Lord Haern,

Your latest trespass outside the realm of your power is contested. You
have a realm of influence, and we, the Occultists, shall put you in your
place.

You seek to mold the entire realm into your image. None shall avoid your
supreme touch. None shall disturb your balance. You move among all
planes of existance as though you were Varian Himself.

First, you thrust your will upon Tasur'ke. And instead of the citizens
singing your praise, they elected a new Elder, one who might have the
power to return the city to its prosperous state. Still they work to
cleanse Tasur'ke of your so-called balance.

Second, your pets on the Duiran Council declare that an ability of the
Occult is an abberation, outside balance, creating nothing but
destruction, and make it illegal. Instead of approaching our guild with
a peaceful treaty, having the guild leaders impose an extermination ban
upon the guild (which, might I add, was already in place), we were told
that it simply wouldn't happen. And we were cowed into submission.

Now, you managed to summon enough power to travel outside Balance
itself, into Chaos, and bring members of your Order with you to slay our
Guildmaster. You were made an enemy, as a common criminal, and have
declared war to have demands met. You seek to be unenemied. You seek to
dictate who may or may not lead us. And you seek to force us to repair
your temple.

These three demands shall not be met. We are done being thrust into the
corner by balance. To be controlled by a force that does not seek
balance at all, but domination of the realm. We have our own demands,
Lord of Butchers. Listen to them, and heed them.

First, you, and not an emissary of you, shall admit that you have gone
beyond balance, and have no power within the Plane of Chaos, and shall
offer up a sufficient amount of essence to Varian or into the Ether, an
amount that would correctly reflect how much of your strength it would
take to perform such a feat. And also an apology to the Occultists for
this grave deed.

Second, you shall express repentance by way of ordering all those you
command, being in your Order and in guilds you Patron, to landmark for
evil for the next ten seasons.

And third, you shall order your Council to remove the ban on
exterminations, and approach our guild properly, negotiating in an
appropriate manner a reason for us to not use the abilities we
researched so hard to use.

If you wish to prolong the war by not giving in to these demands, keep
the following in mind. We have nothing to lose. We are a guild of
philosophers, and we keep our knowledge in our hearts more than in books
or material things. You could crumble our Guildhall to rubble, and we
would still be the Occult. You could squander your remaining essence,
and keep us from the Plane that we hold so sacred, and we would still be
the Occult. You could zap us all to newbiedom, and we still would be the
Occult.

If it takes us tens of hundreds of years, we will destroy every single
shrine we uncover. We will support your enemies, and help them achieve
dominance over you again and again. We will die for the right to protect
what is ours, what we worked for, what we believe in.

We have been called stupid for making an enemy of a God. We have been
called idiotic for not giving into your demands before you do something
-really bad-. But we hold the knowledge that you are not omnipotent. You
are not omnicient, and you are not our god. You will cow before us, and
beg us our forgiveness, or wipe us out of existance, but you will never,
ever, rule us.

- The Occult

Penned by my hand on the 12th of Chakros, in the year 90 MA.