Blai has no particular expectation that Thall will get anything out of the meeting. It is not out of the question that he might have something useful to contribute to it but he can always get Blai's attention later if something he has an opinion on comes up.

Blai can probably guess most of his opinions from the fact that he almost got killed by the Inquisition. ...well, maybe not, it doesn't seem like he has a great understanding of Chaotic people, but still. He'll skip it.

In addition to Captain Harmattan and his party members, they've been joined by Baroness Gaunther, Irabeth, and various Mendevian captains that Blai has yet to meet; Harmattan introduces each of them by name, along with some basic information about the troops under their command.

It's good to meet them all. Have they had any pre-meeting briefing about the topics under discussion (namely, the Lastwall handbook as a basis for military order)?

They have been told that he's planning to introduce it. They have not actually read it, apart from the ones he's specifically discussed it with, seeing as they don't have a copy, but Captain Harmattan summarized some of the key points for them.

Do they have, based on those summaries, any preliminary points of confusion or anticipated friction?

"I don't see why you can't just enforce Mendevian law. It's not Lastwall's crusade."

"I asked Her Majesty for a written body of Mendevian law to consult and she told me there was not such a thing. I'm not local and have not had the chance to absorb the common wisdom on the matter, so if it is not written down I cannot make consistent and predictable use of it."

"Respectfully, Knight-Commander, if you don't feel qualified to administer justice based on Mendevian law you could appoint magistrates who are more familiar with it. I can't ask my men to learn an entirely new code and punish them for obeying the laws they've followed all their life."

"I am equally not qualified to assess magistrates who can Lawfully administer a military court according to Mendevian law and was not appointed any, so we are going with something that is written down and that I have used before, with some modifications to make the transition less difficult. If there are specific pain points you anticipate, addressing that is what this meeting is for."

"If what you need is for us to recommend honorable people who could administer justice fairly, I'm sure we could recommend you some."

"No thank you," whatever the rank on his outfit is, "what I need from you is predictions about which of the rules Lastwall uses will be difficult for your men. For example, if some of you expect trouble about the bit where they mustn't rape prisoners, then those of you who think they can successfully command that of their own units should be assigned the handling of prisoners, and if some of you think you cannot manage to prevent your men from gambling perhaps they should be split up and exchanged for others who do not have such an entrenched habit so that they can pick up other hobbies, and if some of you prophesy a rash of treaty breakage perhaps we need to establish and require attendance at a class on the obligations that the treaty implies, and so on."

Of course their men aren't going to break the treaty! What kind of barbarians does he take them for?

 Are they really expected to ban all gambling?

  If he's really worried people are going to rape prisoners he should just assign only women to guarding them, it'll probably be underusing them since the women are so much more likely to be magic-users but it sounds like it's better than the other options he's considering.

   ...Maybe he should go through everything in the handbook, just so that they can be sure they're all on the same page?

"Gambling for trivial stakes such as raisins or pebbles is under a lenient interpretation of the handbook permissible and I would be inclined to allow it, as I have never observed a person to ruin their life over being ten raisins in debt. I am concerned about all abuse of prisoners, but the idea of having women as guards may well reduce the total risk and you are more than welcome to try it if you believe that is the best way to achieve the results we must see from your unit. We should certainly go over the handbook, and the addenda that I've already been convinced to incorporate."

This meeting is not fun in the once a month sense but it is very much within what one might term Blai's "comfort zone". People will say silly lawless things and then he will tell them no and reiterate that they are trying to achieve an objective and focus the conversation on how to make that happen in real life until the next time someone says a silly lawless thing, and then he can keep track of who says the fewest of those so he can have them in mind to promote later.

Ember listens seriously to the explanation of the handbook. 

"...Would that mean you have to hurt anyone you catch who's done something against the rules, even if they've stopped hurting people and won't do it again?"

"In the absence of prophecy, the main way I have to guess whether they'll do it again is whether they've done it before. It can, also, help people throw off things like Suggestions, if it would be not only a bad idea in general but also specifically risky to themselves, to break an important rule."

"It's very bad for people, and makes it much harder for them to stop hurting people, if stopping means they'll be hurt for sure."

"If I understand you correctly - that is why these rules are designed to be gentler on people who report themselves instead of waiting to be caught, or who take steps to hurt people less even if they don't stop entirely on their own, and so on."

Is that... a child. Why is there a child in this meeting. For that matter why is there a lizardman in this meeting.

"I might have misunderstood, but it sounded like there were some rules where you would have to punish someone very strictly for breaking them, even if they stopped on their own and turned themselves in. ...and it seems very sad if people who've changed for good end up dead, even if they took a little longer about it. I know it can be scary not to be sure whether someone is going to start hurting people again, but sometimes it's not hard to tell."

"Yes, some things remain very serious even with mitigating circumstances, and the best we can do is get them counseling and pray that they make it somewhere all right when they die. It is possible that you are very good at telling; I don't know if that is a power that your kind of caster can develop well enough to see through very skilled liars or not. Maybe Nenio can help design an experiment where we can find out if you are good enough at it to use in this context."

"I would be happy to do so. However, this will require that some of the experimental subjects be given sufficiently lenient sentences to allow for further observation; it does not require very impressive powers of observation to successfully predict that a cadaver will commit no further crimes."

She thinks for a moment. "You could make a rule that if someone stops hurting people, and tells you about the things they did that were against the rules before you catch them, then you won't hurt them, even if what they did was very bad? And that way if someone wants to stop they'll have a chance to, and you won't be forcing yourself to hurt them."

"We have bigger concerns than not killing demon cultists, little girl."

Blai shoots a withering look in that direction and then turns back to Ember. "The trouble is, we have to be able to trust people in the army, so this would create an incentive for anyone who wanted to leave the army to break a lot of rules and then confess so we'd have to dismiss them."