Astarod,

You speak of challenging ideals and then slaughter humble priests and detonate art galleries, as if killing denizens and destroying civic structures somehow harms the ideals that they represent. Are you forgetting that these are the ideals on which the oldest city-state on Sapience, the most resilient of ancient walls, are founded? Do you really think these ideals are so fragile? Perhaps as fragile as the foundation on which Shallam was built?

Starbursts flare and buildings become rubble, fresh material for new constructions, and the grand ideals on which Ashtan has stood for over a thousand years remain.

You speak of combat and those who stand aside, and yet you fail to grasp the simplest truth: Military might is not the only battlefield. It's true that I am neither a combatant nor an enlisted soldier, but I do not stand aside; My weapon of choice is the quill, not the claw. It is a battlefield that you don't recognize, a battlefield that you avoid, but it is a battlefield nonetheless; and here I stand.

In Ruin,
Ambassador Tintar Arbh'ahi-Qumma

Penned by my hand on the 5th of Lupar, in the year 989 AF.