Some people deserve worse than the Final Blade, and that would be enough on its own, but that's not actually the biggest thing she's thinking about right now.

She spent — hours, probably, maybe a day, she's still not entirely sure — thinking she was going to be tortured to death. And it was awful, not in a way that matters but still in a way that made her pretty miserable — and there was no point where she thought they might force her to take a Final Blade. It would have sucked a lot to be tortured to death, but eventually it would have been over, and she would have been off to — well, off to the Maelstrom, not Elysium like she thought, but she'd be fine in the Maelstrom. 

If she'd thought they were going to trap her in a Final Blade forever — she's not sure what she'd have done. Tried to kill herself, maybe, only it would've been pretty hard to pull it off.

And she'd be fine, actually, under this proposal. Calistrian priestesses can't be Lawful Evil. But probably somewhere there's a girl who was never picked by a god, who didn't know she could write to the paladins and explain what happened, and she shouldn't be forced to take a Final Blade just because she can't prove she's not Lawful.

Against.

Idiotic implementation, but better than letting the judges picked based on the demand for lion meals. For.

Criminals have a harder time escaping the Blade than the afterlives. Against.

The vast majority of people who commit capital crimes are Evil. It's true in Cheliax, it's true in Taldor, as far as he knows it's even true in Lastwall. Most of them aren't Lawful Evil, but the Abyss is still a place of enormous suffering, even if it's less organized about it. Many of those will choose the Final Blade anyway, but certainly not all of them. 

The proposal would also, unambiguously, deny some people paradise. He's heard it said that Galt was hoping to extract everyone from the Final Blades someday, but that's a lot to count on.

Even accounting for that, he's confident that a significant majority of people who refuse the Final Blade are going to an Evil afterlife.

(It still feels sort of awful to actually vote for it.)

In favor.

(And he can still Detect Evil, so that was at least not unambiguously the wrong decision, but that really tells him a lot less than one might hope.)

Some fear hell more than they desire heaven. Or wherever Nethys’s people go when they die. He still isn’t actually clear on where that is. 

”For”

Against. You only have, like, one of those things? For the entire country? And the Final Blade as an invention hasn't even been around for a century? It is not, historically speaking, very tested, especially not on an elf's timeline. And they want to put a large number of their populace into this badly tested soul repository? Yeah, no. That's screaming for a necromancer to come do horrific crimes against life itself with it as a dark power source or some shit. Voshrelka might not like Pharasma or her dubious Judgement, but she likes it better than 'This thing we just made should have all souls stuffed inside it, there's no way that'll explode in two centuries.' Humans. Eugh. Idiots.

Obviously. For.

For. They'll get the innocent out eventually, and in the mean time it buys souls time out of Hell.

For!

A very bad implementation of a good law, but the legal repeat law might block better ones, later. Is that what the fool who proposed it wanted? He's not sure, but he'll be for it anyway.

Hmm. It weakens the laws, but chaotic evil people are more of a problem than lawful evil ones, so does it weaken them enough to matter?

No. Pharasma says way too many people are lawful, and the law applies to anyone who might be evil so it doesn't even require that low of a standard. Against.

Desnia had thought about coming up and saying things about torture, about doing things under the threat of torture. 

Mostly that - she'd known that she would have been tortured, if caught, but that she just hadn't - really thought about it? Especially not the possibility of Malediction, but even the rest of it. 

It wasn't because she thought she could get away without being caught for her whole life - she understood that she was probably going to die doing what she was doing. She understood that many of the ways that she might be caught would mean that she would be alive and in the hands of people who tried to mandate the observation of their ability to be creative with torture. 

She had dithered over whether to do this anonymously or not - she didn't want to talk about being tortured wearing her own face to the entire convention, but the specifics probably made her more sympathetic.

Then the letters to (from?) the Chosen threw her off and by the time she had re-composed herself enough to talk, it was time to vote. 

- The way that torture had made her worse at doing things, even things that it didn't make sense for it to make her worse at, could have been an argument but it probably wouldn't have worked at all, they mostly wanted to torture the people they planned to kill afterwords. What it did to still being alive afterwards wasn't really relevant here. 

... 

The final blade argument was - more confusing? And there wasn't enough said about it for her to make up her mind based on that. If it was people who were definitely Lawful Evil she'd vote for that, but proving otherwise would be hard for most people that weren't her. 

Maybe if it was just for people strong enough to detect Lawful Evil? Or people who had that Pharasman afterlife checking spell cast on them? She would have proposed that, if there had been more discussion. And if she could have managed to make herself to be able to do things like someone who wasn't pathetic. 

... 

Against lions, against final blade requirements, against torture. 

She had abstained on public versus private executions. She probably would have voted for public if it weren't for who was arguing each side, on the grounds that knowing what had actually happened (or at least making people doing the lying put in more work) was good.

Against. Most people are too weak to have any aura.

For. She hates that he's the one who proposed it but it might be good on its own merits and definitely seems more likely to get them to kill the rest of the bill.

Against, obviously, people need to repent of their evil instead of encouraging it.

She'll think about it, and decide that it's probably worth denying some people to Axis and even fewer to Heaven or Nirvana to deny more to Hell. In favor."

If it was a kinder slate of punishments he'd be against. A harsher slate, in favor. As it is... he's leaning in favor but no, abstain.

In favor.

In favor. If you're against Hell, and they're supposed to be, now, this is worth a very great price.

He does not care.

Against. This is neither justice nor mercy, but a false hope that delays an inevitable fate.

What they need is to buy time. In favor.

This only matters in cities. Neither result will change anything important.

Actually, no. Asmodeus wanted souls to go to Him. Him being more powerful might matter.

In favor.

The amendment fails, 198-154, with considerably more abstentions than the previous vote.