"No, I think evil will already be quite well-represented."

"I myself am not a Cleric of Abadar." The past few years have dulled the pain of this fact, though it is still a bit of a sore spot with him. "And I am not an expert in crafting laws myself. More of an enforcer. Not that I expect they'll be doing the writing, but I think it would be helpful to have some people with their perspective."

"Having representatives from non-Evil Lawful churches advising in the matter of how to establish non-Evil Law seems eminently reasonable to me."

"If we are inviting churches, we'll need a list of which ones. Do we have any particularly principled way of deciding, or are we just inviting all the ones we like?"

"We might want to set a minimum number of adherents in Cheliax. Are there any major non-Evil churches we specifically want to exclude?"

"I suppose that depends on how we feel about Gorum and Calistria. There's good reason to argue for Pharasma, Nethys, and Gozreh; they're the only churches who we know had clerics able to avoid detection before nine months ago. Relatedly, of course, they're fairly disorganized."

"I'm a bit worried about Calistrian priests disrupting the proceedings if invited in...Gorum's church seems like less of a problem. Nethysians it depends on exactly how mad the individual priests are. Pharasmins and Gozrens seem like good inclusions."

"I'm not sure how much interest Gorumites or Calistrians would have in a constitutional convention anyway. Seems to me that any of them actually committed enough to show up and participate may as well be permitted to? If anyone's disruptive they can be ejected."

"Individual worshippers are fine. Individual priests might even be fine, but if we extend an invitation for representatives of the church as a whole -

I expect Calistrians to have a particular position on matters like 'What, exactly, should be done to the old nobility' and 'What, exactly, should be done to the old tax collectors' and the same for schoolmasters and city guardsmen and shopkeepers and slaveowners and... There's a lot of vengeance to go around, and I don't think it will actually help anything and I don't want them pushing it."

"I don't think we have – I don't think there can be – a principled way to exclude delegates for wanting bloody vengeance, or even for having a sincere philosophical commitment to bloody vengeance.  We don't have to give it to them. This isn't a courtroom; you've already issued your pardons. But the issue will rise whatever we do, and I think better to face it in the convention than in the streets."

It's not a hypothetical: of the people who died in Corentyn and Ostenso and Egorian, they still don't know how many were casualties of war and how many of opportunistic murder. The occupation has kept things calm in the cities, but it's impossible to keep track of every country priests burnt with his holy books or barons torn apart and fed to his own dogs. (Though it seems like fewer than he expected, really. Things could be much worse. Catherine, of all people, doesn't need to be reminded of that). 

"I am not saying that we should exclude anyone who wants bloody vengeance, which I agree would be hard to do in a principled manner. I am only suggesting that we should not go out of our way to reserve a number of seats for the servants of the goddess of bloody vengeance."

"We could announce that there is to be a constitutional convention, and that any representatives of non-Evil religious communities in Cheliax who wish to attend should register their interest. And if no Calistrians sign up then we don't have to worry about it, and if any do, we can assess how much trouble they're likely to make then. If we need to, we can declare that they weren't a large enough contingent to merit an invitation or something. And I suppose if it turns out that half the nation of Cheliax has been worshipping Calistria in secret and will rebel if their goddess is snubbed, then we can have a chance to learn that ahead of time."

"Oh, they're worshipping lots of people in secret, but good luck getting them to tell us which ones. Calistrian shrines are represented in some of the old Asmodean temples, though, she at least wasn't unknown under the old regime."

"I expect the secret Calistria-worshippers to be more capable of understanding and articulating their true desires than almost anybody else in Cheliax. Another reason not to exclude them preemptively." 

"So long as we're not reserving seats for their church in advance I see no reason to do anything to actively exclude them."

"It seems awkward to reserve seats for everyone but them. How many seats are you giving to churches, anyway?"

"Hardly everyone. Milani's church, and Iomedae's, and Pharasma and Abadar and Cayden and Desna and Erastil and Gozreh and Shelyn.

...so, merely nearly everyone. I take your point. I think Ione's solution was good? We can put out a general notice, and then follow that up with invitations to the churches that we want represented and to those that have sufficient popular support."

"I don't object. What do we think of relative proportions?" 

"I would do one each, if you want to keep the nobles and the churches together to one third of the delegates, but it sounds like other people are envisioning giving them more seats than that. How many delegates are we aiming for, exactly?"

"A thousand, perhaps? I would argue for even quarters nobility, clergy, elected, and by lots - so that would be... twenty-five or so per church?"

Naima barks a laugh, and then realizes that this is very rude of her.

" - I am not sure you will be able to find two hundred and fifty total clerics in the country who are both Chelish and in possession of a basic understanding of their church's core theology. - actually, no, you will, but two hundred of them will be Pharasmins."

"A thousand total sounds about right – we should probably figure out something on a per county basis, but the Galtan assembly was 600-odd and Cheliax is larger. ....and much as I like the idea of inviting two hundred illiterate village midwives, I think we should fold the clergy in with the nobility." 

"Hmm... I think having relatively few clergy would not be a problem if the convention were voting by order, but I am sure Élie thinks it should vote by head... A thousand might be too many, then. I think without a sizable fraction of delegates coming from the churches we won't have enough good people present, so I'd rather shrink whole the convention while keeping the same fraction of clergy and picked nobles than shrinking the fraction of clergy while keeping the same size of convention."

"If you'll concede on voting by head, I can agree to that – though I don't think we have the room to insist on too much goodness even among the picked delegates." 

"Two hundred and fifty nobility is also more nobility than we've actually replaced. Or vetted. Or particularly thought about for more than five minutes. We get into barons, at that number, and the barons are mostly the very same people they were one year ago. I do not want to invite one hundred of those people for the sake of making the numbers pretty, and I agree with Catherine that we want to make the convention smaller than a thousand for the sake of avoiding that."

"Six hundred, then? Of course, we can always cut back on the number of nobles."