"You're not wrong. I'm aware of the fallacy. But. It is also true that sometimes, when doing the right thing is difficult--you can only do so many difficult things at once. We're not there yet; I'm not suggesting we're there yet, that we should go after wand-boy and his mistress or black silk girl. But when--if, I'll freely admit it's an if--it comes time that things are too hard and something has to give, I want us to be thinking about the fact that you can't just go on doing arbitrarily difficult things forever and something will give, and I want us to be able to make an intelligent decision about what." 

"You're right, I don't like it. I admit that you're right about burnout; I've seen it happen in my post-apocalyptic wasteland. But it shouldn't be you or me who decides when we've reached that point." 

"I'm perfectly willing to accept that." 

"Well - who, then - majority vote or something? I suppose we might not be able to form a quorum if things were particularly dire."

"I mean, I think if things come down to a dire emergency situation, none of us is going to bite anyone's head off for doing what they had to do in the moment, assuming they really actually had to do it, especially since I don't think any of us can do anything that none of us can reverse. But, like--I dunno, my first instinct is that you're the most mind-protective person here, if you say it's okay then it's definitely okay--maybe, outside of emergency situations you're port of first call, and if you say no then we can vote to override you?"

"I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with this plan, although I doubt there are many situations where Kiri would say no where I'd say yes." 

"Even if it's a weird edge case, it's the kind of weird edge case we should have a procedure in advance for!"

"Ironically, I wouldn't consider myself expert enough to design something better, so I'm fine with that system." 

"Why's that ironic?"

"--My father is a powerful nobleman; I have been actively failing to learn politics from a young age."

"How do you actively fail to learn politics?"

"The parts about trade and infrastructure I do alright with, but the parts about dealing with people who are only out for their own interests in a setting where everybody knows that most people are only out for their own interests but everybody has to pretend they care about being a good ruler consistently escapes me. My responses are always either too paranoid or too trusting. It's why I decided not to worry about the possibility that you were secretly mind-controlling everyone; my odds of calculating the odds accurately and coming up with a reasonable response were negligible, so I decided that it was more likely to be a situation where 'too trusting' was the right answer than one where 'too paranoid' was. I couldn't constructively deal with the possibility that anyone in the group was secretly a mind-controller lying in wait, so I had to decide to trust everyone. --It's less of a handicap back home because my twin sister is good at people in all the ways I'm not. But she isn't here." 

(Idarai quietly thinks that while he does love his own twin sister very much he's also glad she isn't here.)

"Okay. Well, I'm okay with being the point person for deciding if it's time to move to - offensive solutions. So to speak."

"Sorry you're the most conservative one here."

"--Are you joking, because at a place like this that really can't be comforting." 

"I was not joking." 

"On the other hand, everyone's comparative lack of conservatism means we'll all let her read our minds, so that part probably helps."

"It doesn't hurt."

"I hope the other classes are more interesting than hypnotism. Not that I'm planning to underestimate hypnotists, but it kind of has zero non-mind-control applications." 

"Mesmerra did say the magic class would be broader than that..."

"I could imagine self-hypnosis ever being useful but yeah, I'm more looking forward to magic and tech."

"Self-hypnosis is still mind control, it's just, you know, ethical mind control. Of which it isn't the only form; obviously if one is self-hypnotizing there's consent involved but one can receive consent from outside parties." 

"Or undoing damage someone else did." 

"Yup."