Hope
To Lleis, Goddess of Hope
What was it that brought us all together? In my first season
Landmarking, all about me I saw an excitement, in the Paladins, in the
Luminaries, in my wife. I felt it too. That tingling anticipation, that
camaraderie that had me and all the others patting each other on the
back, offering praises for the simplest of additions to the common
defense, and raising our voices together whenever good news was
announced.
What was it? It was more than shared fear, more than giving thanks for
what we had while realizing that it might soon be stolen away. I didn't
understand it then, in that time of frenzy, in that euphoria of frantic
preparation. Now, looking back, it is an easy thing to recognize.
It was hope.
To any intelligent being, there is no emotion more important than hope.
Individually or collectively, we must hope that the future will be
better than the past, that our offspring, and theirs after them, will be
a bit closer to an ideal society, whatever our perceptions of that may
be. Certainly a warrior's hope for the future might differ from the
ideal fostered in the imagination of a peaceful farmer. And a dwarf
would not strive to live in a world that resembled an atavian's ideal!
But the hope itself is not so different. It is at those times when we
feel we are contributing to that ultimate end, as it was in Landmarking.
We feel true elation. Hope is the key. The future will be better than
the past, or the present. Without this belief, there is only the
self-indulgent, ultimately empty striving of the present, as in vampire
society, or simple despair, the time of life wasted in waiting for
death.
So let Hope sing through us all.
With all love to the Lady
Schmendrick Lionel, Essence of Hope

Penned by my hand on the 20th of Haernos, in the year 102 MA.