Salutations Hashan,

You were a decaying raft adrift in a lake of mediocrity, kept afloat by
opportunistic neutrality and swept into a sea of uncertainty by waves of
aggression. I am here today to tell you that you have drowned.

Your raft is splinters and your shipmates are meat for the creatures of
the sea. Your battered sail, bearing the remnants of once proud Heraldic
Arms, rests now partially submerged and draped modestly over the bloated
and upturned corpse of your beloved chimeric dragon, as if protecting
some great shame from the laughing eyes of the Sun.

We have paved the streets of your city with crippled guards and traveled
upon them harshly, in spiked boots, until the music of our movement has
died. We have rained down lightning upon you using supplies refined from
your own Master Crystal. We have pilfered and smudged enough totems to
rebuild the forest clear cut by your ancestors to erect your wretched
city. We have turned your own men against you, who come to us saying, "I
will help you, please let me live."

You have tried every avenue to make our task difficult but it has only
made our victory easier. You have begged your enemies, strong soldiers,
to assist you but like all good warriors they knew intuitively when to
abandon a sinking vessel and they have abandoned you.

I shall make clear the implications of our victory, Hashan. It would be
fatal for you to overlook the urgency of what follows.

I will see to it that any blood spilled on Good land will be cleansed by
the blood of those that allowed it.

I will send torch-bearing men riding armored horses to draw a line of
fire through the center of your city to separate the Good from the bad.
In cleansing fire your bodies shall wither whereupon your heresies shall
be lifted into into the sky and the clouds will rain down nought but
dust and powder for 100 years, and you will be destroyed.

We will set fire to your courts and offices and bid your Regents quench
them with their tears. We will fill the pipes of your heathen warriors
with the dried remainders of their loved ones so that each breath tastes
of loss.

It will be a wonder and frightening to your young, who will cower and
flee your walls proclaiming, "What tempest is this that breaks men to
pieces?" And at the conclusion of each successful breach, before
resting, we shall exhume your dead and prop them at your city gates --
even when your sorrows had almost been forgotten -- and on their skins,
as on the bark of trees, will carve in crude Hashani letters: "Let not
your sorrow die, though I am dead."

Turn your eyes towards the lands of Good men and there will be no rest
for you for we will come and sink our blades into your hearts, into your
servants and into your people so that you will know that there are no
others like us in all the earth. And cursed be any who man who seeks to
build upon your rubble, for we shall pursue them equally.

As I have said, Hashan, your raft is gone. Claimed by the violent seas.
You have drowned. But, perhaps, amongst the splinters, clinging
perilously to scattered debris there exists one -- or more! -- men
strong enough to fight the raging tides and swim to the shores of
salvation.

The city of Shallam sees within you a Light that I am blind to. They
have faith that you can be saved. I am not convinced.

Now is your chance, Hashan. Pull yourselves together, out of sorrow and
sacrifice, and prove me wrong.

Dread Redeemer of the Qashar,
Ovid al-Aqsa

Penned by my hand on the 17th of Ero, in the year 529 AF.