Written By Niklas
Nov. 14, 2020, 11:26 a.m.(5/19/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
I don't believe I called you a name.
However, your false appeal to pity flies in the face of your decision to use a time of great mourning in the Compact to sell people on moving across the sea to your home. You've chosen to exploit fear and pain in service of your Emperor.
A well-trained dog let loose from the leash can also be trusted to hunt in service of their master.
I'm not calling you a dog, Mistress Zyanya. I'm just saying that when you wear shackles so readily they don't even need to exist to bind you.
You talk of ages of peace in the Empire, and I do not doubt it. It's easy for there to be peace when everyone lives under writ. But perhaps the things I've read are wrong. Did Weijin choose to join the Empire? Was that a peaceful transition? Did no one ever chafe under the yoke of an empire and push to return Weijin to being a sovereign nation? If so were they listened to and reasoned with? How often does the Emperor take audiences with people from his provinces who have complaints about the way the nation is being run?
And Mistress Perronne, if you have been working as a merchant in the Compact for more than a half-dozen years then you too have enjoyed the fruits of misery and servitude. You do not need to hold the whip or own the debt to benefit from the lower cost of spirits crafted by hands that did not own themselves or textiles spun by slaves who could not do otherwise. The blood on your hands may not be so dark nor as fresh as on mine or on Duke Valdemar's, but it's surely there enough to make one dubious when seeing your response to someone who was made welcome in the Compact and who now uses that welcome to try and convince people to leave it.
However, your false appeal to pity flies in the face of your decision to use a time of great mourning in the Compact to sell people on moving across the sea to your home. You've chosen to exploit fear and pain in service of your Emperor.
A well-trained dog let loose from the leash can also be trusted to hunt in service of their master.
I'm not calling you a dog, Mistress Zyanya. I'm just saying that when you wear shackles so readily they don't even need to exist to bind you.
You talk of ages of peace in the Empire, and I do not doubt it. It's easy for there to be peace when everyone lives under writ. But perhaps the things I've read are wrong. Did Weijin choose to join the Empire? Was that a peaceful transition? Did no one ever chafe under the yoke of an empire and push to return Weijin to being a sovereign nation? If so were they listened to and reasoned with? How often does the Emperor take audiences with people from his provinces who have complaints about the way the nation is being run?
And Mistress Perronne, if you have been working as a merchant in the Compact for more than a half-dozen years then you too have enjoyed the fruits of misery and servitude. You do not need to hold the whip or own the debt to benefit from the lower cost of spirits crafted by hands that did not own themselves or textiles spun by slaves who could not do otherwise. The blood on your hands may not be so dark nor as fresh as on mine or on Duke Valdemar's, but it's surely there enough to make one dubious when seeing your response to someone who was made welcome in the Compact and who now uses that welcome to try and convince people to leave it.
Written By Dio
Nov. 14, 2020, 11:10 a.m.(5/19/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
Accounts of Jadairal from those who have lived there are not what I have expected.
Is the Thirteenth worshiped in the Undying Empire?
Is the Thirteenth worshiped in the Undying Empire?
Written By Perronne
Nov. 14, 2020, 12:14 a.m.(5/19/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
My friend,
You must understand the history of those who heap scorn on your head. I remember visiting Grimhall, years ago. The thing I first remember is how the sailors, stern Islander men all, took me carefully aside and warned me: step lightly in Grimhall if you are a commoner, a merchant, someone with no defender and no patron. I remember that advice sinking in as I stepped off the ship. The lot of thralls was never good. I mean, it's awful to be a thrall, and I never saw a happy one. Quite a few that their masters claimed were just so happy, so loyal. But you could see it in their eyes, the fear. The desire to be free.
But I remember the hollow cheeks and thin limbs of Grimhall thralls the most. I remember one unloading a vessel, falling to his knees. I remember the man who callously beat him back to his feet, and how with shaking limbs, he picked up the burden and set it back on his bleeding back. When you're a thrall, you earn a salary. Sort of. But your owner gets to charge you for food, shelter, clothing, whatever. In Grimhall, they would charge silk prices for soiled linen, Lycene wine prices for fouled water, and Merchant's Row rent for shacks built of three sticks and a tarp. Your 'debt' grows, moment by moment, day by day. And when you finally died, it would be passed onto your children. And they were worked from the moment that they COULD work, the chains dragging on the wood as they crawled over the ships, scraping away barnacles.
So, I know that it may seem super hypocritical for Islanders, especially Island nobility, to attack you, who had no power to make any changes in your land, who traveled so far to the Compact to see if you could find a home, when all their coin is built on misery, pain, and shackles. But please, be kind, and remember that they have to be able to look at someone else and say, "This person is worse than me." And it probably hurts that you don't hate that person, the person they can look at instead of themselves, right or wrong, and you don't hate that person as much as so many of their shackled victims have hated them over the years. And we're not all so inhospitable. Many of us learned different lessons than cruelty to those less powerful than us, I promise!
Also, we should get together for hot cider, soon! If you see this, drop me a letter - the stores are just about used up from the winter, and I'd love to knock it out with some cider and cake.
You must understand the history of those who heap scorn on your head. I remember visiting Grimhall, years ago. The thing I first remember is how the sailors, stern Islander men all, took me carefully aside and warned me: step lightly in Grimhall if you are a commoner, a merchant, someone with no defender and no patron. I remember that advice sinking in as I stepped off the ship. The lot of thralls was never good. I mean, it's awful to be a thrall, and I never saw a happy one. Quite a few that their masters claimed were just so happy, so loyal. But you could see it in their eyes, the fear. The desire to be free.
But I remember the hollow cheeks and thin limbs of Grimhall thralls the most. I remember one unloading a vessel, falling to his knees. I remember the man who callously beat him back to his feet, and how with shaking limbs, he picked up the burden and set it back on his bleeding back. When you're a thrall, you earn a salary. Sort of. But your owner gets to charge you for food, shelter, clothing, whatever. In Grimhall, they would charge silk prices for soiled linen, Lycene wine prices for fouled water, and Merchant's Row rent for shacks built of three sticks and a tarp. Your 'debt' grows, moment by moment, day by day. And when you finally died, it would be passed onto your children. And they were worked from the moment that they COULD work, the chains dragging on the wood as they crawled over the ships, scraping away barnacles.
So, I know that it may seem super hypocritical for Islanders, especially Island nobility, to attack you, who had no power to make any changes in your land, who traveled so far to the Compact to see if you could find a home, when all their coin is built on misery, pain, and shackles. But please, be kind, and remember that they have to be able to look at someone else and say, "This person is worse than me." And it probably hurts that you don't hate that person, the person they can look at instead of themselves, right or wrong, and you don't hate that person as much as so many of their shackled victims have hated them over the years. And we're not all so inhospitable. Many of us learned different lessons than cruelty to those less powerful than us, I promise!
Also, we should get together for hot cider, soon! If you see this, drop me a letter - the stores are just about used up from the winter, and I'd love to knock it out with some cider and cake.
Written By Tyrus
Nov. 13, 2020, 10:36 p.m.(5/18/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
Let me simplify my point even further for your understanding, then.
If you were anything but a loyal servant of your emperor, you would not have been allowed to leave. If it did not serve his wishes, you would not have been released. As such, your every word is suspect, propaganda to serve your masters' needs, for what are your claims worth when the only ones able to come here are those whose bounds are deemed strong enough to not even require writs to enforce loyalty?
For all his claims to be different, the mantle of Platinum is little different from Diamond's, save for the light he means to blind with.
If you were anything but a loyal servant of your emperor, you would not have been allowed to leave. If it did not serve his wishes, you would not have been released. As such, your every word is suspect, propaganda to serve your masters' needs, for what are your claims worth when the only ones able to come here are those whose bounds are deemed strong enough to not even require writs to enforce loyalty?
For all his claims to be different, the mantle of Platinum is little different from Diamond's, save for the light he means to blind with.
Written By Valdemar
Nov. 13, 2020, 2:38 p.m.(5/18/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
I learned all I needed to about Jadairal when we received the terms of its "offer" for Arvum to become part of its empire.
Written By Niklas
Nov. 13, 2020, 11:02 a.m.(5/17/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
A well-trained dog can be let loose from the leash and still be trusted to come when its master calls.
Written By Tyrus
Nov. 13, 2020, 8:56 a.m.(5/17/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
And I wonder whether you'd sing the same song had they refused your request.
But you wouldn't be here to do so, would you?
But you wouldn't be here to do so, would you?
Written By Valdemar
Nov. 12, 2020, 3:19 p.m.(5/16/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
It is odd, after your spiel about Jadairal, to hear you invoke Skald's name. Jadairal, where writs are forced upon people. Whatever the excuse, whatever benefit they claim you will get for it, that is a removal of free will. Those you're extending this invitation to may find it a worthwhile cost, and if they were the only ones to pay that price, I wouldn't be writing this. But their children will pay it too. And their children's children. And generations of their family to come after that, born without the same choice that they got to make for themselves.
Written By Rysen
Nov. 4, 2020, 8:05 a.m.(4/27/1014 AR)
Relationship Note on Zyanya
Whose dream is this in which I trudge
Amid the frosty forest black?
Ahead she moves with panting breath,
With gathered silken skirts in hand:
Black hair billowing like the pall of night.
Whose dream is this in which I trudge
Till cold swallows up her sapphire eyes
And the touch of her fingers, devoid of warmth,
Reveals her as my mistress?
Have I ever known myself?
Whose dream is this?
Amid the frosty forest black?
Ahead she moves with panting breath,
With gathered silken skirts in hand:
Black hair billowing like the pall of night.
Whose dream is this in which I trudge
Till cold swallows up her sapphire eyes
And the touch of her fingers, devoid of warmth,
Reveals her as my mistress?
Have I ever known myself?
Whose dream is this?
Please note that the scholars may take some time preparing your journal for others to read.