Necessity quite rightly is the father of invention,
but it underhandedly invokes integrity's abstention.
We may determine then it is a quite bemusing lord,
leading oft to compromise that's comprehensively abhorred.

Yet, out of troubled times and in a place of desperate need
did the Western lands' integrity succumb to simple greed;
align they did with Ashtan and the noble Nihilist sect
with an eye toward Shallam's Ruination better to perfect.

Not yet did Westerners themselves constrain to Sartan's gift;
The northern hordes were shapeless, ide'logically adrift--
excepting, but of course, the Nihilist throngs among their ranks;
the visionary leaders, silent pillars long unthanked.

Eyes fervent, then, with visions of Shallam's hasten'd demise,
Mhaldorians assemble with those uneasy allies.
In shackles then with one's most hated enemy, save one,
they march both south and east to raze the City of the Sun.

The streets did fill alarmingly with viscera and gore;
for each new Shallamite, the horde did slaughter twenty more.
Embattled Easterners did honour finally eschew,
and west did turn the City's strong-- retreating toward Jaru.

The horde then turned their sights upon the villagers remained
and were gathered altogether at the palace (yet unstained).
The day drew on as their unsettling, violent work was done;
red did dawn the dusk that night in the City of the Sun.

The gilded domes were burning then, the City's buildings razed;
the few remaining, hardy souls were shackled and enslaved.
Depopulated wholly, save a few verminous pests;
integrity the only loss sustained, then, by the West.

The Westerners themselves did pride on spreading Evil's seed--
no matter that, to preach their ways, the Northern horde they'd need.
Though many ages passed 'tween hallowed then and banal now,
only recently did Westerners Occultists disallow.

And thus see we the difference 'twixt the West and restless North--
after all, the Bastion Sartan's guild did shatter and send forth!
That was the first occasion wherein Chaos bid goodbye
to Evil-- from their nascency, greeting then Discordia's lies.

The waning Goddess Eris, Her truest faithful had deceiv'd
with Her cunning act of treachery-- Her wizened lot did grieve.
The wizened few remaining oftentimes themselves embarrass
with a shrieking and misplaced belief in long-forgotten Eris.

As all the world's a project brushed aside by its Inventor,
we can see its slow demise, an the cosmos be our mentor.
Does He simply just not care to purify what He's created?
Or has His mast'ry o'er our lands been vastly overstated?

As for me, I cannot tell you what was was on the Logos' mind;
only contemplate those things that He has left for us to find.
I believe that He created us to serve a purpose sound
yet that purpose is fulfilled, and thus Creation loses ground.

As this Creation shimmers like the heated desert sands
and it flickers in and out as Chaos slowly takes our lands,
it occurs that Ayar wanted to experience Creation--
and He did that, thus explaining all this subsequent negation.

So many flaws of Order do the West and East admire;
even though the laws of physics 'gainst those two themselves conspire.
Imagine, then, the tortured screams and pained looks of surprise
when the one true Lord of Chaos, Black-Eyed Babel, did arise!

A greater irony I guarantee you'll never find:
the 'principles of Order' will, one day, destroy our minds.
If you long to slow the tide, upon the Nihilists you depend,
for only those intrepid few know 'gainst what we forfend.

If there's no eternal ending, then no actions carry weight;
it's as if our acts are guided by an iron-shackled fate.
Yet the only thing that's fated is that all will fall destroyed--
what, then, matters is our actions as we stare into the Void.

4 Miraman, 573 years after the Fall.

Penned by my hand on the 4th of Miraman, in the year 573 AF.