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Public News Post #19416

A Response

Written by: Dawnlord Silas Maynard, the Voice of Light
Date: Wednesday, April 9th, 2014
Addressed to: Shadow Matrix Jarrod Lucoster, Lunar Shade


Jarrod,

Your ridiculous accusations aside, one part of your post did pique my interest.

Regrettably, I missed the Championship Games, and I was absent for the Ashtani raids that followed. But as I have surveyed the aftermath these past few months, the one thing most conspicuous in its absence has been despair.

These things happened in Shallam, as they happen everywhere else. All cities go through peaks and troughs in their activity and their manpower, as leaders come and go - as cities themselves rise and fall; but in Shallam, when the city was beseiged and her citizens killed over and over, the despair was palpable. It clung in the air like a stifling sheet, destroying morale and thwarting all attempts at progress and forward momentum.

It was reasonable, then, for me to expect the same to have overtaken Targossas when I returned. I expected my citizens to be morose, lacking in confidence, and low in spirits. But I found none of these things.

You see, Jarrod, this city is founded on more than strength. We are not founded on the belief that we are bigger than everybody else, and we are not founded on the need to push ourselves and others to lengths that most would balk at.

We are not squeamish - as I'm sure Mhaldor and Hashan would testify, if either could face up to the Truth - but unlike Ashtan, where the only driving force is power - where only might makes right - we can turn aside from these defeats and know that even though our progress might have been hindered, our guiding principles still shine brightly, a beacon beckoning us on.

I look to the north, Jarrod, and despite your hollow victories, I see a city that is again losing its way. Babel's push was promising, in that it was refreshing to see Ashtan given a unifying direction, even if it was such a wholly unedifying one. But I look now, and I see again your warriors resorting to the brash tedium that I was familiar with in my youth, under the flimsy, anything goes banner of Freedom, still backed by the trifling meddling of the Usurper.

In Targossas, our strength is derived from our purpose. Our tenacity we owe to the Bloodsworn, by whose grace we are led. It is our ideals, Jarrod, that lend us the perserverance to continue to get up when our bodies fall.

You may bemoan whatever alliances you believe sprung up during the Championship Games, and as I was not there I will neither deny nor defend them; but Targossas is a city on its own: the one true beacon of Good, of Light, and of Righteousness in these lands.

The Dawnspear has no quarrel with the primal forces of Nature, nor the cultured isolationists in the Southern Vashnars, but nor do we have any allies in them. In our purpose, we stand alone, against all the forces that would seek to sully or sunder Creation, be those forces the mewling hordes of Evil, the barely relevant shadows of Darkness, or the once mighty armies of Chaos.

This, Jarrod, is why we reach out. It is such a tragic shame to see such power so underutilised - to see Ashtan's might wasted in futile and unnecessary grandstanding and personal affairs.

Alas, though, these are the choices we make.


In Their name,

Silas Maynard de l'Evanoir
Dawnlord of Targossas

Penned by my hand on the 7th of Mayan, in the year 651 AF.


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