“That was clever.  So uh, the Rights committee has thought about how to work the convention processes, hmm… effectively?”

Fernando doesn’t want to imply they are manipulating the convention (not that he minds them doing so, it just might come across wrong to outright say it like that).  But he does need their skills.

“It is going to take some skilled speakers and deft politicking and effective writing to get an actual Constitution passed on the floor.  Some of the floor is skeptical of anything that’s too long or complex, but even a very minimalistic bare essentials constitution is going to come out as long or longer as anything that’s been passed so far.  And some complexity is needed to capture the nuances needed and appease the various competing interests to get the needed votes…”

He realizes he kind of jumped in the middle and hurries to explain himself.

“Uh… for context one of the committees I’m on has been reviewing historical and foreign systems of government with an aim of writing the core body of the constitution.  I made an attempt at a rough draft of part of a constitution for convening future legislatures modeled after our current convention in composition and it ended up over a page.  And of course whatever other essential parts a constitution needs will add in length further.”

He’s not sure what else you need besides a legislation to in turn write other laws, but presumably someone here will have some opinions on that?

"Aren't, uh, basically all the committees working on the constitution? Like, Rights is working on, uh, rights, Judiciary is working on the courts, I guess your committee is working on the legislature, and so on?" Really the legislature part seems a lot less important than what some of the other committees are doing, but it's probably a good idea to have something, so the Queen doesn't have to spend all her time writing new laws. "So if you're worried it'll be too long, each committee can just write the parts of the constitution that have to do with that committee, and we can vote on that separately, and no one part will be too long."

“It seems like a lot of committees have proposed individual laws for immediate implementation as opposed to a more general framework of a constitution?  The Queen made an announcement clarifying some of the difference if I understood correctly?  It was the same announcement that asked the convention not to try to do foreign policy.”

He thinks a moment.

“I guess, yeah, each committee could write a separate piece of constitution?  But I think a lot of proposals so far don’t make sense as constitutional law? Like, at least in my draft so far, the constitution is supposed to be really difficult for the legislature or Queen to circumvent or change, while ordinary law simply requires another vote to change.  So the fundamental rules go in the constitution while rules that might need adjustment should be passed by a legislature.”

Saying it like, Fernando can see the obvious problem is that everyone will want their proposals in the constitution where they can’t be adjusted or revised as easily.

Hearing Fernando’s explanation, the obvious solution is to repeat laws for immediate implementation in the constitution to make them more permanent.  Like her perks and privileges being established in Virtuous Churches.

"I don't know about your committees, maybe there's some that only want to write laws, but Rights is doing both. Like, we brought the publishing law, that's just a law, we can change it if we want more rules against liches or something, but we're also going to bring some proposals for specific rights, and those'll be for the constitution. The constitutions the Archmage read out the other day covered a bunch of different things, I don't think it'd make sense to have one committee write the whole thing."

He is not going to sigh but he's not at all hiding the fact that he thinks this argument doesn't matter. "Did either of you" (he gestures between Fernando and Thea) "have anything specific that's important to you to see done?"

“Delegate Enric and Lluisa are both on Virtuous Churches with me, as long as its proposals get support from you all I’ll in turn support whatever you all  want.”

She should probably try to finesse this a bit more, but her political demands aren’t that complicated.  It still stings a bit she wasn’t already in the room, but at least Lluisa and Enric have good sense and are here.

It’s belatedly occurring to Fernando that maybe he should have waited until his committee had a framework and core of a constitution together and agreed upon before sounding out other people’s support for it.  He’ll take the question as an invitation to move to a new topic.

“Have you talked about anything dealing with unfair debt and indentures yet?  It affects a lot of people.  Wizards don’t have the worst of it, but it affects basically all the wizards that don’t get past 1st circle.”

Nod. "We were talking about that before you arrived. Not wizards specifically, but I suppose a dishonest loan is still dishonest even if it's to a wizard."

“With wizards a proposal to fix the debts might be somewhat helped by the fact that the loans are often tied to wizard schools which are tied to the Crown’s authority.  I don’t know the exact legal and financial arrangement and it probably varies…  In the easiest cases maybe the crown directly holds the loans and if you can find a use for the wizards you can employ them in that in exchange for set repayment of the loan?  But sometimes the loans are refinanced by third parties or there is more complicated arrangements.  And it matters a lot if the loan is in silver or paper given how the paper money is Evil.  If the paper money continues to drop in price I guess that fixes the unfair paper money loans?”

Even if they fix it for most wizards, Fernando personally isn’t helped unless they cover third party refinanced loans in silver.  …maybe it’s worth more Good if he helps other wizards without helping himself?

"Refusing to take paper as payment for a loan is dishonest if anything is. I say lenders should be required to take their payment in paper, and not cheat people for how much their paper is worth."

That she can get behind, finding loopholes to rob people 'legally' is disgusting.

"It's theft, the same way as if you lent someone 'ten coins' and then said the 11 coins they were supposed to repay you with had to be gold now."

It’s validating to hear it put that way, enough that Fernando will risk some honesty.

“My own lender (who I think is technically not part of the wizard school I went to even if in practice they are closely tied to it) offered a refinancing of loans after the four day war with a pretext that turned out to be a total misdirection from the fact that they were anticipating paper money dropping in value while silver stayed constant.  Forcing them to accept the nominal value of the paper money, or even just setting a fixed exchange they have to take, would probably be enough that I (and other wizards in similar conditions to me) could pay it back in a reasonable amount of time.  And then if the Crown used its connection to the schools to exchange or tax the paper money from the schools they could continue with the important goal of rescuing souls from hell with the paper money.”

He’s feeling some glee at the thought of his lender being forced to take paper money then turn around and give it to the Queen.

"I think we'd want Abadarans on that kind of thing. They may care a whole lot about the details in ways we and everyone affected care much less."

“Abadarans…”

Enric tries several tries to think of how to say what he’s thinking without saying anything about people. He can’t… maybe just by asking if anyone heard much about the slavery committee. That’s too tricky though. If he’s not saying things about people, need to actually keep to that. 

He nods and catches Porras's eye. "The Asmodeans put any cleric of the good gods to death. The Abadarans, they invited into their cities."

Yeah, Fernando doesn’t think the Abadarans will ever side against the wealthy.

“If I recall correctly, at least one Abadaran on the slavery committee was strongly in favor of keeping slavery.  So while we shouldn’t be dismissive of them, I don’t think we can be trust the Abadarans to do the right thing as opposed to favoring the existing letter of any agreements or contracts.”

Nod nod nod. "A couple nights ago an Abadaran told me he thought it was okay to murder innocent people if someone pays you enough money for it."

Thea hopes Theopho knows what he’s doing.  Drawing attention to the extent Lawful Neutral can lean Lawful Evil really doesn’t seem wise in his position.

Thinking back… he’s pretty sure the Abadaran was exaggerating to illustrate a philosophical point, but he’s not going to disagree with his someone agreeing with him.

Nod, nod.

Actually, considering Abadarans maybe he was being serious? 

Thea, you're assuming Theopho cares about what he has to lose.

"They don't have to be happy. But: Leaving aside that if Abadarans say it's bad most everyone from Longmarch will follow their archduke the grand inquisitor and many basically-decent nobles will believe them and follow, too? If the Church of Abadar gets angry at a country's government the whole country suffers, even the farmers and herders who never dealt with the church. Every country fears the wrath of Abadar but Razmiran, and that's because Razmir is a fool. Even Rahadoum, though they power through it anyway on principle. There are bloody wars that do less damage than a decade of Abadar's wrath, for all that no one understands what it was He did."

"So we want to make a proposal that offends them as little as possible. Find a Lawful Good Abadaran, if we can, and ask his advice. They don't have to like it; probably they won't. But if they hate it, it's not going to work."

"If Abadar's going around hurting innocent people who've never done anything to him just because he's mad at their government I don't see how he counts as Neutral at all!"

"Same way as Calistria."

"I don't go around hurting random people because of things that completely different people did that they had nothing to do with! Calistria's not the goddess of hurting innocent people for no reason."

He would really rather not have an argument about Calistria right now, frankly. 

"If there's priests of Abadar who want to help us write laws about fair loans, I guess that's fine. But if they start telling us we have to keep letting lenders cheat people, then I say their ideas aren't worth the paper it'd take to write them down."