"Thank you for your wise perspective as always, Archduchess," does the woman ever shut up.

“Archduchess, the point is not to convince the populace we aren’t lying about Arodenite Cheliax - the point is to restore the rule of law on a tried and tested pattern. As you say, the people will believe little we say - that is why we need a system they can see the justice in, and let them learn its truth over time. 

The commons in the convention itself we can hold to a higher standard. We will tell them the truth about the past - even you can confirm that. There must be a dozen ways to show them, starting with us resurrected avowing it. 

We do not need to depart from Aroden’s wisdom just to distinguish ourselves from Asmodeus - now is when we need that wisdom more than ever.”

"If we're worried that people will misunderstand the phrase 'Arodenite punishments,' perhaps we could simply list which punishments our proposal restores, while noting the fact that those punishments were traditionally used in Arodenite Cheliax." That was obviously how they were going to write the law anyway but it's not like he was expecting the Archduchess to be reasonable. "If we are additionally banning forms of execution common under Asmodeanism, it might also be prudent to list any specific punishments that we want to be certain to disallow."

"Aroden's wisdom suited a populace raised under Aroden's wisdom, whose grandfathers were also raised under Aroden's wisdom. I do not dispute that it was an excellent way to run a country, nor even do my resurrected radical revolutionaries who fought the Civil War for Ravounel, even though they are pushing Kintargo and Ravounel more radical in nearly every other way despite my best efforts. But Aroden never pulled a populace out of Hell's grasp. His policies in the very earliest days of Taldor before Taldaris I, when it was uncivilized and becoming civilized, would seem a better place to look for rules to suit our current situation, though I don't remember that appearing in His books and do not know what they were."

"In the absence of clear advice for the situation we actually have, you should not assume reasserting old policies will have good results now merely because they had good results then. Tradition is valuable when circumstances change slowly, but after a century of abrupt and total changes, it is very obviously not going to work as it did before; it will do something wild, which could in theory be wildly good, but could equally be wildly bad. If you want a model which has predictable results, look to Andoran or Galt, not to Aroden, and decide whether you consider those acceptable."

From everything he’s heard since returning, calling Andoran and Galt predictable is insane. Fortunately they don’t need to convince the radicals like Jilia, just a reasonable majority of the convention. 

If you want Andoran or Galt, you can get it! Just do what they did! That's entirely predictable.

"In Lastwall torturous executions are banned. I know that there are many features of Lastwall's governance that are believed to only work because of the Goddess' intervention, but I don't think this is one of them. The practice was, as Archduke Narikopulus mentioned, copied in Menador, with no ill result, and Menador is not governed by paladins. It was tested, by Iomedae when she was mortal, in an army assembled from the people of Taldor, who are not renowned for particular virtue among all the peoples of the world. It may seem, in theory, that the having no way to escalate beyond a death sentence means that the state cannot dissuade those who have already committed capital crimes from doing more, but in actual practice that does not seem to be the case. Even the theory is less persuasive than it sounds - Why should we imagine that there are many men who would be deterred from evil by the threat of mortal torments, when they are undeterred by the prospect of Hell or the Abyss? In forbidding torture of criminals, the queen acts with both mercy and wisdom, and I see no reason for us to overturn that."

"I agree. I am confused by it, but I am forced to agree.

If you mean to ban specific punishments, the fashion in Asmodean Cheliax was to be as creative and varied as possible, so any list any individual can give you will be incomplete. Some forms with variations were particularly common, I suppose. Impalement, flaying, slow cooking, use in the opera or the arena. Kantaria was primarily using crucifixion, boiling, impalement, burning, hanging, tearing limb from limb, and the breaking wheel, but we were more restrained than most places."

And the ordeals, but those aren't executions. ....oh, no, if they standardize punishments over the whole country then they might have to stop doing those. That doesn't make much sense, though, the ordeals are definitely older than Asmodean rule.

"I agree, we cannot ban specific punishments in a country that once prized creativity in punishment. We must create a list of allowed punishments, bound their severities, and let the writers of laws pick what punishments are appropriate for them. Banning a punishment necessarily means banning it for the worst crimes, and I fear if we do not openly allow some flexibility and severity it will instead occur in secret.

Did you say hanging was a torturous execution? Perhaps the chair or Marquis de Almenar, who both lived in Cheliax before the Thrunes, can describe executions and their severities as happened then."

"Well, I'd call the way we did it more torturous than beheading. We're working on switching most executions to hanging the way they do it in Lastwall, where the neck is normally broken instantly, but it's a bit of an investment."

Obviously beheading is better--that's why it is a noble privilege that it's the standard method of execution for them. But if the Lord Marshal really thinks they shouldn't be hanging common criminals, it might be harder to find agreement than he thought.

They boiled people alive?

"In Aroden's day, the most common forms of execution were beheading, garroting, and hanging — in the ordinary fashion, not the fashion of Lastwall. When torture was used, it took the form of burning at the stake, breaking on the wheel, typically used for lesser treason, or turning to parts, reserved for high treason."