"We might disagree about how to categorize some things but I agree that the categories exist."

"...and I think sometimes when paladins talk about something being torture, or about torture being bad, they mean the first thing, and sometimes they mean the second thing? But I'm — guessing a bit, at some of the things people meant today and yesterday."

"That's a good verbalization of why I've wanted to conduct much of this conversation without using the word, yes. It'd be hard to come up with a definition of 'torture' that definitely excluded whipping the way Lastwall does it and didn't have to refer copiously to how necessary or customary or restrained it was. It's inflicting pain because it's painful, and if it's in the hope that it will achieve something else in the process, so too is torturing people for information, which is forbidden. So - yes. Sometimes they mean that the tradeoffs do not seem to them to turn out right, but they could in principle be convinced if they learned a compelling set of facts; and sometimes they mean that there aren't any things they're willing to buy at that price."

Torturing people for information seems different, you might accidentally torture an innocent person. Also sometimes people being tortured will start lying even though it won't stop them from being tortured, which is really confusing but she's seen it.

"...did you have other things to say about torture and punishments or should I ask about some of the other things I was confused about?"

"Go ahead."

She flips through her notes.

"So, with the conscience exemptions to conscription we were discussing in Rights today — I assume you're going to say that those are for... people whose conscience notices bad things about war more than most people, or something along those lines? But it still seems like, any given war is either Good or Evil, someone's conscience might notice more of one or the other but you're still either conscripting people for an Evil war or letting them out of fighting a Good war."

"It's more complicated than that. For one thing a lot of conscription isn't necessarily about a specific war. Someone could be conscripted for a standing army, and then it could get into battles or not without any individual soldiers being able to control that. They could be conscripted for a war and then it could change in character over time, if more combatants enter the fight or if one side presses an advantage. A war can have an excellent cause and involve a lot of Evil in the details - the retaking of Cheliax was essential but the Rahadoumi and Galtan troops did not have the discipline to avoid looting and attacking civilians in Ostenso and Corentyn. It can be a purely defensive posture like maintenance of the border with Belkzen but tend to inculcate Evil habits, like automatically thinking of any orc as the enemy even when individual orcs and part-orcs can often integrate well as neighbors. But even if it is for a specific war of predictable scope, and even if it's the case that the war is definitely either good or evil, to implement a policy about it, everyone making decisions in the course of handling that policy has to agree on the facts, and they won't. The one fact that the conscript has more information about than anyone else is what their conscience has to say about war - whether they are in extra danger of Evil habits, whether they will be able to withstand the pressures that tend to make soldiers rape and pillage, whether they would be abandoning responsibilities at home that are unusually important to them, whether they will be able to becalm themselves after their service is over and return to a civilian life without carrying home a violent mindset..."

Now she feels kind of sick but at least her question got answered. You would really think anyone with a conscience at all could just not rape people. 

Flip flip flip. "Uh, next question, people keep talking about 'virtue' or 'being virtuous' and it seems like they mean, like, three totally different things...?"

"They probably do, there are a lot of virtues and many pairs of them pull against each other."

"...Some of the ways people use it don't seem to quite line up with that. Like, sometimes it seems like they just mean 'being a good person,' or sometimes it's... something about sex? I think?"

"Not having sex that risks a child out of wedlock, or, more broadly, not allowing any room for suspicion that one has any sex out of wedlock at all, and points between the two. The former is genuinely important; the latter can be a way to support people who don't naturally care about it in treating it seriously at all, though it tends to chafe Chelish sensibilities in the Reclamation's collective experience."

Well, people suspect her of having sex all the time, it really seems like that says more about them than about her. And presumably the people saying confusing things about virtue understand that sometimes people get forced, but even if you ignore that completely it doesn't really make sense to say that everyone who goes to wizard school is a bad person just because they're basically all sleeping with each other.

...Probably if she tries to explain that Delegate Jornet is going to just assume she's upset because she's a whore or something.

Flip flip— "Maybe related to that, one of the delegates on Family is from Osirion, and a lot of the time he says things that are confusing. But it's not so much that I have questions exactly, and you're not from Osirion anyways, so I'm not sure if you can make what he's saying make sense."

"I'm not from Osirion but I've served with people who are. They lean very hard in the direction of not allowing any room for suspicion that one has sex out of wedlock at all - between a man and a woman, that is, it's very popular there to make the premarital period a bit less burdensome with same-sex affairs. Respectable Osirians are never alone with an unrelated member of the same sex, ever. I think they achieve very low rates of rape this way in addition to low rates of every other way bastards are conceived, but it's hard to be sure because while the Osirians have remarkably good research and recordkeeping no one else does."

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."