Wow, that sounds like it would suck. Like, less rape would be great, but... she's trying to imagine never being alone with a man and just completely failing. What the fuck.

Flip flip flip. "What did Delegate Ardiaca actually do that people are so mad about?"

"Conde Ardiaca broke his oaths to his superiors in order to take a personally loyal army to Cheliax to attempt to aid the reclamation. It... was a Good thing to do... but if you are not sure that you will always and forever agree with Conde Ardiaca about what is and is not Good, you might not want him to have a lot of power he might again behave unpredictably with. Very few people and no human countries are skilled at 'do as you are supposed to except for the one time it is really incredibly Good not to'. He got it right... that one time... and now no one is sure they can ever trust him again."

Oh! Good for him!

"Well, I trust someone who'd break an oath to do the right thing more than someone who'd do something Evil just because they'd made an oath about it."

"I'm not surprised."

Flip flip flip. "Why does Lastwall's illegal orders list not include anything about ordering someone to do something Evil? Like, I know sometimes people don't agree, but there's some cases that are obvious, is that supposed to be covered by the other rules or is it just allowed?"

"Because people do not always agree on what things are Evil. They do have quite a lot of protections for refusal to do things on the grounds of conscience, but when everyone agrees that something is Evil it will just... tend to be a crime in Lastwall and thus covered by it being illegal to order a crime."

"Oh, I didn't realize people there were also allowed to not follow orders even if they weren't illegal."

"...that is so far from how I would put it that I don't think I can even say it's basically correct, can you say more about your understanding of what 'protection for refusal on grounds of conscience' might mean."

"Like... if someone gives you an order and you think it's Evil, you can say 'no, that's Evil' and not do it and they can't have you tortured... or, uh, punished in ways that aren't torture? Even if it's not an illegal order. Uh, they might make you say it under a truth spell, if they've got enough, so that you can't just say you think everything you don't want to do is Evil, but I'm not sure either way there."

"...the protection is mostly in the form that a court will generally, at the trial for disobedience of a direct order that one will definitely still have to have, accept conscience as a large mitigating consideration like being enchanted would be."

"...Back home I would not have... gotten a trial... for disobeying an order from someone who could give me orders. They'd've just given me whatever punishment they felt like. ...And if I'd tried to say an order was Evil they'd have... laughed in my face, probably? And then punished me extra."

"...well, nothing about that is really all right, but I doubt you needed me to tell you that."

She had in fact noticed that growing up in a country ruled by Asmodeus was bad!

"...and so when we were talking about illegal orders it didn't occur to me that Lastwall might have rules for not following orders that aren't illegal."

"I don't think we can import it all at once. It relies on a lot of other things. Iomedae's people settled Lastwall, they took it from the undead and were already her crusaders and loyalists, and I think you can get there incrementally but you'd have to start with something much more basic. I'm not sure that person Sower Soler spoke to can't get his exemption from conscription on the grounds of conscience but it may be the only thing of its kind in Cheliax for the next forty years."

That's not exactly what she was going for but she doesn't know how to explain the thing she was going for. She nods.

"Any other confusions I might be able to help with?"

"...I'm still confused about what Delegate Saiville was saying yesterday but it kind of sounded like you didn't think you could help with that."

"I think you should probably not try to follow up with Ser Saiville and vice versa, it seems like an expensive purchase of little understanding."

Well, it seems like it could be really important, if he's going around telling people they're Evil for defending themselves because they didn't care enough about not hurting the people attacking them. ...But probably someone else would do a better job of explaining it to him, if she tries to explain it he's probably just going to get annoyed at her for questioning him again.

Flip flip flip. "I can't think of any other things I was confused about but I might have forgotten some. ...And I just realized I never explained the thing I said earlier about how I was brought up Asmodean, is it alright if I do that now?"

"Go right ahead."

...Now she has to figure out how to explain this without sounding like she's saying that the Iomedaeans are basically Asmodeans. Which they aren't, at least apart from Chosen Artigas, just, it seems like the sort of thing that's easy to explain wrong.

"...So, you were talking earlier about how you think I shouldn't assume people have stupid or Evil reasons for things, even if the thing they're suggesting really sounds stupid or Evil. And I hadn't thought about it specifically until you said that, but... I was raised Asmodean. It would've been a mistake to assume the Asmodeans had secret good reasons for things. And maybe if you're dealing with people who aren't Asmodeans, it makes sense not to assume either way, but — anyways. Uh, that's not why I brought this part up again.

And I'm not sure if I can explain the next part right, but — the reason I'm mentioning this is — sometimes, you guys come across like you think everyone should agree with everything you guys say just because you're the Church of Iomedae, even if you haven't really explained it, and even if you're asking people to believe you about a sand-cathedral, metaphorically. Maybe on accident, I'm not sure." (She doesn't really think it's an accident, but it could be.) "And — this is the part I wasn't sure how to explain — it would have been a really bad idea to agree with the Church of Asmodeus just because they were the Church of Asmodeus. And... some people did anyway, but... a quarter of the people at the convention are priests? And, uh, I think most gods are not going to pick people who will just automatically follow what a priest of another god says even if it doesn't make sense. And so I think you'll get more, uh, potatoes, if you acted less like that during the floor arguments, and tried harder to actually explain your reasons."

Also it would be nice if they stopped assuming anyone who disagreed with them during committees was being stupid or Evil but it would be really pathetic to keep bringing that up. Or, uh, whatever they call it in other countries when you get all bothered by something stupid like that.

"I think it is a mistake to trust Asmodeans to have reasons that are not Evil for Evil-sounding things because the Asmodeans were Evil, announced this, had an explicit policy of both being and encouraging others to be evil, and did a lot of incredibly Evil things all the time. I can see why it would have inculcated a more general habit of mistrust but I think perhaps it might serve people better to have a habit of mistrusting people who might be Evil, which is not true of paladins or any priest of any Good god. On, at least, topics where the question is Goodness and not factual accuracy or which tradeoffs appeal. And I don't think any of us will be as offended by occasional checks to make sure we haven't fallen as the nobles tend to be about the truth spell bickering they've taken to doing, if you wanted to ask for those when particularly alarmed. Paladins are easiest to check, anyone with Detect Magic can just watch us Detect Evil enough times that no one could be doing it at first circle, no costly spells expended.

"I am interested in how we can be better received by the people we're talking to, if you have more concrete suggestions, but 'less like that' I'm not sure how to do, let alone tell the other Iomedaeans to do."

That would really be a lot more convincing if Iomedae never picked priests who'd tortured innocent people to death in the name of Asmodeus, or at the very least if her other priests were willing to acknowledge that was a horrifying awful Evil thing to do instead of acting like it was ridiculous to trust Iomedae less for picking someone like that. Or really if she had any reason at all to think that Iomedae cared about anything that actually matters to her rather than about confusing god-potatoes. But she already tried explaining that part once and it didn't even help.

"...would one of the other paladins have a copy of Delegate Cansellarion's speeches? The one he gave during the punishments argument and the ones he gave during the Molthune argument. I think it'll be easier to be specific if I can point out, uh, specific things."

"...Select Artigas or his assistant probably do."

"...so can you, uh, ask him to borrow it, or..."