The very first person to arrive is a cleric of Erastil, taking advantage of the fact that he isn't on any committees to arrive fairly early. He's still not sure about this whole idea, but Porras invited him, and Porras seems sensible enough.

Korva really should have prepared for this more. Preparing for stuff is hard. Insofar as she has a plan, it's mostly to determine what other people want. Now that she's given up on schools, for now, her major priorities are emptying the orphanages, maintaining as much equality for women as possible (she still can't quite wrap her head around the idea that the people who declared all slavery an Asmodean institution are apparently also against that), and, apparently, contract reform. But while the last one is obviously a priority for the commons in general, the first two are decidedly not. They are, she figures, priorities that most women should share, and she can be keeping an eye out for women who she'd like to discuss them with individually, but probably in this general company she should try to at least tone the women's rights down a little bit.

Still. She would much rather the commoners have their interests represented than not, and that really does require figuring out what everyone else's priorities are. And fighting popular battles might help get her other priorities through.

Right now Victòria's biggest priority is for Juan Ventura and every nobleman like him to die painfully, and for absolutely no one to be ruled by men like that. (She is not planning to mention him by name in the meeting, but it really seems like everyone who's not an Evil noble should be okay with "Evil nobles are not allowed to randomly murder people for no reason," even if they're otherwise completely terrible.)

Theo's not really planning to talk much, but he does want to be present.

Has he got the right place?

He does! Wave wave!

Séfora slinks in. She can be stealthy when she wants. 

Where is the water. Out of paranoia about taverns she has bottled some water just in case. Delicious, clean water is the lifeblood of all useful work.

There's also water but people mostly prefer very weak beer to water, especially when you're used to, uh, a vastly lower density of first-circle clerics than Westcrown currently has.

Of course, the type of little feast that’s for bringing people together always happens over light beer. 

You don't grow up in an inn without getting something of a taste for it, and it's always been a much safer way to do it than anything that might risk her actually getting drunk.

Pure water for her, though. She likes her mind working normally and her judgment completely unclouded, to say nothing of how covering up the taste of bad water is the kind of mistake you don't want to repeat.

(She's still wearing the armor; one would be forgiven for assuming it never comes off).

Well, here goes nothing.

(Five women, four men, but three of the men are Enric and Theopho and an Erastilian. Hmmm.)

"Well, I doubt this is everyone, but we may as well get started. Basically, the pace and content of the convention has so far been dictated almost entirely by the nobility, who are able to get things done because they are organized, they talk to one another, and they know which favors they can trade to get their preferred bills through. This leaves everyone who isn't a noble on the back foot, mostly just reacting to whatever the nobles work out ahead of time. But if any of us have battles that we want to pick that the nobles don't, we're going to have to bring them to the floor proactively.

'Everyone who isn't a noble' in fact being a very diverse set of people, I think there are a lot of important priorities that most of us are probably unaware of, and we should at the very least be aware of what the other commoners think is worth paying attention to. I think it's very likely that many of our priorities are not in fact in conflict, though obviously some of them will be. And it's possible that if we talk it through ahead of time, we can get some obviously good ideas passed that wouldn't necessarily pick up enough support in twenty minutes of floor discussion to pass the floor. Or we can give ourselves some breathing room to talk through what a good proposal would look like in a complicated area, without always relying on the nobility to dictate terms.

I am mostly interested in hearing about other people's priorities tonight, but there are two major ones that I've become aware of so far. First, contract law and civil courts. Bad contracts can obviously be used as a tool for enormous evil, more powerful than almost any other. We're not actually without them right now, we just don't have any tools to regulate them. We should be concerned with making sure we get a system that doesn't ruin most people's lives, with limits on what kinds of contract terms are legal. We may in particular want to abolish or significantly limit serfdom and hereditary contracts, and place limitations on apprenticeship, employment, indenture, and marriage contracts, ensuring that there are some things a master can't order. I don't yet know what limits are appropriate, or which ones we can sell the floor on.

Secondly, the orphanage system is in financial crisis. I have learned that it costs more than half the cost of the entire military, despite being funded near starvation levels and no longer offering daycare. I do not want to solve this by securing more funding from the military and putting it towards orphanages, which all the officers in the room will oppose. I want to solve it by creating a policy that will encourage parents, especially fathers, to commit to raising their own children, and creating another policy to encourage adoptions. This should take strain off the treasury, so we can probably get many of the officers to back it on that basis, if we can come up with a reasonable pair of proposals.

What's everyone else got?"

"It's hard to pick just one, but I reckon dishonest loans have got to be important. There's lots of good, honest men back home who took out a loan in a bad year and got trapped by a dishonest lender, who've paid back double or triple what they took out but the lender keeps saying they owe more. Not to mention the lenders who'll claim you never paid when you did, or threaten your kids to get you to pay it back, or refuse to take payment in paper. I've been lucky enough I've never had to deal with them, but not everyone can say the same."

Enric nods at the contracts and loans. Both of those things are Asmodean. Even it's true that Abadar has less evil versions of them, right now the land is full of the Asmodean versions.

"Don't know if we can actually do it, but land. Without any way to support himself or his family, most will end up an indenture or serf again, just to eat." 

"There's a lot of ways to do land reform. I've never thought of a particular reform plan that seemed like it would stick. And... I think it's maybe the worst time to try, since there's a lot of nobles, especially the new halfway-decent ones, who have nothing but land and are trying to rebuild things."

"I read a pamphlet last week that suggested each family should just be allowed to own the land they were farming. It sounded pretty reasonable to me, if you could get people to vote for it, but probably the nobles wouldn't... And my mom wasn't a farmer, so I don't actually know if it'd work."

"You could allow tenant farmers without making them be serfs, if you can't pass land reform."

"Ending serfdom seems like a fight worth picking. I don't know that it'll win, a lot of people suck, but it really ought to, and I think it's the kind of thing where being strategic can get it over the line."

"Do we know what exactly we mean by that? Inherited contracts? Contract terms for longer than a certain number of years?"

"Well, we're not serfs back home, otherwise I don't suppose I'd've been allowed to be here at all. Porras might know more than I do. But I don't reckon a country can call itself Good or Lawful if it's holding a grown man to a contract he never agreed to. Long contracts don't seem so unreasonable, if they're fair contracts to begin with."

Lawyers organize into law firms for warmth so that partners can get their take out of the work of junior lawyers, mainly; maybe now that Lluïsa has effectively named herself a partner she should be pro-serfdom, but it's precarious without at least a year or so for things to settle.

(Farms are basically law firms for farming.)

Really they should annul and bar all contracts made under duress, and define duress very expansively; this would solve a great deal of things without disrupting proper contracts (duress is for Mammonite and Asmodean thugs, good Mephistophelean lawyers convince).

But how to present this idea?

“From what I’ve heard, they took serfs and slaves and everyone for the sortition. Allowed to leave or no, archmage says he wants someone… who says no?”

He has had a bit to drink, but not much. So he’s still steady enough to carefully not say anything about ‘back home’ himself and whether anyone is still a serf. Speaking generally…

”What I think serfdom means. Part of it is being for life and inherited. No way out once you’re in, for you or your grandchildren. Part is being owned with the land, so if the land goes to someone even worse, no way out. Part is all the orders they can give and things they can do, more than a freeholder or even a temporary worker from the city.”

Nod. "I think all of those parts are things we should get rid of, if we can. ...I don't have any idea how to tell whether we can."

"I personally would think inheriting serfdom is the worst of it, plus finding general limits for what can go in a contract like the Rights Committee has already been talking about. But I'm willing to defer to anyone who's, you know, actually known serfs personally, I'm a city man."

Lebanel's kind of hot up close.

"So we've got Evil loans, serfdom... what else?"

"I'm going to introduce a motion tomorrow to make it illegal for Taldor nobles- those raised there or those holding office there, to hold office in Cheliax- their culture is too different."

"You'll have to come up with a way to make it so they can still be in the convention even if they're there on title alone, to get it past the President."

"...but what if some of them get replaced with leftover Evil nobles from here? I'm not sure which-all nobles are the Taldan ones but they can't possibly be worse than most of the holdovers." She's not actually sure where Delegate Ventura is from but even he's not worse than a lot of the Asmodean nobles from before.

"If I could get rid of all holdover nobles I certainly would. Cheliax would benefit. But the Taldans- they're doable. I hope."

Alright, interrupting that is half of why Jilia's inside this room instead of in the hallway.

"I understand the temptation more than anyone, all Taldane nobility I've ever had to work with were either useless stuffed shirts or slime, but I do not think it's doable and I expect the trying will backfire, badly, and make the more liberal nobility close ranks with the conservatives. In addition to annoying the President if not worded very carefully. Please don't."

"And... we don't have enough good men to defend the villages and counties. I've tried. I'd love to replace nine in ten of the hold-overs, maybe even nineteen in twenty, but I do not have decent adventurers who can defend their territories from monsters, nor do the other archdukes, and we don't have a Lastwall- or Galtan-style army to do it either." To say nothing of Menador.

"Are there, uh, more things we could try, for recruiting adventurers that don't suck to replace the nobles that do?"

"Ooh, there's a thought, some process for people other than the queen to install a noble."

Is it worth the risk? It might let her lock in some more votes without needing to spend much on it, but having her support might be more toxic than it's worth... best not to stick with anything she can't disclaim later, even if it means it's less good of a sell here.

"The army committee is looking into reforming the chelish military along more Galtan lines, but it will be some time before that sees fruit."

Enric is all for getting rid of evil nobles, though he can’t always tell which ones are from where. They all speak strangely and dress in impractical noble ways. He also has enough sense for the convention to know pushong too hard will fail. The nobles fight with each other, but close ranks when they need to.

”It’d be a start, just making it easier for the queen to make new nobles, once she finds better adventurers. Put in the constitution that nobles can be replaced, or something.”

”I would even go as far as doing it by election. Every few years, a vote on whether to replace the noble with a new one. But I don’t think the hall would vote for that.”

"Besides the other nobles installing them as vassals, you mean, Avenger Pages? The core problem is that you need dangerous men, or occasionally women. In the cities a political creature like me will do; in the country you need a warrior, whether they use steel or spells. And those people can make safer livings in big cities somewhere else, and letting them raise taxes enough to make the money here better is... well, it would probably be nearly as bad for the farms getting taxed as unchecked monster attacks, most places."

"Mr. Porras is right that the hall wouldn't vote for allowing citizens to vote out their lord. But even if it approved, I don't think it would help very much. We're already removing bad lords - Her Majesty picked her archdukes well, they're all in the liberal camp except the Grand Inquisitor, and the dukes and duchesses are mostly quite good or trying fairly hard to become so - whenever we can catch them at anything; most aren't so bad that they're worse than nothing, and so I wait to arrest and remove them until I have a replacement, but if we had six hundred qualified, decent adventurers willing to become counts, we'd get it done for the whole country in... oh, it might take a year or two. No more."

"So the problem is finding the men to do it. And most of the possibilities boil down to 'with what money?', really. Casters can make good reliable livings in Absalom or another city, and a soldier or hunter or burglar strong enough to run with a third-circle can do much the same as a hired guard or something else much safer than securing a barony or county, cleaning out the monsters which have moved in while the old lords were inattentive, and then keeping it secure. And they make a lot of money, or will once they've taken loans and paid to rebuild everything, but they're adventurers, they were already making a lot of money. There's a lot of ways we could make it better - help them with the loans, give them fancy items from old ducal vaults - but we don't actually have that money and those vaults mostly got raided before the new nobility was installed." Not hers, but she's been making use of it.

"So you need to appeal to them some other way to convince them, or else offer them a lot more money, which we haven't got and can't get without ruinous taxes. Someone who wants to be a noble, maybe, which isn't filtering for lovely people. Or who cares that they'll be securing their family and their children with a title and income, which is a good respectable motivation possessed by many good people, but not very common among adventurers of any variety. Politics can work, get men who care about rebuilding Cheliax and spiting Hell by getting people properly free of it, and that got a good many people accepting resurrections and has gotten me a few men from Andoran who are probably bound for Elysium. But there's just not that many of those men, not compared to the ones who look at the book of accounts and say 'Absalom's good for me thanks'."

"And in forty years we'll have another convention, with a good strong Galtan-style army already secure if Archduke de Requena has the least say in the matter. And maybe then we can consider going the way of Andoran and removing everything nobles have but their fortunes and their titles and their pride, and I doubt I'll have a word to say against it even if I'm still on this mortal plane. But we can't do it now, and I promise you, very sincerely, we who the Queen picked have been doing the best we can already."

"Any proposal to effectively remove the nobility will make a quarter of the convention - maybe a third, a lot of the elected are barons - dig in against anyone and everyone associated with whoever said it. They'll see everything else we suggest as a plot to remove them. If we want to win anything else, we have to leave them something. And I'm not actually sure that the elected quarter is better than they are, anyway.

We can place limits on what they can do to people, and we can maybe create some system that passes off some of their responsibilities to other people? Long term, I think we want some way - probably many ways - of growing decent adventurers and administrators here, and some system for giving them meaningful responsibility. But identifying people who know what they're doing and don't suck seems like something of a puzzle. Even if we know what a decent man looks like - and I don't know that that's always easy - we need to come up with a system that does that."

"I think — even if we can't get anything else passed about the bad nobles, I want to try and see if we can pass something that says that nobles should be punished for crimes just the same as anyone else — or more, if we can manage it, like we do in Lastwall, but even if it's just the same that's still better than nothing. And, uh, actually get it enforced, but I don't know how to do that. If there's a nobleman who's going around murdering innocent people or forcing himself on the local women or anything like that, he should die for it, even if it'll be hard to replace him." 

Like Delegate Ventura. Who is a duke, no matter what Delegate Bainilus thinks about the dukes and duchesses.

"And I think maybe there's nobles who'd vote for that, even if they wouldn't vote for anything else, just because they'd think 'well, I'm not going to break the law, so this is fine for me'? But I'm not sure."

Victoria is not very good at talking hypothetically. They should talk before she leaves.

"We can probably get it on paper, but regular law enforcement isn't going to be capable of arresting them. Maybe you could establish some special elite group under the crown that has other responsibilities, and also polices the nobility and other powerful targets? I don't know how you'd keep them honest."

"Maybe you could put them under Abadar's Truthtelling every so often? And then if there's enough of them to watch all the nobles, but not so many that the archmages and the Queen can't keep an eye on them, it could work?"

"Keep them honest in the sense of them not being bought off by the nobility, directly or indirectly. It's difficult to force people to care about the interests of the powerless, and difficult to confirm that they're doing all of their work well and thoroughly investigating all complaints, if the nobility are keeping their crimes secret. If the monarch is invested in the nobles being policed, then you can find some way to keep them loyal to the crown. But if any of the nobles are particularly useful, some later monarch might not want their crimes to come to light."

...said like that, this seems like a bit of a fundamentally unsolvable problem.

"I suppose it's probably still worth trying, even if it only gets people who are both criminal and useless."

"Well, you could use the Truthtelling to ask them about that too — 'did you take any bribes,' 'did you follow whatever their procedure is for all the crimes you heard about,' and a bunch more questions like that to cover all the loopholes. It might only work if the Queen is Good, I don't know how to get around that, but right now she is."

"I don't think truth spells prove that someone isn't working around the edges of the questions you ask. Many bribes are arguable. It helps, of course, I'm not against it. I'm just not confident that it'll be reliable, or easy to maintain."

Nod. "I'm not sure it'll work, but I think it's worth trying.

...Uh, what else do we want to put on the list?"

“I’ve been thinking of something for the virtuous churches committee, now that I think of it, would help with serfdom and indentures too. Give the churches right to take people in as lay members, even people in other contracts.”

"Huh, that could work. You'd need something to handle people who don't have any priests nearby..."

"And rules for which churches qualify," says the Erastilian cleric, who is not making eye contact with the Calistrians right now.

“Virtuous churches committee is avoiding working on a list of which churches to call virtuous, to trust and give special rights to. Rights has mentioned a right to go to church for holy days, we might want to get that, and something to let wandering clerics visit people and send word back to their churches.”

"Sorry, can you expand on what you're imagining here?" Korva is familiar with the idea that in real life people will call themselves paladins without any actual powers, and aware of the idea that when primary worship of anyone is allowed, then people can count themselves as members of particular churches without actually being priests, but this isn't really enough information to determine how Enric is envisioning being a 'lay member' interacting with contracts.

(Honestly, Victòria doesn't totally understand it either, she just thinks it sounds like a way to partially get rid of serfdom that'll sound good to the nobles.)

“Instead of living on the land of your lord or whoever you’re indentured to, you live in or around the church building and do work there… this does need the church to have a building, but we have the old temples to give them. Also needs work the church wants people for. Tending to any land attached to the church, cooking for the clerics, keeping the building in repair, caring for the sick, all that.” 

”We’ll need to ask foreigners about what belonging to a church looks like when the church isn’t hell. I know it happens, but the only specific story I heard is that in Osirion, it’s what women who can’t get married do. They marry Abadar instead and live together in his temple, weaving. But I think there’s something like that for other churches.”

You can marry a god????????

Abadar is probably lousy in the sack.

Lebanel was an atheist and the rest of them have never left the country... Okay, Jilia can say a little.

"A lot of churches do things differently. I think Iomedae and Sarenrae are... mostly set up like Asmodean temples. They have holy orders, lots of them fighting, but the Sarenrites run orphanages and I don't know what else either of them do. Shelyn and the Elysian gods aren't usually organized enough for orders, and I think Pharasma's orders either fight undead or tend to graveyards and crematoriums. Calistria's people have the same reputation everywhere whether they're legal or not and I got the sense it's always the same amount of accurate everywhere too. Abadar mostly has everyone under his church - or two churches, Osirion is separate somehow - and they do merchant things, insurance and loans and selling Truthtelling. Irori likes independent orders better than a proper church, I think, we even had an illegal one in Kintargo keeping track of history books so they didn't get destroyed by Hell. And obviously he likes martial monks. What other kinds of things He considers aspects of perfection worth having orders about I have no idea."

"Can you say more about 'set up like Asmodean temples'? I assume that's... less concerning than it sounds......."

The duchess said something about how there used to be lots of religious orders, before. Korva hadn't really realized how nebulous her understanding of those was until she just now tried to think about what they would consist of on a policy level, but there's something there. Maybe it's an alternative to the crown labor camp idea she had in rights this morning - almost no one would ever leave a contract for the mines, but religious service might be something people would leave for, although of course it also isn't something that can be expanded arbitrarily far. ...probably. Erastil being the god of farmers and families, it's not inconceivable that an Erastilian order could expand indefinitely, though you'd need land for them to work, and she can already see Soler's disapproving face about the entire concept of organizing people according to what lets the government keep track of them. An Erastilian order expanding across the countryside also probably wouldn't let people opt out of any and all existing marriages, as a Caydenite one might, which means it might not destroy Korva's plans to rope men into child support. 

And she can't say she isn't having second thoughts about her program itself, after talking to the duchess and the other nobles about marriage. She wants men to take care of their children, but she doesn't, really, want all marriages - all families, as she's considering making other sorts of families illegal - to become prisons, the way paper marriages generally are. Maybe it's just that all of the existing paper marriages were drawn up by Asmodean lawyers, but - not being able to leave does sort of make it inherently more of a prison? Her parents' marriage wasn't a prison. Not exactly happy, but at this point she's getting the sense that everyone sort of agrees that marriages aren't meant to make you happy, after twenty years. They didn't beat each other or rape each other or turn each other in to the cops. They didn't leave, and they could have. They stuck around because they wanted to. And maybe if they couldn't have left each other, the other things about their marriage wouldn't have been true; it's not as if either of them was devoid of viciousness in full generality.

"Some of the resurrected nobles have also been talking about religious orders as a thing that used to exist in Cheliax, probably not exactly as they exist in Osirion," which is of course kind of full of barbarians, though she has to admit - to herself, anyway - that the ones she's actually spoken to seemed surprisingly reasonable. It's possible that she has a concerning taste for barbarians, given previous evidence on this front. "I wonder whether we could - give specific religious organizations approved by the crown the right to accept members, and dissolve those members' previous contracts, in accordance with the principles that were laid out at their founding. And have some kind of work or mission that recruits can help with, not necessarily limiting it to work that supports a temple. Like - it seems good if Erastil clerics can run orders devoted to agriculture and potentially accept large numbers of people in unconscionable contracts, or -" okay, every mission statement she can immediately think of for Calistrians is bad - "Nethysite orders can run teaching institutions, or Sarenites can run orphanages. And it'll be easy to staff them with people who want to escape worse contracts. 

I think what you'd want is a system where some people are empowered to excuse recruits from other contracts, but the people so empowered will generally only use this for obligations that ought to be broken, and if they think a person will be capable of the work the order does. Call them orders of last resort, or something, and have them submit their rules to the crown, and give them some kind of responsibility for the people they accept. The crown can give the privilege of accepting all comers only to the specific orders that it approves of, and believes will use the power responsibly. Maybe have them re-apply for the status every few years, so that the crown can rescind the status if they're using it irresponsibly. And then give everyone a right to apply to orders of last resort, and to leave their contracts and go to any order that accepts them."

It could easily all but kill indenture as a civil penalty. She should figure out what killing indenture as a civil penalty would do. For her specific program... maybe it would be good, if people who irresponsibly get people pregnant have the option of serving a church. A lot really depends on what orders exist. But - if they don't just let people break their contracts and then leave immediately, she can see it being an important improvement.

"Victoria, I just mean that they're mostly central churches with priests assigned to and tending to communities, and the rest is a minor factor in what they do as religions. Obviously what they do as local priests is completely different."
"...I like the idea of using religious orders to organize specific options for people, though, ah, I think it would go over better without Nethys. Better to have it be under gods who are good influences on their priests, at least politically and maybe practically, and Pharasma might be but Nethys isn't."

"If they have to be approved by the Crown the Crown could just not allow religious orders that are a bad idea, and it saves us the trouble of having to have a floor fight about which gods people like."

"Needing to get the Crown's permission seems awfully complicated. If one of Erastil's people wants to start a holy order, I don't see why he should need to get the Crown's permission. Erastil's blessing should be enough."

"Because - well, two things. One, I absolutely think that an Erastilian should be able to form a holy order independently. The crown's permission is to allow the priest to excuse people from their existing contracts in the process of joining the order. So, any Erastilian can form a holy order, but for the order to freely get people out of indentures, apprenticeships, or marriages, it has to be an approved order that the crown believes is going to be responsible and do useful work. I think that giving that power to every cleric of an approved deity - any set of deities, really - is going to be an enormously hard sell after the riots. And I'm not sure we want it? I trust clerics of Erastil to be suitably reluctant about letting people leave marriages. But if someone is an apprentice in the city and wants to go home to their family, I'm not sure I trust every Erastilian in the country to limit their permission to people who are actually going into holy orders, instead of just breaking large classes of contract for anyone who wants to leave, without imposing any costs on them. And if there's no record of who the person is or what it is they're doing, and the permission is automatic for any cleric of an approved deity, there's no way to stop them from doing it.

Second - while I'm not sure there are churches where I trust every priest to have good judgement about this, there are also a lot of churches where most priests will have poor judgement, or be doing something useless, but some will be doing good work. Most Nethysians shouldn't have the power to excuse anyone from contracts. But maybe one of them starts a teaching institution that consistently provides education to the poor, and keeps track of its members in ways that the crown approves of, and the crown wants more people to participate in it. Making it by crown approval - I guess maybe realistically by the approval of some agency that answers to the crown - allows you to approve orders headed by responsible people with good organizations and work set out for them, even if we absolutely wouldn't trust everyone from the church in question."

"I'm concerned that making it weakening contracts will make people require oaths of their apprentices instead, and then we're filling up holy orders with oathbreakers."

"Maybe. The paladin on the rights committee was saying that - I'm not entirely clear on who, but her order, maybe the whole Iomedan church - considered it an illegal order to oblige someone to take an oath. Maybe we can forbid it in some circumstances, or forbid requiring oaths to ignore a call to the church? I don't know. I can't think of a way to prevent people from extracting promises from people under threat, and then using that leverage to do anything they like to them. But it still seems important to have someone who can break off legal penalties for contracts that are insane, and - I don't actually see that giving that power only to the courts doesn't produce the same pressure towards requiring oaths."

Privately Korva does not really understand the big deal about oaths. (She believes in unbreakable promises for her, and maybe for some specific organizations, but not really in general; that would be ridiculous.) Though maybe one could adopt them as a thing that does the opposite of a contract, a promise that people care about but which has no legal penalties for breaking.

Obviously not everyone keeps their oaths, that's the whole problem.

One of Jilia's staff walks in and whispers to her.

"Korva, there's a few people my guard noticed in the taproom we might want to invite up. Delegate Thea Iroria, who runs a women's monastery nearby. Delegate Fernando, an elected first-circle wizard. And the fifth-circle wizard Lisandro, who almost read a mage's decree about slavery on the floor, but isn't technically a delegate. Any of them you think we should invite up here?"

Left unsaid: Jilia wouldn't be naming them if she wasn't in favor.

Fifth circle wizards do not really seem like commons, even if they were born that way. "Let's have the delegates up."

Why are they inviting an assassin. This meeting could really stand to have fewer Evil people. ...Not counting Lluïsa, Lluïsa is great.

Fernando arrives, his head held high and his notes on his latest constitution draft tucked under his arm.

It looks like the Archduchess is directing this meeting.  That’s good, she saw his work in the committee earlier so she knows what he has to bring to the table.

Thea arrives with Dia trailing behind.  She sizes up the room.  Korva is an obvious choice to have here.  It stings her pride a little realizing Victoria and some random soldier were apparently already there and thus invited before her, but Thea pushes the feeling down, as long as she gets he desired privileges through virtuous churches and no idiotic proposals get passed elsewhere the convention will be a success for her.

Considering the room carefully… Victoria might be a problem.  Thea thinks she’s made any progress on her, but Victoria did still seem kind of hung up on Thea’s past.

The archduchess is in fact, sort of ostentatiously, avoiding looking like she's directing it, as much as she can, what with giving Korva the head of the table all to herself and only sitting around the corner from her. But she's here, and no one else here has a title not granted by a god, so it's a reasonable impression to have.

He nods politely to the new arrivals. "Pleased to meet you," he says. "We've all been sharing what we want to see done at the convention. Porras here was just telling us about an idea of his, letting holy orders take lay-initiates who've gotten themselves in bad contracts."

That would provide a nice pool of lay-initiates to recruit from, so Thea is in favor!

“That sounds like a sensible idea!  For myself… I’ve been happy with the ideas being developed in the Virtuous Churches committee, we are taking our time working carefully.  We have a variety of ideas like Delegate Porras’s that should help the churches to help the people of Cheliax!”

“Besides that… I mostly want to make sure the convention avoids any disastrously bad ideas.  Some proposals have sounded sensible at first but would have very disruptive effects.”

Considering who is here it is probably okay (maybe even advantageous) to call out one specific proposal…

“For instance… the censorship law that didn’t get passed that required everything go through a censorship board that doesn’t exist or have funding yet would have halted too much harmless non-pamphlet writing I think.”

"Yeah. That was why we passed that mess through Rights, because we were pretty sure it was coming."

“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."

"Calistria is, in fact, the goddess of that. Calistria doesn't care who gets hurt as long as you took your revenge. If you want a god who will refuse to help you hurt innocents as splash damage from your revenge on someone you consider guilty, pray to Ragathiel or Milani and hope you haven't already done so much damage they'll reject you, Avenger."

Thea also doesn’t want this argument!  Any discussion that would drag down the reputation of any neutral God’s or their followers is obviously to be avoided!  She’s can’t think of a way to say this that doesn’t sound blatantly self-serving so she’ll wait it out.

Theopho got Victoria good with that line!  Considering he is an Erecura worshipper though, it would only take a sentence to point out the blatant hypocrisy.

None of her enjoyment of the argument shows on her face as she continues to wait off to the side behind Thea.

"You worship a power of Hell."

Sorry, what? Isn't that illegal?

"I'm still an atheist at heart. Erecura's willing to compromise with Evil when she's stuck with it, which is why she's Neutral, and why I've been willing to look past her circumstances. Calistria just commits Evil herself and defends the weak enough it sometimes balances out. I know what Good I've done, with excess precision; I'm Neutral too myself. You don't, and you can't, because you aren't even Neutral, you're Evil."

"I'm Chaotic Neutral," she snaps. Wow, that was a really terrible response. Can she think of a better one— "Not that I'd expect a servant of Hell to recognize that."

That was not actually a better response. When she's imagined this sort of argument she's always imagined herself being able to think of insults that actually hurt, only now that she's actually trying to have it all she can think of is variations on "you suck and so does your goddess."

He really doesn't want to get in the middle of this but he also really doesn't want to tell off the Calistrian or the Hell-worshipper. If he looks desperately at the woman who's supposed to be leading the meeting, or the soldier, or even the songbird, are any of them willing to set things back on track?

"I wonder if nobles get more done because they all spent their entire childhoods being forcefed etiquette. Could we not?" says Raimon, mostly at Theo.

"Yes, I'd like to second that. We don't have to like each other to realize that fighting each other is going to empower the nobles at the expense of everyone else."

“I’ll third that, I think we all have a common interest in making sure the nobility don’t pass anything stupid that only makes sense to a noble from Taldor or a century ago who doesn’t know how common Chelish people live.  And I think we have a common interest in not allowing nobility to gain leverage against any virtuous (or at least non-Evil) Churches by pitting us against each other.”

He started it though. She's not going to say that because it's kind of pathetic, but he totally started it.

Great. He's going to change the subject. "Does anyone have Good, honest Abadarans to recommend, who'd never have taken Hell's money, that they think we can trust not to side with dishonest lenders?"

"There's one from Osirion on the Family Committee, Delegate Fazil. He's, uh, kind of confusing, but he doesn't seem Evil or anything."

“An Osirion Abadaran might be good for formulating a proposal the Grand Inquisitor will approve of.”

Well that was awful. Thanks, Erastil guy.

"Conde Fazil is a noble, and is definitely foreign in his sensibilities, but I agree he doesn't seem evil. He's mostly spoken about teaching men to be good husbands, and whether marriage should legally require a man to provide for his wife. I don't know who he will side with, here, but I expect that he'll at least explain his reasoning if we talk to him."

Well, an Abadaran who cares about men being good husbands is probably the best Abadaran any of them could hope for.

"Did anyone have any other concerns they were hoping to discuss? Young lady, you said the Virtuous Churches committee was working on something?"

The way this meeting has been going, Thea wants to avoid giving this group anything solid to argue about or against.

“We have been developing ideas for helping virtuous churches to support the people of Cheliax.  A lot of our ideas are still in development… the most recent idea we discussed was figuring out if the convention could get access to spells like Lesser Planar Ally and Commune to consult the Gods for advice.   We have also been doing research to compile a list of less well known beneficent Gods to make sure they wouldn’t be left out of any listing in our eventual proposal.  Like Empyreal Lords and such.”

She's not clued in on this and not particularly inclined to cooperate on it even if she was, but fortunately for Thea there's also not a lot of detail they've finished.

"We've also been considering subjects like tithing structures but that's still a ways off from being ready to do anything with."

Enric stays silent. He's a bit disappointed by how little progress virtuous churches seems to have made, compared to the other committees. 

Talk to the gods...? ...She mentioned Lesser Planar Ally, probably she means something like Delegate Ardiaca or Lluïsa did, with calling an outsider.

Thea actually considers taking a few weeks to research and write laws that will potentially be in place years or decades a reasonable thing to do!  (At least as long as no other committees are going to try to racing them with overlapping laws.)

"Just so long as it's nothing like those money-grubbers who've been trying to vote to up their own stipends."

This is the commoner meeting isn’t it?  Thea had assumed this group was in favor of it.

“Is there any plans to placate or sideline those sorts of efforts?”

She’ll feel out the mood in the room before she proposes trying to side with and get the votes of the avaricious.

Yes, but she's not sure she wants to give everyone else ammunition to attack the scheduling committee, after the way the floor session went today. Of course, this might be the only opportunity to arm them, if she wants to try to change anything about the scheduling committee.

.... actually that might be secret information? Ugh.

"I think the best we can do is ensure that binding resolutions have to go through extra sets of eyes before the floor votes on them, or maybe figure out a way to increase the amount of information people get about floor proposals? We've been told we can't vote to increase the stipends because the money isn't the government's, and I don't think most people would vote against taxes if they understood what it meant." Although come to think of it, Count Cansellarion did? She should really ask the Duchess whether Iomedae is opposed to... taxes. Governments having money. "Since all of the nobles are delegates, I think voting to exempt delegates from taxes is basically a vote that nobles should still be allowed to collect taxes, but none of those taxes can be given to the Queen, who uses almost all of them to fund orphanages and the army. The nobility would collect the same amount from everyone but us, but all of the money would go to whatever they wanted to spend it on - feasts, fancy clothing, and I am sure the occasional monster-slaying expense. I think the archdukes are against it because this situation would in fairly short order destroy the country, and whatever else they are, I think they are attached to having a country.

Probably, for that reason, the Queen won't agree to it, but we really ought to avoid the convention passing anything that the Queen won't agree to. I strongly think we'll have more latitude to pass things if we haven't tried to pass anything incredibly stupid. Once we do, everything is much more a suggestion, you know? An advisor who habitually offers obviously bad ideas will very quickly become no advisor at all. So we want to make sure that the convention is only voting on proposals that have been examined soberly and had the extremely obvious problems hammered out of them. We can't expect the convention not to vote for things that half the people genuinely want, but we can probably come up with procedures that make them less likely to pass things that will actually be disastrous, just because they weren't explained very well and weren't thought about for long enough."

Very sensible, Fernando nods along.  The Archduchess clearly picked the right person to put in a position of (apparent) leadership!

She kinda wanted the avaricious commoner vote as a weapon of last resort against the nobility, but they are on net a liability so Thea also nods along.

Which is be a good pitch! Well, except for how she expects half the room doesn't like either the army or the orphanages, which means she absolutely has to say something.

"And it's an even worse deal than it used to be. The army commitee is working on making the army actually obey the rules and do what it's supposed to - fight monsters and bandits, like they do in other countries. We've got paladins and soldiers and a few of the nobles who actually know how to fight working on it. But there's not any committee on nobles that's going to make rules saying their men can't go into the nearest town and grab some girls to have fun, or robbing people of their stuff, or spending their time getting drunk and gambling."

"Rights is — trying — with some of that. But it's really hard to solve just with laws, and even if a law would be good that doesn't mean we can get it past the floor."

"And even if it does, if the queen doesn't have an army. Well. A lot more people are going to figure they don't have to listen to her."

"...doesn't she, uh, have an army? And some archmages?"

Honestly for someone who just started being Evil Delegate Rado seems surprisingly reasonable? Maybe she was right on the edge, and then she did something a little Evil, and it tipped her over? ...That's surprisingly upsetting to think about, actually, that there could be something tiny that ended up making the difference—

"She does right now. But if there aren't any taxes, then she won't have much of an army for very long; it's hard to have soldiers if you can't pay them, and even the ones that stay are going to do more banditry to make up for it. Maybe the archmages can make up for some of that, but there's a reason they needed the Galtans and the Rahadoumi and the Reclamation in the first place, and I'd rather not count on them sticking around forever."

"Oh, sorry, I got confused about what you were saying, I didn't realize you were just saying we shouldn't vote to not have taxes on delegates."

"It sounds like we're all agreed on that, at any rate. Anything else we wanted to discuss?" He would kind of like to stop being in this room.

“Are we going to make these meetings a periodic thing?  Or maybe before major votes?  If we all work together to keep an eye on the transcripts we can spot big votes before they come up even if none of us are on the relevant committee.”

Korva also doesn't really want to be here, though she can't really leave until other people mostly do, too. Unfortunately this has not been very good at building any sense that this is a reasonable longstanding group.

"I'd be interested in seeing your legislature draft," she says to Fernando. "I suppose it's in the transcripts. I will talk to Conde Fazil about what provisions about unfair debts the Abadarans will be willing to sign off on, thank you Sower. I think drafting for laws about unfair contract terms is either rights or judiciary, insofar as anything about contracts requires having civil courts to make rulings about them. 

As far as I can tell major votes seem to happen every day, but it's still good to know which votes each day are going to be the important ones. I think we also want to talk to more people, if we want more votes, rather than seizing on only this group just because we were at the first meeting. In particular I would appreciate knowing more about what the churches of Erastil and Pharasma want, as groups, in case there's anything else there we haven't thought of; they're quite a lot of people, and I expect the things they want are mostly very sensible."

"I can see about speaking to the other Sowers."

“I can try to talk to the pharasmins, you’re right that this is an important priority.”

“I have a copy on me, although I’ve already got some pretty major changes in progress for my second draft.  The biggest thing I have yet to add is assigned responsibilities to the Queen, the legislature, and the subdivisions of the legislature.  So any input there will be appreciated.”

"All right, I'll look it over. I think we can't throw support behind each other until we have some drafts to support, or at least to take apart and rebuild, so you're ahead of me there. I'll try writing something up to address the orphanage crisis and see what people think there. Maybe anybody who writes up a proposal or has one going out to the floor soon can reach out again to have another meeting - early in the evening, I think, if people can make it. Then we can talk about whether it has any issues, and have time to reach out to other people about supporting it, if we have something we're excited about."

So she needs to keep working at networking, but this meeting was some progress on that front.

She gives a firm nod to Korva.

"I expect this room to be free most nights if anyone sensible wants to use it to strategize in smaller numbers, and other rooms if it isn't. For those who aren't sensible or invited by those who are, the taproom will still be open."

(Victòria quietly asks Raimon if he can Scriven off a copy for her.)

Sure, if the room's stocked with blank paper.

She has paper! She's been spending some of the stipend on it so she can take notes at the convention.

He'll scriven it off, then. Anybody else want one?

Thea will take a copy if Raimon’s making a bunch now.  Best to keep an eye on stuff in development!

Coming into this meeting he would have been excited that people wanted to scriven more copies of his draft, but now he’s worried about who might get a copy and if it might preemptively jeopardize his committee’s work.