"Penalties for breaking laws.

"I think - the Shining Crusade obviously seems to have a reasonable system for itself. It is, if anything, significantly more lenient, in most respects, than the only other person who has advised me that we need to do more punishing rule breaking around here. It's possible that being any more merciful would cause it to cease to function. It's even possible that some of the penalties here need to be harsher than they are over there, if we don't have all of the same other mechanisms for maintaining order."

" - but actually I mostly keep finding myself unsure if I am willing to hand out the listed penalties for a bunch of things. Sometimes I can think of specific reasons why the situations are different and an exact copy of the rule would be unfair, like executing deserters - even Regill wanted to start with floggings, the first time we talked about the problem with Harmattan, because under the circumstances it is understandable, even to him, why someone not wholly devoid of positive traits might want to run away, from a crusade they didn't understand the scope of when signing on and which hasn't consistently paid them."

"Most of the time I can't think of any specific thing that's different, though. I just know that some of the listed punishments make me... uncomfortable. And I'm not sure whether this is an impulse that is hiding something important that I can't identify, or whether it's - letting my personal problems get in the way of basic necessities of being a commander."

"I definitely think that you want to start with consistent but not severe punishments, for first offenses, while you build to a situation where people know the law and have meaningfully agreed to follow it. 

That's probably not all of it, though, right. Causing other people harm isn't just upsetting when it's unfair. Even if someone is a traitor trying to sell your soldiers to Baphomet for personal profit, and too much of a danger to release - every person I’ve spoken to about it finds it very difficult to authorize and conduct executions, even if they are confident that the laws that they’ve made are fair and fairly applied and are minimizing, overall, how many people will be harmed. I think - some things are meant to hurt. Some things I would not want to stop grieving at.

I would usually give the advice that one should try through prayer and reflection to iron out that knot internally, but to keep doing the policy you endorse, but in your case I…don’t actually feel instinctively like that’s the right advice.”

"...should I, uh, do the complaining bit and see if it's at all enlightening."

“Go for it.”

Gods, this is embarrassing.

"...so I grew up in Cheliax, right. And in Cheliax everyone goes to school, and every kid who is sufficiently bright gets tracked to learn wizardry, whether or not they're otherwise suited to it. I was a wizard kid. Or, well, I was supposed to be, I obviously never got as far as actually becoming a proper wizard."

"When I was fifteen I got expelled, basically for being a terrible student. And - part of the process of expulsion is flogging in front of the rest of the student body, not quite to death, obviously, but close enough to it that it's not exactly certain that you won't later die of it anyway. And - it was, I think, of all the terrible days that I have had in my life, probably still the worst day I've ever had."

"I get that there are a million differences between what the Shining Crusade does and what Cheliax does. I get that unlike Cheliax we have the resources to heal people afterwards, if we order floggings. And I get that penalties are necessary to maintain order in any kind of military. But I keep imagining other people here doing something wrong, and ending up in a position where the rules say that we have to hurt them really badly, and - "

"I really, really don't want to."

“I want to build a world where that never happens to anyone, and I think you’re entirely correct to want to build a crusade where that never happens to anyone. 

I don’t - know if you can get by without punishments beyond docking pay and exile, but if you want to try, I do think it’d be in a sense a profoundly noble thing to try.”

"I'm just not sure it's sane. Also we don't currently pay people enough that I'm sure that docking people's pay will even do anything, or that in some cases there'd be anything to dock, which I acknowledge is also an obvious problem. But - I can't tell whether the sense that I never want to do to, like, Daeran, or Woljif if Woljif comes back again, what was done to me, is actually picking up on a sense in which it would be genuinely unfair and a wrong to them, or if it's just - not having any kind of stomach to do what's necessary, and whether that will ultimately be an even greater wrong to everyone else who's trusted me."

“I think it is specifically unnecessary to flog people half to death, that seems - genuinely unfair and a wrong to them in nearly all possible cases. Where we have physical punishments, the point is mostly the - social consensus building, I suppose. I don’t think fifteen lashes are much more persuasive about anything than five, and so the interest in not hurting the person should clearly win out. 

It seems possible that, in fact, punishment is almost always - a wrong, an evil, that you’re picking up on that correctly, and also that there are no paths ahead of us without any evils on them, and we just have to pick the least, but not call it Good for that.”

"I am - not actually the sort of person who uses ideal Goodness as a guiding star. I just don't like seeing people get hurt, that's all. But I also don't like seeing the world get eaten by demons, so, you know, here we are."

"I guess… possibly we can try a system of unusually light physical punishments, for an organization of this sort, and - well, it probably won't be actively worse than what we're doing now. Hopefully. I think."

“I think it’ll be better than uncertainty. Most things are better than that. 

If we have a legal code that we’ve written and reflects these values and priorities of yours, and trials are conducted fairly and openly within it, and it does say to kill people under some circumstances, and those circumstances happened, how do you expect you’d feel about it?”

"One of the people who worked with me to save Kenabres and to take Drezen is petrified right now," she says, which isn't really an answer but also seems like the most accurate answer she can give, somehow. "She was a powerful caster. She'd fought horrible demons with me. And she turned out to be a serial killer, who was killing our soldiers to sate the bloodlust of the spirit that granted her magic. She was a horrible person who absolutely could not go free and absolutely did deserve to die, but I didn't want to kill someone who had repeatedly risked their own life to help me, and so I petrified her. Spent a scroll on it."

"So I guess I would feel like that about it, probably. Which is not really an answer as to what I think I should actually do."

“- I mean, it sounds like you handled it extremely well.”

" - I mean, I don't exactly regret it, but I feel like petrifying people to be dealt with after the crusade is over instead of executing them may not be the most economical plan ever, and I should maybe be thinking about that given that a bunch of my troops are currently not getting any pay for what they do for us."

"....I guess it might not be completely nonviable if people didn't do execution worthy things very often. But it seems like - kind of a fundamentally absurd use of resources, doesn't it, to do it to everyone -"

“A sixth circle spell? For - the option to do better, if you learn what better is in the future? It doesn’t seem outrageous to me, though we separately need to start paying your troops consistently and then everything else won’t have that as a comparison use of resources. 

I would recommend asking people if they prefer that, if it’s a situation where you have affordance to. Some people have done Evil, will still make Axis or the Maelstrom or at least want to take the chance, and it’d be - not mercy, to hold them until a statue crumbles.”

"Sure. Camellia was almost certainly evil, and would've tried to kill me with advance warning, but under more normal circumstances, sure, I don't have objections to killing people who prefer that to petrification."

"I'll feel kind of dumb, but not - monstrous. I guess. I think I kind of expected you to tell me that most of these opinions were sympathetic but that I needed to get over most of them."

“I guess I think - sometimes you do have to do things that your heart is screaming are wrong, but - not nearly as often as people actually do it. Sometimes, if you’re trying very stubbornly to make things not be awful, they aren’t awful, because there was always something better there if someone was willing to work for it. 

Sometimes that’s not how it goes. But that’s the fourth virtue, right, to try things that you’ll feel very stupid for having tried if they fail, that will probably fail, but that are nonetheless worth trying.

"I'm just really not at all sure that this is the time or the place for it," she says, tiredly. "But - "

My heart tells me, Seelah will occasionally say, on topics on which her shoulder Iomedae is silent. She's always kind of assumed that that was Seelah just not having any idea what she was talking about. But, of course, if she hadn't ever listened to her heart, she would probably still be dutifully worshipping Asmodeus in Cheliax.

"I guess it's true that - probably about half the people here are here specifically to follow me. So maybe it isn't so terrible, to try to go ahead and be me."

“It almost always works better to be the strongest version of yourself than to try to be an inferior version of someone else."

Morgethai, a positively sane person is delighted about there being more forces of Good and willing to try developing an interworld transit spell if Nefreti claimed it'd work and concerned about what they'll do with post war Cheliax and interested in Andoran's ongoing independence from Cyprian, and also asks Iomedae how she's doing, which is a surprisingly awkward question. 

"- there's a lot of Evil here and I am determined to see it ended," she says.

             "Well, I guess one can't say Lastwall went astray."

"I'm honored to know them."

              Morgethai leans back, thoughtfully. "I myself try to maintain a politely distant relationship with the gods. If we bumped elbows too much I think it'd get awkward quickly."

"Alfirin says similar things sometimes."

                "My aid with the Teleportation Circles certainly doesn't depend on hearing anything in particular from you besides a plan that'll work. But I have to confess a great deal of curiosity about the person, and much less about the halfway divine embodiment of the importance of destroying Evil."

"- well, given that being what you are curious about I appreciate you asking about it," Iomedae says. "Give me a moment to think about whether I have an answer? It has, in fact, been an emotional day, but all of my first stabs at articulating it would be - wrong." Condescending to her allies, or inappropriately possessive of them.

And she closes her eyes and thinks. 

"This world is - much worse than the world we thought we could achieve - but - there is a strength that in my world is extraordinarily rare and precious, that I have seen over and over again here, and I want to weep every time.

And I think on some level it had seemed possible that there'd only ever be what I could build, that the most I could hope for from Lastwall was that they hadn't lost the vision, and - people can carry a torch, not just rally around it.

I'll be able to do better, in my world, not because I failed but because we've learned.

Though it's disconcerting to try to tell when we disagree because they've learned something I just haven't learned yet and when I have a reasoned disagreement with them because they got something wrong. And that's not made simpler by being their god."

             "When you're not a god," says Morgethai, watching her intently. It's not exactly an insult. It ...is a test, she suspects.

"The holy books are missing some of the more embarrassing things. I really wish they weren't. If they're disillusioned with me it will genuinely constrain us in many important respects. If they're overawed we'll make plans that won't work."

              "Are they overawed?"

"Lord Cansellarion tried to smite me." She smiles approvingly at him. "I have been advised of papers written about my stupidest tactical decisions and told that I was a good battlefield commander nine hundred years ago and now had better get some tutoring. ....but also, yes, of course they're overawed! They and I can both agree that it's important they not be overawed, and also I am accustomed to operating so as to build my Church around me wherever I go and they are my Church."

           Felandriel Morgethai's face says very expressively that this is not a problem one has quite as much if one is Chaotic Good and not trying to be worshipped by a good fraction of everyone they meet. 

" - you left things out of the books for being embarrassing? Or - were they edited?"

“Edited! And then the originals stolen, but they wouldn’t have been vulnerable to that if they hadn’t done the edits.”

"...Unless you think knowing will cause me to be less effective, what did early Lastwall think was worth hiding?"

“I don’t have the books done in my own time so I don’t know all the changes they made, but the one which has already had immediate implications is that they cut Alfirin, unless she didn’t exist, and I’m leaning towards the former, the timeline lines up precisely and it really shouldn’t if I’d been without ninth circle support for the last five years.”

Sigh. “And there are a few candidate explanations for why you’d edit Alfirin out, but the one that stood out when I spoke with the Lord Watcher was -

When I was twenty nine, and under Arnisant holding Vellumis while we built the port there, and she was contracted with the crusade as a seventh circle wizard, we dated. And realized it was unwise, and stopped.”

"...was there some additional impropriety? Like that she was attached to your command, or...? Because if not I don't see what's embarrassing about that."