Forgive me, public, the length of this missive.

"Yes I offered support in the past..."

Being able to walk the halls of Bloodloch is not support, indeed is not
something you allow or deny any Syssin. We do it with or without your
leave. You think much of yourself if you consider that allowance support
at all, especially support on par to negate your past raiding of
Spinesreach, kidnapping and ransom of citizens, and kidnapping and
torture of protected associates. As for my own support in attacking
people inside your city, while I certainly risked my life for selfish
reasons (for it is generally an alignment of self-interest that makes
people allies), I couldn't help but note that none of your citizens
could organize themselves to lift a finger either before or after I
arrived on the scene. While the aid of walking through Bloodloch
unphased will surely be missed, the aid of your impotent population is
more acutely felt.

"Please tell me how I am enticing anything since, regardless of my
offer, they would be enemied for acting in such a way anyway."

The Syssin do not allow undead in their ranks, nor do they allow their
members to be citizens of a city other than Spinesreach and you know
this. You invite current Syssin to abandon their mission and entice them
to break both of these bonds, obviously.

"Next, it has always been my understanding that the Syssin 'hate'
Corruption, undead and Lady Chakrasul because of what happened to
Spinesreach all those years ago. The guild has also claimed that their
stance is because of Lord Severn's stance on these matters."

I'm going to call you stupid again, so get ready for it. It's going to
be a long way of calling you stupid though, and you seem to have trouble
reading so try to be patient as I take this opportunity to clarify the
issue, touched upon above, for those of you who seek to advance your own
agendas through purposeful mischaracterization and ignorance. You,
again, do good to provide a public example. The Syssin avoid undeath
simply because it is an arbitrary, emotionally loaded distinction that
people like you will try to use as a lever in your politics. Just as
Enorian tries to use hysteria and dogma to motivate common people to
sacrifice, so do you. The Syssin are for Spinesreach and no other cause.
They are not for life, they are not for undeath. Undeath has nothing to
to do with protecting Spinesreach. We preserve ourselves and the trust
we have in each other (that you seek to undermine) against evangelical
idiots like yourself through secular unity. You ask how it is a threat?
The Syssin were disolved in the Ankyrean civil war because some fought
for the Ankyreans and some fought or were suspected of fighting for the
vampire rebels. We have learned that you cannot put two saddles on one
horse. We provide no cracks because cracks will widen and become breaks.
The Magi know the pain of this. We defend Spinesreach, not undeath and
people like yourself would surely try use undeath as a lever to fight
battles for you, may even exploit the mixed state for your own ends. We
do not try to defend Spinesreach from Bloodloch, nor from Ashtan or
Enorian or the Heartwood. That you'd try to break this covenant between
the Syssin by seeking to fracture us with this trasparent attack simply
tells us we have made the right choice. Further, it tells us that you do
not have any interest of ours on your mind with your proposition. Your
diatribe about the guild, myself, Exodus, and everything simply
illustrates the root of all this, that you want to exert control over
something. That is why you have been branded an


---

Having divorced the idea you advanced that the rejection of the undeath
has something to do with the denial of Corruption in the Syssin or with
the Ankyrean war, I will take the further liberty with your public
stupidity (that the citizens of Bloodloch have been privately thanking
for my blunt naming of such, they being prevented from doing so - you
are most welcome). You seem to want to frame the conflict between
Artifice and Corruption in historic terms, no doubt because you look for
history to support your definition of the conflict. No doubt a man so
insecure as yourself needs to surround himself with exclusionary
absolutes as a substitute for fiber of character and intellectual rigor.
A stick up your ass is not a substitute for a spine. Unfortunately for
someone like you, it is with how Corruption defines itself - Fear,
Malice, Despair, Lust, and Cruelty - that invites opposition from anyone
who values growth and sanity. Forgive me if I choose to ignore how you
choose to confuse things with your tangents as I proceed. Artifice, and
the Syssin by extension, regards Corruption as a mortal danger because
it is nothing but juvenile cult of indulgent nhilism that, through a
cloak of vague ritual, rationalizes and fetishizes self-destruction and
the decay the strength of others. It has nothing to do with undeath
itself or how the undead are regarded. As I've explained to many people,
you're spies I've apparently neglected, undeath is an individual choice
and individual state. There are a few, rare vampires who I've had the
priveledge of knowing who I think of as strong men and predators, Povox
being the last one I knew so long ago. Great men who took the next
logical step in their lives by seeking more strength and ability and who
were able to seize vampirism as a blessing instead of a curse.

There is a lesson about Corruption in the orgin of undeath and also in
its contemporary state, one which we should all learn from. The vast
majority of vampires seek vampirism out of weakness. They are fearful
and powerless and think that becoming a vampire will give them power,
that there is a magic tonic of blood that will erase their faults. They
ignore that the things that made them weak men will still hobble them as
weak vampires. They give in to fear and lust, the immediate and easy
gain and cannot see the long term as they become immortal in the service
of others. Temptation, jealousy, fear, weakness, and ignorance. While
they are certainly not alone in this - one could look to any sort of
extreme and reactionary cult like the Luminaries for an analogue - they
are the most visible and prolific people to exemplify the dysfunction of
Corruption. And in the beginning of their history is the civil war of
the Ankyreans. Like all civl wars, it began with fear and jealousy and
malice and lust for power as the Ankyreans began to keep secrets from
each other, began to turn on each other out of fear. Fear, Malice, and
Lust, Corruption is these things, it is what destroys organizations. It
is said that the Gods no longer gave the Ankyreans their favor and
sought to destroy them. Here we have Chakrasul's contribution to their
end - to whisper to them of secret power, of fear of death, to provide
them with a kind of immortality that would cause them to fear each other
both as rivals and as predators, to cause them fall apart. Who knows,
perhaps if they stood united in their ability and power they may have
been able to become gods themselves.

Corruption doesn't tell you when you first embrace it that its end is
self-destruction. No, its first step is the destruction of reason. Then
it tells you that your weaknesses, such as fear and hate and jealousy,
are not really weaknesses but strengths that people do not want you to
embrace. It tells you that there is no point in being great, that the
best pleasure you can hope to have in life is seeing others fail. It is
the decay and the end of everything, the beginning of nothing. The
nihilsm of a spoilt child. To those who would teach you to be strong, to
have a vision, to go forth to and be great and create great things - to
be an adult - it is something to grow out of. To someone who would
preserve what has already been created, it is a threat.


---


To respond to some of your other questions and points since I found them
too hilarious to pass up:

"He saw the posts I made and he even ignored my attempts to speak with
him about this situation. Why?"

To answer your question, I think of myself as a teacher more than
anything else and I am indulgent. He has far less patience for idiots
than I do, though. While I do not propose to teach you specifically, I
hope the exchange educates others.

"Because you rushed ahead and did his job for him, so why should he have
to do anything?"

When I speak, you see me through the eyes of Corruption, of a fearful
man - a rival for Exodus' authority or he as my pawn. But the Syssin
will not begrudge me for speaking the truth, it matters not who says it.
There was a time when you'd not be safe, even in Bloodloch, from any
Syssin for what you've been saying. I long for the time when I would
have arrived to have seen that every Syssin had already replied to your
vitriol and piked your head. But, you and others weaken us with your
whispers, tell your spies that loyalty and initiative are outmoded, that
they cannot speak to their own and only to you. Again, fear and malice -
the work of Corruption. But a reall Syssin knows that a fight is not
over until you win it and we know that things will change. This is the
other distinction between Artifice and Corruption. Artifice is the long
term profit, Corruption is the short term indulgence.

"I am also aware that he knows of your views on the second war
history..."~

It isn't about the war, idiot, get over it already. Maybe this is why
you have such a hard time?

"Now all of this comes back to what I said at the start of this post,
the realm is evolving, changing and progressing..."

Bloodloch is by all accounts the most boorish and stale city ever
populated. You do nothing there but lord over your citizens. This is
where I am laughing.

"Are you simply unable to stand on your own feet and accept change
without a helping hand?"

The Syssin stand by our values and mission, even when we have no Divine
guidance to reassure us. When have we not been standing on our two feet
and making our own way, even when best by fool and we know there to be
easier, compromising paths? What kind defenders would be just to shrug
and dissolve in the face of adversity? Well, the kind you'd want in
Bloodloch apparently.

"Go on believing that people outside the guild will care about you, or
even tolerate you after they have moved on."

It is only a concern of ours only so much as it affects our ability to
protect what we value.


---


I don't know, if I wanted to change a person or a group of people I'd
try to show them how it would profit them to do so. I'd be polite and
professional. You use insults and bribes. I guess that is just one of
the ways I am smarter than you. It would almost be worth leaving my
guild and going to Bloodloch so I could turn your city around into the
ally Spinesreach would need to restore its old empire.

Penned by my hand on the 20th of Arios, in the year 228 MA.