"I wonder how much we could do this with the right to counsel from a good priest, cleric or lay. The priest could check if there's any beatings happening, and would take letters but wouldn't do evil things like helping a thief cultist warn his friends. Could also try to talk about good and repenting, and tell good churches if the charges are unfair, lots of things. Seems easier to have the priest do this than a secretary and a mail carrier and whoever else. Maybe we don't have enough clerics, but they can train new lay priests for this?"

"That seems reasonable as well. ...Shall we bring the scribes back in?"

"I'm fine with them coming back." She's honestly not totally sure why Delegate Bainilus thought they needed to send them out in the first place, it's not like she's keeping it secret that she was arrested, but noble politics are complicated.

Because it's generally frowned on to admit to being arrested, and she thought Victoria might admit to things she wouldn't want everyone to know.

"Then we'll call them back."

- Right for counsel of virtuous churches in custody

And then one of her clerks will make copies of the new parts of the list.

“If we’re doing rights about law and prisoners today, any news from the justice committee on those?”

He wants to ask if they’re working on another good thing, like the right they just made about being taken prisoners. Or something bad that they need to be racing to stop. But can’t ask that directly, in this room.

"Ser Jornet would know better about Judiciary, but earlier today Urban Order was considering codifying the list of punishments and executions, and I, Ser Cansellarion, and Archduke Narikopolous could not convince them to adopt a policy which would respect the rights we drafted last week about torturous treatment, so I'd like to get those assembled and bring it to the floor tomorrow."

"Today on Judiciary we mostly talked about assizes and how to obsolete them. The broad shape of the plan now out for drafting by one of its members was that there'd be provisional bailiffs with some paladin supervision."

So, it's a race again. To stop torture now, and to get enough rights that the switch from paladins to normal men doesn't go horribly wrong. Well, rights committee won the last race, so it can be done. 

"Think the floor would go for something like a ban on any punishment worse than what Lastwall does? Don't think they can call that radical, and it sounds like we need something simple and fast." 

This means no spending the whole committee on edge cases and debates about good and evil. 

"Well, what punishments do they have in Lastwall?" Lastwall is Iomedae's country so probably it'll be fine, except that she picked Chosen Artigas as a priest so maybe not.

"Lastwall performs executions by long-drop hanging - it's quick, unlike many short drops - but I don't actually know what they do for sentences that don't merit execution."

Enric has no idea either. But he did think a lot yesterday about what Xavier said at the end of last rights committee, and came to the conclusion that copying the paladin country is the best strategy. Iomedae set up the country herself, the Iomedaeans said. So, most likely, they already have all the answers on how bad a state has to be to make itself strong enough to fight evil. 

That's very weird but maybe if everyone there is like Valia no one ever does anything Evil enough to deserve being tortured to death? Or if they don't have Final Blades maybe they're figuring most everyone will get what they deserve in the afterlife. If they don't have enough priests and wizards to make sure they never get the wrong person, it would make sense to be really careful about that sort of thing, your afterlife trial isn't going to get confused about whether or not you've murdered an innocent person.

"I assume they use lashes and indentures, and presumably not spiked whips. I don't know what else. I'm comfortable voting for banning anything Lastwall doesn't use. Let's try... this?"

All citizens of Cheliax have the right, if convicted of a crime, to be punished only by means which are no more torturous than necessary for public safety and public order. Any sentence prohibited by Iomedae's nation of Lastwall at the time of adoption of this right is considered in violation of this right unless and until consultation with the Church of Iomedae confirms otherwise. The convicted may accept other punishments if the court offers one and the criminal prefers it, such as the Final Blade.

"I think in forty years we'll probably want more flexible rules, but for now trying as hard as we can to be strictly Good seems like the best way to recover from Asmodeanism."

"I don't think it's a good idea to vote for just copying Lastwall if we don't even know what Lastwall does." She's pretty sure she disagrees with Lastwall here but it would be kind of a stupid idea to vote for a law like this even if she didn't.

"I think it less likely that Lastwall has a list of prohibited sentences than that the law only provides for a specific whitelist."

"We can say 'not permitted by' instead of 'prohibited by', then. I think your objection is reasonable, Delegate Ferrer, if you don't trust Iomedae, but personally I do. Even if Lastwall is too restrictive, Her church won't be."

"I don't think Lastwall is going to be doing anything super Evil? But I wouldn't — if there were a country where everyone was a Calistrian, I wouldn't want to just copy everything they were doing either, if I didn't know what it was. ...And also Iomedae picked Chosen Artigas as a priest even though he used to be an Asmodean priest who tortured innocent people to death to support Asmodeus, and — I don't know how to explain this well, I can try again if it's confusing — but I don't want to trust that a god who would do that will always do the right thing? And I definitely don't want to just automatically trust her church, when some of the people in her church used to be priests of Asmodeus. And the Lastwall rules might be fine, but I don't want to just assume they definitely are and then be stuck with them for forty years."

"Do... you have any reason to believe that Select Artigas's repentance is less than sincere... that possibly we should know about...?"

She's a Calistrian and doesn't believe in redemption.

Sure but you have to follow up on this sort of thing just in case.

"...I don't... specifically know of him torturing any innocent people to death since Iomedae picked him? But that doesn't mean — if I were a god I wouldn't pick priests who'd tortured any innocent people to death, even if they'd stopped. And it seems like... if Iomedae sometimes thinks the thing to do with people who've tortured innocent people to death for Asmodeus is to pick them as priests... there are probably other things where we'd also disagree on the right punishment? And I still don't understand why she'd choose someone like him so I don't know whether we'll have small disagreements or big disagreements."

“I talked to Select Artigas, first day of the convention, and I saw him do a healing channel.” 

"I'm not saying he's lying about being a priest of Iomedae, if he were just lying it wouldn't make me trust Iomedae less."

"If I had heard any misconduct complaints about Select Artigas they might be confidential so I won't claim not to have done so, but I believe he is a genuine Select doing his utmost to serve Iomedae, and that this implies he is not going to torture people, because torturing people is Evil."

"I'm not saying I think he'd go torture innocent people? I'm just saying that I don't want to trust that Iomedae is always right about everything."