To all of you in Ashtan and Hashan who have, for the past
Sarapis-only-knows-how-many years, delighted in attacking Dresden,
physically OR verbally, for things that she may or may not have done,
had control over, sanctioned, or allowed, and who now have the
unmitigated GAUL to act surprised when she lashes out after taking all
this crap from you for years and years:

Let me remind you of a story that we all have heard at one point or
another. The events in the story take place about 3 years ago (apologies
to Divines, cleverly disguised OOC break ahead). There was, at one
point, a mythical land known as "Colorado". In this land, there were
these things known as "high schools", in which the young went to learn
stuff that they might need to know upon reaching the magical age of 18.
There were groups of students, kind of like newbie-waves that we get
from time to time, only they were divided up by the Administrators - the
God-like beings who ruled the High Schools - into what were known as
"Grades". These Grades split themselves up further, into collections of
people with similar interests - like clans or guilds - known as
"cliques".

These groups had some really odd names, too - the "Jocks", the
"Cheerleaders", the "Bean-Heads", the "AV Geeks", the "FMA"s (Future
Millionaires of America (America is another Mythical land that we do not
need to discuss here), the "Others" (no relation to the Other), and
more. Some of these groups, for YEARS - probably back through the "Fifth
Grade" (there were, I believe, 12 Grades total) at least, took a
perverse pleasure in tormenting certain other groups - most notably, the
Jocks found tormenting the Others to be vastly amusing.

Naturally, one would assume that these Others had done something to the
Jocks that would make retaliation of this magnitude acceptable - after
all, no one with any dignity or honor attacks someone who's done nothing
to them, right?

Wrong.

These people were innocent as Just-Graduated Newbies, at least in this
one respect. Yet the Jocks insisted upon publicly belittling them,
simply for their own amusement.

Now, one day, two people who belonged to one of the "Other" cliques
deceided that they'd been pushed around, harrassed, insulted, picked on,
and humiliated enough, and that they were not going to take any more of
it. They went out and purchased devices similar to bows, only instead of
arrows, they shot little metal pellets - "Bullets", I think they were
called. These pellets were shot at extremely high rates of speed -
faster than an Atavian can fly - and could do huge amounts of damage -
enough to potentially kill you in one hit.

They also purchased materials needed for making devices similar to a
mage's Holocaust Globe - relatively small containers that, when
triggered, would explode. The main difference is that their devices were
much more potent than ours are.

Anyway, after months of planning exactly what they were going to do,
they went to their High School (which was also known as "Columbine
High") with their metal-spitting devices and over-sized holocaust
globes, and proceeded to kill, I believe 17 innocent people(?), and to
injure many more. (Humblest and sincerest apologies if my numbers are
incorrect, any msgs on that would be welcome.)

The worst part, for lots of people, was that a large number of these
people /hadn't actually done anything/ to these two young boys. They
were people, just like you or me, who were in a very wrong place at the
worst possible time.

To fully grasp the severity of the incident, you must also understand
that in this other world, you get one chance at life (or so most people
there claim), and that's it. No praying to Sarapis, no Tree in which to
immolate the corpses of the dead, no ressurecting Priests to come and
bring you back to life. If you die, that's it. You're done.

No one could believe it at first - after all, what could *possibly*
cause two boys from a nice neighborhood to go and snap like that? Then,
as reports came in - barely a trickle at first, then more and more until
they were flooding the newsboard-esque media - people started to realize
that continual deliberate and CONCENTRATED harrassment of a person, or a
group of people in any way, shape, or form is liable to have unforeseen
consequences such as these. That you cannot - can *NOT* - keep dumping
all this (bad word) onto a person, and then expect that they will just
contain it all inside themselves. It has to come out sometime, and
somehow.

(On a side note, I apologize in advance to any of you who take offense
at my likening the Columbine Incident to what Dresden did, even though
the two incidents seem frighteningly similar, from what I've heard of
both of them.)

(end cleverly-disguised OOC break)

To put it another way, "Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto
You". I don't give a (bad word) if you never killed a Citizen of Shallam
without "just cause", whatever the (bad word) that meant then or means
now. I don't care how much of an innocent victim you think you are, each
and every one of you who insulted or criticized or mocked Dresden has
contributed to this final effect - you reap what you sow, people.

And just for the record, Shallamese aren't off the hook here, either -
we give as good as we get. Only reason I'm focusing on
Ashtanites/Hashan(ites? ians?) is because YOU are the ones who caused
Dresden to snap - not us.

Any sarcastic or "funny" comments making reference to these four or five
final paragraphs by ANYONE short of a Divine will be met with utmost
hostility. 'Nuff said.



Yours,
Water-Mage Mirudraas, The Seriously Pissed

"Do not start with me - you will not win."

Penned by my hand on the 15th of Sarapin, in the year 290 AF.