FINALLY.

Surely even the Evil nobles won't be willing to support a literal portal to Hell, right?

Oh good, something straightforward that won’t give her a headache trying to keep all the pieces straight.  

Sounds great. Why can't everyone write proposals like this one?

Unfortunately for reasons no one in this room except her, Elie, and possibly Mephistopheles know, the party doing this without consulting an army of lawyers first would be the worst action it is possible to take as a mortal short of letting Rovagug out. This is really kind of emblematic of what's wrong with Republicanism.

That's what the druids want????? Give it to them!!

"I second this motion! If it moves the archmages or the Queens to hear our perspective they should know that this is a great priority of the convention."

Won't anyone think of the fascinating experiments that this will make completely impossible?

(He's not dumb enough to say that.)

Preach it. Or, well, continue the sensible strategy of not preaching it.

A nice easy unobjectionable proposal written in plain language with no tricks or even drawbacks.  Does it score political points to make speeches in favor of obvious easy proposals?  Even if it does, Thea doesn’t want to waste time, so she’ll sit back and not do anything for once and vote in favor once it’s time.

Wait, there's a portal to Hell? Why are they planning to close it, Cheliax is the one with all the archmages now. They should be invading to make Hell a colony, see how they like it when the shoe is on the other foot. 

"If there was any doubt, I speak for the Knights of the Pike in confirming that this portal exists and causes a great deal of harm to both forest and farm. Please close it as soon as it can be practically done."

YES, THIS IS WHAT THE DRUIDS WANT!! FUCKING FINALLY! These proposals were ready over a week ago and you assholes put it off and started killing each other instead of getting to the VERY REASONABLE DEMANDS that the DRUIDS HAVE!!! Do you idiots want to starve, why is this a difficult fucking question. Close the portal to Hell, don't commit atrocities towards dryads, don't starve, ask any of the paladins you imported, any one of them would agree with all of this.

She supposes she doesn't have to go around the Sower in favor of bothering the queen directly after all. That's nice. It would have been annoying, and she suspects the queen has to deal with quite a lot of idiots, by how quickly she got her piece of paper of 'don't bother the druid that is casting Plant Growths.' That sort of thing speaks of just how many stupid, stupid people have been bothering her.

Portals to hell are bad. Hopefully even the evil nobles can figure that one out.

"I wholeheartedly support this proposal, and I hope the archmages will carry it out with all possible haste!"

This question does not really require his input, but he is, really, a bit confused by how comfortable this body, which was convened by an archmage against the wills of many of its participants, is about issuing that same archmage orders. Although maybe the archmage likes it. He doesn't know.

“Hey. If you want to petition the queen about your forest problems, write a letter. Don’t waste all our time. One more thing. How about we let the archmages  decide what to do themselves? This convention already tried to vote to take coin from their pockets, are we just going to have one obnoxious and ungrateful slight to the archmages every day, now? Maybe they haven’t gotten to this little problem because they had a bigger portal to close? Something up north, had this big treaty about it? Everyone’s sons and brothers sent to die holding it? Anyone remember what I’m talking about?”

The President presumably likes conventions and conventions petitioning for stuff, so this should actually be fine?  Hopefully he will give them some actually warning if he thinks they are being presumptuous?  The only thing that actually bothers him are attempts to target other delegates which the slander law was much closer on.

Still, thinking more logically, the petition is only likely to  nudge the list of priorities for the archmages, it should, in theory, be mostly already set in a particular order, with petitions at most moving the hell portal up or down a few places, not sending it straight to the top.

Aren't there other channels to report Hell portals along? But sure, if it comes to a vote, this one's pretty obvious.

Liushna decides that this is an excellent opportunity to explain druids to Rojix, first in Chelish and then in Itarii.

"The Whisperwood is not as great a problem as the Worldwound. But the Wound is closed. Delegate Tiumfane has come from the druids of the Whisperwood to draw our attention to the portal, and it would surely be easier for all those who farm near his forest if the burden of fighting the portal's monsters was lighter; once in that they and my order would be able to keep more of the devilish beasts away, and a second time in that some of their druids might be spared to negotiate plant growth for their neighbors. We will be cleansing the wood for many years hence even if it is closed today, but now is still the best time, and as soon as the archmages can be spared the second-best."

Petitioning the Queen is all very well, but Feather didn't get the impression the Chelish authorities didn't already know about the portal.

This is a constitutional convention. Maybe they should write into the constitution that 'Chelish rulers must close any portals to the lower planes in its territory'.

She's not going to propose that to the floor, because it would interfere with the current resolution and because wrangling the Forests committee to get even this far was hard enough even before the riots. Eulalia's speech against the new censorship law showed wisdom and tact, which implies that whenever she was being stupid and nasty it was on purpose. Best to let Voshrelka run the show, and hope Eulalia has forgotten about the "we hate druids and they are to blame for everything" resolution she passed in committee in exchange for agreeing to peace negotiations with the Forest. (They do need to pass the resolution about peace negotiations, though. Or is it a law now?)

Technically this part is Tuimfane's show, and Voshrelka is just supporting it. Her own proposal for the convention is about not felling dryad trees. But yes, sure, Feather is free to think of her as the resident elder druid in charge. Realistically, she probably is, in this little druid clan marooned in civilization.

Hm. Proposed by a Sower, and it has the proper form for a petition. Of course he'll vote for it, and probably should say something in support too.

"Wise words from the Sower. The nobility of this realm, their companions, and the orders they support are the primary line of defense the people have against these foul supernatural invasions. The one point of Chelish pride that was well-earned during the infernal years was that Cheliax stood tall against the Worldwound, and now I hope we can turn our attention to domestic troubles. I encourage you all to vote in favor, and also for any of you with the power to defend the people of Cheliax, to consider how you can be receptive and responsive to the needs of your people, and encourage them to bring you their troubles through swift and just resolution of them. As above, so below."

Tuimfane thinks that Voshrelka is senior. Why would this be his show. He doesn't want it to be his show. He didn't want to show up in the first place and now there's an elf older than he is. He sees no reason not to do what Senior Elf says, under the circumstances.