I am curious, Hingar. You say you were peaceful explorers. You say that
yours is a peace-loving society. Why, then, when you found violence on
this plane, did you remain? Allow me to quote your own words, if I
may...

'We did not start the aggression. We sent peaceful scouts and
priests - non-combatants. We sent them to determine the risks of
this place. We found aggression. We found violence. We found death. Our
death.'

You sent scouts to discover the 'risks' of this place. For what purpose?
And one you found what those 'risks' were, why in the name of
Peace-loving Vertan did you remain? It would seem to me that an
explorer, discovering that the inhabitants of the land they're exploring
have a tendency to kill, would write off that area as a 'hostile plane'
and move on. Mind you, I am not trying to feed into your perception that
the main purpose of the inhabitants of this land is to kill, that is far
from true, but yes, it does happen, and quite often.

That brings me to another quote of yours, again if I may..

'Consider this in comparison: however distressful death may or may
not be for you: for us, death is permanent. For us, death is the
end of all hope and all plans. For us, death is a singular event.'

This is understandable, and we now understand that death is an entirely
different experience for your people as it is for us. But Hingar, if you
were aware upon coming here that death is a permanent experience for
you, and if upon arriving, your scout's first experience was with a
death, then it was your responsibility to protect your own people from
that. You were aware that your people, once killed, will not live again.
We have had no such experience, because with us, as you say, death is
undesirable, but yes, temporary. How then can you hold us all
responsible for the permanence of your own deaths? It was your
responsibility, knowing the risks here, to protect your people, not
ours. We are living in our home, our land, and doing things our way, and
expecting the results we have always known. This is different from your
way, but this is not your home, it is ours.

My point here is this. I understand that in the grand scheme of things,
the hostilities began with a member of our society. And as protectors of
your own people, you had every right to retaliate on the one
responsible. Though you are aliens to this land, that gave that person
no right to kill one of your people on sight. But instead of protecting
the lives of your people by choosing to leave after that occurrence, you
further endangered the lives of your own people by choosing to remain in
a land where death is frequent and tempers not always reasonable. It is
your fault, not ours that you chose to stay, knowing the 'risks'. It is
your fault, not ours that you committed so many lives of your people to
attacking our people, knowing that if they were killed, there would be
no return for them.

This is our home, Hingar. And like it or not, here, we do things our
way. It is perfectly acceptable for you to disagree with the way things
are done around here, and it is perfectly wonderful to share with us the
knowledge of how things are done on your world, in case we might see it,
and adopt a 'better' way if we so chose. But it is not acceptable to
come into someone's home and attempt to destroy their entire way of life
because you think you can do it better. It is not acceptable to try to
justify the slaughter of our people because you chose to irresponsibly
put the lives of your own people in danger when you knew the risks since
the day you arrived.

And if I've not made my point clear yet, I'd like to expand on an
earlier analogy made by a fellow Achaean. If you were to visit someone's
home, and you do not like the decorating scheme, you do not set the
house on fire. You could give some helpful hints, and leave them to take
it or leave it. Then you return to your own home and decorate it in any
way you wish. If you walk into a tiger's territory, and it growls and
takes a swipe at you, you do not hang around and wait for it to bite
your head off, you leave the area. Nor do you kill the tiger for being
protective of its own space. The only reason I can imagine that you
would kill the tiger is if that's the reason you came to its home in the
first place.

So now my question once more. Why did you not leave? Why do you still
remain? Was your intention all along to come to kill/dominate us?
Because that is the only rational explanation for your continued
presence here, knowing that for all of our sakes, it would be better for
you to be gone. I await your reply with concern.

Oenone Atreide
Achaean

Penned by my hand on the 6th of Daedalan, in the year 386 AF.