Forests committee filled up back when he still thought the convention didn’t matter, but Vidal cares quite a lot about dealing with the Barrowood. Forests also has three druids including Voshrelka on it, so the chance of it doing anything useful is rather low. It definitely won’t be making the right tradeoffs between the forests and the actual people of Cheliax.

A committee on natural resources is much more Arodenite. Hopefully he can help pass something useful here.

Imilce signed up.

Desnia is going to see whether this committee has room for her to join. 

Oh, look. It's a druid. She's here, politely ignoring Vidal, and drafting a letter. In Elvish.

He kind of expects that more than a dozen nobles alone are going to try to get onto this committee for basically the same reasons he is, but do those other people control the largest dwarven settlement in Cheliax? No. No, they do not.

Karrag is pretty sure that this is the thing that the Queen called him here to talk about, so he's obediently shown up.

Mines are important and lucrative.

Silvia's still pretty sure this is where people are going to end up killing fae if they do it anywhere. Unlike the druids, she hasn't made her stance there clear yet. She'll sign up and show up.

Dolor Rado also shows up to sign up. She’s not sure she’ll get picked, but making sure they have a supply of iron is important enough it’s worth taking on a third committee for.

The actual extraction of natural resources is not her usual practice area, commerce in them afterwards is, but it seems pretty cool!

Sergi will have intelligent things to say about fisheries and vaguely Andoren things to say about mining. Or he'll be left out of the committee. Either way.

“Your grace de Lestdemarc, I apologize, more than eleven people wanted to be on the committee, and I’ve already filled all the seats. If there’s something specific you want us to consider, we’ll hear you out, and if a seat opens up I will offer it to you first.”

Gods above why did it have to be a Duke who she had to exclude...

Not the perfect committee composition, but the best she could do with the people who had signed up. The trick is to try and balance out the radicals and nobles so that whatever you propose is something they can compromise on. And a Druid, because they made a fuss and can probably be relied on to vote on anything as long as they’re assured of their precious trees.

“Right. Thank you all for coming; I call this committee to order. I have two potential topics—the administration of existing mines and the establishment of new mines—but let’s go around and see if anyone has other topics of discussion, and then we can prioritize them.”

She feels self-conscious about having jumped on this committee and maybe excluded a duke just for having been first, she should figure out something to say. 

“The discussion on the floor brought up fisheries as well. And - lumber insofar as there’s something not covered by forests - maybe we should discuss how we’re splitting that more? Nothing else is immediately coming to mind.” 

“Mining and lumber should be the priorities. Hunting rights, grazing rights, and fishing rights are perhaps within our remit but are best solved by individual local arrangements rather than edict from on high.” 

"The easiest way to split forests and lumber is to give defined and set borders between the civilized land and the uncivilized. And then you can manage your own trees as you like. As to mining - druids can wildshape into earth elementals. Would that be useful for locating ore pockets for mines?"

This is of course a very stupid question. Of course it would be useful. That's why she's volunteering it. See, look how reasonable and cooperative the druid is.

She'd really rather keep discussion away from lumber. The Sower's committee seems to be handling that well. Maybe as long as this committee stays distracted it won't have the time to pass any proposals about angering the forests before Forests has already made good proposals.

Mining is a good distraction! She does know something about the species of fey which live in or near the Barrowood. She's never seen them herself, of course, but still—

"Lampads can speak to the stone. I do not know how many there are, but there are some beneath the Barrowood. And korreds can shape and dig through stone freely and easily, and they again live within the Barrowood. A bargain with the fey may help in mining?"

"Bargaining with the fey is always foolish and dangerous," he says, extremely suspiciously.

"It depends on the fey, but on the whole - yes, agreed. It is possible, but I would not recommend seeking it out for reliable treaties. Korreds would be better options than Lampads, but. I do not have high hopes for either, and think druids are the best option of the Barrowood." Though she is impressed that this person knew those kinds of fey by name, she's now looking at Silvia with interest and curiosity. And that was a gentle shift away from lumbering? Huh. Interesting...

"I think we should first look to the dwarves, who are unambiguously held to Chelish law, but whose particular needs were relatively ignored under the Thrunes."

“I think the first focus of this committee should be on mining; it’s what this committee was primarily formed to do, and the most important of our natural resources.”

The tiefling is already going for flattery / bribing their chair? That implies interesting things about what he thinks the power dynamics here are.

She was attempting to be helpful and relevant, but: yes, all reasonable. Nod. Here for coordination and offering weird druidic solutions, that's her.

“From the proposals coming out of Forests, I imagine they’re working on proposals to that effect. If it becomes apparent later that they’re missing some subject that naturally falls to us, we can address it then.”

“The biggest issue facing mines is the Labor shortage caused primarily by the sudden lack of necromantic wizardry and negative channels, and secondarily by the reduction in slaves and prisoners available for mine work. It seems likely that earth elemental wildshapes could drastically reduce exploratory mining work, but I don’t know off the top of my head whether that would fully compensate for a slower excavation rate.”

”The other issue facing mines is that most of them are still operating under the same administration model as they were during the Asmodean government,” namely, being under the personal control of the local nobility but she has to phrase this in a way that won’t get the nobility to immediately oppose it, “and I think some reforms may enable the mines to attract outside investment.”

Nah, he's trying to figure out what will enrich the dwarves back home. Also he's pretty sure dwarves just solve all mining-related problems.

"How so?"

“Foreign and private investment in Chelish enterprises is still low because the law is unclear and unpredictable. If we establish rules and protections for chartered mining companies, or even mining companies that own the land outright, the mines can issue stock to foreign investors who are still wary of operating directly in Cheliax.”

"I do feel the Absence of Civil Courts quite Keenly, as do Businessmen, but we shall I hope establish them soon enough; in the interim, the Abadaran Arbitrators will certainly Honor what we may Devise here. I fear that this very Constitutional Convention may be at present the chief source of Uncertainty which discourages Investment."

Also the last time she got an Osirian businessman as a client it was actually a local lich.

"I suppose the Empire is still Recovering, but might we encourage Domestic Investment in useful Ventures as well, by some means?"

“Using Abadarian arbitrators is fine for any private enterprises that currently exist, but as far as I am aware most of the mining in this country is a state affair, and we are here to determine the affairs of the state. Are you proposing that the state convert all extant mines to private enterprises? Under whose ownership? That’s certainly one of the options available to us.”

What?

”Nowhere else has this convention proposed legalized thievery, and I would vote against any proposal to do so here.”

"A strange definition of thievery, for the state to willingly hand over power to private enterprises," says Voshrelka, dryly, mostly just to needle Vidal.

“If the mines are taken without recompense from their current owners to deliver to those private enterprises, what else would you call it?”

“My Lord, I would not legalize thievery and I apologize for speaking so carelessly that you might think I would. I merely meant that the ownership of the mines under Asmodean rule often changed hands via unclear legal principle. Any clarification of the legal status of mines will have to take some stance on ownership; even enshrining the current de-facto controllers ownership would face some opponents. Yet doing so is integral to attracting investment; no one will invest in a count’s mine if the count’s claim on the mine is that their predecessor wrested it from a baron in an Asmodean power struggle.”

“Thank you for clarifying, Delegate Brighthelm. The problem is a real one. I suggest we approach it in the same way the issue of land ownership in general has been addressed, as that faced the same problems. The lords who are unrepentantly Asmodean have been and are being removed, with the Queen and her vassals elevating worthy replacements. Is there a reason to treat the title to mines on a land differently from the land itself, in cases where those did not previously differ?”