"...I don't know what all of those words mean. Could you maybe say the first sentence again but, uh, not like a lawyer?" Probably everyone is going to think she's an idiot but it seems pretty important to understand what he's getting at!

He does not sound irritated.

"If people who might become pickpockets or public brawlers or other petty criminals know that they will most likely be caught and then whipped, the prospect of the pain discourages a great many of them from committing those crimes. Especially if they've been caught once before. Most petty crime is impulsive for small personal benefits and the prospect of significant pain and embarrassment in the near future is enough to outweigh it. But Iomedae, in life, did not think it matters very much how painful the punishment is, as long as it is swift and certain, and Her church has found this to be true."

This is an interesting practical explanation that had not occurred to her. She should take some time to think about it for the purpose of running Kintargo.

"Oh, that makes sense, I didn't know there was a word for that." She's still pretty confused about why Lastwall cares so much about why you want to give people what they deserve, but she's not unfamiliar with the idea that people are less likely to break the law if you hurt them over it. And it sounds like this is mostly a punishment for minor crimes like getting into fights, where you don't need to hurt them that badly.

"But yeah, I think there's a few reasons why that won't work if you just copy over Lastwall's laws exactly to Cheliax. First of all, like you said, people probably care a lot more about not being whipped if they aren't already used to it happening to them in school. Second of all, you said it needed to be 'swift and certain' to work right and we're not really doing so great about either of those right now — that might work better in Lastwall where there's loads of priests of Iomedae? I'm not sure. And third of all, this is kind of related to the second part, but there's some people who don't expect they'll be punished for anything they do, and they're mostly right about it — like, there was a nobleman the other day who chased a delegate around with a sword for insulting him, and he didn't get punished at all, because he's a nobleman. ...Admittedly you can't fix the third thing just by making the punishments worse, you also have to actually punish nobles and not just say that trying to kill people is fine when they do it."

Enric is aware of the idea that beating someone means he'll think twice about doing it again. Unless he's very stubborn. (Enric sometimes had to be very stubborn, but would rather not do it again.) He is also aware that school is terrible, but doesn't see how that's related. 

"Judiciary can figure out how to stop nobles from committing crimes, but I think in most cases it'll be the other way around. We're making a list of some magistrate or baron can do to us, not things that happen to powerful people. So I'd rather not make them worse."

"I do not expect harsher punishments would compensate for those punishments being slower or uncertain, from what I studied, but I'm not familiar with the full practical or theological debates on that topic. It's generally understood that hurting others is bad for the person carrying out the sentence even when it's necessary, and worse the greater the harm inflicted, which is another reason to favor the mildest punishments which work. That is more likely to be worse in Cheliax than better."

"And we do not have hereditary nobility in Lastwall, but those with authority are held to stricter standards, not laxer ones, as conditions of their oaths. Her Majesty seems to have adopted a similar policy in directing her attention before the amnesty, so I imagine she agrees." But he's not going to commit to it himself without consulting someone better at politics.

Blink blink blink. "—Wait, why does Lastwall think it's bad for the person doing the hurting? Assuming that you're hurting someone who did something actually bad, I mean, I get why it's bad if someone makes you hurt someone who doesn't deserve it." That is not her only disagreement here but it's the most confusing disagreement.

Calistrians. "The core of Evil is doing harm to others. It does not matter what they have done; doing harm to others is always more Evil than not doing that, and the Good in the mortal soul rebels against it even when it is necessary. Convincing yourself that your victims deserve it is one of the more common ways that said rebellion takes form. Even if you are punishing very Evil people in order to protect many others, and even if you have the blessing to be painlessly committing them to a final blade rather than sending them to Hell or the Abyss, punishment encourages Evil habits of mind; Lastwall rotates the duty of execution among many to avoid encouraging those habits among any of them. Paladins are generally not assigned primarily to administering justice like the assizes, for the same reason; it is very easy for it to make us fall, because we are not immune to those habits of mind. Punishment of all kinds is a lesser evil, not good in itself."

This is almost certainly not going to convince Ferrer, but it might save her from damnation so Jilia doesn't have the heart to interrupt.

"...I don't think that makes sense. Like, if there's someone going around killing a bunch of innocent people, so you execute him, that's not Evil, or, uh, how did you say it, it's not 'more Evil than if you didn't do that,' it would be way more Evil to let them just get away with killing a bunch of innocent people! And it wasn't Evil for Valia to rebel against the Asmodeans even though it definitely hurt plenty of Asmodeans, and everyone agrees it's fine to hurt people in self-defense unless they're, like, an Asmodean who thinks you should just be a loyal obedient little girl and let them do whatever they want to you. If you call that sort of thing Evil then you're not using Evil in a way that means anything, you're not talking about right and wrong anymore, you're just making up words.

—And I'm not just saying that because I'm a Calistrian, either, I talked to an azata last week and it said that if there was someone going around being super Evil it was fine to kill them. We had some disagreements but none of them were about whether it was literally always Evil to hurt people no matter what, since that's... obviously stupid.

...also that didn't actually answer my question but I don't know how to explain my question differently."

"It is always more Evil than stopping them some other way. Sometimes that other way does not exist, or is beyond your capability; or it's within your capability but at great cost, and you must triage and decide whether that cost is worth it. Some cases are very straightforward; self-defense is preventing an Evil done against you with a comparable or smaller Evil done against the attacker, and I've never heard of anyone but Shelynite extremists refusing self-defense. But it's an Evil, and our natures know this, and indulging the impulse to harm someone encourages the Evil in your own nature and makes it more likely you will do other Evil in the future that is less justified. An azata... well, I would have to speculate, but it's an outsider and its nature is much more fixed than a mortal. A Chaotic Good human who followed that advice would be in danger of drifting to Neutral and then Evil if they did it often. This happens to a lot of adventurers, and to almost all Avengers of Calistria; those who've reached third circle and show their personal alignment to a detect are, if I remember the figures right, majority Evil and less than a tenth Good."

Those numbers sound really fake. Probably he's not totally making them up, it would be a stupid thing to lie about, but maybe... Good priests are more likely to die before they hit third circle? Because a Good priest is going to be trying not to kill innocent people, and that's going to make it more likely something kills them, like how if she were Evil she could maybe have gotten away from the guards who came to arrest her.

"So I disagree with a lot of that, obviously, but I think the most obvious thing is — I think you're wrong about what people's natures know, in places outside of Lastwall? If people in Lastwall almost never hurt each other then I guess maybe it makes sense that your consciences don't really understand it the way people in normal countries do, but—

—when someone is trying to hurt you very badly, not for a good reason but just because they can, your nature isn't saying 'don't hurt them, that would be Evil.' If it did say that you should ignore it, but that's not what it's saying, it's saying — as loudly as it can say just about anything — that you should stop them, whatever it takes. And — that doesn't mean everyone does try to stop them, if they're scared of worse happening to them if they try to fight back, but — the voice in your soul that knows right and wrong knows you should fight back, even if you fail. I don't think this is just for Calistrians. Even if you're a scared thirteen-year-old that vaguely knows Calistria is the goddess of whores and nothing else, the voice is still there. 

And our natures know the difference between hurting someone like that, hurting someone who deserves it, and hurting someone who doesn't. Maybe it's not something you can feel in Lastwall, if almost no one does deserve it, so you never learn the difference. But my soul certainly knows the difference between fighting against rapists or people who murder innocent people or Asmodean priests, and randomly deciding to go hurt innocent people for no reason. —Uh, to be clear, I'm not disagreeing that some people's souls are... bad at this... and will decide that, like, every single Hellspawn deserves it even if they aren't actually Evil. That's Evil, I'm not defending that.

Also I don't know what 'triage' is, but that's probably less important.

I'm not sure this is actually relevant to whether we should just copy the Lastwall punishments or not, just, I think you're wrong."

What does he even say to that, other than 'you're one of the Evil ones'. You shouldn't say that while doing politics.

"That way of thinking is not reassuring to me. Much of the war with Belkzen could describe their motivation that way with all apparent honesty, and that's not a Good war even on our side. Men whose brothers and fathers died to the orcs want to strike back against them for the injustice and the pain they caused, and this makes them do Evil with false confidence that they are acting justly. Striking down the Evil to protect the others they will hurt later is, at least usually, Good; striking them down because you believe they deserve it is not, as far as I've ever learned. I've been told angels regret every devil and demon they kill, even though it needs to be done, because they hate killing and inflicting pain even when the need to protect others wins out."

"I have seen a lot of Chelish people on assizes, and I think you are wrong that they are different from Lastwall people. They seem mostly distinct in that nearly everyone has already suffered much of that damage before adulthood, and have silenced much of the internal voice of Good one way or another. That is certainly relevant to what punishment code is appropriate, but I don't think it suggests more violence would be good for people."

If she gets an early judgment and comes up Maelstrom he's wrong. But he's not. Cheliax is terrible.

"...If you don't need any more information from me, delegates?" Please say he can leave.

Well, she doesn't know anything about the war with Belkzen. She didn't even know there was a war with Belkzen. Or what Belkzen... is. Or why they're fighting it if they think it's Evil. It kind of sounds like it involves getting revenge on people's family members for things they didn't do, which does sound bad, but they're orcs so it's hard to say for sure one way or another.

"I don't think I had more questions about Lastwall's laws but I don't know about everyone else."

Xavier looks at Victoria with pity, for a moment, before then turning to Mandraivus. "Thank you for coming to speak with us."

"Thank you, Ser Saiville, that was very helpful. We'll ask for you again if there comes a need."

And he will vanish as fast as he can, with a poorly-concealed relieved look.

Delegate Requena i Cortes is making some sort of face at her. You'd think it would be easier to read the foreign nobles, they don't try to hide their emotions half as much as Chelish people other than her do, but besides showing their emotions more they also show them differently, and also half the time it feels like they're assuming you're familiar with the exact sort of noble social games they're used to, which are not the same as the noble social games she's used to. This face in particular really doesn't look similar at all to any of the sorts of faces she's used to normal Chelish people making.

She's pretty sure people besides Delegate Saiville said things she wanted to respond to but she got distracted arguing with him and now she's forgotten the other things she wanted to say. She's going to try looking around the table and seeing if anyone brings them up again, just in case that works.

"Is anyone else uncomfortable with adopting Lastwall's punishments, as amended by consultation with Iomedae's church if we need it for things like using the scourge?"

"With the addition of imprisonment, I am not."

"Imprisonment seems a" luxury, but maybe an affordable one "wise addition provided it remains affordable with adequate protections on the prisoners, the same way as labor sentences."

"Does this allow paying off fines through indenture? Indenture probably wants to be changed, but I don't know if we want to ban it." Because she's planning to use it for her anti-bastardry plans.

See, she was right. Even if you don't count torture or normal things that for some reason Lastwall people think are torture, the Lastwall rules were missing important punishments.

Finding out what Lastwall actually didn’t take days with no result, like it did for mining, and they almost missed something important. Enric notes that and reminds himself that it’s unfair to think of Victoria as just someone young and angry, with a heart in the right place but missing some wisdom. Even if it usually feels like they’re all arguing about evil instead of getting more rights, there’s a point to it.

Separately, once the committee is over he needs to ask for the transcript of what the paladin said. It was for Victoria, but he might need that speech about doing evil while fighting evil, too.

"I did expect we might have some things like that, which is why I wrote we could ask the church to approve other things." Actually she wishes she'd asked Ser Saiville about it but oh well, she's not calling him back now. "I can add that we'll immediately ask for imprisonment, lashing with the scourge, and probably beheadings since that's a traditional noble right and it seems harmless to permit it."