Honoured High Lady Maleficence,


You chose to list such serpentine skills as negative connotations
unworthy of Knighthood, even when you yourselves employ the same, having
been gifted by the Divine powerful abilities of shadow and stealth. We
serpents are indeed chosen by the Divine as most skilled in the arts of
deception and subterfuge, but to what avail? After all, the Maldaathi do
claim to be a House centered on combat and war, and is not all warfare
based on deception?

That being said, I myself prefer the austerity of a duel over such
tactics as assassination, and I am quite content to relinquish the
advantage of surprise that is so prized by my kind to that effect.
Honour is respect, and propriety, so you say, and so it is. Such honour
is what separates the Knight from the common warrior or the thug, and as
serpents of the Guardians of Light, we choose to exhibit that Honour. As
to whether or not you consider us your knightly equivalents, or our own
House labels us as so-called "second-class members", we care not, for it
is not for the sake of a trophy, medal, or some sort of worldly
recognition that we choose uphold such ideals, but duty and devotion.


Regards,
Alaren Nivalis, Justiciar

Penned by my hand on the 22nd of Aeguary, in the year 450 AF.