"If Galt and Andoran both got rid of serfdom it sounds like it would be — hard but not the impossible kind of hard, to get people to vote for it? And if it'll be hard but not impossible then I think it's worth trying to do it, no one should have to be a serf."

“Agreed. But also agreed that it’d be hard to get it past the floor.” What with how half the elected look like they live in manors and have serfs, and half the sortitions are city types who don’t mind serfdom if it’d make grain cheaper. Enric doesn’t say either of those things, too close to talking about people.

”Might be easier to just put limits on it, see if that passes. Not as good, though.”

"If we were going to keep it around and just put limits on it, what are the limits you'd need to have to make it — I'm not sure I know all the right words — the sort of thing that's okay to do?"

"I'm inclined to leave abolishing serfdom, quickly or slowly or not at all, for the Slavery Committee. Though I'll talk to Count Vivas to be sure it's not forgotten, and ask if he wants our input."

At minimum she'd want to talk to the Reclamation knights and as many Sowers as she can gather to speak for its abolition. But she still wouldn't expect many votes from the nobility; a dozen counts and barons combined supporting it, if it was lucky. Maybe better with the dukes. It seems probably doomed even if everything goes right.

"But putting limits on what you can do to serfs, and what you can do to any servants or staff or apprentices, seems like something we can and should do here."

“I don’t know if there’s an okay to do version. Which things we can fix now and which ones wait for the next convention or the age of glory. But I can think of some.”

This is one of those moments where he’s really feeling the responsibility of being a delegate. Lots of serfs out there.

”First thing is probably making the allowed punishments list apply to landlords. Or, since the order committee already won on that, a shorter version of their list. If any of you know any of them, maybe we all can talk about this, see if they agree that landlords shouldn’t be breaking people on the wheel or feeding people to lions.”

“Second would be letting everyone travel to the village center, at least. For village meetings, for laundry and market, and for holy days and healing. Especially if we get enough clerics to have them in villages. I’ve met people who never left the house where they worked, some serfs and some city types. Breaks something in them, being in one house and grounds away from everyone for so long.” 

”That’s just the first two for now, need a moment to think of the others.”

He nods. "Ban inherited contracts, ban signing children into any contracts of more than ten years, end all existing Asmodean serfdom contracts and abolish peonage," he says. "I do not think any conscionable state of serfdom exists so long as it remains serfdom."

Oh, 'conscionable,' she thinks maybe that was the word she wanted.

"Treat crimes landlords commit against their serfs just as seriously as if anyone else had done it. Or more seriously, like they do in Lastwall." Actually, that one might be easier to get people to vote for once the Queen has dealt with Delegate Ventura? She's not sure.

"And Feliu was telling me that people are supposed to be able to petition if their local lord is doing things he's not supposed to, I don't know how you'd set it up to make absolutely sure everyone can do that but it seems like it's pretty important to find some way, even if he tries to stop everyone from leaving or sending letters."

"The right to petition is sacrosanct," he agrees.

"Right to trade, with any merchant or traveler, passing or nearby. That one's rough on apprentices and indentures, gets them deeper in debt; not sure about out in the country."

In answer to Theopho,“In the country, sometimes the landlord takes a cut at the market. Sometimes serfs can only sell to him and he sells to merchants. Or he owns the only mill, which is almost the same.”

Trade with passing merchants and travelers always happens anyway, but sometimes at night. It’d be nice to have it as a right though.

"Right to monopoly on grain milling in your territory is one of the really old ones, I think, probably before Aspex. Might be better to set a maximum fraction the lord can charge for multure than pick a fight to remove that entirely."

"Something about not being forced to give up minor children? We used to get children from servants who weren't allowed to keep them. And people were talking last night about banning contracts that give someone else the right to have sex with you over your later objections, which seems relevant.

I do worry that some of these are impossible to enforce in any situation where you owe otherwise unrestricted obedience to someone. It's not hard to obliquely punish someone for using a right that they ostensibly have if you control everything else about their life, though I suppose some people may in practice be too lazy to be oblique.

......I am suddenly, though perhaps not seriously, imagining a Hellknight order devoted to worker's protections."

"...don't Hellknights, uh, work for Hell?"

"They do not. They summon devils for training, they're very harsh about it, and most of them read Evil - but they care much more about Law than Good or Evil, and some like the Torrent are almost Good. I trusted the Helknights, the Rack excepted, more than almost anything else from the old order. And then they stood aside in the war, and submitted to reforms - except the Rack, which was abolished. They'll do as the law and Her Majesty command."

...Evil knights who summon devils and care more about being Lawful than anything else still sound pretty bad even if they don't literally work for Hell, but Korva did say it wasn't a serious suggestion.

"I agree that actually enforcing the rights in practice is going to be hard, I don't really know how to fix that. Maybe in addition to any other punishments we come up with there could be a rule that anyone who gets caught violating their serf's rights stops being allowed to have serfs and all their existing serfs go free? That wouldn't really solve the thing you were worried about since it's so hard to prove, but it might be, uh, deterrence."

"I think you maybe want some way of automatically breaking off employment contracts if an employer attempts to abuse them in certain ways, but I don't really see how to do it. They can always technically allow you to do everything on the list, and then make other extremely onerous requirements and punish you for failing to adhere to them, if they don't like what you're doing with your rights. I like the idea of limiting allowed punishments, but I'm not sure that works in this case, either, because - masters don't need to pass sentence to order you to do something. So they can always order you to do something, or violate you in some other way, and say it's not technically -

....hm. We previously discussed a right to integrity of person. It doesn't really make sense as a general right applied to the government, because of criminal punishments, but could we apply something like it to private contracts somehow? It's a radical step, but - something in that vein?"

Nod. "I think — probably we'd want to have that as a general right, and then a bunch of specific examples of things that would violate that right? So that people can't try to argue that whatever they were doing didn't violate it if it's something that obviously would, but we also don't have to think of literally every way to violate it — does that make sense?"

"Potentially. But I'm not actually sure what it would mean. And we'd need to be... fairly clear. We'd have to write something that works when enforced strictly to the letter; even getting that much would rely on enforcers with very strict Law, hence Hellknights. I don't think we can do anything else without relying on paladins we don't and won't have nearly enough of for anything of scale."

When she'd originally suggested the right to your own person she'd mostly just meant it as part of a right to not be raped but that's clearly not broad enough on its own, there's all kinds of ways people shouldn't hurt innocent people that aren't rape. Maybe if she waits for someone else to talk someone will suggest something for it to mean that's less specific?

...Nope, apparently that's not going to work.

"I think it could include things like... rape, which we already voted on, or making people get pregnant, like Korva mentioned before, or — punishments that damage someone permanently rather than just hurting a lot while they happen, if it's not part of punishing you for a crime you actually did. Or some types of mind control, or carving your lord's name into your skin, or making you kill your unborn child. ...I guess it wouldn't do anything to stop someone from making their serfs kill their children who've already been born, which is also really bad. ...It might not end up making sense to count all of that as the same right, it was just an idea. And some of that would already be covered by, uh, actually going after lords for crimes against their serfs."

Probably it won't end up making sense, those don't really have anything to do with each other. Maybe she should've thought more about how to phrase things on the first day.

"I was actually expecting it to encompass any forced and intentional injury. Which is why it doesn't work as a protection from the government, while narrower protections from rape or forced impregnation should apply even to the government. But - you can imagine a system where the government can maim you, but you can't sign away permission for a private citizen to do so over your later objections. And you could imagine a system where whipping someone voids your contract with them, though that - probably isn't worth it? I don't know. Maybe you could say a certain threshold of injury voids it? Only at the victim's request, you obviously want to avoid any situation where you can avoid paying them if you whip them first, or something."

"If I had to take a guess, it sounds even harder to get the floor to vote for whipping automatically cancelling any contract than to get people to vote to get rid of serfdom? But I might be wrong, I'm not great at guessing how votes are going to go." She still doesn't really like having to think in terms of what the floor will pass rather than just what's right, but it does seem like it's important to.

"Probably. Maybe things that would otherwise be crimes void them? Though - again, for some things that doesn't work in any situation where you owe unbounded obedience, unless we make a list of things you never have to do even if someone tells you to?

....we could ban general obedience clauses. I guess. I think a lot of people wouldn't go for that either. We could - have a right to leave to some particular situation? Like, you always have the right to leave to some kind of - government run labor camp, or the army, or something, so wherever you are it can't get worse than that - but you wouldn't know how bad it was, and once you left you would be stuck -"

"Actually, I can't do this blind. Can anyone who's lived in another country give us some idea of either a typical employment relationship, or - the point at which an employment relationship becomes bad enough, in other places, that anyone outside might take action about it? And - limitations on what you can put in contracts, if any? Do other places have those, or is this a novel concept?" The duchess didn't sound like she thought it was a completely novel concept, but she doesn't really know what things other places might take issue with.

"Contracts are less prevalent outside Cheliax, I think. You might want to adapt the concept of illegal orders?"