"If we can bring down the number of children who need it, we have it already. And the alternative needs just as much money."

"So, I don't know what the orphanages in Osirion and Andoran are like, maybe they're way better than Korva's orphanage, I've never been. 

But my mother didn't have a husband, and we weren't living anywhere near any of her family, and as far as I know the other people around weren't unusually trustworthy — I could be wrong about that, I don't really know how trustworthy people in most places are. And there's definitely some things she did wrong, but I don't remember ever almost dying because of something she did, and she was definitely way way better than the orphanages we have now.

And maybe I'm just not imagining well enough, maybe there's things Good people do when they're caring for children that I haven't thought of, but at least where I come from, people mostly didn't leave their kids in dangerous situations by accident? Like, I don't know the right words to explain it, but even if someone's an Asmodean, that doesn't make them stupid, they can still... do things that they want? And so if they want their kid alive — which they do, if they didn't care about their kid being alive they'd've smothered them, or maybe left them at an orphanage if it's in the cities — they can still watch their kid, even if they're Evil. Even if someone's really really Evil they can still figure out that it's a bad idea to let their kid crawl into a fire.

And I do think it's harder to find someone who'll definitely do a good job of watching them, but — back home the way it worked out was, if someone had done a really bad job of watching the kids and other people found out, then they'd kick her out of the group of women who were watching each other's kids, and then she'd have no one to watch her kid while she was doing her work and she'd get fired. I don't know if bringing back the daycares would be better or worse than that, if you had Good priests running them, but I think — maybe I'm wrong, maybe people where you're from are a lot worse than people where I'm from — I think even if a woman grew up under Asmodeus she can probably make sure children she's watching don't literally die, if she's trying to.

...probably that would stop applying if we started paying people to adopt random kids, I do think Korva's right about that. Maybe if you were giving them the things that they needed to take care of a kid, rather than just money."

"I expect that most arrangements like that only have someone kicked out when they cause permanent harm, because most Chelish mothers are not very attentive to anything less out of their sight, and that significant but impermanent harm happens quite a lot, because most Chelish women being asked to do it do not care enough to attend and prevent it. I think everywhere I've seen in my duchy except my ancestral county and one of its neighbors on the shore, I would not trust my toddlers to anything like that, if I had to choose. Death from negligence is just the most obvious harm that is impossible to ignore."

But he does note a point in favor of 'Ferrer isn't useless' in his mental book.

Nod. She's not really sure of all the ways people could hurt kids, accidentally or on purpose, but that explanation seems a lot more plausible than people just accidentally letting kids crawl into fires for no reason just because they're Evil.

She looks at Korva. "...How many Good priests would we actually need to have enough of them for all the orphanages and daycares? If we assume it's just the ones that were already around before the war, and then also if we assume we're adding a bunch more daycares outside the cities."

"I couldn't guess how many orphanages in the country. It would have to be in the thousands, maybe tens of thousands. I know the money is about six million, and that's with skeleton crews and no daycare."

"...the paladin assizes are supposed to have downtime one month in four. This is an extraordinary amount. Because otherwise we fall at elevated rates; it's morally injurious work. Sower, are you concerned that it would be like that for clerics trying to run orphanages?"

"If, what, you made me work at one? Deadeye's empty quiver, I don't know, but you'd have to make me."

"Uh, Korva, just to be clear, did you mean thousands of orphanages or thousands of priests? And if you meant the first thing how many priests would each orphanage need to stop having the problems you were talking about?"

"Lay priests of Sarenrae run them in Andoran, for the most part, one per orphanage for smaller ones; some other churches and some empowered priests supervising, intermittently except at the biggest ones. I can't possibly beg for them to import enough for this, but they would have less problem with caring for children during the day than keeping them, if anything, and that's what we expect to increase this way. I don't really understand the Sower's objection to day care, but I wouldn't expect it to extend to any Good church but Erastil."

"I walk into one of those places and the only thing in my head is to get every one of those kids out of there."

"A number of different churches run orphanages in Osirion but I share the sentiment that -  inasmuch as they're not a horror it is only because it is exceptionally rare for anyone to need resort to them. I would not be excited about any program to have them play a significant role in the rearing of a nation's children."

"I meant orphanages. I figure one priest per orphanage is probably enough? You'd need to hire other staff, definitely, but I don't see how you could possibly hire entirely clerics. I don't think you could even hire enough for every orphanage to have one, but certainly not more than that. The current cost is with lots of the labor coming from young women who don't have any other skills, besides maybe domestic service ones. When we offered daycare a lot of the workers were women who themselves had children and kept them in the daycare while they worked. That's what I did. Then you'd have a housekeeper and some nursemaids who lived there full time, and have the older children help at night.

- Conde, do you have the same concerns about daycare if all the women working there themselves have children at the daycare? It wasn't required, but it was common, before we fired most of them."

"That seems much more reasonable to me and perhaps the best that can be done in places where no one has their family to fall back on."

Victòria really doesn't like Sarenrae. As far as she can tell Sarenrae thinks you should never treat anyone differently for trying to hurt people, no matter how badly they did it, even if they don't regret it at all and are still going around trying to hurt people, to the point that she doesn't even think you should be angry at people for trying to kill your best friend even if they did it yesterday.

...Now she's angry again, and not even at Delegate Napaciza, who unambiguously deserves it.

It hurts to think around the anger but probably she should try anyway, this seems like — not the sort of situation where being angry is useful for figuring out what to do—

If you somehow had a Good person who just — didn't understand how terrible some people were, or something — and agreed with Sarenrae, and they were working at an orphanage... probably that would be okay? A little kid's not going to do something really Evil, them hurting someone isn't really the same thing as an adult that should know better, you could just have the normal orphanage workers punish the kids for actual misbehavior. They'd probably teach the kids to think a bunch of stupid things, but her mom taught her to worship Asmodeus and that didn't stick.

And it does sound like the orphanages are really bad right now, and could definitely use more people, even if those people follow a really stupid goddess. On the other hand, it sounds like the orphanages are really bad right now, which is going to make it pretty hard for one person to fix them no matter who that person is.

"I think... given how Korva described them on the first day, one priest per orphanage — especially if they don't even have magic, like Delegate Noguera i Mata was saying — wouldn't really be enough to make them not terrible, even if the priest was a really good person. Like, I think it would help, but that still sounds a lot worse for the kids than basically anything besides being murdered. But she's the one who's actually worked at one, so if she thinks that's wrong I'd trust her guess more than mine."

"I think we're over time. Is there anything to be taken home from here besides that the Judiciary committee needs to prioritize getting civil courts up?"

"I'll see if any of the Sarenrite immigrants at the Burning Blades have any direct experience and can come by, but I don't expect to succeed and can't think of anything else."

"I can't think of anything else either." Maybe she can try to talk to Raimon about how this would work with whores but she's pretty sure she still doesn't understand what Delegate Fazil's been saying there.

"Alright, then that seems good for today. May tomorrow morning be even less exciting and may the sun shine on us all."