"Little red island."

Ne'er before in recorded history have three words - conceived in pride,
published in contempt, and remembered in ignominy - been so bewailed, so
utterly stained in the blood of mortalkind. The Holy Church, in all its
magnanimity, might go so far as to forgive the fateful impetuosity; but
among the multitudes laid low, forever deaf to regrets, there are none
left to offer absolution.

The unlucky few to have survived this century of savagery may scarcely
recall the post at all, dismissed for a trifling banality too common for
common knowledge, yet its currency lay in its consequence. Within five
years, a little red island had swept across the Vashnar Mountains,
disabusing its Eastern foes of a "complacency," so readily admitted, and
reminding the whole of Sapience of the vicissitudes of fortune.

Meanwhile, our heathen foes lounged amidst degeneracy, its members
blending every expression of convenience, of frivolity, and of
ostentation, whatever might assuage their weakness, or gratify their
sensuality. Exercising long-developed powers of self-deception, our
numerous foes frittered away those irretrievable moments that were
diligently improved by the industry of Mhaldorian leadership. At the
last, with Western swords all but pressed upon the breast, the
Shallamese armies resigned, with a sigh, the comforts of their
subdivision, their Ithmia groves, and where exhibitionism supplied a
want of taste, the city balconies.

The vanity of belated valour was soon apparent to the Eastern deities,
Who beheld the inexorable splintering of Their scattered shrines, the
destruction of which might have suggested the necessity, if not the
prudence, of decisive action. For it was this wave of defilement that
presaged still more desperate losses, as the five Icons of Shallam were
deliberately set upon in breathtaking succession by forces raised to
ferocity and long accustomed to the rigours and sacrifice of total war.

Yet, even with the acrid smoke of fallen bulwarks mingling with the
rising stench of public ridicule, the practices of court intrigue proved
themselves of a stronger construction. Habituated to campaigns of a
political, rather than martial, quality, the unruly Shallamese mob
trained their arts upon the foes against whom they are raised from
infancy to fight - namely, each other.

In the interim, the Shallamese warrior, where not crippled for want of
courage, found his shoulders the perch of these well-fed political
scavengers, insatiably pecking at whatever decisiveness remained within
the desiccated Eastern corps. Even the most firmly indoctrinated slaves
of the political elite blanched when faced with what came to be a
familiar cycle of helpless besiegement, hapless leadership, and hopeless
counteroffensives. A wave of emigrants, possessed of more sense than
fidelity, and consulting their own safety, sought refuge abroad,
necessitating, we are told, a tripling of the aides to the office of the
Cyrenian ambassador.

And now, with the sun descending behind the jagged cliffs of Deadman's
Peak, that ruddy light recalls to mind the triumph and sacrifice of our
Evil forebears. A barren wind whistles past the graves of our vanquished
enemies, where men and monuments alike lie broken. Shrines to the Lords
of Evil, no longer confined to the Baelgrim walls, mark a land once
marred by heathen works, offering silent confirmation of both faith and
faithlessness.

Indeed, the children of the West are the inheritors of a great legacy
and still greater burden, for while our active valour, the strength of
nature, might claim an empire - only our patient diligence, the fruit of
discipline, can keep it. The Lords of Evil guide us in this endeavour,
that we might hold Their wisdom in our hearts, Their vision in our
minds, and a blade in our hands, forever and ever,

Amen.

Penned by my hand on the 17th of Valnuary, in the year 516 AF.