I would not be so harsh on villages that side with the Vertani. For
generations their people have been decimated by hordes of attackers.
Imagine if your entire city was slaughtered every other month, and you
could do nothing to stop it. I doubt you can even conceive of what that
would be like - I know I can't. The only city that tries to help these
villages, Shallam, is constrained by its own resources as well as divine
law. Now for the first time these villages have some sort of hope of
avoiding the holocausts that are visited upon them many times each year.

I don't endorse the Vertani. But I do completely understand the desire
of certain villages to gain a respite, however brief, from carnage and
despair. We as Sapience are reaping the consequences of our total
disregard for these villages.

Penned by my hand on the 18th of Chronos, in the year 382 AF.