"- I think Bastran is not going to be able to participate in this conversation because of his compulsion to serve the Empire." 

"It doesn't matter if every single person in the world would be better off with something else. He's - not allowed to care. I don't think they would be better off with something else, yet, but - but having to be a shape that - doesn't have any dangerous thoughts -

- it's the way things are, in places like Cheliax and the Empire, and they lose, to places that let you think."

"Huh."

"I really wanted to ask if what Altarrin said was news to Bastran, but if Bastran can't actually hear / think about / process / respond to what you are saying, Altarrin, then I guess my question is moot."

"It is not unusually even on my planet to have subjects that people really struggle to think clearly about. What's unusual here is that there is a clear and specific source for the blockage. By the way, if I ask questions about the compulsions, am I running the risk of doing any damage to anyone's mind?"

"Not magical damage. It might cause Bastran a lot of distress." Altarrin shakes his head a little. "I will be fine and do not mind answering questions about it. I have more practice navigating the compulsions, and flexibility in how I interpret them - what I was saying before is not being disloyal to the Empire I committed to serve." 

"Mine aren't motivation-altering at all. I can't hurt the Emperor, of course, or resist if he decides to change them, but I can think whatever I want."

"Bastran, I am going to ask what the rules are about compulsions. It might end up causing you a lot of distress. Do you want to leave the room for a few minutes or would you rather stay here?"

Is he allowed to leave the room? That sounds great. A few minutes is probably long enough to get his head into slightly better order. He nods stiffly to Ramona and gets up. 

"Okay, so... can compulsions ever be removed? How? And what are the obstacles to doing so? Like is it a matter of 'the committee would never agree to that' or is it more like 'if anyone suggests it Bastran will then be forced to attempt to kill them' or what actually happens?"

"I should say that it is okay if the compulsions are permanent or if it's not within our power to alter them. But I had to ask!"

"Magically speaking, they can be removed easily by any mage, or with certain wizard spells from Caris' world." Nnnooot going to think too hard about specific occasions when this might have happened in the past, but his compulsions aren't objecting to just describing facts about the world. "It would obviously be a problem for the Empire if mages could do whatever they wanted to their and others' compulsions, so the standard compulsions, like mine, include one against tampering with the others, either oneself or by asking someone else. Bastran does not actually have the same setup, I think his compulsion is...differently self-protecting. Caris does not have the same setup." 

He says all of it in a very neutral tone, mostly not looking at Caris. 

"As a relationship therapist, it seems like an obvious good to me if people can actually hear what the others are saying and think clearly about it and respond to it. A few minutes ago, I witnessed you saying something, Altarrin, that was a statement of your values and preferences, and it looked to me like Bastran couldn't actually process it. You both are telling me that it's the compulsions that are preventing him from interacting with the information, and I'm provisionally believing you about that."

"So just from the narrow therapy perspective, it seems like removing whatever obstacle Bastran has to participating in the conversation, would be helpful and good, and I should try to bring it about if I can."

"But I worry that I'm way out of my depth here, that these compulsions are apparently centuries-old mechanisms for keeping the Empire running properly, that I might not understand all the downstream effects it would have to make such a move, and that I should not interfere."

"Also I'm not yet sure I have the power to make this happen even if I think it's a good idea."

"I would like to invite either of you to comment on anything I've just said, if you're able to do so safely."

"I can do an antimagic field just in this room. They'd come right back when Bastran and Altarrin left, so they wouldn't be - escaping them - but they'd be suppressed temporarily? I have the predictable complaints about this plan but I'll do it, if it seems like it'd help."

"It would be very messy if either of us returned to court," slight emphasis on that, "without the usual compulsions." Altarrin is notthinking about the silent implication that this objection doesn't at all apply here. 

"Have you experimented with removing compulsions temporarily before? I worry that it could damage their minds. I think about trying to cram something that has expanded back into a space where it no longer fits."

That sounds like it's addressed to Caris. Altarrin will leave it alone. (He could engage with the question, he's pretty sure, but in general he's been trying to conserve the limited wiggle room he can wrangle from his compulsion.)

"I think it's probably easier to be all right with your compulsions to the Empire if you don't remember what it's like not to have them? I - took Altarrin's off, once. He got them back. I guess it was bad for him. ..the current situation is also bad for Bastran."

"Why did Altarrin get his compulsions back, if it was bad for him to have to climb back into that box?"

"- I am not entirely sure. I think he thought it was worth - having the Empire as a resource to mine for spellsilver and stuff - and then once it was on he couldn't think about it anymore. Probably it was the wrong decision but it's not easy to vanish on your life's work overnight just because you noticed it's bad actually."

"Why was it a tradeoff to either be free of the compulsions or else have the Empire as a resource? Can others see, or check, whether the compulsions are in place as expected? Who are these others, anyway?"

"Yes, people in the Imperial court can tell. We'd have had to flee immediately."

"Okay and this is probably a ludicrous question, but I just have to ask: is this system just too big to change? Like, how many people are we dealing with, how much power do they have, is that power real and backed with force or is it pretend and backed with frowns? If the four people in this tower right now decided that compulsions were just a bad idea -- which, by the way, I do not know at all at this point -- is there any way in which we could just change how things are done?"

"Again, I am not advocating that we do that, there is much that I don't understand. But I do like to know which of the obstacles my clients believe in are really there and which ones dissolve when you look straight at them."

Ramona is talking to Caris but sneaking glances at Altarrin to see if he seems to be getting a sudden headache or anything. She hasn't particularly figured out how to read him yet. She's not sure if it's because he's so grounded all the time that there's nothing to read or if he's mastered the external manifestation of his feelings. Or it could be a cultural thing -- but Bastran was easy, so probably not that.

Altarrin is only about 50% paying attention to the conversation; he's hearing Ramona's questions but not considering himself particularly responsible for answering, or trying to think too hard about how he would answer. He's not particularly in distress. It seems like a useful conversation and very informative for Ramona and it can just be that, it doesn't have to be anything with ramifications outside this room that his compulsions would care about. 

He does have an answer to that question, though. "If Bastran tried to order that, I am not sure exactly what would go wrong," because he's not trying to think about it very hard, this is so hypothetical, not at all something his compulsions should care about, "but I am certain it would fail and he would end up deposed as Emperor and probably dead. It might be possible to dismantle the entire system, in theory, with about a decade's worth of planning and figuring out how to bring the right people on board - it would have to be hundreds of them - and then make the transition without destabilizing everything. I think the Empire would probably still collapse afterward, there is a reason why it ended up this way, and I think an Empire without compulsions would be less predictable and therefore more threatening to our gods."

Another slight shrug. "I am not particularly inclined to put the next decade of my life toward changing the entire system."  

"The gods really do work pretty cleverly to undermine the Empire. I had a hard time understanding what they meant by that until I saw it happen."

"Can you say more, Caris? I can't even guess what you mean."

" - so, the gods see the world through prophecy - through precognition. They can see all possible futures, and steer for the ones that they like. And that means you can't just make plans that work unless you get absurdly unlucky, you have to make plans where you like all of the range of possible futures, or where the gods disprefer the same ones as you."