Here's Victòria! She's had a very long day, but but at least now she's had the chance to eat some food, so maybe the things the paladin is saying will make more sense? She waves.

"Good evening. So - I've noticed," easily dozens of people have noticed, and some of them are comparing notes with Angela, "that you seem to be finding yourself frequently - surprised - by other people's notions of the Good, and the purpose of lawmaking, and possibly other things too, and I thought it might be useful to frontload more of a conversation about that so you can" waste less time "more quickly see where people are coming from and what they're getting at in convention discussions."

Nod. "That makes sense to me — I know there's a lot I don't know, it'd be good if I could... know the things going in, instead of having to figure them out in the middle of another conversation."

"One way I sometimes think about conscience is that - the conscience is a means of comparing reality to an ideal world. Different people live different lives in reality and still would in the ideal world, so different things stick out to everyone - someone who is hungry will notice more keenly that in an ideal world they wouldn't be hungry, but if that drives them to steal, whoever they're stealing from will notice that in an ideal world they wouldn't be stolen from and that will be much more obvious to them than the fact that ideally also the thief wouldn't go hungry. Does that make sense?"

Nod. "I knew that not everyone's conscience cares about all the same things the same amount, that part isn't confusing. ...Sometimes the specific things people care about are confusing, even if their lives are very different."

"Like what?"

"Like what Delegate Saiville was saying about self-defense yesterday, except Laia thought maybe I didn't understand him right — I wrote him a letter but he hasn't replied yet. Or how Delegate Noguera i Mata thinks no one should ever treat anyone differently for anything they've done, even if all you're doing is being mad at them because they just tried to get your best friend killed and you aren't even doing anything to them. Except for watching kids, for some reason. Or... Abadarans... except I'm not sure if that has anything to do with conscience at all or if they're just pretending because it sounds better than saying they care more about money than doing the right thing. Or — Delegate Ardiaca told me today that Lastwall's punishment rules are about trying to cause the least amount of suffering possible — but he might've been wrong about that, it doesn't seem like they're even doing a good job of that if that's what they want, and he didn't have time before the vote to finish explaining why he thought they were good at the thing they were trying to do. Or how it seems like you don't care that Delegate Artigas tortured innocent people to death—"

"...I don't know all of these people or all the things they may have said, and I don't want to try to interpret 'what you remember them as having said' when you're yourself allowing that you're confused about it. What do you think it should look like to care that Select Artigas tortured people to death?"

"...well, you were there for Delegate Saiville. But — I know not everyone acts the same way about things they care about, but — I'd expect anyone who really cared about it to be mad at him, and to feel upset that everyone is just — treating him like a normal decent person who didn't torture a bunch of innocent people to death — and not to act like I was being unreasonable when I said it made me trust Iomedae less that she picked him as a priest. I'm — I don't think it only counts as caring if you spend a bunch of time thinking about how you'd like to avenge what he did, or anything like that — just to be clear, I'm not planning to take vengeance against him. Because he stopped."

Even if it's still awful and upsetting to think about him just getting away with everything forever. But it makes sense to focus on people like Delegate Ventura first — that's not really the point.

Chaotic people can just randomly lie about things but Angela supposes it's better than saying she does plan to take vengeance against him. "That's a lot of very specific expectations. I suppose it's reasonable that it makes you trust Iomedae less, but - only because you previously expected Her to be something that She isn't, and to instead be something which is actually antithetical to a very important and central tenet of Goodness shared by most major Good deities and their churches. I only say 'most' because I have not actually heard Erastilians on the topic of repentance."

If she were planning to take vengeance on him she just wouldn't have said anything about it in the first place, she's not stupid. "I don't think... being Good... means you have to pick priests who tortured innocent people to death? ...And it's not like she was just... picking everyone within a step of her, or something, she picked two priests in the whole country and one of them was him."

"...it doesn't mean you have to. But it also doesn't mean you mustn't. Select Artigas's own guess for why he was selected in such a thin year - it's not just Cheliax that got so few new Iomedaean empowerments, there's also no new ones in Lastwall - is that She was able to get all three of his circles without spending more than She'd spend on a new first-circle, and also specifically because his selection sends a message about repentance. It does nobody but Hell any service to have Chelish people, an overwhelming number of whom have done dreadful things, laboring under the belief that they cannot recover from their sins and reach Paradise."

"—so, I think there's a few different things I want to say about that.

Uh, first, I don't really know how the gods spending money thing works, I didn't know that was a thing at all until last Moonday. I guess maybe there are some ways it might work where it would make sense to pick him rather than someone like Enric — uh, Alicia already explained that to me when she was telling me about Shelyn, how sometimes it's worth it to just... never see justice done... if there's someone who can help a lot of people.

The second one is — I don't think most people in Cheliax has done dreadful things? Or, I mean, it might depend on what you count as 'dreadful,' most people have whipped people in school or prayed to Asmodeus or things like that. But — so, I think sometimes I talk about how people who do terrible things should face justice for it, and people act like I said I think everyone who's whipped someone in school should be executed. And I don't think that. I think people who murder innocent people and rapists and people who torture innocent people to death in the name of Asmodeus should be executed, but not everyone who's ever done something Evil. And I don't think most people are murderers or rapists or Asmodean priests or anything like that.

And the Diabolism Committee checked, before we got disbanded, there's a Pharasmin spell that can tell you someone's alignment even if they're not very powerful, so we checked Korva, the sortition on the committee, and she was True Neutral. ...Admittedly Delegate Artigas is Neutral too, so maybe that means less than we thought, but still.

The, uh, I forget how many things that was, but the next one is that — well, people use 'repent' to mean a bunch of different things — but if he really felt bad about what he'd done he'd have turned himself in for all the awful things he did, like the murderer Laia talked about during the floor debate today.

And if she chose him to send a message, it's a pretty confusing message, like when I found out I thought maybe Iomedae just didn't care very much about torturing innocent people to death in the name of Asmodeus. And I don't see how anyone's supposed to know that that's not what she meant, if it isn't — before I met Valia I thought Iomedae wanted everyone to follow the law all the time even if the law was made by the Asmodeans — if I was still back home and I heard about him, I'd assume it was either something like that, or that I was just hearing made up stories, like how people said one of the archmages was a faerie. If she just wanted to say 'you won't necessarily go to Hell even if you've done some bad things' she could've picked someone who did bad things like whipping people in school."

"I am making some assumptions about you, and in particular the things you mean when you use phrases like 'see justice done', because you are a Calistrian cleric. Does that seem like something we should discuss explicitly, or that you might like to disclaim, before I respond to that on the basis of those assumptions."

"...well, I don't know what you're assuming. If you think you might be assuming something wrong probably you should tell me what you're assuming. The example she gave was — if Delegate Ibarra decided to stop being Evil and spend all his time using his wizardry to help people, it might be right to let him live, even though he burned down houses full of innocent children, because he could help so many people with his magic. ..........I am assuming that Iomedaeans think you should execute people for burning down houses full of children who haven't done anything wrong but I guess I don't know for sure."

"I think I'd put it as 'a well ordered justice system would have the death penalty for arson'. I'm not sure if that's just a - phrasing difference - or if you mean something very different."

"...the part where he murdered a bunch of little kids is more important to me than what he did to the house. Like, arson is" sometimes "bad, but not as bad as murdering innocent people. And I don't know what makes a justice system 'well ordered.' ...Do Iomedaeans" other than Valia and Feliu "think arson is worse than torturing innocent people to death for the glory of Asmodeus??"

"Iomedaeans are about tradeoffs. And I can't tell you how to trade those things off without more specificity about the nature of the events I'm to compare. I've dealt the death penalty for murder too.

- I notice that it is very hard to stick to a single specific topic in conversation with you as there are so many pressing tangents appearing at such a clip. I'm not actually trying to catechize you in Iomedaeanism. I'm trying to - inculcate a much more general ability to figure out where people are coming from when they talk about their ethics and their principles and the pressures they're operating under and so on."

She is actually still pretty upset about that! If Delegate Jornet thinks what she and Raimon did was worse than what Chosen Artigas — well, she did say it depends, there's probably some sort of arson that would be worse. Like, if an Asmodean priest set fire to the temple of Shelyn because he hated that they weren't Asmodeans, and the fire spread and killed a bunch more innocent people too, that would probably be worse?

She is still really unhappy at the thought that Delegate Jornet might think she deserves to die for it. Which shouldn't even be surprising, right, she's Lawful — except she doesn't want Chosen Artigas to die—

She is not going to say any of that, obviously.

"...Normally I figure that out by asking questions. Except you were worried that was taking too much time at the convention. Is there... some other way... to figure it out, that doesn't involve asking them?"

"I think you may tend to - embed a lot of baggage into your questions, and wonder if another format for them would help at all, like if you said, 'it sounds like you're saying arson is always worse than murder, is that an implication of your stance here', then that's a yes or no question, and would take up very little time."

"—well, I specifically brought up torturing people to death in the name of Asmodeus because — so, it sounds like you're saying that arsonists should always be put to death, but that Delegate Artigas, and other Asmodean priests that weren't at the Worldwound, shouldn't be, including right after the archmages kicked Asmodeus out of the country when none of the Asmodean priests had stopped being Evil yet. Is that your stance here?"

"No. Law enforcement is extremely complicated and almost none of my beliefs have 'always' anywhere in them. I'm in favor of the Queen's amnesty, though."

"I'm against the amnesty but I also think that even if she was going to do the amnesty she should've dealt with all the Asmodean priests running around first. ...In any case, I can try to ask... weird lawyer sounding questions... and see if it helps, I guess."

"I don't think sounding like a lawyer is necessarily operative if there's a rephrasing that would feel more natural to you."

"...if I'm not saying it in a lawyery way I don't really get how it's different from just a normal question."