She stands up to get in line, though of course Cerdenya’s allies are ahead of her.

Most peasants would be lucky to scrape together 10 crowns, so it’s more like 10 years hard labor.  10 years hard labor over something being ambiguously a public or private letter.  10 years hard labor over loaning a book previously legal and currently legal in Lastwall.  

Fernando didn’t previously think to question arbitrary and cruel laws, but the convention has pushed something loose inside him.  Genuine moral opinions might be new to him, but the hate he feels is very familiar, and this is the first time he’s been close to the chance to do something productive about it.

He gets in line, but loads of nobles have already gotten in front.  Probably to jerk themselves off to the chance to impose brutal punishments.  They’ve got to fill the mines now that they can’t have slaves anymore. 

Another day, another attempt to end basic freedoms by foreign nobles who apparently don’t understand Cheliax.

Well, Thea herself hadn’t appreciated the sheer number of books out there until the past year.  She can’t exactly do the math, but it would probably take a while for a censorship board to get through even fundamental basic uncontroversial books.  And leaving it up to local lords to add their own censorship is begging for arbitrary and capricious decisions that commoners can’t reasonably track.

Well, she can think of one angle to attack the proposal along.  She gets in line.  She brings Estella with her in case she needs to send any last minute messages.

Felip walks slowly to the podium, first in line from having lined up with Cerdanya.

"Citizens of Cheliax. We are called to the duties of statesmen; to shape policy wisely. But what does that mean? It is to foresee the effects of those policies, to carefully weigh the tradeoffs, and to choose the best of options. It is, with the benefit of experience, to admit your mistakes.

Along with the narrow majority of this convention, I was a vote in favor of yesterday's law; better any law stemming the tide of tumultuous pamphlets than no law. The question of whether we needed a centralized censorship office or could trust an open market of self-appointed censors was unclear to me, and I thought it worth giving the market a try.

Conde Cerdanya has brought to your attention the first work widely published under yesterday's law. I ask you to not let the particulars of that case weigh too heavily on your mind. You have no need to fear the Badger Lich anymore, thanks to the heroics of Lord Marshal Cansellarion and his companions.”

He gratefully nods in the Lord Marshal’s direction, allowing a moment for applause.

“Instead, I direct your attention to why yesterday’s law allowed for this to happen, and to consider whether the only hole in this law has been plugged, or others remain. The lich was able to teleport to Osirion and return within a day, which is only the province of powerful spellcasters, and attracts the attention of the protectors of the realm. But a Vile Scribe could write them a letter on a pamphleteer’s salary, and receive permission to publish something similarly harmful to the public. Would the censors of Osirion, focused on their country’s culture, be able to correctly judge what Chelish commentary is in the Chelish public’s interest, and which will disturb the peace? By shirking our responsibilities, we wrong our allies by asking them to pick them up and judge cases outside their experience. The Pharoj is confused.

Some worry that a single censorship board, even amply staffed and tasked with haste, will be an impediment to the country. Our current law does not reduce the amount of work required, merely spreading it to any who volunteer. But the only provision it makes for who may volunteer is that they be willing to bear the costs of failure, and that failure is described in chaos and destruction. If a publisher approves of the autobiography of a lich, and its wide dissemination turns some enterprising young wizard from the path of righteousness to a darker one, will their victims know who to sue? Will they even be able to, on the grounds of “chaos and destruction”? Will the publishing house have closed, and received their bond back after thirty days, and be beyond the reach of the law? With a single censorship board, there can be oversight and clarity. With a multitude of them, we open ourselves up to Geryon's machinations.

And when censors compete, will this improve or degrade their judgment? What stops an author from shopping a work around to every publishing house, to every allied country, trying to find one credulous enough to let their work through? Cheliax will have the worst works from every country, from every publishing house. 

I think yesterday's law was insufficient, and needs mending. Let us have clarity; let us have public decency."

"This is a good law. It only stops people who want to publish bad books, not good books, and it means people can't publish bad books just by going to another country or paying a lot of money. I don't think people should be allowed to sell evil lich pamphlets, even if Osirion says it's okay."

Maybe next time he should see about giving his sortitionate recruits some guidance on speech-writing.

"I like that this law says we're allowed to add our own parables at the end of the Parables. I talked to one of the other priests last night and he said that the other one wouldn't allow that, even if you were just writing advice about farming and not anything that could hurt anyone."

No, there are people here who will find that speech more compelling than his. Simplicity has its own virtue; it's not a very statesmanlike virtue, but they have the convention they have.

Here we fucking go. She gets in line.

"I'm a little concerned about the penalty for obtaining banned works, it seems somewhat harsh. If someone gives you a book they say is legal, should you really be in debt for twenty crowns? Lots of people don't have that kind of money. And it's especially harsh for people who can't read very well, since they can't even check if the censors approved something."

"The law only punishes people for intentionally obtaining banned works. If you mistakenly believed a work you were acquiring was allowed, such as because the bookseller forged a mark of approval, only the man who distributed it to you will be punished for it, not you."

"Thank you, your excellency, that satisfies my concerns."

"I do not think this is a perfect bill; indeed, were I tasked with making one myself it would look somewhat different."

This is only trivially true, of course, but it's not a lie.

"But I think it is a good bill, and one that will serve well to prevent more inflammatory or disorderly pamphlets going forward.  This proposed law is not a new, radical construction that we seek to experiment on Cheliax with, but follows the standards for such laws used across the inner sea from Osirion to Andoran. It bans those publications that are injurious to Cheliax no matter how rich their author, and ensures that any who flout this law will face the punishment their crimes deserve, while preserving the ability for her subjects to publish good works. And it will certainly accomplish this task of keeping order far better than yesterday's law, which failed within the day."

Narikopolus does not have much confidence in his speech-giving ability, even when he has prepared thoroughly, and he hasn't. But he has to speak, this time.

"I am strongly against this proposal. I voted against it in committee, and intend to vote against it on the floor.

I have three reasons, any one of which would be enough, but all rest on one belief. That is the belief that we do not, at present, have the manpower or money to staff a censorship board with men of sound judgement and character. We do not even have enough men of sound judgement and character to staff our own criminal justice system, with nearly all cases being heard by members of the Glorious Reclamation. If we were to staff a censorship board with an adequate number of experienced Chelish censors, I expect that we would see far worse than this pamphlet. Our own people have far less sense of morality, and are no more impervious to a spell caster's dominate, which I suspect is to blame for the lich situation.

This law says that the board must instead be staffed by at least twenty men. Perhaps we can find twenty. But twenty men, I think, will not be anywhere near sufficient. I do not know the specific numbers, but I would guess that the previous regime employed more than a thousand censors. Why? In part because the old regime was very censorious. But in part because Cheliax is very large, and very literate, and even many of its peasants view reading as a daily activity. I believe that the vast majority of worthy and actively helpful existing books will not make it through such a board within the year, to say nothing of works which are merely harmless. I believe that censorship boards work. I believe in censorship, and I believe in public order. But I do not believe in relying on a Chelish censorship board, not this year. I cannot imagine it morally outperforming the Osirian board, let alone the board of Lastwall. I instead believe that this law will outlaw the buying and selling of nearly all books in Cheliax for the foreseeable future, if it takes any amount of care with them at all.

Given that - I turn to considering what will happen, if we ban more than ten million literate people from obtaining anything but a small list of holy books.

In the first place, I expect many wizards to break this law. Not because they are fundamentally lawless, but because we have in the last two years done away with most of their options for employment. We have closed down the schools, leaving the teachers out of work, and the boarding school students to search for anything useful to do with themselves. We have closed down nearly all government bureaucracy, which once employed many wizards. We have limited mandatory conscription of wizards into the army. If we additionally close down the bookshops and the academies - if the academies find that they cannot function without books - even fewer will have any plausible way of buying bread. I think it takes very great strength to follow a law which outlaws one's profession, and that many men will risk what they see as a harmless crime, if the alternative is starvation or life as a plantation hand. I believe that many of the people copying the now-illegal pamphlets are not just ordinary men who lack such character, but children - boys and girls of fourteen or fifteen, copying things for pennies because we shut down their schools. The current law will have the city watches jail them en masse this week, and they will learn their lesson. This one, I fear, will send hundreds or thousands of them to the mines, where there are no more lessons to be learned.

Second, I think of how I myself felt immediately after the war. I was able to find a copy of the Acts themselves, and ordered many copies made from it. But I did not understand it. I went on doing horrific things, not knowing I was doing them. Commentaries, sermons, explanations in plain language - these were hard to find. They had not been officially allowed, and many people would not sell them or attempt to obtain them. I was fortunate enough to directly petition the government of Lastwall for a lay priest, who came to answer my questions personally, but this is obviously not an option for most of the people of Cheliax. I fear it is not an option even for most nobles. I think that many of us need Lastwall's books like we need food, right now, and I do not wish to put any barriers in the way of us obtaining them.

Third - and perhaps this is my truest reason - I must think of all the people who I have ordered killed, for breaking Thrune censorship laws. Brave men and women, risking their lives to bring people works by Desnans, Shelynites, and Iomedans. Men I wish were here today. I do not wish to be made to kill such men again. If the law provides a way for those works to enter the hands of Chelish people who desperately wish for pictures of virtue, then I believe that the vast majority of people with good intentions will use it.

But if, in practice, it does not, and they once again feel the need to risk their lives, to bring my people books which speak of virtue - I will serve, if the Queen orders that I should return to killing men who smuggle Shelynite hymns through my territory, even if it happened because because a team of twenty men was scrambling to approve Iomedan prayer books instead. But I beg you all not to ask her to."

There. He has no idea if it was good, or will help, but - he had to try.

Where are they finding these archdukes.

If someone tells you to do something evil, don't do it. Nobody is saying it's easy, but it's not complicated to not do things you know are wrong.

She's not sure what else she should have expected from a holdover noble, though, obviously anyone who wasn't willing to do evil when they're ordered to couldn't have been a noble under the Thrunes. That he should have learned better? Maybe she should count her blessings that he at least doesn't want it to pass.

"Honored archduke, I certainly agree that it would be a great wrong, if our censorship board proved so inadequate that virtuous men were forced to turn to smuggling merely to bring the teachings of the righteous gods to the Chelish people. But I do not believe this statute would bring such a thing about. It sets a minimum of twenty men, yes — but we can have a board of twenty men by nightfall, selected from virtuous men vouched for by wise delegates of good judgment" that is to say, people his allies thought would be competent and trustworthy "and expand as necessary to meet the needs of our subjects. Such men need not be exclusively Chelish-born, if we cannot find qualified Chelish censors in sufficient quantity, but even if they are not of Cheliax I believe they can do a better job of evaluating the worthiness of publications than men instructed to judge only according to whether it conforms with Osirian law. 

Perhaps you may wonder why it is necessary to restrict access to the teachings of the righteous gods in the first place. In the past week alone, I have seen writing attributing all kinds of reckless and incorrect teachings to the righteous gods, claiming among other things that Iomedae wishes Evildoers to commit suicide, that Iomedae's church is intentionally working towards the destruction of all Cheliax's people, and of course, that she wishes Chelish subjects to form anarchic mobs and rise up against the Queen. Many of these claims, I believe, were made out of ignorance rather than malice, but they are no less dangerous for it; a censorship board of virtuous and learned men is better-positioned than a pamphlet smuggler to evaluate theological claims.

So long as the board works swiftly, our wizards need not find themselves without employment and our subjects need not find themselves without instruction. If in a month your fears have come to pass, and the censorship board finds itself so bogged down that it is unable to approve even clearly-permissible works promoting the righteous gods, I would certainly support modifying it; but I do not think they will."

"This law bans the making, sale, and lending of all books save a handful of holy books, across the whole country, until a board of censors we have not hired, have not trained, and will certainly be pulling off of other urgent duties laboriously read and reintroduce each book. That would be a very grave error, for all the reasons that the Archduke has already spoken of. I wish to speak of a different matter, which is whether our existing censorship law is adequate, and if not what should be done about it. 

I was as unpleasantly surprised as His Excellency Cerdenya to see the latest edition of the Badger when I departed the convention hall last night. I had presumed that the Badger was a daring and foolish child with a moneymaking gimmick, not a genuine lich living in the sewers of our city. But where His Excellency concluded that the problem was that Cheliax did not have a board of censorship, this was not my conclusion. Osirion, after all, has a board of censorship. This pamphlet was published by it. I do not know whether the lich Suggested that the censors approve it, or Dominated them, or merely intimidated them, or did some more horrendous thing yet, but this problem was caused by a pamphlet approved by a board of censors, and I see no reason to imagine that it would not have happened if that board of censors had been right here in Cheliax. 

He will of course applaud and cheer the heroism of the lich-fighters.

Aww, there was a cool fight and he didn't get to see it? That sucks. (He claps anyways.)

He applauds an evil wizard getting her comeuppance more sincerely than anything else that's happened this convention.

Dolor frowns. That rubs her the wrong way, but it's probably just that the duchess didn't know why, not that there wasn't a good reason. The archduke Requena and the Lord Marshal are unusual as nobles go, and not allies besides. She doesn't clap, but doesn't stand up either.

As things nobles do go, killing liches is pretty much the best thing they could be doing. Delegate Napaciza is still basically a murderer but she can clap for the ones that aren't awful. Hooray for avenging the lich's innocent victims.

She's not sure what side she's supposed to be on about the law but it's easy to figure out what side to be on about stopping liches. Liches are bad.

Why did the badger-lich have to get killed immediately after starting to pay preposterous amounts of legal fees. Can she sue over this somehow. Can she inherit the lich's estate. Can liches curse their estates to polymorph lawyers into undead badgers.

No applause from Lluïsa, that was her money fountain. They probably looted everything like the wretched tortfeasors they are.

Yes, it was very impressive, yes, he appreciates the recognition. 

Hot boy fights liches? Oh noooo. He's out of her league.

(She'll cheer anyway.)

He still hasn't been able to figure out why liches are still supposed to be bad.  After all, if the Asmodeans don't like them, and they aren't Chaotic (he doesn't think?), shouldn't the Asmodeans' enemies like them?

But it's not like he minds one bit.  He's happy to cheer for one less lich loose.

She'd never actually dealt with liches, in any of her travels, but the more common sorts of undead caused enough problems, in her experience.

Good on the nobles for sorting that out, she claps along with much of the room.

Though somehow liches causing problems results in the worse nobles backing a worse censorship bill? That wasn't even the type of problem that it would have occurred to her that the undead might cause. 

Zzzzzzz wait someone said her name? Oh, congratulations for the lich killing. Yes, she’s awake and attentive and whatnot, look at what a good pet druid she is. Does tricks for political gain and everything, practically a noble herself.

Voshrelka already dealt with the lich and rescued the badgers?! That's amazing! Enthusiastic clapping!

...Feather only learned of it yesterday, how is Voshrelka always two steps ahead of her - duh, fourth circle and hundreds of years of experience. She should trust her wise elders more. Enthusiastic clapping!! Hurrah for elder druids!

It won't take her hundreds of years to make fourth circle tthough she has seen the lofty heights of great Wisdom and she is climbing flapping up deterninedly.

"Some of these men disagree with me about censorship, and some agree with me. On many other matters, too, we stand here in fierce disagreement. But when duty called, every man it called on volunteered without hesitation, and every one fought bravely. I hope that we return from this great deed renewed in our confidence that against our country's enemies we are all united, and renewed in our determination to build a country where no man dies for another's twisted pursuit of immortality, or profits from such horrid crimes.

With that said - one lich subverted Osirion's censorship board. So for this reason we are going to ban all published material in Cheliax, while every single practical barrier to having our own censorship board that existed yesterday remains, while the only problem to have arisen so far with the new law is one a censorship board wouldn't even solve? Really? 

 I pray to Iomedae every morning before this convention, not for her valor in battle, but for her wisdom as a writer of laws, as someone who with great foresight and boldness lay a course for her country better than any laid before, as someone who understood that peace is purchased with institutions as much as with swords. 

But she did not attempt to address Tar-Baphon with a censorship law. She had smites for that. She fought him. She beat him. And she did not leave Lastwall a set of reactive hamfisted overreactions to his manipulations, but a code of laws that has managed to stand tall against every evil without treating its own people as one. This afternoon I intend for the committee on Safe Roads and Safe Villages to consider for adoption Lastwall's rules regarding liches and necromancy - but of course I don't imagine adopting those rules would have prevented the Badger publications either. And frankly I don't wish they had. The Badger publications were in the end a great public service. They made the heroes of Westcrown aware there was a lich in their city, and once we knew we could swiftly bring about its destruction. If there are any more liches in Cheliax I hope they write all about themselves so we can find them and destroy them.

So, yes, the censorship law is ill-suited to prevent liches. It seems to be working just fine to cultivate caution and wisdom in men. If it fails, we can revise it. But I would caution this convention against imagining that we serve our country only, or even primarily, by forbidding things and commanding punishments. Sometimes the thing to do about the evils of the world is to make wise laws, and sometimes it is to go place ourselves in danger's way to end them."

Applause for the adventuring party! Applause for her ally and bill-writer!

"Your Grace, I extend my heartfelt congratulations to all the brave delegates who fought against the lich and ensured the people of Westcrown need no longer fear her schemes.

But I fear you have drawn the wrong lessons from Iomedae. When she established Lastwall's censorship regime, she did not use it as an opportunity to perform untested radical experiments; she left them with a censorship board, as practiced by nearly every country on Golarion. She certainly did not allow Tar-Barphon's vassals to publish necromantic propaganda merely so that they might be located more swiftly. There is a time and a place for novel experiments," such as the Age of Glory "but there is also a time and a place for following the time-tested example of other Lawful countries, which have shown us that censorship boards are an adequate strategy for maintaining a Lawful state and promoting virtue amongst the populace.

If you are concerned the initial staffing will be inadequate, I would gladly welcome the recommendation of additional wise and virtuous men of good judgment to sit on the board." (Which is to say that he's willing to offer the mild concession that the Duchess of Chelam can appoint someone who will approve any publications that have her endorsement. He does not even slightly trust the judgment of the Duchess of Chelam but it is probably not so bad that she'd recommend a censor who would approve destructive publications.)

Lastwall was absolutely an untested radical experiment! It's not thought of that way today, because it was a successful radical experiment. However the rules do not permit her to debate without getting back in the (long) line, which would be beneath her dignity, so she nods politely and returns to her seat.

He respects Narikopolus the most out of the holdover nobles he's had to interact with. It's a genuinely good point, that the Chelish people are lost, and don't know the way towards Good, or even non-Evil Law, or really any personal virtue. Many of his problems would be solved if he could really trust any of his subjects.

Unfortunately, that's not the only consideration.

"The Archduke of Menador and Duchess of Chelam have raised very sympathetic concerns. I think Conde Cerdanya has addressed them well, but I expect reasonable men and women to disagree." Some of them because they are doing their best and are wrong, some of them because they are radical idiots. "I support this bill, not because it has no drawbacks, but because it is a solution to the very real dangers we face today. One week ago, hundreds of men and women died. They died because we did not stop them from dying. We tried in the moment," some of us, "to protect the innocent, to disperse the mobs, to avoid the bloodshed. It was too little, and too late, after radical ideas had poisoned the minds of so many in this city. The way to avoid those deaths is by acting before those ideas spread. That is how we avoid a repeat of the Terrible Third.

Yesterday, we told you that the proposed censorship bill contained too many exemptions, and we were assured that they were necessary and proper. It was only hours later that the first abuse of those exemptions occurred. I am proud to have helped promptly deal with the lich responsible, yes." He nods thanks to Carlota. "But plugging leaks after they have sprung is inferior to building a solid dam in the first place. I doubt that yesterday's Badger will be the only failure of that law, rather than the very first.

The Duchess of Chelam tells us of Lastwall, and their prudence. I agree we can emulate their example, but as Conde Cerdanya says, the fact is that Lastwall's censorship law is far closer to his proposal than it is to the bill passed yesterday. They maintain a censorship board to determine what may be published, just as we propose, rather than a laundry list of alternative avenues of approval.

Archduke - your Highness, your sincerity is plain, and neither I nor anyone else here should want you forced to execute virtuous men and women for spreading the teachings of Good. I would be horrified if that was the result of this law. If you still cannot condone this proposal, I suggest a compromise: that this proposal be amended to allow publications permitted by either the new Royal Censorship Board, or by Lastwall's Censorship Board, to avoid outlawing those texts that might bring the populace closer to Law and Good. We cannot abide by a dozen exemptions, but a single one, for Iomedae's own country, seems reasonable."

He doesn't see an obvious problem there but it's possible Acevedo had a good reason not to include that provision in his draft. But it seems reasonable enough, and if he puts it to a vote it might redirect some of the less extreme radicals into arguing for the preservation of that exception, rather than attempting to defeat the law in its entirety.

"Thank you, Your Grace. Before we vote on this proposal, I would welcome a vote on an amendment to additionally permit any work that was approved by Lastwall's Censorship Board as of the first of Sarenrith, except where prohibited by other decrees — I phrase it such not out of any concern for what Lastwall's censors will approve in the future, but in recognition of the wrong done to Osirion's censors yesterday, and the desire to avoid similarly impinging on Lastwall."

It occurred to him, standing in line, that if he didn’t realize this wasn’t an elaborate loyalty test until recently, other people may still not realize that.  So to sway enough people to stop books from being (effectively) banned in Cheliax, he just needs to make it clear what the correct loyal answer is. 

He’s taken advantage of the anonymity for this speech, too many nobles are too strongly in favor.

“1 year hard labor and an additional year for every 10 unpaid crowns of fines, so if they aren’t a rich noble that is 9 or 10 or 11 years of hard labor, depending how desperately the ‘criminal’ can scrape together money.  The Conde would have you think of this applying to Liches and vile crude satirists, but there is no exception for the type of written material.  You could be punished with a decade of hard labor for sharing a recipe from a cookbook, sharing a textbook, sharing a commentary on a virtuous God, or even accidentally sharing a wedding invitation too publicly.  The Conde would claim that surely the prosecutors and judges would be more reasonable but we’ve seen the judges have been (quite reasonably given recent history prior to the Four Day War) committed to the letter of the law and prosecutors in this Cheliax aren’t known for merciful discretion.  The Conde would have you believe a brutal response is necessary to stop anarchy and is thus Lawful.  But I ask you, what is the Good thing to do?  We are called not just to be Lawful, but Good also.  Forcing a choice between 10 years hard labor or illiteracy while we wait on some tiny board of censors to get around to enough books isn’t Good.  Choose not just the Lawful thing, even infernal Cheliax under the Thrunes could call it also Lawful.  Choose the Good thing, and reject this proposal for its outlandishly cruel penalty!  The Queen herself is Lawful and Good and was satisfied with 30 days penalty for pamphlet crimes in isolation of other crimes, look to her wise and Good and Lawful example and reject this proposal with it’s nearly Asmodean level of brutality in punishments!” 

…he may have went too far.  The illusionary disguise made him too confident, and he was already angry at the prospect of no books.  He’s worried about how attempts to pursue slander prosecution interacts with Archmage authorized anonymity.  The Archmage probably wins out, but it is unwise to bet on it.

"Delegate, every Good country on Golarion has a censorship board, and penalties for distributing illegal works. The specific penalties in this statute are identical to those prescribed by the laws of Taldor. I would not claim that the laws of Taldor are perfect in their every particular, but I am sure we can both agree that Taldor is not Asmodean.

There are Lawful polities which prescribe a lighter penalty for simple distribution of unapproved works, increasing in strictness depending on the nature of the prohibited work. If this body would prefer us to rewrite this law after the example of those polities, we will certainly do so, but such a law would necessarily be far more complex, and lend itself to far more uncertainty as to how it would be interpreted in any particular case."

Taldor isn't actually Good is it?  And he's heard bad things about it, like it's Cheliax without the Asmodeanism openly acknowledged and instead buried under rationalization, but those claims might themselves be Asmodean propaganda.  Whatever, since this isn't a loyalty test and is actually for real, he cares about being able to read books when he wants to, not about making true claims.

"Last night, after speaking with a Select, I made a copy of a commentary on The Acts of Iomedae.  This proposal, without further amendment would make that illegal.  The literacy of this nation is a blessing and a virtue and one of it's unique strengths.  I think perhaps some of the foreign nobility fail to realize just how many books there are and how widespread literacy is.  Asmodeus chained this country in slavery and lies, but gave us the tool of literacy to make us more useful, so let us turn it against his chains of lies and ignorance."

She worked on that line hard, even if she did kind of crib it from one of Korva's earlier speeches to the Education Committee.

"A commentary on a virtuous holy book would surely be swiftly approved, but there are more than dozens of such commentaries for each holy book, so I'm unsure how quickly a censorship board could even get to essential fundamentals like that, and it would be even worse for less critical but still useful books like various textbooks and primers, and even worse for more obscure textbooks and less obviously useful topics.  The authors of this proposal claim the censorship board would act swiftly, and they also claim the censorship law of yesterday was too hasty.  So my counter proposal is this: add in an amendment delaying the beginning of the promulgation of this law until after the censorship board has approved it's first thousand books.  A thousand might sound like a lot, but consider, several dozen good commentaries to each holy book, several dozen fundamental and basic textbooks and primers for every edifying educational topic, several dozen of the most popular and virtuous works of fiction imported from Andoran... just getting a moderate selection for a moderate range of topics adds up..."

She isn't actually sure how quickly this adds up and how quickly a censorship board would work... she needs to get better at math and whatever math techniques there are for guessing.

"This amendment would allow the law to go into effect swiftly if it's authors are correct a censorship board could work swiftly, and delay it if they've made an error in their estimation of a censorship's board's speed.  With an amendment like that... and the amendment to allow Lastwall's books... and an amendment with some clarification on gradations and moderations of punishment (I agree that is an issue the Conde is not weighing heavily enough)... this proposal is... adequate... although at the rate problems are being pointed out, I would think it would be better to learn from yesterday's example and spend more time considering the issue before passing a law."

Yesterday's law relies on the actions of private citizens taken in anticipation that the law will remain in effect; a conditional repeal of it would slow down its operation. But he likes the idea of a challenge that they must meet or not.

"I believe that proposal to be redundant with the proposed amendment permitting works approved by Lastwall's Board of Censors, which has certainly approved more than a thousand books already, including commentaries on the holy books of righteous gods, educational texts, and virtuous works of fiction. I worry that delaying for an additional thousand approvals, on top of the multitude of works already approved in Lastwall, would needlessly inhibit the Crown's ability to keep order and lead to confusion as to what laws are actually in force."

There's really something fascinating about it, that both good and evil are so terrified of people hearing enough of the world to know anything about it. But she is neither. And has nothing she can do about it except speak, so she hopes that yesterday wasn't a fluke.

"To the anonymous delegate who asked whether yesterday's censorship law would ban posting a public wedding invitation, which is currently allowed: this new one says that for that act, assuming you are not wealthy and have no land to sell, you ought to be sentenced to eleven years in the mines, which is in fact a death sentence that merely doesn't come with the opportunity to choose the final blade. If you are wealthy, and make the same mistake, it says that you ought to get at least one year in them.

To Delegate Oriol, who asked whether yesterday's law would make the news harder to get: if the Archduke is right, and he knows better than I, this law will make legally running a newspaper nearly impossible. If you attempt to obtain a written account of the news anyway, and a judge declares that it is public, you are to be given forty lashes, and then - well, assuming it's a short newspaper, you may be able to sell some of your livestock to pay perhaps a two gold fine, and not have to sell your farm itself to avoid being indentured. If you should instead unwisely buy an unapproved novel, it's forty lashes and a fine of perhaps a hundred gold, which I think under most circumstances one should expect to be a life indenture, if you are indeed alive at that point.

Last week, I realized that I did not understand the way that the governments of other countries worked, or even particularly my own. I was busy, so I hired a child of, oh, maybe ten, to look for a bookstore that had in stock information about the basic structure of governments, and copies of foreign constitutions. The child found a fantastic deal on them, and decided to buy the books and return with them to me, in the hope that I would be even happier with that.

Under the law we passed yesterday, it's quite easy to make this interaction legal again; the bookseller would in the future need to affix a page clarifying the statute these works were sold under, and mark them with an arcane mark, at which point the sale is legal. Under the proposed law, the only way to make it legal is for each of these works to pass through the censorship board, which I expect will be far too busy working through books of theology to bother with explanations of government structure for quite some time. If we were to have the interaction anyway, this law suggests that the bookseller should be sent to the mines - for ten years, I suppose, since I doubt if he could pay even his existing debts off without the right to sell any of his books - and that either I, the child, or perhaps both of us, should be given forty lashes, and that we might escape a life indenture only because of the delegate stipend. Naturally, as I attempt to be a law abiding citizen, I would not do this. I would, instead, simply have no way of accessing information about the governments of other countries, or about my own, besides the text of the royal decrees themselves."

She's.... actually just confused about the entire structure of the penalty for buying books. If you're going to whip a good portion of people to death, why not send them to the mines for a flat year instead? If you're going to make money by indenturing them, why have a step where you whip a bunch of them to death? Why equivocate between a week in prison and forty lashes? - okay, that part's easy, it's so that judges can decide to send wealthy but not powerful people to prison for a week instead of flogging them to death, but the combination flogging-fine is still kind of confusing. Whatever, you don't stir up righteous anger by sounding confused.

"Yesterday, the rights committee did speak of creating and empowering a censorship board - one focused solely on the theater. Based on that discussion, I believe that twenty teams of two men is about the right number to adequately censor solely new Chelish plays, at a slower but sustainable clip, relative to what we are used to. It takes so long because most plays, it turns out, require multiple rounds of revision, even if they are ultimately accepted. Books, of course, are the same.

I happen to know that before it burned down, the Egorian Academy Library alone contained more than one hundred thousand books. Since people began importing foreign books, there are now more than ever before to go through. If asked to look through decades of material - decades in which each year saw more books published than anywhere else in the world - a skeleton censorship board will not have time for public notices or invitations. It will not have time for sewing primers or cookbooks. It will not have time for you. And if you try to read or write those things anyway - we have discussed the penalties, but I think I will take a moment to discuss them again.

I have taken forty lashes with a penal cat. I took them when I was fifteen, without army training, so I can tell you what a teenager or an old woman would experience, perhaps even better than a soldier can. As you can see, I survived, but not everyone is so fortunate. Forty penal lashes are enough to rip large portions of the skin from a person's back, to begin to dig out the muscle below. You actually stop being concerned about the damage to the back quite quickly, because it soon becomes apparent that the really terrifying thing is that some inner fluid is flowing into the lungs. If not given something to bite, you are very likely to bite the tongue and lips, badly enough that more blood flows down into the lungs, since you are at that point having difficulty swallowing. It reaches a point where a part of you hopes for the next stroke, because if it comes quickly enough, they may unchain you before you suffocate, and you may be able to find some position that allows you to breathe. The pain, of course, is indescribable. I actually didn't faint until after they unchained me, but I had a fever and could not walk for about three weeks.

I got my lashes because I was too busy reading Skaldic poetry to focus on my lessons. Because the things I wanted to learn were not considered valuable, and yet I wanted to know what other peoples did so badly that I found it difficult to focus on arcana. It was explained to me, at my own and other floggings, that the number forty is chosen because it is the number where death is, while far from a certainty, considered unsurprising. Because we were not worth the effort of intentionally flogging to death, but it would be absolutely no loss to the crown if such worthless children as us were to die for our failures.

I had hoped that what happened to me when I was fifteen was of hell. I had hoped that there was some other country in which no one suffered so for pursuing knowledge which no one actually finds objectionable, but which is not the knowledge the state most wishes you to have. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that really is how they treat people in ordinary countries, and all the worst experiences of my life were not hell's influence. Maybe they really were just life, and none of the things that we disliked about hell are actually any different from how things are in Taldor.

Maybe so. But the only civil holiday our Queen has retained is the one where we celebrate not being Taldor, and she has asked us, here, to tell her how we wish to live. So I must ask all of you whether that is how you want to live again. Yesterday we didn't. I still don't. I don't want to live like that ever again, and I will vote no."

Is Taldor that blatantly evil?  Or maybe all the judges are some mix of absurdly corrupt and absurdly lenient and lighten punishments with the slightest provocation?  He’s actually curious, in a morbid kind of way, about Taldor now.  He could buy a book about it… if it’s still legal later this evening…

Lluïsa isn't sure how to feel about that speech.

Clap clap clap.

Oh, Cheliax. Whipping children with a cat?

The fundamental problem here is that all of the infernal Chelish are so traumatized by the infernal Chelish implementations of perfectly normal things like flogging criminals that they'll throw a tantrum about any law enforcement at all on the assumption it'll be incredibly evil law enforcement.

It really should have occurred to him during the drafting process that the Chelish people, used to being ruled by Hell, would assume their rulers intended to inflict the punishments of Hell even in cases when it would be manifestly unreasonable. This did not, in fact, occur to him, and he's looking faintly horrified at the prospect of having someone brutally tortured to death for purchasing an illegal sewing primer.

"In countries that are not being ruled by Hell, it is not typical practice to use a spiked cat on civilians for crimes such as this one," he says. "I do not wish to condemn anyone to a painful and torturous death merely for possessing forbidden literature. In Arodenite Cheliax, the sentence for a crime such as this would have been carried out with a horsewhip. It would be manifestly unjust to inflict the sentence you just described, and I will edit that provision immediately to ensure that this law is not abused in that fashion."

He strikes out "40 lashes" and replaces it with "40 lashes with a horsewhip." Hopefully his allies weren't counting on the forty lashes being inflicted by a spiked cat — no, actually, if they were counting on that he's willing to take the fall here, having someone tortured to death for purchasing a forbidden sewing primer would be absurd and Evil.

He is not at all sure that the censorship board would find many books worth approving in Egorian's library, but that seems less important than clarifying the issue of punishments. There are other supporters of the bill in line who can make that point.

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 Spell Lord."

"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!

She'll wink at him once she's down from the podium.

"Your Excellency, were I confident that the only loophole in yesterday's statute was the one already abused, I would wholeheartedly support your proposal. But I do not expect it is — indeed, many others have already been identified, and were identified on the floor yesterday, even if thus far no one has taken advantage of them. We cannot solve this problem merely by adding a censorship board, because those who are taking advantage of other provisions of yesterday's law to legally publish anarchic or wicked works will have no need to submit their works to a board of censors. 

The archduchess spoke earlier of how it is better to repair a drafty house than to build a new one on a foundation of sand. I don't disagree. But it is yesterday's law that establishes a publishing regime built on a crumbling foundation, a foundation that until yesterday no country in the history of Golarion had ever attempted to build on. It may be that this proposal is imperfect, and will need to be amended — but where it differs from Lastwall, from Molthune, from Taldor, from Thuvia, from nearly any polity you can name, it does so only in the details and not in the fundamentals. Better to reestablish our censorship law on a firm foundation than to continue with an experiment that has failed in less than a day.

I agree that it is unfortunate if a law passed one day must be amended or repealed the next. But if we cannot repeal even laws that are manifestly flawed, we ought to refrain from passing any more novel and experimental statutes, and stick to laws that have been tested and proven in those countries we wish to emulate."

If this proposal fails, but everyone agrees to not do any more novel legal experimentation, that also seems like a success, frankly.

He sighs deeply, before beginning, a fresh wave of regret that he was not stronger sooner, was not able to help in their rescue.

"It was wrong that you were denied knowledge of goodness; it was wrong that you were forced to follow twisted laws; it was wrong that the government hated and feared your friendships with your neighbors and love within your families.

The Thrune's censors wanted to harm you. They wanted to limit you. They wanted you burning in Hell.

That is not the censorship board I hope to create. In my travels, I met a Shelynite cleric from Andoran; she works now in Fraga, healing the wounded, spreading redemption literature, planting the seeds of authentic love. She does not want to harm you; the opposite. She does not want to limit you; the opposite. She does not want you burning in hell; the opposite. Hers is the first name I will submit for consideration for the censorship board.

But why have a censorship board at all? Because our world is filled with both good and evil, both obedience and rebellion, and it is the strength of Good that it can coordinate with itself against evil. When we block necromancers from sharing notes with each other, we weaken them, and strengthen the public. When we stop liars from poisoning the well, everyone can drink more deeply from it.

Our law must both protect the public and not strangle it. Yesterday's law does not protect the public, because it is not challenging for an inventive adversary to get around it. Today's law will not strangle the public, because it allows for the private possession of what works already exist, and will allow for their distribution as swiftly as is reasonable. An empowered board will be able to react flexibly to challenges as they arise; rather than the convention needing to write in an exemption for marriage announcements or cookbooks and revise the law the next day, the board can simply create a category and allow works within it, without any need for the Convention to return its attention to the topic.

We all agree there is a need for censorship, and a need for distribution; that we must treat Cheliax's literacy as a prized accomplishment and also a serious matter of good governance. This bill improves on the previous one, and should be approved accordingly."

"Thank you, Your Grace. I hope that with your Songbird's help we can protect every Chelish subject without placing unnecessary restrictions on virtuous texts."

He looks at the remaining people in line; none of them are archdukes or other sorts of people likely to be dangerously offended if the discussion cuts off here.

"With that, I call for a vote for cloture, so that we may begin to vote on, first, the proposed amendment to allow any works approved by Lastwall's censors as of the first of Sarenrith, and second, the proposal itself."

The vote for cloture passes! That's what happens when a lot of delegates are hostages!


The vote to amend to allow any works approved by Lastwall's censors?

In favor because it'll limit the damage though she's annoyed that to limit the damage he ended up resorting to the precise solution that his initial speech was denouncing.

In favor. Lastwall's censors are sensible, so far as he knows, and it'll make the statute more likely to pass.

Lastwall is Iomedae's country and she is a loyal servant of Iomedae. This one is easy. In favor.

Against, because without it the bill is worse and likelier to fail which she can take credit for.

Sigh. In favor. One country's books are better than nothing. They probably don't have the saga with the Iomedan guy who goes around challenging people to duels, though.

In favor. Lastwall's books are probably the most important to have. Though he still doesn't understand why people keep insisting that they can experimentally send a thousand people to the mines.

It won't help that much, and it makes the proposal sound better. And she's anonymous. Against.

It will help tremendously if worst comes to worst. In favor.

Of course he's in favor. Why wouldn't he be?

She doesn't think this law sounds that bad? But a bunch of the nobles she really doesn't like are in favor, and the ones that are reasonable are against it, so probably they're planning to do something like put a bunch of Asmodeans in charge of the censorship office again and not let anyone publish anything criticizing the nobles at all. It's pretty hard to see how letting books from Lastwall in would make it worse, though, she's in favor of that part.

Since it’s not a loyalty test and voting is genuinely anonymous… against.  It’ll make the main proposal more likely to pass if it passes and slows down the disastrous effects of the main proposal enough that they might not be able to repeal it.

In favor of the amendment.  Hopefully Lastwall has a good selection, but if it comes to that it will still be disastrous, just slightly less than otherwise.

In favor. It's more likely to pass with the amendment and if you had to pick a country for it Lastwall seems like the least bad one.

This law is supposed to ban bad books and not good books, but Lastwall probably has good books. In favor.

Against. It's less likely to pass without the amendment and she'd rather make sure the bill dies. If this brinksmanship fails she'll feel bad about it but judging by the mood of the room the amendment will probably pass anyway and leave her vote against moot. 

Marit is not from Lastwall but he's always found his fellow Reclamation members from Lastwall wholly reasonable, and he can't imagine Lastwall's censorship board approving anything strongly objectionable. In favor.

The main law is guaranteed to pass, because it is a bad law, so for the amendment.

She sits back down, vaguely relieved that she didn't actually make it to the front of the line before the voting started because she hadn't figured out exactly what she wanted to say. 

Now she realizes that she's confused about whether she should vote against the Lastwall bit, because it probably makes the whole law more likely to pass, or for the Lastwall bit, because if the law does pass it makes it less bad??

Why is everything so hard and confusing. Also she misses her baby though not having him here is so helpful for actually being able to follow what's going on. 

She dithers. 

She's kind of annoyed about Lawfulness right now, maybe having many of their books banned would maybe teach the Lastwall types some kind of lesson about Law and make them notice ways that it can be bad. 

Against the amendment. 

In favor of the amendment.

When Asmodeus conquers the other afterlives all the people flocking to paladins to save them are going to feel pretty stupid, if any of them even manage to escape Hell to begin with. Against.

Against. She doesn't much care for Iomedae, telling people to leave home and go off to fight in battle rather than helping their families and communities. 

In favor. If he can't even provide Joan with new books, there's no telling what he'll do, and new books from Lastwall seem particularly unlikely to lead him into Iomedaean heresy.

Against.  She’s against everything about this proposal, some holy books from Lastwall aren’t going to stop her neighbors from being arrested for a wedding invitation or sharing a letter too much.

 Huh, oh yes, he has totally been paying attention this entire time and not surreptitiously reading his book. No, not at all.

Being in favor of the amendment means less censorship, right? And Nethys probably likes that, right? Anyway, he’s pretty sure “in favor” means there are allowed to be more books.  

“In favor” 

Wasn't the entire thing we disliked about the radicals' censorship law the part where it gave other countries undue influence? Against. 

Amendment passes, 220 - 119.

"I call next for a vote on the amended statute, to replace yesterday's publishing restrictions with a board of censors."

No.

Against. That badger lich had a great idea about getting things published in another country.

Against.

Yes. Obviously.

Yes, of course.

Against.

Against. Almost everything she's done last night has been to try to kill this, though she wasn't actually expecting them to bring it to the floor today. Or to have such high penalties, honestly. She thought it'd be a simple 'establish a censorship board, ban everything' and all the harms would be diffuse and hard to give speeches about.

Instead, only about half the harms will be the diffuse strangulation of thought and the other half will just be lots of people sent to their deaths. You stupid fucking lich. Carlota wishes liches could experience regret so it could be the case that she made the lich regret it.

Against, but she hopes it fails narrowly so she gets all the credit, so if she were more sure it'd fail she'd vote for.

Abstain.

Against.

The other one seemed better for business. Roda de Ter will take forever to get anything approved, all the big towns and cities will get first crack at the censors. Against.

Against.  

It sounds like an excuse for some brutal punishment… also she doesn’t buy that the Conde somehow didn’t know how whipping usually works.

In favor, of course.

Andoran has been fine with the weak censors, really, though it's impolitic to say so out loud. Against.

Against. Kicharchu talked to a bandmate last night and they had the most cunning ideas about getting books from drow to bring upstairs, and with the dinner party Share Language still up he can tell this would put paid to that.

Against.  Yesterday’s law just needs some minor tweaking.

Against, as he was in committee.

It’s past time. In favor.

For. Censorship boards are very annoying and he doesn't know any of them to ever do anything useful, and he is sympathetic to the perspective you should let people say things and then just hang them if they say treasonous ones. But all of the most annoying people here are opposed to the bill and anyway the trick the "Rights Committee" pulled yesterday was underhanded.

Against, in the strongest possible terms.

Against.  Fuck these Taldane nobles.

Abstain. This one has the courtesy to write in the Parables but it otherwise seems worse.

Against. Nethys, let us know.

In favor, both on the merits and on his own personal advancement. It’s great when those align.

Against, mostly based on who's pushing for it.

At least this one is less complicated than the one from yesterday. In favor.

He's been mostly abstaining, but no, you should not reverse course on your last law one sunrise later because you panicked about the fact Osirion allows the intelligent undead, a fact a hundred people in this room could have told you at any point if you had asked any of them, and a fact that has not caused Osirion any problems. Against.

In favor. Evil lich books should definitely be banned.

It'd save her the staring at letters willing them to become words, maybe, but it seems dumb, what do some twenty people some nobles picked out know about anything. Against.

For. Sounds like this puts a lot of indentures on the market. He needs the prices low, or else they’ll be too expensive and it won’t make sense to throw them to lions.

It’ll also make his fliers advertising the games more expensive, but surely the board of censors won’t be that expensive to bribe. Free tickets, good seats, the works.

In favor. She doesn't care about most of what they're arguing about, but it's nice that this one allows the parables.

In favor. The mines need more people anyway.

The archdukes all being against it is probably a bad sign, even though this is simpler and not so lawyerly. Anna will take a minute to think, whisper to her scribe, and then abstain.

At some point in the last week Ester's much disused book-learning from her decades-ago school days reasserted itself. It is conceivable that, after she has picked her way through all of The Bones Land In A Spiral, she might want something else to read. And there's no reason to think any of the censors' top priorities will be any good to her. Against.

Books make a good cargo compared to some things you might be carrying. Against.

In favor! It’s a shame this proposal wasn’t ready yesterday, they could have gotten in passed without a fuss.

There's Shelynite romance novels? Sounds exciting. Against.

Abstain.

Against this bad law, in great futility. The previous one wasn't well drafted but you could really see where it was trying, it's not an offense against the Law. Is their principle just "all laws must be the Worst Possible Laws"?

For. We also would like cheap indentures, especially if they’re good at writing. There’s more profitable used for those than the mines.

Meritxell likes books because she's a wizard and stuff. Against.

Against. It would be a little inconvenient for him, and if people are taking advantage of yesterday's law, it won't be that difficult to come up with an alternative pretext for arresting them, or no pretext at all.

Against. Fucking assholes.

Llei is trying to remember if he's ever heard Narikopolus make an impassioned and apparently sincere speech about anything. Not... really. Some borderline examples, but... not really.

Against. Not that it will be trivial for him to find out for sure, but still.

The Acts are an epic poem about fighting monsters!! You need the commentaries!!!! Against!

So the last law allows liches to write things, which are bad. But this one allows anything the censors approve, and maybe the censors will also be in favor of liches. Where are they getting the censors, anyways? 

Abstain.

In favor. The Queen's men should be able to approve all the books that actually matter. How many books worth the paper they're written on can there be, anyways? A hundred?

You have a Songbird and you want to work her to death confirming that it's okay for people to study math and read poems, kept awake late every night by the desperate knowledge that if she falls behind she'll be sending those book-smugglers' recipients to the mines? Your poor Songbird, you don't deserve her. Against.

For. 

He doesn’t care about books, just doesn’t like Korva. That beggar woman thinks she’s so smug because she reads a lot of books, wants to whine about how she got forty lashes for being too pathetic for wizard school. She probably wouldn’t last an hour in the well.

This one seems complicated but a bunch of the Archdukes were opposed so probably that's what's safest. Against.

Books aren't much use, but neither is letting the nobles proclaim that something is fine, and then a day later round up everyone who believed it and send them to the mines. Against.

The significance here is dominated by political concerns. Literacy is fine, but it's not that much of a tragedy if the booksellers all fold, or if some silly books inspire a handful more criminals, they'll be stupid ones and easy to catch, more hands for the quarries. And yes, he's anonymous, but annoying Chelam or De Fraga or the archdukes and having them check...

The Queen killed the Rack. She spared the rest with demands, elevated the Pike, and killed the Rack. Her Majesty is with her archdukes on this.

And the Countess de Seguer had a good point. Changing the law every twenty-four hours is highly unLawful.

Alright, Against.

This is the one Gemma told her they would put up about hellknights! Against hellknights.

Karrag doesn't read, and it sounds like this will fill the mines up with people who do. For.

In favor, the first bill was a whole load of nonsense. Maybe if they keep voting for better replacements these nobles will learn how to write laws.

Her job is to stop people from worshipping illegal gods. People are more likely to worship illegal gods if they can get books about illegal gods more easily. She wants to do her job. In favor.

Censors in Westcrown? Bribing them is too rich for Roger's blood. He'll find some angle with the other one. Against.

Opposed. Was there any doubt?

In favor, if it reduces the risk of riots.

Could anyone possibly care less? He can't even be bothered to pick a vote at random, he's just going to abstain.

Against. Enric doesn’t care about books and pamphlets, but the nobles on his side already passed their law banning them. 

Marit is pretty unsure about this. He voted against the proposal yesterday — boards of censorship seem much more sensible than the Archduke of Sirmium's complicated scheme — but he's also from Taldor. Taldor's censorship laws really only work because of how inconsistently they're enforced, which is a very bad feature for a law to have. There's a sense in which that's how they're enforcing nearly all the laws right now, with their newly-lengthened list of mitigating conditions several of which seem written primarily with an eye to not hanging a quarter of the country, but he'd very much prefer to eventually have a criminal code that can be consistently enforced without relying on the assumption that the magistrates and prosecutors will exercise nearly unlimited discretion, including in cases where they directly contravene the law in so doing.

On the other hand, the law from yesterday does seem to be deeply flawed. If the Count of Cerdanya were proposing a law with lighter penalties, he thinks it would straightforwardly be an improvement, even accounting for the damage to rule of law from passing another law so soon.

Against, but he expects he'll probably be voting in favor of a modified version in a month.

The last one banned the Parables? Why didn't someone say something? Or did it get lost in all the long speeches...

Anyways, in favor of not banning the Parables.

Yeah, that one really is decisive. The cities will get up to some nonsense on books regardless but they should stay out of everyone else's business. In favor.

Against!  He's been quite enjoying the imports from Osirion, thank you very much!

... and if the vote for passes, how am I supposed to dispose of the books with me right now?

Against. At least this one was less complicated than the others though still some complicated. 

Against.

Against

Strongly against

Zzzzz oh they're voting again? And this is still the slightly different version of the dumb law from yesterday, do it again for some reason? Against. Now, please move on to something else. Like the stuff the druids want. She will be making faces at the Sower in an attempt to prod him into introducing the things their committee came up with a week ago. From way over here. Druid is impatient, and these arguments are stupid.

Josep really wants to vote for this one, the people howling about boohoo, their precious books and their precious peasants being sent to the mines are incredibly annoying. But the nobles that drafted this clearly have never had to run a practical concern in their entire life. Twenty people is laughable. If it was twenty per county, he would be in favor, but the Crown can't afford that, now can it. And the girl-Countess had a point, repealing their laws the very next day after passing them will make them laughingstocks.

Against. Ugh.

Fails. 214 - 241.

Yes!!! Close enough she can take some credit!! 

Message, to hot boy. Maybe they'll give it up for a week now. You free tonight to tell me allll about how the lich thing went down?

That's disappointing. He hopes dearly that his fears are unfounded and that the lich-wizard will be the worst of their problems, but he doesn't expect it. If they find themselves back here in a month because some publisher had the poor judgment to print a pamphlet that sparked a riot, the knowledge that he was right is going to be awfully little comfort.

(This also means that going forward, every time there's a controversial topic, everyone involved is going to be incentivized to rush a proposal the very morning after the controversy becomes apparent, but he's self-aware enough to realize he's only upset about it because it was the radicals who pulled it off first.)

Take that, Evil nobles!

This is going to be a disaster for Cheliax, but at the very least he can try to limit the damage until the folly is revealed. He makes a mental note to write a letter home so his county can make preparations. It probably helps that they don't need to prevent a disaster forever, just long enough that someone else fails and they can attack the problem at its roots again.

Joan-Pau usually just lets women down gently when they flirt with him, but the Countess de Seguer is a useful ally! He might want to marry her, she's intelligent and articulate and a wealthy landholder. I am tragically not, he says, since I have a dinner I am promised to attend, but if you'd care to join me for it...

I'd be delighted.

That was distressingly close to passing.  It’s a reminder every speech and every point of concern or weakness matters.  Something as small as more moderation of punishment or more awareness of common Chelish background assumptions might have let it pass.  She supposes she can be grateful the Taldor Nobility and Reactionary Conservatives are so heavy handed and ignorant, but if they fix that their next country ruining proposal might just make it through.

He has been working on a constitution to present to necessary alteration to the monarchy for almost a week now.  He’s rewrote it again last night.  Realizing it wouldn’t be a way of scoring loyalty points but instead might be the law of the land has made him reconsider some things.  Seeing this vote nearly pass… he’s going to raise some thresholds in his constitution, make dramatic reversals or complete replacements of laws require 2/3s majority of every estate.  It will hopefully stop pathetic impulsive replacements of decently written laws, like what nearly happened just now.

Phew. She knew it wouldn't be easy but it's still a relief that they pulled it off.

Message to Sower Soler: This is a good time to bring up the amendment to allow the Parables.

Is it? She'd be the expert. I can't read, send your scribe up with me to get the exact words.

The same scribe who wrote down his sermon will meet him by the speaker's stand with a copy of the proposal.

"As it happens we've got an amendment to the standing censorship bill ready, to permit the Parables in their traditional forms." Gesture at Txell.

A Publication Statute for the Holy Books of Virtuous Churches.

Certain holy books, particularly the Parables of Erastil, are written with variations and not permitted by other Publication Statutes. For these books, it is permissible to make substantial changes to the text, so long as a chosen priest of the god is willing to sign their name and where they may be found - a home village, ministration circuit, or similar - to the modified version. These modified copies may be copied as though they were the original and further modified and so on, and they are considered permitted under the same statutes as those original texts, if marked with this Statute in addition to the one authorizing the original.

The Queen or Her Board of Censors may designate other virtuous churches and their holy texts to receive equivalent status, if they judge such status necessary. When first passed, this Statute applies only to the Parables of Erastil and the Sowers of Erastil.

"This sounds good to me. I liked that the other law allowed our Parables, but if this would allow the Parables too, that's also fine with me. Thank you for fixing the law!"

Oh good, some of the other clerics of Erastil are on top of it. They'd have kept passing around the parables illegally if they had to, of course, but it'll be helpful to get the paladins on their side if someone tries something.

Why are they making an exemption in the pamphlets law for more books, aren't there too many books legal already?

This anonymity thing is actually pretty useful for being an annoying loudmouth while avoiding getting killed!

"We should take this Opportunity to do a Beneficial Service for Erastil, that Excellent God who works most Diligently to our Benefit, by enshrining his Holy Customs in Law."

That weird enunciation thing is very identifiable.  And some of the phrases like ‘Holy Customs’.  At least the illusions covers up her height.  Possibly they should warn Lluisa, even if she is a lawyer, she does seem to be aligned with the same general values as Thea.

Now, should she do the official seconding, or have Tallandria do it? We do need that before the vote. She could apologize if she does it herself, but... no.

Message Korva: It still needs an official second; go do that? Say whatever else you think is reasonable; about not including it yesterday, or not. Your call.

Oh, it does? Uh -

"I second the motion to vote. This was an important oversight to correct, and we should certainly be working to support the faith of Erastil in Cheliax, rather than restricting it."

No one is waiting in line to speak, so they don't actually have to do a vote for cloture, they can just vote.

How are they voting?

In favor.

Erastil's a good reliable god, a lot of her knights were secondary-worshippers of Erastil. In favor.

This is specifically to help Erastil’s followers? Sure. Okay. Now, move on to the topics that actually matter.

He's never been terribly fond of Erastil but this seems pretty obvious anyway. For.

In favor.

Patching the terrible censorship bill won't work but it seems mean-spirited to vote against all the patches. Abstain.

He doesn't actually want the radicals' censorship bill to fail, he just expects it, and the Duke of Fraga seemed to think this was a reasonable provision. In favor.

Sometimes Sowers are annoying but they are at least reliably not terrible. And this doesn’t seem tied to maybe making other things worse if it passes like the Lastwall bit on the new try at censorship did. 

In favor.

In favor. It is a reasonable provision, and perhaps with enough patches, it will be clear that patching the list of allowed works is really not the Convention's job, and they will empower another body to write such patches. 

In favor. She doesn't really pray to Erastil very much but it's silly to make his holy book illegal.

In favor. Maybe someday her village will have a real priest of Erastil.

In favor. They'll have to scrap the bill in a few weeks anyway but at least the Erastilians will be spared the collateral damage.

In favor. What sort of idiot writes a books law and forgets to allow the Parables?

He doesn't really expect Joan to be interested in comparing different versions of the Parables, but it's not like this hurts him. In favor.

In favor!

It's an easy yes - both in that Erastil is good, and every bit they chip away at censorship makes the next bit easier.

This is the easiest yes vote of the convention.

Of course he's in favor.

Opposed. Weakens the position of the opposition.

In favor.

This is obviously a terrible idea because it lets anyone write whatever they please. Opposed.

In favor. Restricting the holy book of a Lawful god, whose worship is legal, encourages his followers to break the law and their Law, and why would anyone want to do that?

Succeeds, 351-43.