's situation than Molthune's, he trusts his judgment.

He does think that, and thinks it more now that Xavier prefers Molthune’s law! But Molthune’s law is better than what the radicals have created, and if they have to copy it to get a victory here it’s a compromise he’s willing to endorse.

What the fuck is a "polity." How is that different from a country. Why is he not just using normal words like a normal person.

Wait, they're doing this again? They just had this argument. It was yesterday. They had it yesterday. This is the stuff they're putting 'stop killing dryads' off for? To argue about something they've already argued about, literally the day after?? Why! She's doing the Plant Growths! She went and fought a lich! She's being a very good druid who is offering your extremely vulnerable populace a way to not starve! Have literally any perspective! Do any appeasement, at all!

Ugh, but she's expecting humans to have wisdom, when she knows already that mostly they don't. She's going to have to prod the Erastilian on the Forests committee to actually put forth the thing they all agreed on, instead of not, letting people argue about stupid shit. Again. Or maybe just damn the convention and make a deal with the queen herself, that seems more likely to get results she wants. And then she won't have to sit here in the argument room day after day wanting to beat her head against the table for how stupid these people are and how little they understand the country they're nominally in charge of.

Either way, fuck this, she's going back to sleep. Sitting up with her arms crossed, as she had before, like she's considering everything in silent contemplation.

"Honored delegates. The censorship law passed yesterday does, indeed, have a flaw that was made evident by the continued presence on Westcrown's streets of pamphlets authored by a lich. This flaw is not, however, that it does not send anyone to the mines for copying unapproved works, nor that it does not rely on a board of censors that Cheliax does not presently have and can hardly afford to hire. Its flaw is that it permits foreign institutions, accountable to neither the Queen nor the people of Cheliax, an unprecedented degree of influence over our law."

"It has been suggested that the lich responsible for the Badger pamphlets Dominated a board of Osirion censors into approving her work. Do we know that enchantment was indeed required? Gentlemen, in Osirion the speaking dead have the same right to their person and property that the living do. With due respect to the High Inquisitor and the other Osirian immigrants in this room, that is one of several respects in which we do not wish to imitate them. There are many things permitted in Osirion which we do not wish to permit, and many things forbidden there that we do not wish to forbid."

"The other countries on the censorship law's list of Lawful and approved allies are closer kin to Cheliax, and will likely cause fewer such problems. However, on a general principle that Cheliax ought not rely on other countries for its law, having now seen the results thereof, I propose striking that entire section."

"Your Highness, I certainly agree that it is wrong to treat the undead like people, and wrong to rely on the censors of a country that does such a thing to decide which works should be permitted in Cheliax, though I admit I have more faith in Lastwall's censors. If the current proposal fails, I hope the Committee on Rights will take up your wise suggestions for consideration." Because the Rights Committee is full of radicals, and any amount of time they spend discussing reasonable proposals instead of doing radicalism is an improvement.

Osirion treats undead like regular people??? Why??

What do you mean 'treat like people', the set of entities you should keep your bargains with is not the same as the set that you like -

There is no point in talking at the Chelish constitution event and he will continue not doing so.

You should simply not make bargains with undead that involve giving them any particular legal protections! Nearly every country in the world has managed to avoid that particular problem!

Elorri is actually kind of against having a Chelish censorship board on the grounds that it would be composed of Chelish people and there are so vanishingly few Chelish people who are not awful and even if you find a vein of them who have managed to shake this character there are probably better uses for them than a censorship board. The thing from yesterday actually seemed kind of neat, in the sense that if he heard someplace implemented it fifty years ago and continued to abide by it since that time and the place in question was still standing, he wouldn't be startled to learn this fact! And it wouldn't require finding and employing Chelish people on questions of promoting public virtue!

Unfortunately he cannot think of a way to get up in front of this body and go "I'm against this on the grounds that most of you are awful" which isn't imprudent as all get out.

.....well, okay, fair that they don't want to do everything Osirion does, but the foreign books provision is the only part of the law that allows new works that talk about people, since she's still really skeptical that anyone's going to open a publishing house.

"Much of what I stood up to say is an echo of what Archduke Narikopolus said. He is right; any of the three flaws he listed is enough to make this law a wrong to Cheliax. This is a Taldoran law, copied from that country to ours, and it cannot be enforced Lawfully; we can be sure of this, because in Taldor it isn't. Taldor, for those not aware, does not enforce its laws Lawfully; everyone who lives there knows this, and if any of them try to remedy it, they are entirely ineffectual. Everyone is a criminal, if the law was followed faithfully; penalties are ruinous and, like these, usually fatal to anyone without influence; and only political connections can protect anyone from the noose, the mines, or debtor's service at the Worldwound. The only safe course of action is to never annoy anyone with more political connections than yourself."

"Oppara can afford a significantly larger board of censors than Cheliax presently can, and this is still woefully insufficient for their needs, and so the vast majority of books and pamphlets to be found in Oppara or anywhere else in Taldor are written and published illegally, with no attempt to secure the approval of the censors. And we, in Cheliax, are the most literate country on the planet! Our need for books, as readers and as scribes and bookbinders, is much greater than Taldor's! This law pretends to be strict and ban all pamphlets, but it will not succeed in doing so, not for long; it doesn't in Oppara, so why would it here? It is a self-defeating failure on its own terms. Much better to use a system like that which we passed yesterday, which can actually be implemented at a cost the Crown can afford to pay. With changes, as needed; I had some in mind already, both permits for the Parables and performance, and to add a delay to Osirian approvals or remove them from the list. But better to fix the walls of a drafty home than to build a new one on a foundation of sand."

"This bill requests twenty censors. This is not enough, as I told the committee this morning. A hundred censors might begin to be enough, once the backlog is worked through. We cannot afford a hundred censors without large taxes, taxes we need much more dearly for a dozen other things like the army and the orphanages. And that is if we can find them; foreigners do not know how Chelish people react to what they read, and so will not know Cheliax well enough to prohibit work which would be dangerous. And while I am sure there are a hundred honorable men with good judgment born to Cheliax who do not have more pressing duties in administering justice or running noble fiefs, they will not be easily found, because they will not be in the company of nobility. They would hardly have honor or good judgment if they did, given our nobility's recent history! They will hide, if we look for them, because they have no reason to trust us to be different, just as the priests of Pharasma and Gozreh still do. Just finding them would take months, and their work would take years. And until we did, this bill would send men to die in the mines, every day, for doing things no god of Good would frown on. For borrowing a book from a neighbor, or writing down the Sower's sermon so they can read it to their family later. For having a Shelynite romance that they can't prove they had a year ago, even, if a magistrate dislikes them. Things a paladin would refuse to punish, because Iomedae teaches that some orders are not to be obeyed, not even from the mouth of a Queen or a Goddess. It does our country no good to pass laws that require such orders, neither for Good nor for Law, and at Judgment it will weigh against those who tried to institute it anyway."

"A vote for this bill is a vote for the ruin of every bookseller in the country, a vote for descent into the vicious lawlessness of Taldor, a vote for Good men sent to the mines, a vote for straining the finances of Cheliax, and not even a vote for preventing destructive pamphlets. Virtue of every kind demands we reject it."

"The Archduchess spoke in committee also of her conviction that it would be disastrous if we implement the censorship laws that every other country in the Inner Sea has. But I think in this she is mistaken. Booksellers will not be shut down for more than a week or two, they will just get their best sellers to the censors promptly. We are told that it takes censors such a long time to review books because some things require many rounds of revisions before they're acceptable, but if it's true that things currently being widely sold require lots of revision and don't merit immediate approval, then that sounds like a problem not best solved by instantly approving all of them, which is what yesterday's law did.

You can't have it both ways; either they're fine, in which case the law is no impediment, or almost none will be approved without extensive revision, in which case you believe that most of them are a threat to public morals.

I also think that many of the people making dire announcements about the penalties for this law are forgetting that the magistrates are all paladins, who in my experience judging cases are exceptionally lenient, or Her Majesty's magistrates who we have just witnessed declare that a hall of six hundred people is a private setting and that so long as murders are committed by a person outside that hall encouraging them in it cannot count as incitement. They are not going to be sending peasants to the mines left and right. The Archduchess when she spoke remembered this, but argues that it is lawless. It isn't. The law has listed penalties, and then magistrates consider mitigating circumstances, and where mitigating circumstances are present assign lesser penalties. There is no lawlessness in that."

He nods. "Thank you, Your Excellency, I wholeheartedly agree."

Alonso has been patiently waiting in line, and now hesitantly takes the podium. He was too busy rehearsing what he would say to pay much attention to the previous speakers, and now he's afraid that he will somehow make the same point, or they've already responded to what he has to say.

"I hear the lich that published these pamphlets also published a spell. I think the dangers of unrestricted sharing of harmful magics should be an important consideration for a censorship law, and neither the current law nor the proposed law seem strong enough against wicked wizards. With as many wizards as Cheliax has, and"--he gestured back to Korva, standing in line--"as many books on arcane theory as Cheliax has, we need to ensure the censorship board has the relevant specialized knowledge, or that publishing houses can be reprimanded by the magical authorities."

"I agree that it's very important for some members of the censorship board to have the relevant arcane knowledge, just as it will also need experts in theology and natural philosophy. If this proposal passes, we will certainly ensure that there are members with the appropriate skills to protect our country from harmful magic." It'll make it more expensive, and he doesn't specifically know anyone on the shortlist to be a wizard, but Grey-Eye isn't wrong that there should be someone who can check over spell diagrams. One of his allies can almost certainly suggest someone suitable.

Eulàlia is going to have to step up her game if she wants hot boy. Luckily she knows how he feels about this issue and had a long time in line to draft a speech that she thinks he'll like. 


"Your Excellency has correctly observed that we should have a censorship board and that all civilized countries do. Thankfully, the law that we passed yesterday allows us to create a censorship board. Maybe as a next step, we can just pass a law...creating that censorship board, without banning all books in the meantime, and without obliging the honorable Archdukes to put Shelynite smugglers to death, and without anybody being shipped off to the mines over schoolbooks, or any of the other terrible unintended consequences of the law. You are a good man and I know that you intend none of those things, but nor can I argue with the wise Archdukes who have observed they are the likely consequences of your law, and I am not sure that lots of hasty revisions on the floor solve more unintended consequences than they introduce. You changed the whips, so now probably no one will die of the sewing primer except if they catch an infection, but what about people being sent to the mines over wedding invitations, or over giving their friends their Shelynite romance novels?

The main problem is that this is so hurried, and so needlessly so. There was a great urgency yesterday, because we had no censorship laws at all. Even a law with unintended consequences could hardly be as bad as the lawless anarchy that we had been laboring under.

But now we have censorship laws and apparently the only loophole yet discovered in them is that you can go to Osirion and pay them to review your pamphlet and publish it, and maybe they'll publish some stupid things but I don't think they'll publish treason and incitement to murder, so probably it is not a desperate emergency to force some new bill through this very morning, and we have time to write something without any of those unintended consequences. Put it to people for review, so they can catch any additional problems with it. Check at the bookstores what they have in stock and how long it would take to review it all. We are operating in a frantic rush off wild guesswork and we do not need to do so. It's reckless. 

Indeed there is a very simple next step for us, I think. 

I think you should edit this law to not repeal the old one, strike the punishments entirely, and just add the censorship board that yesterday's law makes provision for. Then, if that censorship board is working very effectively and is adequate to the volume of publications in Cheliax, and some other provision is causing trouble, we can remove the troublesome provision. We can strike Osirion from the list if Osirion actually has bad judgment instead of just being Dominated by a lich. If many of the old books grandfathered in under the law are Asmodean we can introduce measures suppressing them gradually. If sewing primers turn out to be often evil actually we can require review for them. Evil magic, likewise.

And if the fears of some come to pass, and the censorship board is overworked and inadequate, we have not rested the whole bookselling economy and all of our ability to disseminate wisdom for the Chelish people on it.

If you are right, and staffing an adequate censorship board will not be too difficult, then once it exists and is doing good work you can point at it and laugh in the face of everyone who warned it would be too difficult. But it seems to me that we can afford to wait and see, that there is no need to repeal a law less than a day after we passed it to resolve an emergency that has already been resolved.

Also it just makes this body look very stupid. I'm sorry, it does.  We're going to completely repeal the law the next day? When lots of people have just laid their bonds and started their publishing houses? And what, tomorrow after some sympathetic orphan is caught with a forbidden romance novel and shipped to the mines to general outrage we'll come back here to repeal this one and try yet again? Is that the reputation we want to have with the city, with the merchants, with potential troublemakers, that we are indecisive and easily swayed and can't anticipate the consequences of our actions at all? That we're sore losers who spend all our time plotting a revote on every vote that didn't go our way?"

They're not supposed to have pride, anymore, but Eulàlia does and she doubts she's the only one. Also she suspects there's a sweet spot where all the real Chelish people can tell she's calling Cerdanya pathetic but all the imports from Heaven and Taldor and other Good places can't.

"I would like this body to be taken seriously when it does things. That means we should change our laws if changes are needed, but not completely repeal them in a panic after less than a day, when we could instead by steady measures improve them. This bill should just be a supplement to our existing system that we already voted for, and failing that it should be voted down."

That was a brilliant speech.  Wasn’t that the noblewoman he thought was an idiot for… something… on the first day of the convention?  Oh wait, that was back when he thought it was a loyalty test, maybe she realized it wasn’t sooner than him and was actually saying something very sensible given that context?

He claps. His political ally is being useful and clever!