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..."

"Yes, I'll be right back." She goes into the temple and comes out again a bit later with the transcripts.

Flip flip flip.

"Okay. I'm going to do my best to explain but I don't know how well it'll work — actually, you know who you should really be asking, Feliu, I bet Feliu'd be great at it. If I don't explain it in a way that makes sense maybe see if you can track him down and ask.

Anyways." She holds out Delegate Cansellarion's first set of speeches from the Molthune debate. "I thought this speech was pretty good but I'm not sure how well I can explain why. It... gave reasons? It wasn't just saying 'oh, we're the Church of Iomedae, you should listen to us?' I guess some people might not believe him about what he said, but it's not a sand-cathedral sort of thing, he's not saying anything that makes no sense if you actually think about the world. It's not because of the part at the beginning about how he's only speaking for himself, if he'd left that part off I think it'd still have been fine. But the people who just want to listen to the Church of Iomedae no matter what can still listen to him, and the people who care about doing the right thing but aren't trying to listen to the Church of Iomedae will think 'wow, it's really bad how he tried to stop the paladins from coming to help kick out the Asmodeans.'"

She switches to the page with his speech on torture. "This speech is... the sort of thing I was trying to say you guys shouldn't do as much. Like, I was there for the speech and the Rights meeting and I talked to you, and I'm still not sure whether he was saying 'it's Evil to use punishments that hurt people more than the right amount, my best guess is that some of these punishments hurt people more than the right about' or whether he was saying 'there's some punishments that are always wrong to do to anyone no matter what, some of the punishments on this list fall under that.' And — I think there's a couple problems, actually, but they're kind of linked?

One is that people don't all agree on what counts as torture, like when Rights talked about it we didn't all agree, so maybe some people thought he was saying 'it's not okay to flay people alive' and were like 'nothing on here is anywhere close to that' and some people thought he was saying 'it's Evil to ever whip anyone' and they were like 'that's obviously stupid and wrong' and some people assumed the lions thing was fine and voted for it even though they were trying to listen to him. 

Another is that... he doesn't really give reasons? He just says it's Evil, which is... the sort of thing I was talking about, saying that people should listen to him just because he's the Church of Iomedae. And depending on what you think he's saying to ban, it might be... the sort of thing that people's conscience's disagree with... because lots of people think that people who did worse crimes or more crimes should get a worse punishment, because" they deserve to suffer more "the worse a crime is the more important it is to deter it. Related to that, he's... saying you can make a cathedral out of sand, and that everyone should just trust him that it's totally possible, but he hasn't actually shown us the cathedral if that makes sense?

And then also" hopefully this is different enough from the parts that were frustrating her that it won't sound pathetic "depending on what people know about the Lastwall laws, they might think he's calling them Evil even if he's not, and if they think it's for a stupid reason it might make them not believe him about the rest of it — like, let's say there was a person who'd heard that Lastwall counts it as torture to not feed people, and they didn't realize Lastwall doesn't count it as torture to make your kid skip dinner for one night, so they thought he was saying they were definitely Evil for that, or something — and obviously that doesn't mean you shouldn't say things are Evil when they actually are, but I think it would be helpful to... only say that if you mean to?

So I guess in terms of specific things you guys could do differently, you could... explain things better, so people know what it is that you're saying, and so they have a reason to listen that's not just that you're the Church of Iomedae, and so if there are any... sand cathedrals that are true?... people'll actually have a reason to believe them."

"Torture is very hard to talk about coherently. It is true both that it's Evil to hurt people more than you must and that there are harms that no amount of must can justify. He gives - several examples, of various places and what they do and what results they get, I'm not sure how much more evidence you want him to bring forth in a speech he didn't have long to prepare - I admit he is not very specific about exactly how Taldor and Molthune punish people but the number of ways men have come up with to bring one another pain is far too long to go about reciting on every occasion, that's much of why we collapse it into the word 'torture' even though it's not a very good word. I'm not sure where in the speech you think he could be interpreted as saying Lastwall is Evil? - or do you mean that people might think he was calling his audience evil? A lot of them are, not for sending a child to bed without supper once but in many cases for things they do not yet know to be Evil because they were brought up Asmodean.

"Ser Tauler is not making his home here at the church and is sometimes a bit scarce, and while I'm glad he was able to communicate effectively with you I'm not sure I would count on his style working well for a greater number of people than the Lord Marshal's. I could be wrong, but it could also be that he just happens to suit your understanding in particular well, or that he's good at talking one-on-one but his turns of phrase adapt poorly to public speeches."

"I don't know what he'd've needed to say to get people to believe him about the sand cathedral, I'm not the one trying to convince people you can build a cathedral out of sand. You already said Lastwall only tried it one way, it might be there's nothing he could say to convince people." On account of how what he's saying makes no sense!!!

"—And yeah, I meant, they might think he was saying they were Evil for that. Probably some of them are Evil, and some of them aren't — Korva's not, we checked, and she doesn't really seem unusually Good — but either way it doesn't help if people think you're calling them Evil for something that's not. Like, let's say you say 'it's Evil to whip kids for getting bad grades,' and some people are like 'no it's not' and stop listening to you, that sucks but it doesn't mean you should've pretended. But I think that's different from, like, you say something that sounds like you're calling something super Evil that isn't, and people decide you don't know what you're talking about.

...but, I mean, I also can't make you change anything, if you're fine with the number of potatoes you already have."

"...I'm not sure why you expect whether someone 'seems' 'unusually' Good to you on a brief acquaintance to track whether they are more or less Good than their neighbors?...

- we are never fine with the number of potatoes we already have, but I do not know how to take your advice nor am I confident it would get us additional total potatoes."

What, so if they're trying to tell people you can build a cathedral out of sand, they want people to believe them even if they didn't really check, but they're not willing to believe other people about things they actually did check? ...That's not really surprising, it fits with how they want people to listen to them just because they're the Church of Iomedae, and it was Valia's idea to check Korva but Valia isn't here. 

"...It seems hard for explaining things on the floor in a way that lets people actually understand what you mean to get you less potatoes, unless understanding you makes them agree with you less."

"Different people understand things in different ways. I'm glad that Ser Tauler made sense to you. There are hundreds of people on the floor and most of them aren't you, and I don't think that you are so similar to so many of them that we should tailor all our floor speeches to a style that worked well for you that I do not understand well enough to tell the other Iomedaeans how to do. If I happen to see Ser Tauler in a situation where I can talk to him for a few minutes I may bring it up."

That's not even what she said. She's kind of tempted to stop trying to explain this and let the Iomedaeans keep not getting their potatoes. (Half their potatoes are stupid, anyways.) But probably if she does that then the next time they're trying to argue for potatoes she does care about they're going to mess it up, and then she won't get any potatoes.

...Now she's upset about the people who want to make naked women fight to the death and sell off the winners again. She doesn't even know who they are. ...And in any case that's not going to help explain things to the paladins.

"I think maybe I explained that badly, let me try again. Do you, uh, agree with me that probably lots of people who heard Delegate Cansellarion's speech didn't really know which things he was saying were bad or why? ...and that this is a bad thing?"

"I think it is likely that he was not well understood by a number of the people in the hall. What I'm not sure about is whether there is an accessible way to make that number smaller next time."

"Well, I don't know if he can make it smaller, but if he wants potatoes I think he should try. When I say he should try, like, actually saying what his reasons are, you think that won't help, because... this is the best he can do at saying them? Because you think what he did say should be a good enough reason to vote against the law and people shouldn't need another one?"

"I think he said some things about what his reasons are. Saying more things about that would trade off against other things. He might have had to wait to speak to gather his thoughts, and even if that would have turned out fine compared to getting up as soon as he did, he couldn't know that in advance and won't next time either. He might have said something that someone wanted to disagree with in more detail and distracted the conversation from whether it's acceptable to turn people to parts to instead talk about whether his sources in Taldor or wherever were reliable. He might have spoken for another paragraph and something in that other paragraph might have been as confusing for someone other than you as what he said was for you, just because it would make the whole speech less simple and less short - a lot of people seem to specifically mistrust anything that takes too long to say, and he cannot lie so he cannot shorten things in any way that makes them false and just hope people understand he was speaking loosely. I do also think that the listed torturous punishments being Evil is a perfectly sufficient reason to vote to forbid them, but I know that not everyone in the hall will vote for things just because there are perfectly sufficient reasons to do so."

Delegate Cansellarion can't lie?? Wow, that sounds like it would really suck, is there no way for one of the archmages to fix it for him? Or is it can't, like, he's Lawful and he made a really stupid oath... this sort of thing is why it's kind of stupid to care about being Lawful, but she's not going to try to convince a paladin of that.

"...If he's worried about taking too long to think of all the things he wants to say, maybe he could try writing out his speech in advance? You're on Rights, you could've told him that there was probably going to be a big argument about punishments." 

In hindsight that would've been a good idea for Victòria, too, except for how it wouldn't have mattered because she didn't get the chance to speak. She's pretty sure her sermons from back home were mostly a lot better than the speeches she made up in ten minutes in her head.

"But, uh — so I agree that people shouldn't vote for Evil laws. Obviously it's bad to vote for Evil laws! But that goes back to what I was saying earlier, about how you guys act like people should always agree with you just because you're Iomedaeans." It didn't work because Delegate Jornet thinks people should just ignore their consciences if their consciences disagree with a priest of Iomedae, and probably it won't help to explain it again, but she's not sure what else to do.

"Not voting for Evil laws is only the same thing if none of you are ever wrong" or lying "about which laws are Evil. And maybe you think people should be assuming that, but anyone who'll vote against a law just because a priest of Iomedae said it was Evil would've definitely voted against the punishments law, unless they were so confused they didn't even realize that it counted as torture, and you'd have to be really stupid not to realize that. And I don't actually know how many people thought you were wrong about whether the law was Evil, versus how many people thought it was Evil and just didn't care, but clearly there aren't enough people who agree with always listening to Iomedaeans no matter what to actually get you the potatoes you want. So if you care about potatoes it really seems like you should try something else."