"I do think the - ultimate ideal of a human society - is a system that works with humans, for human reasons, off the strength of human virtues, without a god supervising. And without an immortal ruler, that also seems to work and yet not feel like the ultimate and satisfying answer. Axis doesn't have succession wars and I don't find that satisfactory, either, because Axis is succeeding at that by not in fact being made up of mortals, and it can't be the case that mortals aren't good enough. I have known mortals who are good enough.

I expect Lastwall to be subject to a lot of interference by Evil gods. Even if there can be countries that select their rulers in open debate, I would expect that there would be powerful forces - and not just human selfishness - steering them away from being an actual organized force for Good in the world. It's not fair, that the task isn't just to build something robust to human frailty but also to build something robust to the active and careful manipulation of powerful forces that hate humans and want to see us fail, but - I think that is the task.

And if you propose a solution to all that then it seems very difficult to me to build a republic that doesn't end up run by the most charismatic person around, which isn't the same as the one who'll do the best job, and that I haven't thought of a solution to even in principle even when the scope of my proposals includes 'god treaty against interfering in elections'? - Aroden didn't think that'd work."

"Crusades, it is well known, rarely wind up being run by the most charismatic person around."

"I have contemplated a rule you can't wear Splendour in council, but where am I going to get a headband without it."

"- and quite seriously I don't think of Lastwall as a place that would ideally end up ruled by the next person with my personal qualities. Ideally the next person like me would study there, learn what could be learned about how to fight wars that make the world better, skip the mistakes I spent two decades making, be one of their commanders if there were a really important fight to have somewhere, and then go around clearing the high seas of charibdi and siding with the more Good side of various conflicts, or threatening to, and eventually raiding the Evil afterlives, because it's fairly absurd resource allocation to have your arguably-fifth-circle paladins running your country, even if we're good at conquering them.

- or you could say that a person with my personal qualities, in that society, doesn't get paladin circles because it doesn't seem like the best way to make anything better, and instead specializes in government, and does end up ruling Lastwall while being unclear by which end to hold a sword, this thought experiment rather turns on what one thinks of as my essential personal qualities."

"My point is that splendour is a path to power regardless of what system you have for picking leaders, possibly short of direct divine intervention, rather than that being a unique failing of republics. Our command tent doesn't have anyone in it of merely average splendour, even if many of us are only moderately splendid without our headbands."

"That's fair. I think - 

- 'good battlefield commander' is not a sufficient condition for a wise and just ruler, not even close. I suspect it's better than 'good politician', but perhaps that's only because every politician I've met was operating in Taldor. Good battlefield commanders are obliged to temper their splendor with a modicum of attention to the probability their plans will work."

"I think that living in a royal court makes politicians worse – probably it makes everyone worse, but it does matter less so long as they're not trying to govern. They only for a courtier to get a governorship or a ministry or whatever else is to convince the emperor, and the emperor doesn't care if the courts are just or the roads are safe or the tariffs are fair. He wants his taxes, and if his peasants rebel, he'd like it to concern him as little as possible.

Or, let's say we're very lucky and our emperor is public-spirited. If the governor of – let's say Ligos – is selling his free peasants into serfdom, he'd very much like to know. Who's going to tell him? Not the peasants, they'd be beaten for trying to leave their farms, and if they did manage to escape and make it as far as Oppara, nobody'd let them near the palace. And not the governor's staff, they need him to advance, as much as he needs the emperor. The governor's jealous rivals at court would be a better bet – though of course there's no reason they'd limit themselves to real abuses instead of false ones, and indeed they don't. So our hypothetical good emperor decides the only thing for it is to go visit Ligos himself. Fine. He can't travel without at least half the court, and moving the whole menagerie won't take less than two months. So he gets to Ligos, and he finds charming villages and happy farmers all prepared for him. But our emperor is wise! He leaves behind his agents, to observe and report – 

– at which point he's assassinated by his oldest son, who would probably have gotten around to it eventually, even if the governor of Ligos hadn't promised to support him in the next civil war. 

No emperor, no matter how wise or good he is, can really know what his subjects need, because nobody ever has any reason to tell him. With an elected representative, it's different. People might be gullible selfish fools, but it's really extraordinarily difficult to talk one into believing that he wants to be taxed until his children starve, or hanged for letting his pigs forage in his lord's forest, or see his crops flooded because nobody's repaired levees for ten years. If he doesn't like his lord, he can't do anything about it. If he doesn't like his representative, he'll vote for another. And maybe those representatives will all be charming enough that their citizens won't notice if they're being governed badly or well – but if that's so, I truly despair of our ability to build a society better than what we have now." 

"That problem I have worked on a lot, though not with elected government as a mechanism specifically. I want - I want there to be a place with some actual law. Few rules, consistently enforced, with everyone knowing exactly who to complain to and exactly who to complain to if that fails, if they're being treated unjustly. The same laws for everyone, except more responsibility with more power.  On the Crusade we train - if your commander gives you an unlawful order, you go to their commander, and if you have some reason to believe that won't work you go straight to me, you'll never get in trouble for that.

If Encarthan has any lord selling anyone into serfdom then I'd expect the victims or their relatives or their friends have a temple they can report it to or which will notice them missing and is obliged to report that, and a magistrate in the same situation, and if anyone involved knows anyone in a city they know how to go into the city courts and report a problem. 

I've been trying to design an Inquisition that isn't evil. There are - all the obvious reasons they get that way, right, but you need a mechanism to go look into corruption and wrongdoing, and it needs to work, it needs to be trustworthy and not go after people for anything outside its own purview and not try to strengthen its own power base and not be possible to bribe. Which is partially a matter of institutional culture, and partially a matter of external incentives, and frankly partially a matter of divine intervention but that's where divine intervention goes farthest, as a predictable-and-thus-rarely-necessary response to misconduct by the people who are supposed to look out for it. 

I'm not sure if you're saying that I fail at that and there are lords selling people into serfdom, or just that it's - fragile, to possess that in significant part because of ongoing divine intervention."

"I'm not sure what you'd consider a failure. If Lastwall was trying to be a country, I'd have complaints, but it's really more of a permanent bulwark against evil that by unfortunate necessity happens to have people living in it." 

"Hmmm. 

I want Lastwall to make the world a better place, as much as it's possible for one small country to do that. There are a lot of ways it could do that. One is by, yes, having a large standing army it can use to keep Tar-Baphon sealed and put down the next one before he enslaves half the continent for most of a century. One is by - being a place that is Lawful Good, and that isn't run cruelly and stupidly for the advantage of whoever within it can seize power, and therefore being a place that can show what good institutions and good laws look like, and then whoever else wants to try can learn from it and build on it. One is by being a good place to live, a place where peoples' lives are safe and free and happy and they reach their potential and they don't go to the Evil afterlives.

As far as tradeoffs between those go - well, I don't feel very willing to trade much probability that Tar-Baphon gets out and kills and enslaves everyone, or that Asmodeus takes over Cheliax. I think that if I had to choose between a country absolutely guaranteed to prevent those things forever, but which was, after five hundred years, below-average in terms of how safe and free peoples' lives were... or a country that was the safest and freest in the world, but every century taking a one in ten chance of its utter destruction -

- I choose the first, I think. Obviously I would rather also have the country be the safest and freest in the world! And obviously it's tempting to assert that they should never be in tension because safety and freedom make people stronger, and make a country attractive to immigrants, and are specifically attractive to the kind of inventive and ambitious people that a country needs most, but - probably they're in fact in tension in some contexts. I assume some of the draw of Absalom to wizards is, in fact, the fact its government benefits them and won't prosecute them for murder if they Magic Missile some dockworker who looked at them funny."

He's know it's the worst possible thing to say the moment before he says it, and by then it's too late to stop himself. 

"Lastwall didn't stop Asmodeus from taking over Cheliax, and it wasn't Lastwall that took it back." 

"I inferred as much. And if you're going to tell me you know a way to change that, I will almost certainly do it."

He really is being unfair to her. Maybe Iomedae the goddess doesn't care if her people or anyone else's are free, as long as Evil is defeated, but Iomedae the mortal clearly does. He knows the real reason Cheliax fell, that Asmodeus could have spent the resources of a thousand planets, that there was nothing Lastwall could have done – there's no need for him to twist the knife. 

He's too powerful to afford to be this petty. 

"I'm sorry. That was unfair of me. My grandfather was born after Cheliax fell, I certainly don't know if there's anything Lastwall could or should have done differently at that time. They do have records, it just hasn't been a priority for me, so this is guesswork. But if I had to guess – 

– I think you made a nation which was and is very good at containing Tar-Baphon and protecting the border with Ustalav and Belkzen. They're much worse at doing anything else. It's like you said before: your people are Good, and just, and competent, and efficient and – fragile. Rigid. They have their way of doing things, which is the way you did things, with perhaps some advances in strategy and tactics. They have their leaders, who you pick. They have their Vigil over Gallowspire which they've kept for eight hundred years." 

"Now, when it looked like the diabolists were really going to win the Chelish Civil War, the right thing to do would have been to break it."

(He's being careful, here. If Lastwall had pulled everything they had off Gallowspire and Ustalav and the Worldwound it still wouldn't have worked, and they'd have lost everything else in the bargain. The thing is, they couldn't possibly have known that – even Iomedae the goddess couldn't have known –  and knowing what they did know, it was the only choice). 

"I understand why they didn't. It would have meant risking everything they'd fought to protect. It would have meant a new kind of combat they really weren't prepared for – they train to fight demons and undead, not organized mortal armies led by devil-binders. And it very easily might not have worked. It's the most understandable mistake in the world, but I think it was a mistake – a terrible one – and it's exactly the kind of mistake I'd expect a nation to make when they've been taught for centuries that the only way to protect the world from Evil is by sticking to the narrow course laid down by someone much wiser than themselves.

I won't claim that it would have gone better if Lastwall was a republic – I agree with you that the thing you want Lastwall to be is not compatible with democratic government. But Galt was only a republic for about ten years, and in that time we reformed our army, and that army did more than anyone else's to reconquer Cheliax. After their general declared himself emperor, of course, because you're also right that freedom doesn't always make a country stronger. Still, there's a kind of strength that can't exist without it. That's what Lastwall would have needed, then." 

"I don't know if they could have broken the vigil. It would have been the right thing for them to do, if they could have.

I have - treaty obligations, and if I don't - really and truly lay them to rest, shred Tar-Baphon and not just seal him, then I don't get to leave them - a free hand. ...they could stop being Lawful, I suppose. It's harder, to say they should have done that, which isn't saying they shouldn't have.

If it's in your power to help me with that - I would rather build a nation that is, if not free in every respect that people ought to be free, at least free to walk away from everything it is for something more important, and able to notice if they should."

"That's another thing, it might have been better on the Tar-Baphon front if they'd chosen to concentrate on Cheliax, since Cheliax ended up with one of the seals – 

Don't give it to Taldor, by the way. But that's beside the point. I don't know if it's in my power to help you do better than you did. I can't say my record here inspires confidence." 

"The arcane engine will help. With a richer world and a freer one and a reminder that not all the most important victories for humanity are won with swords. And if you do think of other things - I do not imagine that I found the best possible way to build my country. There are probably some things that are obvious eventually that aren't obvious now.

I don't - have worries about people voting for local magistrates and governors. I don't know if you think that'd be of any value in itself."

"It very well might. If you teach people that you want their judgement and not just their obedience, they're more likely to get in the habit of exercising it. But I think you have a harder problem – I'm not sure you really do want their judgement. You want them to be perfectly Good, to never seek power, to never abuse it if they have it, to value the interests of strangers they'll never meet over their own families – 

– This is where I should clarify that most Republicans think a republic must be built on a foundation of virtue. I disagree. The great beauty of Republican government is that it can stand perfectly well on a foundation of vice. Of course, I do believe that a healthy republic will make its citizens gradually more virtuous – but it needn't, and it needn't be steered in any particular direction, because even a perfectly selfish person would rather be prosperous, happy, and free, and in a society of equals, the best way to achieve those things is to be well-governed. 

But you're asking people to act against their own interests, which means they've all got to be Good to begin with – or they have to obey. I don't know how you'd train them to obey perfectly for eight hundred years and then suddenly change their minds."

...Huh.

"It doesn't sound true at all to me that even a perfectly selfish person would rather be in a society of equals. I suppose it's slightly promising, on that front, that Norgorber lives in Axis, but like everyone I suspect that He's in fact cheating people, and suspect even more strongly that He would be if He could get away with it. Being in a society of equals isn't a selfish advantage, and the things that get built out of genuinely fully selfish people seem - intensely ugly, to me. To the extent mortals can do better it's because mortals are not in fact perfectly selfish. 

I think you can build virtue through a society, but you have to be aiming for it, it won't happen by convenient coincidence. Peoples' conceptions of who is theirs to protect, who they care about, who matters, are - very flexible in a sense - it's a rare person who cares about much more, or much less, than the society that molded them. But surrounded by people who care about strangers, most people will. Surrounded by people who care about aliens, most people will. You can't get people to Heaven at the point of a sword, but you can build a state where, if they think only ordinarily hard about who matters, the ordinary answer is 'everyone'."

"I think we agree on that much. But you're also not trying to build the state that's most conducive towards making its people Good. You're trying to build the state that consistently applies its resources to doing the most Good actions in the world, without sacrificing any of Your existing contractual obligations – and you can probably do that and still leave them some room to grow. Just not very much." 

"I have considered actually only trying for the state that's most conducive towards making its people Good. It has some advantages. It's probably more imitable, it has in some important senses more positive potential, if there are heights of Good not yet realized which a society striving for it could attain. 

I have been leaning against for two reasons. 

The first is that I believe it would be crushed by its enemies.

And the second is that - 'Good' is, in fact, not actually what matters. People being Good matters but only because they are all subject to a system that is fundamentally unjust and fundamentally the enemy of mortals. I care about creating people who'll choose Heaven over Axis because they think they can get more done in Heaven, or choose Axis over Heaven because they think they can get more done in Axis. I care about that because we need them to end Hell and Abaddon and make the nearby bits of the Abyss all acceptable. And it has always felt to me like it's very precarious, very self-destructive in some ways, to care about making people Good and not about fixing problems."

"I'm satisfied if people just have the space they need to be people. Of course, then I have to live with the fact that they sometimes go about being people I don't especially like."  

"When we go out recruiting I do try to have in mind the question of what share of people ought to be on the Crusade, for which of them it is part of their growth into their fullest self. And then, you know, to not recruit the ones that's not true of, because - the Crusade is not the right place for everyone, and Lawful Good is not the right place for everyone, and Encarthan won't be the right place for everyone, and Heaven won't be, but - but hopefully not a place that crushes them, regardless, and a place that lets them notice if it's the right place or not, and that encourages them in walking away, if what matters to them is found elsewhere. - right now of course this isn't very pragmatically achievable since most people never leave their village and never live to adulthood. But as we grow richer, as we build enduring things - the Empire's right there, Lake Encarthan is right there. I would not want the whole world to be this state, have gone well out of my way to not even make it a very big state though I'm now questioning that ....

...but I do hope it will be a place that teaches people to go somewhere else, if it's not picking the fights that matter most to them."

"I don't know if it does or it doesn't. The paladins of Lastwall who I've met seem very sincerely dedicated to their causes. They're just mostly the same causes you have now – plus the Worldwound, which is in the same genre, holding back ravening hordes of things. 

I'm also not especially concerned for the well-being of the people of Lastwall. In the grand scheme of things, they're fine. Purely from the perspective of creating the most efficient tool for fighting the forces of Evil, though, I worry that giving them the autonomy to decide what Evil they ought to be fighting trades off directly against keeping them on a narrow enough course that they never try to do anything else." 

"There are tradeoffs like that, with armies, but - they've never actually seemed all that stark to me. People who can see the big picture and flexibly keep track of which battles are worth fighting are much much better at winning wars than people who aren't good at that. You want people who are trying to win, and you may want people who'll check with you if their plans are a terrible idea for reasons they haven't foreseen, and you don't want every infantryman deciding every day whether to march or not, but you would much rather have a hundred people thinking about the big picture than ten, or none, and I'd expect this to be even more true for a country. It would be shocking to me, if the best route for 'making sure Tar-Baphon never gets out', alone, were a country where people didn't have a great deal of autonomy about how to pursue the Good."