Wealthy greetings to you again.

I greatly appreciate that both of you have taken a portion of your
valuable time and busy schedules to answer to my post, and shown me that
the previous ignoring you displayed when I approached the leader of your
House in this matter was only temporary and purely unintentional.

To Silinrul Lichlord. First, I am no Vault Keeper, but a Managing
Director in Lord Prospero's Order, as stated at the end of my previous
post.
Next, when I claim that your House is not achieving its full potential,
which is why I felt you no longer followed the teaching of my Lord, and
one of the reasons for removal of His shrine from within your Househall,
I make that claim form my standpoint, that of a Prosperian who had been
taught to seek excellence in the art of Trade, to rise above the average
merchant dealing in the business of the exchange of goods and services,
and offer something more to the public, in the form of new markets, new
services, absolute quality and fair prices. And out of all of that, I
believe your House does not display these traits, which is something one
of your former House Leaders admitted herself, and even promised that
will change. But, I still await to see any change yet. Although, if you,
as House, are content to boast with having a shop in any city, and have
a wide selection of craftsmen and providers of services, which is
something any House with any interest in the economics can claim, so be
it.

Now, regarding to your membership in Lord Prospero's Order, I must admit
I do not remember you, for I have not seen a single post on the Order
board written by you, although, like you've said, you were absent for a
longer period of time, and I wasn't part of the Order at the time you
were a member, most likely. For that reason, I cannot say why you were
deemed unworthy of a membership, what I gather from you explanation, it
involved even a person outside the Order. While I don't agree with some
of the things my predecessor, the actual Vault Keeper, did, I believe he
did not act in haste and failed to consider all the consequences of
removing you from the Order for the reason you stated, since Lord
Prospero never objected to that decision.

But, the fact that you left our Order certainly does not mean you are
not made to be a Merchant, more it has to do with finding your own path,
and it seems you have found that path for yourself, on which I
congratulate you.
I must still add that we had very diverse number of members among our
ranks, and not all of them have managed to achieve their potential after
leaving the Order, but so can be said for any House too, including
yours. Some people just have to make mistakes to realize where they
belong, I believe.

Also, how difficult it is, for any House that has strong financial
support and the number of members no Order can hope to have anytime, to
open shops or buy other real estate? Surely, in the comparison of Orders
and Houses, Orders seem to be in relative disadvantage, especially
Orders with only a few members an missing Patron, like Order was?

But to get to the matter at hand, to clarify some of the details you
have mentioned. You say that your House was always in support of my Lord
and His Order, even after He stepped down as Patron of your House, but I
wonder where your House was when we had to deal with the constant
attacks from Santar, when he successfully destroyed not two or three
shrines of my Lord, but almost twenty shrines in total? Oh, yes, I
forgot, some members of your House were in business relations with him,
so you couldn't afford to get involved in that. And more recently, did
your House offer any help with the rebuilding of His Temple in Delos,
during the time Zaphar flooded the city and turned many buildings there
in to ruins, while His Temple even now is still under construction, but
due to bureaucratic issues, cannot be fully rebuilt. Surely, with the
vast resources and influence of your House, assisting in that rebuilding
would not be a problem for you.

When the actual removal of the shrine to my Lord is concerned, I never
really claimed I smudged any runes on any totem within your House, since
I wasn't aware that we of the Serpent class can do so, but maybe the
knowledge of my skills is not yet good enough. It is true I tricked one
member of your House into getting me into your Househall, and by doing
so, the runes on totems therein assaulted me, as they should have, since
I clearly was not desired there.

I have given your House Leader more than two years to consider my
request, and enough reasons to accept my request, but he chose to ignore
it, even when I told him that shrine will be removed, by all means
available to me, if needed. And yet, why he seemingly did not inform you
in the House Leading Council, that is not upon me to speculate, so you
should direct your question to him.

I do regret that it had to come to this, but since my pleading and
reasoning with your House Leader was met with his silence on the matter,
I didn't have much options available. Trickery is not something I am
proud of, but in this case it was available to me, and necessary, even.
Or maybe you suggest that I should have followed another option, any
offer gold to your House, to secure my request, as it seems that would
have worked quicker and better. Or maybe even I should have, as some
have suggested to me, turned that shrine against your Leading Council,
and cause actual harm to them, before you agree to my request? To be
honest, I haven't even considered that last option, but if a person with
less patience than me was in my place, I fear that might have happened
in the end.

And lastly, I am not sure how well you are both familiar with it, but
the process of dismantling a shrine is very much different to defilement
of that shrine, which can take some time, depending on one's resources.
The process of dismantling merely requires an authorized member of an
Order, and with permission of the Patron of the Order it is very much
legal, and can be compared to when carpenter disassembles a table made
from several components. It doesn't have the same meaning, though, since
shrines are physical manifestations of devotion to one God or Goddess,
and not just mere objects.

It is true I did not have actual permission of my Lord, since He is not
physically able to give me such permission, but I did act with belief
that your House no longer followed His path, and thus, the presence of
His shrine in your Househall was no longer an option.

And as far as my sentence and fine is concerned, while I dispute the
validity of reason for issuing the edict of my enemy status, do as you
please and set any fine you prefer, since that is your right, but you
have by now clearly shown that your devotion to Lord Prospero is nothing
more than a word on a piece of paper.


To Saltaern Sioraiocht, Regent of Hashan. I appreciate you taking time
to explain to me why was I enemied to your city, since you somehow
failed to mention that when you enemied me. Of course, not that I am
entitled to be given the explanation of why was I enemied to your city
at all, but it warms my heart to know I have been given such privilege.

There are few things in your post that I find odd, though, so I shall
address them here.

The question remains, if you believe that shrines are city property, and
their removal being an offense in your city, while you failed to enemy
me to Hashan when I removed the first shrine to my Lord from a public
place within Hashan, and your only reaction to that was to ask me why I
removed the shrine, after I removed the shrine, and then gave you
reasons for that removal. While that is only a speculation now, it is
likely I would have never gotten the chance to remove the shrine from
Crown Merchants Househall afterwards, had I been enemied at that point.
My guess is you found no reasons for such act then, so I would dare to
say you had no actual reasons for such act now either.

To be clear, that shrine was the only shrine our Order had in any
private property, save for, obviously, my Lord' Temple, and given to
your House as a concession, not to be made part of your property or even
House inventory. And for the reasons I stated over and over, I have
decided to remove that shrine, not out of malice or to exact any revenge
upon your House, as some members of your House tried to describe it. I
chose the least aggressive way to do so, if I may point out that, since
no one was actually harmed, save for the pride of few people.
Unfortunately, the person I used, and I repeat, used to lead me into
your House, without me hving to use my skills of a Serpent to break into
your House, was harmed by your House, and suspected as my collaborator.
That both saddens me and amuses me, since it clearly shows that distrust
and witch-hunting are not foreign to your House.

Now, to your implication that as head of Lord Prospero's, I have
aspirations to rise above Divine law, and act on my own, since my Lord
is not here to hold me down or even replace me, I would have to say you
are the last person that can make your claim, for some of your
statements, that I had the opportunity to learn of have been quite
intriguing, borderline breaching the same Divine laws you call upon,
combined with your particular behaviour towards few of the Divines you
claim to respect.

But that is your problem, not mine, I still remain a loyal servant to my
Lord, and will abide to any decision and judgement He deems worthy for
my act, once He returns among us.


Good fortune to both,
Aecius Pyroboreus, Managing Director, for the former Order of Wealth and
Trade.

Penned by my hand on the 9th of Valnuary, in the year 491 AF.