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In the Name of the God-King Neraeos Pelagia, Who Measures the Deeps as a mortal measures grain, and Knows the Truth of every matter hidden beneath the waves,

From Ramilies Da'Navi, Scrivener and Scholar, who has read the laws of the City States of Sapience, and their written charters and constitutions and His Most Excellent Imperial Charter,

To His Majesty King Tu'eras, and Queen Alianna, and their August Court of the Aalen Forest.

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Lo-dai and Peace be upon your most noble royal house, and may the clarity of still waters fill your mind.

I write not as a stranger but as one who has served these realms with ink and vellum, who knows the weight of precedent andthe shape of justice, and who know humbly seeks the honour of the bench in the matter of the Case before the Tribunal.

Having written to you in private, as is proper, for one does not shout his ambitions in the marketplace before he has whispered them in the ear of the lord of his domain. I do not persume to know the pace at which a king nor his court moves, for the right of kings is sacrosanct, nor do I mistake silence for refusal. A forest does not answer every wind that passes through its branches.

But this matter, before the tribunal does not wait, for as it is known that the Hearth has extended her hospitality in hosting the tribunal. The parties grow restless my king. The whispers have begun. Many have whispered "who will sit upon this tribunal?", including Countess Nezaya Vsindi, Advocate for Ms. Skye Anchors, as I am sure your majesty has heard, as have I, for a Scrivener hears everything. Being seekers and Curators of all that has been written, whether within the Library holdings of Cyrene or beyond.

I have spent centuries in the company of laws, from Imperial Edicts, decrees, charters and constitutions. I have watched justices sleep upon benches and wake to pronounce sentences that would make the Divine weep salt into the seas. I have seen justice done poorly, and I have seen it done well, and I have studied both so that the difference between the two is known.

The great ledgers of precedent, and the rolls of pleadings tied with silk, I know them as a shepherd knows his sheep. I have mended their broken spines, deciphered their faded words, and added my own hand in their margins.

Who better then to hold the scales?

Not the warrior, for he sees only honour and insult,

Not the merchant, for they see only profit and loss,

Not the courtier, for they see only favour and slight,

But the scrivener - the one who has studied and acquired the laws, and noted where the law bends and where it breaks - he sees clearly.

The God-King does not judge the drowned by their strength in swimming, nor by the gold in their purses, nor the friends they have left on shore. He weighs only what they were, and what they did, and what they carry in their hearts when they waves took them. So too should a justice of the Tribunal of the Aalen Forest look upon those who come before him.

I ask for no recompense, I ask for no special favour in other matters. I ask only to sit upon the bench in this case, and for the chance to show what a lifetime among the books has taught me.

If you choose another, I will serve them as faithfully as I would have served myself. I will pen the judgments in a fair hand, I will search the precedents they require, I will hold my peace when he errs, and praise him when he does well. That is my vow.

If you choose me, if you take the risk of raising an ink-stained hand to hold the rod of justice, then I swear by the God-King who sees all depths, and the forest you rule, and by the very ink with which I write these words, in witness of Sapience herself:

I will judge truly.
I will judge fairly.
I will judge as one who knows that every sentence he writes will one day be read by scriveners and others, in other ages, who will say of him: "He understands the law. He served it well"

In service and friendship eternal,

Ramilies Da'Navi
Scrivener of Cyrene,







Penned by my hand on the 9th of Lupar, in the year 998 AF.