An Abadaran will be cheapest at first circle, which (someone does some figures about how many Truthtellings per month that works out to)... the random audit plan sounds like his best chance of getting this done.

 One of his other advisors wants to stand up for the honor of the coat-makers and coat-procurers! Of course no one is going to be procuring subpar coats on purpose, but it's not like anyone has invented a Create Coat spell to create a bunch of identical coats, some of them will be heavier or less scratchy or better at keeping out the wind.

  Does he have a plan for ensuring that people don't slack off at their jobs if they're effectively taking a pay cut and being expected to spend more time on paperwork?

Maybe first crack at sorting through a new batch of coats can be awarded for good behavior but like actual good behavior and not... being friends or whatever it is they're doing.

There is not a specific inflection point of pay and working conditions at which people inevitably start slacking off at their jobs. Whatever incentives they have previously been accustomed to using to make people do their jobs despite not being paid even more than they already were and having even fewer responsibilities than they already did should be given a fair shake.

Does he want them to get an Abadaran as soon as possible even if it means a more expensive or less experienced Abadaran, or would he prefer to resolve that tradeoff in some other way? ...For that matter, if Fiducia Rathimus is coming on Crusade, would it be possible to hire him? She's not sure if it would be some sort of conflict-of-interest, and separately whether he needs his Truthtelling slots for other purposes.

It is worth asking Rathimus what he would charge to do audits, he himself will know best if this creates a conflict of interest he can't manage, but he's fifth-circle so his time is very valuable. Fiducia Boian is also fifth-circle and also has another job but Blai knows him and might be able to work something out, he's not sure, his letter probably hasn't reached him yet. They can march out in the morning without having an Abadaran already; as with the randomized Truthtellings, the knowledge that they are seeing about getting one and seriously cracking down on graft should have some quelling effect. He doesn't expect Drezen to be much more financially complicated than sitting around in a city. Maybe less. If somebody is keeping a mistress in Drezen this is a much more serious and fundamentally different problem.

What exactly is he going to want them to affirm under Truthtelling?

That they have not misappropriated budgetary funds, made decisions that might affect the quality of their work negatively for personal reasons, defrauded anyone in any way, or permitted this to be either known to them or have avoidable space to hide such malfeasance in anyone who reports to them.

...they're all about to look at him like he's an inevitable who's never been to Golarion before, aren't they.

...Some of them are at least putting in some effort to hide it? But yes. 

"If you find me a man who can pass that I'd hang him as a Norgorberite, for being able to beat a Truthtelling."

 "I think that's a myth, actually? Abadar is stronger than Norgorber, he wouldn't let — sorry, that's a side point."

  "Ser Tirabade is married, so to speak, is that illegal now?"

   "Frankly, Knight-Commander, I don't have the slightest idea how I would possibly ensure that not only was I not making any decisions that might possibly be affected by my personal relationships, but no one under me was either."

    "You should make it time-bounded to the point when you changed the rules if you want it to tell you anything."

"...we can time-bound it, yes. It's only work-affecting decisions but if the standard of confidence is too high perhaps we can soften that part."

"A man's patrol squad gets attacked, in the heat of battle he runs up to join one of his squadmates and not another, he thinks it's the best tactical call but he can't be absolutely certain it wasn't partially because he liked the first one better—"

 "Does 'this person was recommended by someone I trust as highly suited for the job I gave to them' count as 'personal reasons,' or 'I know this person isn't trustworthy because of their conduct in their personal life,' or are you saying those don't count?"

  "That can't be what he means, he'd be asking us to fight with one arm behind our backs."

 Pointed look.

"I would not consider those personal reasons, just personally-acquired information, so clearly the wording needs work. Perhaps I will discuss it with Fiducia Rathimus, who has seen more of" Mendevians "the application of his spell than I."

Most people in the room visibly relax a little.

Oh good. Other issues?

Some people in the army are volunteers, not conscripts, but committed to serving a specific term such that they can't just quit. It seems kind of unfair to change the rules in the middle of their term so that they're subject to much stricter standards than they thought they were committing to follow. Maybe he could wait a while longer before starting to phase in the new standards?

How long are these terms?

It depends, but mostly a few years.

..........no, he is not going to wait a few years. If any of these people want to appeal to him because they find the tightened rules anxiety-inducing or something (could not be him) he is happy to arrange for there to be classes and so on in their application until everyone understands them, but if someone signed up for the army one of the things they signed up for was following orders, even and especially when those orders were not predictable completely in advance, and "don't embezzle" is an order as much as it is anything else.

Irabeth has some concerns about the proposal to supplement the rules changes with an increased alcohol ration for good behavior. That seems, ah, like it has some risk of being counterproductive.

She furrows her brow. "What's wrong with alcohol?"

"It often inspires people to Lawless conduct, quarrels with their fellows, and recklessness."

"Only if they're not responsible with it!"

"Yes, but its most ardent aficionados are the least likely to be responsible with it. Someone who has a beer in the evening will skip it for a week and be slightly grouchy. Someone who has five may have a medical problem if they attempt the same thing and will experience concordant desperation about it. I don't like the increased alcohol ration approach very much but I have fairly limited tools."

...Next issue, Lastwall apparently lets people clear their name under a Truthtelling if they're accused of a capital crime, is he really going to want to do that for every single case? Maybe as a compromise they could do it only for cases where it's not blatantly obvious what happened. (Also, does that apply to cultists captured in battle? Because if it does this policy is probably going to be interpreted as 'don't ever take cultists prisoner in battle if you can possibly avoid it, just kill them all.')

....well the alternative to doing that in every single case is killing innocent people some of the time and he's pretty against killing innocent people, he's pretty sure that one is not supposed to do that. They could make them pay for their own Truthtellings (or their friends can) and they only get it back if they're innocent? It's not ideal but it maybe acceptably reflects the relevant scarcity. Taking prisoners is inconvenient but Iomedae did and prescribed doing it.

Obviously they're going to make them pay for their own Truthtellings! (They're not really sure why they would refund the innocent but if he's really committed to that it's probably not a huge extra expense, though they'd still prefer not to pay it.) But even without counting prisoners taken in battle, sometimes they might arrest a whole nest of cultists at once, and if all of them get a Truthtelling they'd have to wait days to finish. If they are counting prisoners taken in battle it would be... more than days, probably, if the policy gets out.

 It's totally reasonable that he doesn't want to execute people who might be innocent! That's why they suggested the compromise of allowing prisoners a Truthtelling if it's not really obvious they're guilty. But if you storm a meeting full of Deskari cultists and catch everyone there sacrificing a captive to Deskari, you can be pretty sure they're all guilty (possibly excepting the captive).

  Actually, if he likes Abadarans so much, maybe they could try handling it in an Abadaran way? Announce how many Truthtellings will be available that day and the next and let the prisoners bid on them, whoever bids highest gets the Truthtellings and everyone else can hang. Innocent people would probably be willing to pay more, unless the cultists are really rich, or at least this person is pretty sure that's how Abadaranism works.

   This policy doesn't apply to known casters, right? It's a lot harder to be sure they won't have some trick for escaping or killing their guards, especially if they're out of Truthtellings and need to wait for the next morning.

There is something that does not sound quite right about - ah, he's figured it out, cultists might outbid the innocent just to get the innocent killed. It's not like they can take their money to the Abyss.

Any step you will skip when it's really obvious you can skip it is a step you will skip if Suggested.

It may be that they cannot actually do very well in this dimension. They can compensate some with putting mass captures through Zones instead of getting them all their own Touch, but this is a compromise to necessity, not best practice.