The practice that we're all instructed on as youth of examining critters
before we mercilessly beat the life out of them is, as it turns out,
more useful than it sounds. I'll give you a few examples of what I mean:

Let's say that you're roving through the Black Forest, slaying some
boars. You come across something called a treekin, so you, wanting to
add it's corpse to your collection, commence to chop it to pieces. Sure,
you'll probably get some free wood comms out of it, but you'll also have
to deal with an angry Oakstone, who will enemy you to most* of the
wilderness of Sapience, spend a hundred years bickering amongst
themselves about whether you deserve it, and then unenemy you once a new
hierophant comes along, since you never managed to pay off the 500k per
treekin fine.

So, you've been unenemied from Oakstone, and you're now 100 years older,
and have learned how to avoid stepping off the highways by heart. You
wander over to Mhaldor, and see a wretch that almost looks human.
Assuming it's a rat that has spent a little too much time in the red
fog, you kill it. Oops! That was Meric. Now you're enemied to Mhaldor.
This basically means that you can't wander over an entire mountain range
and into a city that isn't particularly welcoming to strangers anyway.
You'll be crying for hours over this one.

On your way over to Sahart's in Shallam, you see a kitten in the
streets. Too much time around the Mhaldorians makes you think it's a
good idea to slay it, devour it's soul and make a stylish hat out of
it's skull. Turns out that Shallam likes it's kittens, and now you're an
enemy there too. They won't actually enemy you, because there's a good
chance that the kitten, much like Thera, deserved it. They will vaguely,
and in rather uncertain terms attempt to condemn your actions, but
mostly they'll just have flash backs of the back room in the choir and
cry themselves to sleep.

So, since the city of evil hates you, and the city of good is crying
about their childhood trauma, you head to Ashtan. A few hours of helping
clear the streets of orphan trash later, you realize that the dull thud
you keep hearing when you turn them in isn't the dropping of a large
pile of candy for the orphans. It's the first step in knocking them out
for gleam production, and glandular juicing. Hoping to save the
orphanage some time, and a bit of wear and tear on their clubs, you slay
an orphan before bringing it into the orphanage. Apparently, that makes
Ashtan unhappy. Not because they mind you killing the orphan, but
because the orphans tend to cry for help over CT, which interrupts the
steady torrent of authentic Insanity that traditionally rules the
channel. Your fine will be set to one punch in the face by an Ashura
(recently reduced from 20 punches in the face in light of certain icon
related developments).

Finally, let's say you're on an epic quest to slay a denizen for each
letter of the alphabet, and after realizing that Yuddhishthira isn't the
only 'Y' option (Yuvim, she's in Chiada! Look it up!), you're really on
a roll. You wander down to Riparium, and see Morandar. A perfect option
to complete that pesky portion of the alphabet between L and N. Too bad
he's not a Riparium citizen, but a loyal follower of the Father of your
divine matron. Oops! Now you're really in trouble, and have to make a
public post about how it's important to probe things before you kill
them.

So, to finish up here, I feel awful about slaying one of Lord Neraeos'
loyal followers, and will be off slaying pirates in His honour for a few
months.

-Tiax, Monarch of Malarkey

-*Mostness not guaranteed.

Penned by my hand on the 7th of Phaestian, in the year 409 AF.