Greetings honorable Calhoun!

I am pleased that someone has decided to take a scholarly examination of
how landmarks play into the lives of Achaeans. Unfortunately, I see that
you have primarily examined necromancers. But clearly this is a fallacy.
After all, the plights and advantage a necromancer gains from a landmark
is meaningless without a benchmark from the other side to gauge it with,
and the quality of the skills of a necromancer mean nothing without a
benchmark from the other side to compare with. So clearly you need
someone to revise your document to include both sides of the issue more
in full lest you inadvertently bias people towards Shallam's side with
inaccuracies since you do not fight for either side anymore. Being of
the Tsol'aa race and having been recently honored in the Fellowship of
Scarlatti for my university thesis on truth itself, I have taken it upon
myself to do the arduous task of filling in the missing pieces of your
original work with proper scholastic statements on not just necromancers
and their abilities, but also an analysis of how it contrasts with the
Church and comparable Church skills (and I even threw in the snakes once
solely for the sake good balance). I even graciously fixed your spelling
and grammatical errors.

As Ethians Crossing has come and gone, the war over the landmarks is in
full swing again. Paladins, Infernals, Priests, and Occultists lead the
charge to work on landmarks.

In a perfect world, that would be the case. In ours? Yeah right. Of
course the four concerned guilds have a hefty hand in the workings of
the landmarks, but the entire world somehow gets thrown into the mix.
Some of which don't even want to be involved in such a mess.

To clear some things up for all the critics and complainers of the
world, Shallam is extremely interesting when compared to the two other
city states. Paladins and Priests are gifted with the abilities of
devotion. Specific powers such as Prayer, Preaching, and Deliverance are
widely used throughout the City-State to cower in fear and run away from
honorable combat like scared rabbits more effectively than any other
skill in all the lands! These life giving abilities tend to cost
devotion energies and are replaced every dawn and when a Church member
immolates the dead, if of course the landmarks are in good alignment. It
is much identical to necromancers eating hearts for essence and gaining
essence when the Church gains their free devotion points. Unlike poor
necromancers who have a mere two ways to gain power (the infamous third
way in necromancy does not count as it quickly prevents a necromancer
from walking peacefully through the woods thus being of little use to a
non-suicidal necromancer), a member of the Church has an additional
third way to gain with no drawbacks: through a rite of prayer thus
giving them a slight edge in the power struggle between the two despite
their abysmal failure in the last struggle for landmarks.

The righteous endeavor to sway the landmarks into good alignment for the
church is painstakingly frustrating and hard for the leadership of the
Church. Unlike Ashtan, the Church does not employ all their forces field
preferring to leave their mediocre fighters behind instead of sending
them in full force to fight in honor as Ashtan does [according to
Calhoun's claims, not mine], nor can they field people vehement enough
to keep on pushing long after they have lost numerous levels of
experience as Ashtan does (in other words, the Church lacks the bravery
and conviction of beliefs to continue fighting for the cause in the face
of their superiors [again, this is what Calhoun claimed in his post, so
argue it with him if you disagree] and Shallam also does not subscribe
to allowing graced newbies get involved, a stratagem that even the Logos
Himself has said is perfectly acceptable). But maybe Shallam is finally
learning to use all forms of combat as the honorable Kerbouchard's
warcry states what could possibly as her strategy in warfare:
"webwebwebwebwebwebwebwebwebwebwebweb".

Ashtan on the other hand, is gifted with necromancy. We all know how
soulcage, blackwind, and deathaura go to help the well being of the
entire city-state nearly as effectively (or dare I say as effectively)
as deliverance, the angel's wrack, and even the evil and mighty demons
of Hell itself which the Church summons to fight by their side as allies
in combat. Given, Ashtan fields necromantic fighters who enjoy using
their greatest necromantic power in excess of three times per fight due
to Shallam's previous inability to gain more than a paltry 2 landmarks,
and everyone in the Sapience knows that there's no almost fleeing like
necromancy's ability to flee third only to Shallam's mighty deliver
which is the envy of all and the snake's ability to phase out while
running from combat! Let's not forget that to be delivered from combat
does not require you to be even more than inept in devotion and requires
no restrictions such as paralysis and webbing unlike an infamous
necromantic skill, and of course even phasing provides far fewer
restrictions than a necromancer using a similar spell once it has been
cast. But really, all this necromancy uses a lot of essence!
Nonetheless, just like the Church which just needs to find local
skirmishes and immolate the dead for free power, Necromancers also just
need to go find a local skirmish and steal hearts for supposedly the
same amounts the Church would have gained for immolating with the
landmarks reversed. So, the Church, like Necromancers, even though
they're slightly linked to landmarks, in the long run doesn't really
need landmarks to exist to half their potential. And clearly both gain
and lose the same amount to landmarks thus almost giving the two skills
a seemingly Daedalian balance after one turns a blind eye to the
Church's third option for gaining power.

Now to the fun part. What in any gods name does an Ashuran monk, or a
Warlock, need with necromancy? Because when certain necromancy spells
occur, the monk or the warlock is screwed. After all, how many
necromancers would even have a prayer a fight after such a handicap came
about? Thus that's one less person taking assaults. Surely it is out of
camaraderie because Ashtan's people, as has been documented always even
so far back as the Black Wave, unite with each other side by side
against the face of opposition.

As we can see from the histories of the land to present actions,
Shallam's citizenry is committed to the landmark war to pay back their
debts to the Church's benevolent mindwashing. And yet even then Shallam
is outnumbered 3 to 1 when it comes to people who leave their city
defences during times of war.
-Saruman.

Note: if you wish to argue the point of how neutral Calhoun's original
post was and how it did not leave out important facts to secretly bias
things for Shallam, go talk to a mutated humgii: he might be dumb enough
to actually believe you.

Penned by my hand on the 20th of Daedalan, in the year 287 AF.