Sarcasm makes an entertaining garnish at a tavern table; it is less palatable when served as the main course in a discussion of sovereignty. You delight in quips about beavers, cyclopes, and misplaced paperwork as though this stage act might pass for statesmanship. Is this comedy routine what passes for leadership in Cyrene these days? Some sick satire insisting that oaths die with their signer, as if promises liquefy into mulch the moment ink is capped and the audience applauds?

If so, then what worth is any accord you agree to today? Will every Senate session require a fresh scroll of vows, stamped "best-before" the next shuffle of chairs? That is not diplomacy; it is cup-and-ball trickery. Oaths endure precisely because rulers topple, colours fade, and archives smoulder. The Aalen must remember, for we have never possessed the comfortable amnesia of city-states that repaint their sigils when the season turns.

You soothe us with talk of peaceful intent, promising no sword will flash so long as we smile at the collar you fit around our throats. Spare us the pamphlets. A garden may bloom beneath another's trowel only after the native roots are hacked away to make space for imported ornamentals. Your help arrives wearing gauntlets and measuring sticks.

I ask nothing new, only that Cyrene keep the vow already spoken: draw back your eidolic brand from trees that were ancient when your quarries were still dust. Honour the word that once earned you welcomed passage beneath our boughs, and the Aalen will speak of Cyrene as a people whose promises outlive parchment. Treat pledges as festival bunting to be packed away when the parade ends, and you will discover how swiftly the world learns to fold up your banners in return.

- King Tu'eras

Penned by my hand on the 17th of Scarlatan, in the year 992 AF.