Jonatan, the man who brought the proposal to reintroduce torturous executions to the floor, is findable, having just concluded a conversation with the Duchess of Chelam.

"Your excellency. Thank you for all of the work you do here in Cheliax. I am the representative of the Church of Iomedae who was assigned after the Four Days' War to the Archduke Narikopolus, to help him root out Asmodeus's evils in Menador, and he requested that I speak with you, if it is convenient, about the work of the committee on Urban Order."

This sort of meeting would normally be arranged by the man's servants, who could also communicate information like his name and title, but he supposes it makes sense that a Church representative wouldn't have any.

"Of course. I would be honored to speak with you about our work, and don't have other commitments until the committee meets."

A vaguely familiar man joins the conversation. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything private."

Well, does the Count seem offended? Marit has no hope of staying on top of the absurd pileup of noble grievances and insults here.

He doesn't seem offended, no.

"Your Grace, this man is a representative of the Church of Iomedae, in the employ of the Archduke Narikopolus. He asked to speak with me about the work of the Urban Order committee, though I don't know whether he intended our conversation to be private. —His Grace the Duke of Fraga also sits on the committee," he adds to the Church representative.

"Ah, business." 

He turns. "How can we be of assistance?"

Well that's weird and creepy. Or maybe it's normal outside Menador! Who knows! "Your grace. I am Marit Tenwaller, and the Archduke actually proposed that I speak to you as well as to Count Cerdanya. I am grateful for all of your hard work on behalf of this country." Not for many of the results of it but he can still appreciate the effort even though it is all catastrophically badly directed, and anyway that isn't really their fault; why would they have any skills relevant to creating wise laws?

"Your thanks is appreciated." Marit Tenwaller--he saw that name on a list. He thought he wasn't going to be revived. "Your work in Menador is appreciated as well, and I wish we had somehow managed to avoid your sacrifice."

"It's an honor to meet you, Ser Tenwaller. What matter did His Highness wish for you to speak to us about?"

"For the last year, I and my colleague have worked in Menador on un-indocrinating the population and trying to build the relationship with the government and the Church that people in a virtuous society possess. There is a great deal of work and we are of course not done with it, but it seemed possible that from the lessons we learned there would be some applicable to the work of your committee. In particular I think the Archduke hoped we could advise on the laws being considered about heresy and worship of prohibited deities."

He nods. "We discussed them briefly with the Lord-Marshal this morning, and I am optimistic that we will be able to come to a satisfactory agreement on the details. But we would be happy to hear your advice — there are a number of matters of implementation which the committee was uncertain about."

"I can speak only to what we experienced in Menador, of course. But what we found in Menador was that a great many men worshipped Asmodeus, not because they were trying to do wrong, but because they had been taught their whole lives to do so and had not actually been taught to stop. This was particularly true of people who were in various ways isolated - forbidden by their masters or their husbands or their wives from going to church services or speaking to anybody, unable to leave their homes, imbeciles. These were not men who posed a threat to the social order, and indeed were broadly victims of it. I think that they are not the people you would mean for such a law to target."

He is going to look to the Duke of Fraga, here. He hadn't intended to punish anyone for genuine ignorance, if there are men who have somehow managed to maintain genuine ignorance after a year and a half, but it was the Duke who brought the initial proposal to the Urban Order committee.

"Of course not. I did not think there were so few empowered cultists in the country was such that the Order of the Pyre or the Glorious Reclamation would waste their time with such cases. In Fraga we have been rather vigorous in promoting new churches, but--well, I am continually relearning how much better we have it than the rest of Cheliax." There are nearly twice as many people in Fraga as are in all Menador, but on the map his duchy is smaller than the largest Menadorian county. And he had favors to call in from half a dozen clerics, and has been eagerly courting others; the Menadorians apparently only knew the court the church of Iomedae, and didn't even get a cleric out of it.

"Hm. It's the opposite case, but presumably we could use the standard for 'theological innovation', where the accused is only punished if they fail to recant."

He grimaces. "That won't help with the imbeciles, will it."