"Permission to enter, Knight Commander."

"Go ahead." It's not even locked, this time.

She's sitting cross-legged on the bed, the pages of the draft legal code scattered around her. She's been crying, off and on, and not really bothering to prestidigitate away the evidence.

He closes the door as soon as he's inside.

"There was some concern that you'd gone missing."

She looks up, then. "Who in the world has such a high opinion of my punctuality that - " - no, she can't even finish that thought, now she's looking at Regill and he's giving her that extremely severe frown he gives everyone and everything, and just because she's not sure there's any obvious discernible difference in his expression doesn't mean he isn't judging her. Of course he's judging her. Why would anyone not judge her.

He's not going to yell at her. That's a stupid thing to worry about. He's just going to withdraw his support and leave her flailing, without him and without the hellknights. Possibly tell Galfrey to recall her. His opinion of Irabeth absolutely plummeted following her breakdown, and Irabeth had, like, a reason. And the loss of his support won't even actually matter, strategically, next to the reason for it, which is that he'll have determined that she's no longer capable of leading the crusade, if she ever was, and he'll be right.

"How many people are out there?"

"About twenty, mostly your advisors and top officers. Tuvan and Lann are also present and waiting."

"Would you like my advice, Commander?"

"Yeah."

"It is the mark of a good soldier to be capable of setting his ordinary mortal needs aside in time of crisis. More important than any other quality - mental brilliance, physical strength, initiative, or even obedience - is the ability to respond to a crisis appropriately, and to worry about one's physical and mental needs only insofar as they are relevant to determining which plans are feasible."

"Failing to account for a soldier's mortal needs outside a crisis is not heroic; it is stupid. Like a neglected weapon or a neglected horse, a neglected soldier is more likely to break under strain, and less likely to be able to respond appropriately when crises do occur. Your highest priority for the last several weeks, quite correctly, has been to see that every crusader who answers to you once again has access to enough food, adequate training, necessary equipment, protection from the elements, and enough pay to purchase whatever else he needs to function. Neglecting the army's basic needs would not have bred heroism, or made the crusade's soldiers stronger through adversity; it would have weakened and ultimately doomed them."

"My advice to you is to pull yourself together immediately, and to finish deploying defenses against the ongoing demonic assault. I suggest you then take two days off from crusade logistics, and fulfill whatever personal needs you have been neglecting, before the next crisis presents itself."

She blinks at him.

That is - different, than what the teachers in Chelish schools say. It rhymes, sort of, but it isn't really the same thing at all.

"I haven't been able to finish reading the drafts of the legal codes," she says. "I've been trying for half the night, and I have basically no idea what they say, let alone how to fix them."

"Then I suggest you delegate rewriting them to someone other than Captain Harmattan. Will you be joining us in the command center?"

"Yeah. Give me a minute, I'll be there."

When he's gone she bites herself again, sings quietly, and casts Greater Heroism on herself. Regill only gives personal advice to people he respects, so she doesn't have to hate herself yet, she figures. It's - a little easier, thinking of her actually important meeting that she actually has to go to as a crisis on par with the sack of Kenabres. She can rest for a bit once she handles it. Harmattan might think less of her, but Regill won't, and she cares a lot more about that.

A minute and a half later, she strolls into the command center, greets everyone very brightly and not at all like someone who has spent the last six hours crying, and apologizes for her slight lateness. She is hardly at her most strategically brilliant, but the hardest decisions have already been ironed out; this meeting is for dealing with solving as many of the relatively minor problems that remain as they can in the next six or seven hours. She can probably handle those, or at least agree with other people's suggestions enough to allow people to move forward on some kind of game plan.

If nothing explodes, then in thirty minutes she will shoo everyone and.... ask Marit if he can help her finish the legal code that she said she would finish and has not finished.

"Yes, sir. Do you have a draft for me to work from?" Marit had a summons spy on Korva's conversation with Regill and is thereby mostly satisfied that nothing horrible happened to her except war, which is known to be horrible and happening to her. 

"Two of them, both with different issues. Uh - I know you can't write Hallit or Taldane, so I was thinking you could dictate something and I could translate it. And that way I can, you know, answer questions. It's not that I don't have time, I'm just not - coming up with anything of acceptable quality on my own, right now. And I want to have - meaningfully signed off on it, but it really needs to get done today."

"I can ask you about anything where I don't have a good guess of what you wanted, and you can correct me where I guess mistakenly. Where are the two drafts we're working from?"

She can show him Harmattan's version and Regill's version. Harmattan's is dense, worded to allow a lot of officer discretion in punishing soldiers, and incomplete; Regill's is readable, but has harsh punishments and too much overlap with the Godclaw code of conduct. They're both longer and more complicated than she wants. She wants something simple and easy to remember, with consistent and predictable but non-monstrous punishments.

Officer discretion in punishments is a great idea in principle and usually a bad one in practice, in his experience. For minor matters it's more important to be consistent and predictable than to be attentive to the exact details of the situation. For major matters how about they allow commanders to appeal on behalf of their soldiers for a lighter punishment but don't make the punishment their job to figure out; it's not what she hired them for and they're likely to play favorites, inspire resentments, try to be harsh to make a point, have their own moral crises, etcetera. Letting them speak on behalf of the men puts them on the side of the men and lets her still account for any actual extenuating circumstances. 

If she only gets ten rules, what ten would she pick, from both lists? Why don't they just in fact make do with those. 

That sounds... probably fine, on officer discretion. She just doesn't want people to keep letting each other off with warnings, which is what everyone in Drezen is constantly doing.

Picking ten laws is honestly more thinking than she was planning on doing here, but she can try. It at least seems like aiming for the correct level of simplicity. Let's say, uh, murder, theft, assault, destruction of property, enchanting and mind controlling people, bribery, desertion, espionage or revealing secrets to the enemy, and disobeying orders from a superior, at a first pass, for the set that applies to all soldiers. Oh, and being a demon cultist or working for demon lords, since that keeps coming up. Does that leave any gaping holes.

He'd bid for falsification of a report to be included but otherwise seems extremely reasonable. They can use some of Regill's punishments if they just ...take them down many notches....you don't have to flog people nearly to death to make your point. His prediction is that Korva wants to take the punishments down even farther than he does. Docked pay, extra shifts, and remanding from the luxury of the mansions to Drezen, for minor offenses, escalating for repeat or more serious offenses to flogging-not-half-to-death or reassignment to punishment details? Death or petrification, for murder/espionage/demon cultists?

All right, they can add falsification of a report to the list. The mansions are a temporary measure and probably shouldn't be mentioned in a document that might be around for a while, although hopefully they'll eventually be able to, uh, refine it. Docking pay only works if people trust her to keep paying them, which, uh, she's earned some points back but doesn't exactly have a stellar record there. Extra shifts... also work better if they aren't either sitting on their hands or constantly assigning people to as many hours as they can physically work, which also might be getting better from here on out but she's not sure that people have confidence in it. (And, when she lists all that out, it's no wonder that everything is a mess.)

Maybe they can do docked pay and very temporary reassignment for minor offenses, and escalate to docked pay and flogging and longer reassignment for repeat or serious offenses. She doesn't think they currently... have... punishment details that they can reassign people to, but that is probably a solvable problem. And yeah, death or petrification for murder and espionage and... man, does she really want being a demon cultist to be a death penalty offense? Death or petrification if you are discovered by law enforcement; flogging and reassignment if you turn yourself in for it before committing murder or espionage?

That works. (They should probably expect to refine exact penalties a lot, though what the laws are much less. 

He dictates this back to Korva in slightly more formal language.

And she can translate, which is sort of like making decisions but it's not like this is poetry or anything.

"I guess that's that, then. Just need to hand it to the clerics for copying, and we can have it distributed to at least the officers by tonight. Then I just need to... help extend the mansion castings, I guess."

And after that she can Take Care Of Personal Needs She's Been Neglecting, however one is supposed to go about doing that.

"Yes, Knight-Commander. I expect most logistical snags that come up will be addressable without you personally needing to do anything."

"Well, we can hope. Lodvig and Setsuna can probably handle things, though, they do in fact know what they're doing when it comes to military operations. Regill pretty much told me to spend the rest of the day getting to the point that a strong wind wouldn't knock me over, and considering the source I guess I'll give it a try."

"That seems very wise of Regill. Should I bring it to the clerics for copying?"