Dear Tzadkiel,

As you've probably perceived, I'm a bit taken aback by our recent
conversations. While I'm aware that I have many "fans" out there, I
really don't think I'm anywhere near as great as such people want me to
be. With this in mind your passionate pleas of demanding my leadership
over a new generation of young zealots such as yourself makes me wonder
about many things. I've had a lot on my mind for quite awhile now and
have decided that these things need to be said. After you, and everyone
else, has heard the truth about me then those who look up to what they
think I was will be able to decide if they really want to follow me now.
You make me feel like the one-eyed man; I may be getting too old for
destiny.

You talk about the Swordsaints and vampirism. You say that we need a new
crusade, you say that my opinion that I'm no longer worthy to lead
anyone because of my cursed blood is a coward's excuse. I realize now
that you're right. I have become a kind of coward, after years of trying
to change things I have accomplished nothing real. Though I've rarely
known fear, repeated failures can rob a man of his conviction, and
without that what good is courage.

I founded a guild, the Paladins. As they grew complacent I created an
elite division within them, the Swordsaints. We tried to save the many
villages of sapience from their perpetual state of being raped. Did we
succeed? Some of them knew a couple years of peace, but the campaign
drew Haern's attention towards Tasur'ke and got myself and my followers
kicked out of the organization we founded because we were 'too extreme'.

Wandering and alone, I joined up with Shoimoro, an innocent dreamer out
to change the world and hated simply because he inherited great wealth.
We tried to defend Tasur'ke from Haern's attacks, and when he caused a
magical jungle to consume the village we exterminated it and other
forests in a counter-attack. This cycle went back and forth for years,
many otherwise innocent people dying and for nothing. In the end after
nearly ten years of it we gave up our extermination efforts, none of the
divine would come to our aide. Except for, much later, Severn. But only
because Tasur'ke lies upon a source of great wealth which we were all
(except for perhaps Shoimoro) previously unaware of. With His help we
destroyed the source of the jungle sprawl and the village has begun to
recover, but at what price? Tasur'ke has endured so much, even if it
does become a full city as we wished for it, it will be a city of the
artificer. Perhaps no city at all would have been better. That is the
legacy of the Swordsaints.

Then there is vampirism and vampire hunting. I tried for twenty years to
exterminate them, ever since Belladona kidnapped my friend Abhorash and
stole his soul in order to expand her own strength. I led a group which
chased him into Bloodloch, freshly taken from the dwarfs and confronted
him before the lava run. I turned down his offer to become one of the
founders of the first Houses; we tried to throw him into it. If we had
succeeded then perhaps it would have ended there, but we failed. As the
leader of that group and the one who failed to save Abhorash not once
but twice only I can take responsibility for everything.

Why then did I, some thirty years after that, choose to become a
vampire. I was wandering as usual, idolized as the most magnificent
failure ever. By this time Abhorash had lost control of the legions of
undead and they were everywhere, in every city, at least a fourth of the
world's non-village dwelling populations. Needing food and shelter, I
took on a job as a defense contractor for House Bahir'an during one of
their disagreements with Bloodloch. I lived in their castle, walked
around Thera and Ashtan a lot. For the first time I had access to
vampiric lore from the perspective of the consanguine themselves...
though many in the House detested my presence I read mostly undisturbed.
By now I had long since given up vampire hunting and was to them the
equivalent of a white tiger chained somewhere. So exotic, so potentially
dangerous. Bahir'an always was the most stylish of the Consanguic
Houses.

What came next is, sad to say, best described as a midlife crisis.
Though I was a celebrity, I felt like a total failure. I saw myself as
getting old without having accomplished any of my dreams. I needed more
time, I needed to reach further and harder than I ever had before. I
needed more strength to do this.

So the then leader of Bahir'an, Silmarillion, agreed to embrace me in
blood. Controversial as it was, it would make myself and all of my
skills and influence subservient to her. Almost every vampire I had ever
fought had offered to embrace me, the worst of enemies always make the
best of slaves.

Shortly after she embraced me, Silmarillion found herself beset by a
strange 'illness' and dissipated to mist, dissolving into the castle
floor after a long struggle against it. Silly vampire... as if Strung
Cardinalis would give up his freedom to anyone. Before she embraced me I
saturated my blood with an incredible level of toxins especially
damaging on an insidious level to consanguine and used my devotional
magic and general physical fortitude to hide my own discomfort. Despite
all of this my own death would have come quickly, if Silmarillion had
not drawn out all of my blood and replaced it with her own. I obtained
the power of her cursed blood, she got the privledge of being the first
consanguine to die. I must thank the Bahir'an library for helping me to
formulate the plan... I was a free man, perhaps the first truly free
vampire and a whole new world was opened to me.

My first act after I had gathered my wits about myself again was to form
the 'Iscariote' House. The only real point of the clan was to do the
impossible, to defeat Severn and save Lanos. We fought the enemies of
Lanos, who were many, and pushing myself to the limits of my unnatural
endurance we helped Shallam get all nine of the landmarks. I was
exhilarated; riding the wave of success my brother Elden became a Vizier
and the power of all nine landmarks created a ritual strong enough to
repel Severn's attack upon Lanos' temple. We did the impossible, mortals
defeated a God. Or so we thought.

Predictably embarrassed by the event, Severn sought to save face with
what seemed at the time the petty act of breaking Lanos' discarded
sword. In a later event which I wasn't part of Severn's minions tricked
the Lanosians and used the shards of the sword to seal the rift off,
effectively killing Lanos.

So then I reached further and harder than I ever had before, selling my
soul and deflecting the power of a God. For what? What good was saving
Truth's temple when Truth is dead?

There then is the entire story of my life after the age of eighteen. The
moral perhaps is that no one can change anything. The harder you try,
the worse the opposite effect shall be.

What is Strung Cardinalis, then? A great warrior, a brilliant tactician,
a man without fear? Or a self-righteous thug, the one-eyed man, an
idiot. Tzadkiel and others, think long and hard before you demand the
leadership of one such as me, for many fear the results should I draw
again and with good reason.

Penned by my hand on the 21st of Severin, in the year 92 MA.