About a year has now passed by our mortal timekeeping, a heartbeat by other standards, since I extended the invitation of a life in service to Nature, to those savage hearts who would heed such a call. During this time, there have been some responses. To those who have spoken out in aversion, representatives of the City of Evil, the Seat of Chaos, and the Guardians' Hearth, I extend my thanks. Debate, especially when sharpened by disagreement, is preferable to the silence, and there is value in seeing beliefs pressed against each other and discovering what remains standing.

In the varied responses that were penned, I note that the restrained dominance of Nature was yielded nearly completely without the fight some evidently expected it to require. Instead, we have witnessed others appoint themselves arbiters of Eleusian conviction and measure it by their own conception of what it must look like, congratulating themselves for finding us wanting. Whether this is testament to the inevitability of Her realm or the inconsistencies within those opposing ideologies, I shall leave to you to determine: perhaps wiser minds than mine will decide.

From Mhaldor came three contributions, from the Dread Hand Aegoth Aristata, Commandant Pharaus Lichlord and Scribe Harkon d'Ivoire, each with a slightly different angle, yet ultimately revealing the notion that conviction and its successes can only be weighed by what one is willing to suffer, what one is willing to impose, and how firmly another can be pressed beneath the heel of said conviction. This, and an apparent thriving industry in dictionaries: one must wonder if the libraries on this continent have begun charging their Mhaldorian patrons by the word, so desperate some have become to acquire sufficient vocabulary to decipher the meaning of their own arguments. Beneath the surface seems to rest a simpler proposition: that if Eleusians do not constantly tear down walls, refuse every tool wrought by mortal hands or seek confrontation for its own sake, then we must lack conviction.

I acknowledge the challenge from the Commandant aimed at the Viridian Charter and its following, and I lament the fact that it troubles some men, even years after leaving the village, enough to write to us still embittered. However, an empty faith does not produce deserters this aggrieved, and I fear this ire perhaps cracks the lens through which the Commandant views what has passed. The Charter demands that Nature outlasts that which iron and stone attempt to make permanent, not that every Eleusian carry a torch to your gates. The villager seeking trade within a city does not un-write the ending already promised to its walls. Those reading who would call this convenience must also consider it as certainty, which affords a patience that Mhaldor, in its haste to fight everything at once, does not.

Further from Mhaldor came the idea of the victory of Nature as too easily won, that it has cleverly been arranged to never be judged. The Scribe grasps at a wager he has not seen lost, in place of one that cannot be. I will name my personal terms clearly, since he asked for none: should the wild ever cease its return, I will kneel at whichever gate remains standing and admit the error that is mine. In the interim, however, I will not have the impatience of the Scribe confused with our answer.

From Ashtan and Ser Ulvin Devi came a single different challenge, that the persistence of Nature is itself subject to the same impermanence that consumes all things. The thought experiment about the last seed has excellent imagery, but is fundamentally flawed: death is not an exception but an essential mechanism of the cycles. Followers of the ideology that only sees desolation as the ultimate destination of our journey through this world will perhaps look upon that barren wasteland and declare victory, only to be astounded as they observe the seedling growing from that which was thought lost, proving beyond all mortal doubt the power of regrowth that simply will not yield.

From Targossas and Adjutant Kaldrin came an astute observation about competing interpretations of conviction, and the troubles the uninitiated might experience discerning who is right when all are equally loud concerning for whom they endure sacrifice, and what price they will pay to see their convictions through. I acknowledge the thoughtfulness of this, and ask of you: who gets to decide what constitutes sufficient evidence of conviction, and by what authority are we required to provide it?

To the Eleusian, this question is answered, and I have already stated what would prove me wrong. The tree does not need to roar to prove that it is alive, and the seed does not need to conquer the soil before it grows. Nature does not require our permission to continue through arguments of conviction, convenience or whether it can endure the fate of all things that live: it can only be revered, until the day it cannot.

To all who are reached by these words, the offer still stands: claim your space within the cycles, or become a memory of an ideology that crumbled alongside the monuments raised in its glory.

Penned by my hand on the 13th of Glacian, in the year 1011 AF.