'Stealing' is such a harsh way to describe it. It's not like this is anything out of the ordinary — well, there might have been a bit more skimming than usual, but that's to be expected with all the attacks that happened along the line.

They... don't really know which individual people handled the money. They know which forts are on the way, he could write to the forts and ask?

Irabeth is pretty sure she knows who was handling it in Kenabres, at least.

"Careful, my dear Select, anyone with the privilege of handling the funds in Nerosyan will almost certainly have a patron on the Royal Council."

"What does that cash out to in practice?" What are they going to do, take his job?

"It may affect their desire to allocate additional funding or troops to the Crusade, insofar as they have any to allocate. Of course, sometimes it's worth risking their displeasure, and any individual faction can only bring so much influence to bear, but in this case you may well replace one bureaucrat with another just as interested in self-enrichment."

"I can attempt to be slightly more conciliatory in any letters that must go as far as Nerosyan's purse-managers. How beholden is the Queen to this council?"

"In principle they are merely an advisory body. In practice if the Council is united my dear cousin would be hard-pressed to refuse them."

"In what concrete sense would she be hard-pressed. They can hardly frighten her."

"Of course not. But they could, for example, make different choices as to what work they recommend to their most competent associates."

"Kindly unpack that for me."

He would not have expected this of all things to be a foreign concept to someone from Cheliax, but he supposes that Chelish politics may be even more different than he had imagined. 

"Anyone of significance has both a personal staff and a broader group of clients who benefit from their patronage. If they wish to support my dear cousin's endeavors, they will recommend their more competent associates for positions of relevance; if they do not, they will encourage those associates to take on other projects that they have more confidence in. She cannot simply avoid the problem entirely by hiring those with no preexisting patron, as anyone in Nerosyan unable to attract a patron at all surely has some deficits that make it so, and she cannot simply conscript people into an appropriate role in the bureaucracy because she does not necessarily know every single person who might be worthwhile to appoint."

Cheliax has this sort of thing but it is talked about differently and also Blai barely touched it in his life. "I see, thank you."

"Your situation is somewhat fortunate, in the sense that no one but cultists desires Mendev to be overrun by demons, but not very fortunate, in the sense that the Royal Council may or may not believe the Crusade likely to succeed."

"I will delay some letters for post-Drezen which will one way or another settle some questions of the matter."

He laughs mirthlessly. "I suppose it will."

...Is he really not going to let people do any skimming of the money that made it to the Crusade? Even if all the soldiers get the pay they're owed?

Is someone proposing that all of these thieves are politely meeting up and coordinating on their share of this pilfering so as to carefully ensure that there is enough left for the men? Because if they're not doing that, being able to make payroll is a coincidence, and one that Mendev is paying to make mathematically possible but not enough to make reliable. And? Also? If you have more money, you can use it for other things. Performance bonuses and equipment and hiring and emergency funds. The fact that he can still just barely say he's never paid a man late is not the only issue here.

They were sort of assuming he'd be apportioning the funds out to the captains, who could then apportion it to their subordinates, and so on, and as long as everyone knows roughly the wages owed to the men under them there shouldn't be a problem. ...Is he distributing pay some other way? Inquiring minds want to know (specifically, they want to know whether their embezzlement schemes are still feasible).

How many people would he have to fit in a Zone of Truth to expect that doing things that way would ACTUALLY WORK.

...His captains seem concerningly unsure of the actual answer to that question. If he's only checking the people who might have contact with the funds before soldiers get their pay... at least a hundred, probably a couple hundred? 

He wants them to go determine the answer to that question more exactly. Not just people who pay soldiers, anyone who has budget authority over things like weapons, food, coats, etcetera.

But he can do "probably a couple hundred" in just two Zones if they have appropriate protocols for "assertions first, confirmation in the Zone" and he thinks that is worth it.

If anyone has a weird borderline case that they certainly don't think is corruption but would like to go over with him well in advance of this process to make sure they're not caught by an underinformed wording, now is good.

They can... attempt... to determine an answer. It will take them some time while they question their subordinates about their delegation practices, but they do eventually come up with an estimate. (Under their best guess about how broad he meant that to be, it's a larger group, but still less than a thousand people.)

How long of a time period is he going to be asking them about? Just the time since he took over? 

It's not corruption if they take funds that were supposed to be spent on one thing and spend them on something else that's more important, as long as everyone still gets their pay on time, right?

It's not corruption to dock people's pay for disciplinary infractions, right? 

It's not corruption to make reasonable judgment calls about how to use discretionary funds, right? And so he definitely doesn't need to look too closely as to what those judgement calls were.

This person doesn't have a question, he just wants to complain that he's trying to treat them like common criminals rather than having trust in them to do their jobs.

Could the size of this group be cut down by next month? Not necessarily by demoting anyone out of a budget-handling role if they didn't do anything wrong, but if he's about to find two hundred speculators, do they need to be ready to promote two hundred or can they not.

Since he took over and their intentions for the coming month's money.

You need to get that signed off on. By, to start out, your CO, but if this turns out to produce surprising agreement about things that are actually incorrect between people and their COs, or if he finds that people are directing their subordinates to consider things important so as to manufacture that agreement, he might make it skip levels or something. Document it.

Up to the point specified in the handbook for those reasons and no farther and you don't get to have the money, it goes back in the general top-level budget or else it just incentivizes people to have and/or manufacture relevant disciplinary infractions in their units.

That... is what "discretionary" means... but he is going to want them documented, actually. They are discretionary, not personal; they cover "there was a fire sale on Endure Elements wands and I took advantage" or "our food caught fire and I had to replace it" but not "I went out to lunch".

Blai would love to establish that trust but he does not have it at this time. Would this person like to ask Rathimus what kinds of bets he'd be willing to take on how many people are going to fail the Zone? He can make money that way, if he's right.

...........Is he really planning to replace everyone who "fails" the Zone? 

They could probably reduce it somewhat but at the cost of making anyone he leaves in place busier.

Will he be increasing the paper budget to account for all this new documentation he wants them to do?

This person isn't a gambler, don't be absurd. 

If he's trying to march all these people through a Zone of Truth anyway has he considered asking them to affirm that they aren't cultists? It'll make it take longer but it'd be worth it to catch a cultist.

That's his plan!

So they need to be ready to do some promotions, and he'd like recommendations for that ready to go.

Learn to write smaller but if anyone is seriously running out of paper yes.

Blai is delighted to hear that this guy isn't going to take chances with anything important, like money.

It'd take too much longer and cultists probably do fiduciary malfeasance if they have the opportunity.