Morgethai is merely Chaotic Good and an archmage and not even the most annoying version of either of those.

Multiple people have told me that Razmir is an idiot, which is not a usual criticism of archmages!

So you know how they say archmages tend to be dangerously more clever than wise? Razmir is - narrower than that, he's genuinely very talented at some things but - no creative genius, no ambition. And absolutely no common sense. He drove out all the clerics of Erastil and then got mad that the crops wouldn't grow, he drove out all the Abadarans and is mad that nobody will loan him money, he's clever enough to cast Tsunami and not clever enough to ever find a solution to a problem that isn't throwing powerful magic at it until it stops being a problem. He's still dangerously more clever than wise but only because he isn't any wiser than the town drunk.

Well, I hope Alfirin and Morgethai get along. Four active archmages, I was kind of expecting to find her some research collaborators and maybe someone who'd come back and help the Crusade with logistics.

I don't know Alfirin to judge. I'm sorry that most of our day's archmages are so disappointing.

I am wildly uncertain if you and Lastwall will get along with her splendidly or not at all. In my day she maintains a polite distance from paladins who aren't me but this is - on the grounds that they are bad at hard tradeoffs and at moral reasoning in a way that I think has changed through the ages. 

I'm not too worried because - you cannot possibly be so rude she won't help us kick Asmodeus out of Cheliax and I suspect she can't be so rude you'd decline her help either. 

At this point the powerful adventurers in shiny well-fitted armor are accosted by a small child beggar requesting copper or food. Half a dozen more are visibly peeping over a wall in the middistance to see how this goes for the (nervous) one in the lead.

He doesn't eat food or carry copper but the child can have two silvers to share with his friends there.

It's ...good that he's there because Iomedae's money is all ancient and possibly no longer legal tender and also she's kind of flabbergasted. 

Right. There was a catastrophe and mass starvation and then thirty years of civil war and then another civil war to break free from Cheliax.

Who took over the Order of the Stars? I - wouldn't have -

I don't think it's around anymore. I'm not familiar with all the old Arodenite orders, maybe someone else took it up and gave it a new name.

It's worse in Andoran, than most countries. They take their Chaotic Good as an important part of their national identity and that means a principled opposition to personal responsibility and to ending a pregnancy.

Lastwall was genuinely impressive and may have left me with the wrong impression of how much the world, where not literally ruled by Hell, has marched the great march of human progress. ....Stars was the astronomy order, observatories on nearly every mountaintop on the continent, many of them built by Aroden. They took in all children abandoned at temples in the city because it's terrible for children, growing up in cities. I did a lot of recruiting there because growing up on mountaintops turns out to give people excellent constitution.

I think the age of lost omens has been bad for the march of progress worldwide, not just in Cheliax. There are orders that take in abandoned children but - not enough, especially not here.

Note to self maybe worth half a Commune question to ask if I should plan to ascend into something less narrow, just in case, even if also warning Aroden.

Perhaps you should throw some more geopolitics at me while we wait for Morgethai. Assume I sent a representative to purchase my own holy books and some Cheliax-focused history, spent two days reading them while people checked that the Church of Iomedae wasn't wildly off-target, and then went off to claim to them that I was their goddess. 

The sun sets early in midwinter in Drezen. Once it does, Marit releases the men and goes to the single-shelf library in the temple of Iomedae, to leaf through some books and keep an eye out for trouble.

Korva spends her day trying to do useful stuff. She bullies Daeran into spending half his spells on extra remove diseases. She tries to solve a second round of Dorgelinda's supply complaints, talks to Harmattan about a round of various complaints from officers, and then talks to Lann about whether the Neathers need anything, because she hasn't taken him out adventuring lately and she's getting to worry that he might think she's avoiding him, which is not really something she has enough personal insight into to say whether it's true or not.  She spends a few minutes talking to Zara, who she's very sure she is avoiding. She tells a bunch of people to meet her tomorrow for a meeting, where she intends to talk with all of them about fairly and consistently enforcing their laws and policies, and whether any of the laws or policies have to be changed before they're willing to enforce them.

And then it's dark, and she ought to go find Marit and talk to him about the various ways in which she is maybe not willing to enforce her own laws and policies.

…does she want to go find Marit and tell him she’s a whiny baby? Really? Is she sure she doesn’t just want to secretly be a whiny baby, and pretend that it’s a moral stance, or alternatively copy what the Shining Crusade does exactly, and hope that no important strategic considerations she’s noticed but failed to articulate are wrapped up in the gut feelings of horror and revulsion at keeping any kind of order around here at all?

Probably those options would in fact have negative consequences of some kind. And Marit can always tell her if she’s being a whiny baby and needs to grow up already.

She’ll find him reading history books and ask him if he once again has a minute.

“Yes, Knight-Commander.” He marks his place in his history book with a strand of thread from his Bag of Holding. 

Wow this is awful. This is an awful plan. She should definitely go with the plan where she feigns having any kind of normal relationship with completely reasonable systems of punishment.

“I’ve been reading through the legal codes you had sent over. They seem - pretty reasonable, more lenient than what Regill would suggest but probably a lot better than what we’re currently in practice doing. But I’ve also been - noticing strongly not wanting to enact various punishments in this setting. And I don’t know how much of that is - having a correct sense that some things would be unjust in this setting, which are not unjust in the setting for which the laws and penalties were created, and how much is - having a personal problem that unfortunately makes me less capable of commanding people in reasonable ways. Which - seemed like the sort of thing that I ought to talk to someone about. I’m not sure whether you’re the most reasonable person to talk about any of those intuitions with, but - you’re the one who would need the least additional context and the one who seems most likely to have actually useful thoughts that I haven’t already specifically expected you to have. It will probably involve more complaining, though.”

“ - also some of the laws were separately kind of weird, and I’m a little worried that I’m missing something that ought to be obvious, and was I guess also wondering if you could elaborate on the reasoning behind some of them. I guess.”

“ - maybe we can discuss which laws seemed weird first? I do have thoughts on the other thing, but it’s - more complicated, and you might have to say more if you want me to venture a guess whether the thing your intuitions are pointing you towards is - an intuition for circumstances that don’t in fact apply.”

“....mostly I guess I was not immediately able to reconstruct the reasoning around the rules about who people could have sex with.”

“ - huh. We only enforce ‘not with someone in your service’ and ‘not in a fashion where our soldiers get pregnant’. The first because it’s unethical and the second because it’s really inconvenient for militaries when their soldiers get pregnant. …most militaries solve this by just not enlisting women who aren’t wizards and can’t handle themselves, and having celibate religious orders, but if you have enlisted women outside those categories it gets to be a problem."

“I suppose I can appreciate the logistical problems of pregnancy if you can’t send people home. It gets a bit weird in a context like Drezen, where you have a town attached, and where some of the people in that town are people who both take on military duties and who came here with children and families.”

Sigh. “Can you explain why you consider the first thing unethical, so that I definitely have the actual reasoning and am not making something up.”

Oh no is there a situation between Korva and…Lann? Daeran? If Daeran got himself into this he knew what he was getting himself into and Marit doesn’t actually feel very motivated to protect him -

Time to be diplomatic. 

“It is normal for people to develop very emotionally close and deep relationships with their unit, in the course of a war. It’s often still a bad idea to become lovers, because it can compromise the strategic judgment of everyone involved. I wouldn’t say it is always unethical, but I suspect Lastwall would, and they are - quite likely correct about which norms work for people raised in a Lawful Good society. It is - more troubling - to pursue a liaison with a person sworn to your service, because - it would not necessarily be obvious to them that they could refuse you, or obvious to other parties that they could refuse you, or in fact a good idea to refuse you, and that’s a situation where a lot of harms can be expected to happen."

“I guess? I mean, I can see why you shouldn’t be allowed to order it. I feel like introducing a rule about that in the middle of things is probably going to annoy a bunch of people, and I don’t think Mendev actually has any existing rules about it that we’re just not enforcing very well. Maybe the scenarios that I’m frowning about are actually situations where our command structures are more confused than they ought to be, or something, I dunno.” It might be CONVENIENT, if she could tell Lann and Daeran that she’s simply not allowed to have personal relationships with anyone she ever interacts with on account of this job that she’s not telling them that she never actually signed up for, but that’s - probably the wrong level on which to be thinking about general policies.

“Banning things merely because they compromise people’s judgment seems… I mean, strictly speaking, friendships compromise people’s judgment, right. They probably compromise judgment more, for a lot of people, they’re just not something it makes a lot of sense to try to make rules about.”