Blai nods along, especially at "sleep". "I've been having some luck with disseminating material during marches but of course we will not always be on the march. Do you think you could attempt something similar, not with a view to actually assigning any paladins to anything new in the near term but the creation of knowledge that it's not impossible?"

She nods. "I'd be willing to attempt it, yes. —Some of the paladins from the Eagle Watch are also accompanying us on Crusade, if it would be helpful to assign a few paladins to that sort of role as a demonstration, though I would want to ensure they're given training on details of the situation that might be different from what they were accustomed to in Kenabres."

"I am of course as new to most of these situations as they are, but if this takes the form of - organizing drills or something, that shouldn't be out of reach."

Nod. "Were there any duties you were particularly hoping to assign them to? If possible I'd like to have them speak with people who've been involved with those tasks in the mobile army, to help them anticipate what sort of complications they might face and think through how to handle those situations before they actually face them."

"Well, if I come up with a way to run any part of this edifice without corruption it would be a way to be noisily alerted to backsliding."

"If they need to be literate and good with figures I will have somewhat fewer to offer you, unfortunately."

"I've been having Mr. Jefto teach Ser Seelah and Lann to read, do you think more would be interested?"

"It's possible, though I don't know if all of them are clever enough to pick it up. I think it's unlikely they'll treat it as a high priority unless I instruct them to, though I can if you think it's strategically indicated."

"I am accustomed to having men most of whom will not read if they do not have to but vanishingly few of whom cannot if they must, but perhaps it's more expedient to just train me on the skills associated with managing illiterates who won't be able to make use of so much as a posted schedule or notice."

"—Huh. It's convenient when I get someone who can read, but I'm not used to treating the fact that most of my people can't as an unusual constraint, rather than just... the way the world is. So I know where to begin, what did you do with the 'vanishingly few' illiterates you previously managed?"

"I didn't promote them, for one, and made sure their squad leaders knew they were responsible for relaying anything put about in writing."

"The officers are expected to know how to read, and to my knowledge they generally in fact do. But scheduling and other announcements are generally communicated verbally — it's possible that Mendevians are typically given less varied schedules than you're accustomed to? If you'll be doing the same thing every day, or every other, that's easy enough to remember."

"We'd generally have on the wall things like - you'd want each patrol to know who they were following and who was expected after them so a gap would be noticed and corroborated if one vanished; they might not be in the same order every day. The kitchen staff had a list of who wasn't to have alcohol and for how long. There were classes and a schedule for them on the wall and they varied with the instructors' availability."

She nods. "The mobile army is under different constraints, but at the forts they don't reorder the patrols without a specific reason, and if they swap some people between patrols they communicate this fact verbally — they might also have a written schedule posted, some of the soldiers can read, but it wouldn't be the primary way to communicate changes. Unit commanders distribute little chits for the alcohol ration, and are expected to know which of their people aren't supposed to have access to it; lending someone a chit who's been cut off is grounds for losing access to it yourself. If someone wants to hold a new class, or announce a schedule change for a class that isn't happening when expected, they announce it verbally, usually at a mealtime, and allow the news to spread by word of mouth. —That does seem less efficient than having a posted schedule that anyone can read." (She's curious how Cheliax is achieving that. She hadn't pegged them as sending their best and brightest to the Worldwound, apart from the wizards.)

Unfortunately the way they are achieving that is the Chelish public school system. "Understood. I haven't been personally meddling in the schedule details much so whatever they're presently doing seems to be working fine."

"Are there aspects of the corruption situation that are particularly important to you to address? In case it's relevant to which strategies are likely to be effective."

"I am particularly urgent about making payroll without any of it going missing."

"Mmm. I don't know how well this would generalize to the Crusade, it's much larger and the situation is rather different, but one strategy I tried when I first took over the Eagle Watch was to require all purchases to be meticulously documented, on the theory that it was better to know where the money was going even if I didn't like the answer. This strategy had a number of flaws — it was very unpopular, it required a lot of my personal attention, and to get anything resembling compliance I needed to credibly communicate that I would be more lenient about a purchase record with a line item for bribery than about an attempt at secret bribery — but it might be better than the alternatives, if you can pull it off." 

"This works with the rampant illiteracy?"

"For an organization the size of the Eagle Watch, yes, though of course it requires oversight from the literate members. I don't know whether that would still hold for something the size of the Crusade."

"Well, to take a crack at it I'd first need to know who in the Crusade is in fact authorized to spend anything other than their own wage, have we got a list -"

"...It might be possible to put one together?" 

And after a few more questions, she departs to attempt this.

She's very useful. If he had any fucking spare money he would give her a bonus. Maybe he can issue awards or something at some point???

Compared to the previous couple of days, this one is comparatively uneventful. His soldiers have more questions about whether they can abuse the illegal orders framework to get out of tasks they'd prefer not to do. Count Arendae brings him on a brief excursion to meet with the cousin who might or might not be competent enough for an officer commission; he's a little green, but not incompetent, and there would certainly be worse candidates even if this one didn't come with more funding for the Crusade. (The Count lightly implies afterwards that he hopes the Knight-Commander is grateful for him arranging the meeting on such short notice.) Anevia discreetly informs him that her people have, in the process of attempting to identify secret Baphomet cultists, identified a small cult of unempowered Urgathoans who appear to believe that if they offer up a small portion of their rations to her she'll protect them from diseases; how would he like for her to handle the situation?

They cannot abuse the illegal orders framework to get out of tasks they'd prefer not to do.

There's worse than "a little green" about; Blai will take him. Arendae is going to have to be clearer about what form he would like gratitude to take so that Blai can benchmark against that to determine if he is technically above the minimum threshold of gratitude or not.

Urgathoans do not to his knowledge have any habit of systematically upholding the Worldwound treaty or being useful in any way like Asmodeans do so they really can't be having with that. What is on the books for it and is there some reason to not just do exactly that?