Briefly,

Lot of chatter about vision from people who say they see a title as the goal and have no idea what they intend to do with it. Lots of treating this as a race rather than a fundamental shift. When Nicator founded Seleucar, did he say, 'Ha! First place!' and then go to bed? That may be part of why Seleucar guided history for an era and the modern age has trivia notes. Just an idle thought.

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Mr. Wintermourne,

I would like to offer a different perspective, speaking only on my own behalf, citizen to citizen.

Client state is a wild accusation, born of an inability to understand motivations other than one's own, even when they are painfully obvious. Eleusis took Hashan's territories and became Empire, and they could've stopped. They chose instead to keep going, strangling out the rest of our holdings. That wasn't enough either, Eleusis proceeded to stifle any attempt by Hashan to gain enough territory to meet its needs. Then it violated some taboos of ours, even when well aware. We've been here before. We knew what to do.

But it ignored the full board, the full picture of how things were going. Hashan paid attention. We put in the work.

As our liberation tanks cut the edges of Eleusis, Mhaldor grew uncontested by this young Empire. Sure, your obsession prevented us from gaining more, but we can still set bombs in the distant corners. You were content to just hold us in place with uncontested beacons again and again as you shrank month by month. Truly, I thought your Empire would fall and you would blink in surprise, utterly unaware that you were that close.

Didn't seem to notice until paid scouts offered services. Wasn't long after that my leaders heard from yours. A few days before they got that report, I asked for a small gesture of respect. For the vines to not touch one spot. No, not one forest, not one stretch of land. One spot. One of those taboos I mentioned.

I was informed I knew the consequences of trying to remove them, which is rather pompous. That answer was shared with every Hashani awake, leadership to newest citizen. When later that month the Seneschal asked if we wanted to ceasefire, the answer was loud. I didn't even need to voice my opinion. This is a consequence of haughty decline.

The bottom line is Eleusis failed to do anything more with us than stir up bad will. How can we forget, when you barely wait a heartbeat before sticking a hand out in bad faith? Shout all the selfish delusions about motive you want, there's a principle at play here. It's not just about the land, its about making a statement.

Like how you work with civilisations now when an empire you all insisted you didn't care about was threatened. That statement.

My initial hope was to see the Empire drop - check - but there's still debris in places it doesn't belong.

Our focus doesn't change with the seasons.

Countess Nezaya Visindi,
Witch


Penned by my hand on the 9th of Miraman, in the year 966 AF.