"We've got exile on the books, but it almost never comes up. And imprisonment, though that one is mostly relevant for labor sentences for spellcasters. There are also a few additional forms of punishment for members of the military, or members of the government."

"And then, uh, people'll argue a lot about whether it technically counts as punishment or not, but the magistrates have a ton of discretion about being able to make you do things that they think'll get you to stop doing crimes, like, they can make you go to spiritual counseling, they can say you have to get a different job, if the thing you did is fixable they can say you have to fix it, sometimes they'll make someone repeat something they said at their trial as a sort of... speech?... They've still got to follow the other rules, like the ones about not doing torture, but I'm sure there's all kinds of things that have happened once or twice that I've never even heard of."

He doesn't like the idea of magistrates having a lot of discretion, but if they can't torture you that puts an obvious bound on how badly they can use it.  He tries to focus on his planning.

He's kind of curious if they make the whippings worse if they know you are an adventurer with the extra toughness, but it sounds like they have enough options on punishments they can just give him a different one if it comes up.

"What is spiritual counseling?  I think in Cheliax that just means a priest lies to you a bunch, maybe while torturing you, and then demands something."  It wasn't that different in the cult either... except for the leader, who liked giving him puzzles and riddles to work on.  It is pathetic to feel bad about killing the leader when the leader was probably weighing the odds of needing to eventually maledict himself.

"—It can include a few different things but in Andoran none of them are torture. In general it's... when there's something you want advice about, and there's a priest who you think'll have a good perspective, so you talk to them about it? I think if a magistrate sentences you to spiritual counseling they probably... talk about why you broke the law, and then if you were confused about whether what you were doing was right they talk to you about why it was wrong, or if you did something wrong and you don't want to do it again they... give you suggestions on how to stop?... and if you did something wrong and you aren't interested in stopping I don't know what they do. And if you were actually doing the right thing then it probably depends on which god they're a priest of. But most spiritual counseling's for other reasons, like — if you're trying to do the right thing but you want help figuring out what that looks like, or you have questions about the gods and you're hoping they'll know, or you think you're about to die, or you're in a confusing situation and you want advice, or — if you know you've done something Evil, or a lot of things that are Evil, and you regret it, and you want to make up for it."

"That sounds helpful."  He bets you can get advice from a Caydenite spiritual counselor over a drink.  That seems like the sort of thing they would do and maybe being told to be pathetic to stay out of Hell or the Abyss (he assumes that is why most people would bother trying to do the right thing in the first place) wouldn't be so bad if you're a touch drunk.

"Do you do any counseling?"

"Sometimes, yeah, it's not the main thing I do but it comes up every now and then. —Was there something you were hoping for counseling about?"

What do you if you regret killing someone, even if they were Evil and going to maledict someone?  He doesn’t want to talk about it.

“Maybe, I’ll think about it…”

"You don't have to if you don't want to. Or if you do want to but you'd rather wait till we get to Andoran and find someone else to talk to that's also fine."

Meanwhile, he connects the final strands of the spellform for his Unseen Servant, save for the connection necessary to actually cast the spell.

He actually finished first even though he started later, he’s practiced getting his scaffold up and down fast.  With Sinashakti finished and Mateo’s conversation finished, he’ll repeat some of their discussion for the groups benefit.

“So if we have an unseen servant open the bag of holding while it is inside the rope trick, and are just around the corner outside the rope trick, we should be safe from most possible symbol effects, as most of them are bursts or emanations that can go around corners.  Once we’ve had an unseen servant poke around for a bit and set off any symbols… there are still a few other common magical traps, but most of them require active reading writing, not just passively seeing a symbol, so the unseen servant can’t set them off in advance, but we can also just avoid reading them.  We can look back over the stuff we take out with a detect magic to try to find any remaining traps.  If the unseen servants do set off any symbols, some of the more common ones can take tens of minutes to discharge, so to wait it out we might need up two hours.  I’ll defer the judgement on when in our day works best for that.”

He pauses for a moment.

“Those are the major points of consideration I came up with so far, if anyone had any other precautions or recommendation that would be good.”

"...If we wait till tomorrow there's, uh, technically a trick I can do with a Summon Monster II, for anything that's triggered by reading, but it'd only work some of the time, so it's probably not worth waiting." Also, it'd really suck to hit a random person with one of the nasty symbols, even though they'd almost certainly be okay afterwards — she wouldn't do it unless they agreed, but it'd be better not to have to.

"Is there a reason we're putting the bag in the Rope Trick and going outside rather than putting the bag outside and staying here?"

"If we stay inside the rope trick and put the bag outside then we could be stuck inside the bag waiting out a symbol's duration.  That would be an hour and a half if the wizard that teleported on top of us was fifth circle-"

"I'm pretty sure he was sixth circle."

"So waiting two hours for the symbol's duration to expire... except if he had extend spell metamagic?"

He glances questioningly at Mateo.

"I don't know, I didn't see him typically use a rod or staff or whatever?"

He's kind of proud of himself for knowing that either a rod or a staff are usually involved in metamagic.

"So he didn't have metamagic rod, but he still might have known how to use extend metamagic, which would mean waiting four hours for the symbol.  Except... I know a few examples of symbols, but I can't rule out an obscure symbol spell I haven't heard of with a longer duration.  A hypothetical two hours per caster circle duration would mean we would be stuck past this rope trick expiring, at which point it would drop us on top of a potentially nasty symbol.  The obvious solution would be to have an unseen servant just shove it back in the bag, but if it's something that can disrupt or destroy the unseen servant before it can do so, then that wouldn't work.  So it's not overwhelmingly in favor of putting it inside the rope trick, but I think on the balance... oh and if we're concerned about someone teleporting on top of us, I could cast another rope trick from my amulet and we could wait in that one?"

"I don't really know what your trade-offs are on waiting versus getting the bag opened sooner?  Like maybe if it has something extremely useful like a teleport scroll that is worth the rush?"

He expects everyone in his party would actually prefer to save a scroll of Teleport for an emergency rather than simply using it to escape to Andoran immediately, but by rights the two defectors have an equal right to any such scrolls, and he suspects they would prefer not to risk being captured by either the Chelish government or anyone affiliated with the cult.

"The primary benefit of opening the bag today is that even if it takes several hours, we weren't planning to spend today travelling, so it won't delay our departure. Secondary benefits include, as you say, the possibility of the bag containing particularly useful items, or time-sensitive information, as well as the fact that it would enable us to distribute the items among the six of us immediately — though we could do so regardless, at some risk of a less fair distribution. If we do open it today, it likely makes sense to do so just after you cast your Rope Trick, which should outlast any Symbols unless he had a particularly rare technique."

They’re giving him a cut?  Good people are great!  He hopes all of his future fellow pirates are Good so he can count on them to give him his fair share.

“I’m in favor!”

He would really rather minimize risks to his life until he detects as Chaotic Neutral (or better).  It’s nice to have confirmation that they will give him a share of the loot though.

She looks between the two wizards. "Do either of you know, is there a spell any of us could prepare that'd make it easy to deal with whatever's in the bag? Or is it more like, if we wait until tomorrow we'll still have all the same problems, but slightly better odds if it turns out he could do something weird? I know there's some kinds of magic you can't just Dispel without setting them off..."

“A dispel would have bad odds against a caster three circles higher than us… I have heard of a spell to Erase magic writing (which would get symbols as well as other trapped writing like explosive runes)… I think it also depends on the caster’s strength, and thus it had the same problems as a dispel?  I don’t have it anyway… I can’t recall if it was abjuration or transmutation?”

"Transmutation, but it's ineffective against all of the Symbol spells that I am familiar with. It can erase Explosive Runes, but at some risk of inadvertently triggering them." He runs his finger over the leather bracelet on his left wrist.

"So probably not worth it?  I've been trying to think of other traps besides magic writing...  Cursed items are a possibility but detect magic should show any problems.  Poisons should show up to detect poison.  Any dormant creature powerful enough to be a serious threat would probably also be large enough it would waste too much bag space.  Misdirection only lasts for hours so even a sixth circle wouldn't want to waste the spell slots on keeping traps concealed.  Well... magic aura and greater magic aura last for two days per caster circle... so we can't be completely confident in any results of detect magic... I suppose a skillful illusionist might be able to interfere with the results of detect poison as well even though the spell normally just effects magical auras?  So we check everything after the unseen servants have been through it once, but we don't get overconfident in the results of the check?  I suppose we could hold off on using anything not absolutely necessary and wait 11 or 12 days (or 24 days to allow for the possibility of extend) and check the items again after that duration, just to be cautious?"

"To answer the original question, there isn't any spell that would make it significantly easier that I know of.  There are lots of things we can do to slightly improve our odds and cover weird possibilities."