What Rosirine chooses to do with her gold and her spare time is of
course her own business. However, I would like to address some of the
factual issues, which Rosirine has managed to twist like a balloon
animal to build support for her cause.

11 years ago, Rosirine returned from inactivity during the period when
we changed the overharvesting limits (from 15 and 5 to 10). She
proceeded to harvest moss to 5 in 11 rooms and bloodroot to 5 in 10
rooms on Ulangi. That makes 21 offenses.

In her defense, she cited a number of ooc reasons why she had been
inactive, and stated that "a friend" whom she refused to name told her
that it was ok to harvest down to 5. She admitted that she had made a
very large mistake, however, she insisted that she was a loyal follower
of Nature who had not sought to deliberately harm the forest and thus
should not be punished.

We rejected these excuses on the basis that we have never seen accidents
as being exempt from the law. We recognize that accidents happen, and
sometimes people screw up. This is why the law is structured so that
enemying doesn't occur until the 3rd offense- to allow for a couple
mistakes where the law can be satisfied just by paying a fine. Making
one mistake is bad, but not fatal. Making mistake after mistake after
mistake is not justifiable, which is why the law is structured to punish
repeated incidents of overharvesting more harshly.

The law was made and is upheld by forestals who recognize that if Nature
has been harmed, the harm is not any less just because the incident was
an accident or the perpetrator was a forestal. If you kill a friend in a
sparring match, the person is not any less dead because she is your
friend. Furthermore, the law is designed to be impartial. What
overharvesters like Rosirine are in effect suggesting is that we judge
crimes on the basis of how loyal or good we think a person is, and
punish them less harshly if they have been proven loyal to Nature.
However, to divide offenders into "good people" and "bad people" and
punish them accordingly would be to engage in exactly the sort of
nepotism that our detractors so often accuse us of.

Further, rather than relying on "a friend" for information on something
as important as what the harvesting limit is, Rosirine could have simply
asked a Hierophant, or read the public news post that we made
specifically so that people would not be confused and would know exactly
what the law says. Therefore the fact that "a friend" either got some
horribly bad information from god-knows-where or deliberately lied to
Rosirine is not an excuse.

Oakstone law stipulates that after the 5th offense (an offense is
counted as an overharvest of one plant in one room, both multiple plants
in one room and multiple rooms count as separate offenses) the offender
"will remain a permanent enemy of Oakstone until such time as recompense
is made to the satisfaction of the Council of Oakstone." The law was
designed under the premise that someone with this many overharvests was
a special case- either a deliberate mass overharvester, who we would
want to ensure would remain enemied permanently, or else someone whose
case we would want to review.

Initially we were sympathetic, seeing Rosirine as someone who had been
extremely careless, but not a malicious person and probably not someone
who was going to be a longterm danger to Nature. It was suggested that
she be punished at the level of a 4th overharvest, which is 5 years
enemying, a 20k fine, plus a 2k fine per plant overharvested...this
owuld be something like a 597k fine. We also discussed the possibility
of lower fines. While we agreed that permanent enemying was not the
solution, we wanted to be sure that she was punished for her actions,
which were still serious despite the lack of malicious intent.

We were very willing to lower the punishment to a reasonable level, and
it was basically decided to hold a referendum to vote on what kind of
punishment she ought to have. So Venyon and Rosirine spoke, and Venyon
explained the various options we were considering. Rosirine immediately
began yelling at Venyon about how unfair it was and how she made one
mistake and we were ruining her life, and how she shouldn't be enemied
at all. After Rosirine's belligerance and her display of the attitude
that she was above Oakstone law, the idea of the referendum was dropped
and we tabled the issue.

Due to some Hierophant changeovers and miscellaneous intervening
problems, the question of Rosirine's exact punishment remained
undiscussed for a while. Recently Rosirine approached us again and we
reopened discussion. (We were also harassed by Narses and Raelene, both
insisting that we were slow, grossly unfair, and should not be punishing
Rosirine for an innocent mistake.) We were also complained of to Lord
Lupus as a method of forcing us to agree on a punishment to Rosirine's
liking, and Rosirine threatened to form her anti-Oakstone group, again
in order to coerce us to do what she wanted.

I am sorry that this delay in giving Rosirine a specific punishment has
given her a way to vent her spleen at Oakstone. However, the primary
issue here has always been the belief by some people that because they
are forestal class, Oakstone law as written should not apply to them. As
for someone telling you that we forgot about you, Rosirine, we did not.
If you would attribute that quote properly to the Hierophant you heard
it from, i will certainly take it up with that person.

Unfortunately the issue of overharvesting law reform never seems to come
up except when someone complains when they personally are enemied for
breaking the law repeatedly, or when they form an anti-Oakstone group to
rant publicly about how unfair and despotic we are. Why don't people
push for reform BEFORE they commit crimes, or before they leave forest
organizations to form oppositional groups devoted to crushing Oakstone
rather than reforming it? You often see oakstone taking a defensive
stance in these little arguments, but perhaps that's because no one ever
comes to us and says "I think we need to reform the law for x reason,
let's discuss how to do it." It's always "You just enemied me for
breaking the law and that's not fair." We're not deadset against the
idea of looking at our laws and considering their fairness- but we are
against warping the law to let specific offenders off the hook, which is
usually what such people are demanding.

In the service of Nature,

Rhakshai Silvertongue
Hierophant, Oakstone

Penned by my hand on the 15th of Mayan, in the year 358 AF.