From: Chief-of-Chiefs Third-Gaci
To: Xetares the Common-Born Foreigner
For too long have I and mine allowed you to reign the northern lands, which are my birthright; your claim to those lands is now revoked, for while your father and your grand-father possessed piety, you clearly do not and so must be punished for your theft.
---
Anyway...
It doesn't look as though I will be able to finish the epic, sadly; some of the reasons have already been given elsewhere. The Bisrian war seems to have been a relatively quick and easy victory, anyway, and though it is ofcourse possible to cobble together a good story from that - and many Moti story-tellers have done just that - I just don't see the need to do so, especially inasmuch as this story has already served its purpose.
Still, some kind of a conclusion is needed.
It is known that after Kirost slew Wel'teq and split his mind-soul in half, making the good parts go to the Good God and the evil parts go to the Evil God, the Dueling Gods were so distracted by this they stopped their battle and went to investigate, and then held council, and made their decision, which later became apparent; as for Kirost, head of the Horse Family bandits in the Outer Mountains, he now truly became the supreme leader of all the former Moti bandit groups that invaded Bisria, and not much later he came back to the Moti side of the Outer Mountains, where Gaci-city was then being built. His warriors manage to capture Chief-of-Chiefs Second-Gaci in the fifth year of his reign, and brought him before Kirost; Kirost and Second-Gaci talked and feasted, and came to an agreement, and so Kirost became the supreme war-leader of all the adapted families in the Outer Mountains and soon renewed his forays into Bisria with renewed force, now more for reconnaissance than for plunder, whereas Second-Gaci departed.
On the sixth year of the reign of Second-Gaci, the Chief-of-Chiefs explained his and Kirost's plan to the rest of the Elephant Family, and it was accepted with some misgivings. On the seventh year of the reign of Second-Gaci, the Chief-of-Chiefs announced to the Godlike Chiefs that he wished to conquer a vast and wealthy land beyond the mountains, and suggested that all those who yearned for peace and comfort be exempt from having to attend the Council-of-Chiefs in the next seven years, whereas all those who yearned for wealth and glory should attend it in Gaci-city, though it was far from their lands; and this was accepted not without some suspicion, but nevertheless with rejoicing, for the Godlike Chiefs all yearned for wealth and glory. On the eighth year of the reign of Second-Gaci, the Godlike Chiefs all came to Gaci, and there the Chief-of-Chiefs explained that they now sat at the middle of the world, and that the world was full of evil because it was out of balance - the lands on one side of the central mountains were under the reign of the direct lineage of Eso Kotuu, but the lands on the other side were under the reign of some foreigner. And he told them many other things as well, about Bisria and its cities, and about ancestors and valour, and also about the death of Eso Kotuu and the end of the Great Family, and the survival of the many Good Chiefs thanks to the sacrifice of one, whose name was until now forgotten, and of how the children of that forgotten chief now returned to lead the way into Bisria; and in this manner Second-Gaci fulfilled his promise to Kirost and introduced the Horse Family-Chief to his brothers, and Cow Family-Chief Fourth-Frono immediately realised that Kirost was once Kirti, yet nonetheless held his tongue, deciding to remain loyal until the end of the war, and so the chiefs reconciled and celebrated for many days, as had their finest warriors whom they had brought with them, and they all left full of zeal and bloodthirst, and of good will and acceptance of Second-Gaci's plan; the chiefs of the Twenty Families went westwards, whereas the chief of the Twenty-Second Family went east and gathered his forces, until then dispersed.
On the ninth year of the reign of Second-Gaci, the chiefs arrived with all the forces they saw fit to muster to Gaci, and when all the warriors were counted there were seven thousand men. This time it was not a Council-of-Chiefs, but a War-Council, and instead of ancient laws the chiefs looked at maps, and instead of prophets they listened to scouts. The chiefs gave each other blood-oaths to fight on together without rest or treason to the end of the war, and their warriors did likewise to each other. Worship-Chief Sixth-Yotun sacrificed seven sheep, War-Chief Fourth-Frono sacrificed three bulls and Chief-of-Chiefs Second-Gaci sacrificed a crimson elephant, and Horse Family-Chief Kirost, who arrived with a delay, sacrificed two Bisrian commanders he had just captured in the Battle of the White Mountains, having adapted their orphaned soldiers into his family; and this was clearly a good omen for the beginning of the Bisrian War.
By tradition, Fourth-Frono commanded the army and he was the one who gathered and inspected the warriors after the sacrifices, yet afterwards in a sign of piety he granted supreme command to Second-Gaci; nonetheless Second-Gaci was not well-learned in the ways of leading men to battle, to say nothing of leading them to war, and being wise enough to realise it, he led the army as per the advice of the three great Warrior-Chiefs and Moti-Heroes, that is to say Horse Family-Chief Kirost, Cow Family-Chief Fourth-Frono and Lion Family-Chief Trenessa. This main army consisted of three thousand and five hundred men of the four families of its commanders and all the families within those families; other families fought distinctly, as had many of the former bands in the Horse Family, not yet used to their new rank. Still, whenever the Chief-of-Chiefs and the Warrior-Chiefs called a war-council, all the other chiefs came or sent their representatives, and it never happened that they explicitly disobeyed orders, though some say it was simply because they were ordered to do what they did anyway and to continue their raiding and pillaging. Thus some warriors of that time fought in smaller bands, where the glory and valour was all the greater for their small number, whereas other warriors fought in the main army, where the glory and valour was all the greater for their great battles; and there is scarcely a family within any family in the Moti Great Family that had not its own heroes in that war, and if all the stories of feats of valour from that war were to be gathered together it would take seven thousand seven hundred and seventy seven scrolls.
The Bisrians resisted bravely and too had had many heroes and stories, and by the end of the war turned out to be no less brothers of the Moti and children of the Chief-of-Chiefs than the men of the Horse Family; only, their king was greedy and foolish, and listened to evil and unwise advisers, and so he fought in the east while the best of his men died in the west or, having been captured, were adapted by the families within the Moti Great Family and continued fighting, but in their name. Finally, the Bisrian king had gathered a large army and went to Het, and there he met the Three Warrior-Chiefs and the Chief-of-Chiefs, and their armies fought from dawn to dusk, and again on the next day, and the Chief-of-Chiefs, in a moment of despair, had charged deep into Bisrian lines with his personal retainers and broke half the enemy army, but was surrounded by the other half and was only saved when the Moti-heroes rushed after him and turned the Bisrians to flight; and after that the evil that had poisoned Bisria in this viceful king's reign had clearly magnified the evil in the minds of the Lion Family-Chief Trenessa, the brutal leader of the cruelest of families, for after the battle he spoke with Fourth-Frono and with Kirost, and told them that the Chief-of-Chiefs would have been captured and the Great Family would have been humiliatingly defeated if not for them, and that the Chief-of-Chiefs is a poor man and a bad warrior whereas they were the greatest warriors and chiefs on both sides of the Kotthorns, and that they should overthrow the Chief-of-Chiefs and redivide the lands and the peoples in the manner of foreigners into three Chiefdoms, so that Trenessa would be the West-Chief, Fourth-Frono would be the Middle-Chief and Kirost would be the East-Chief; yet Fourth-Frono immediately refused and left, so Trenessa realised that it would be better still if there were two Chiefdoms rather than three, and, having been well informed by his spies, reminded Kirost that the Cow Family has always been his enemy. And Kirost, shaken by the battle and his words, agreed to ponder this.
Yet on the other day, during the victory-feast after the Battle of Het, when Trenessa and his men, along with his allies within other families, had tried to kill and overthrow the Chief-of-Chiefs, Kirost raised the alarm and cut down Trenessa in a duel, and the warriors of the Lion Family who were there agreed that this was honourable and backed off, whereas the Chief-of-Chiefs pardoned all those involved. However, other men of the Lion Family who were present at the Moti Great Family Army camp were more bitter over the death of their chief, and besides were in negotiations with the Bisrian king; and so they declared Trenessa's younger brother Jonessa the new Lion Family-Chief, and went with him to attack Kirost when he left for his mountain strongholds to levy new reinforcements; and so they caught up to him and killed everyone there, and Kirost's mind went to the Good God, for he had been judged to have done more good than evil, having restored a family based on the old laws and the principles of justice, amongst many other deeds of valour.
So the Good God asked Kirost if he had a last request before his mind left the mortal world entirely; and Kirost told the Good God that he wished to go back to life and to kill his attackers, but the Good God said that to let the dead rise again was to damage the world and to do so in the name of goodness was to let the Evil God demand something of equal value in the name of evilness, and that therefore this request was such as could not be granted. Then Kirost asked the Good God to grant his children luck in avenging him, and the Good God agreed.
And so it happened that when Kirost's seven sons had heard of this, they set out with their retainers earned by right of lineage or by right of valour, and massacred Jonessa and his warriors and all other lions they found in the vicinity of the main army's camp, and after that some of them said that the required vengeance has been done, but at the subsequent mourning feast of the Horse Family the eldest of them, Darost, was elected as the new Horse Family Chief, and he decreed that the Horse Family would never stop killing lions except when stopped by circumstances, and since then the Horse Family and the Lion Family hated each other with a passion and slaughtered each other whenever there was opportunity, and many said that this was truly tragic, for the Lion Family guarded the western frontier and the Horse Family guarded the eastern frontier, but others said that it was good, because now there was no way the two mightiest and most valorous of families could fight together against the Chief-of-Chiefs, and whenever kept from killing each other would try and outdo one another in killing foreigners and other enemies. Also, some at that time thought that the Horse Family, being so recently rebuilt and made of people who in truth were until recently mere bandits, would not outlive its founder; nonetheless, it both survived and remained true to its laws of justice, by which the Horse Family had neither humans nor godlikes, but only the sons of Kirost, and never tilled the soil or traded, but left that to its slaves and friends, instead making war and preparation for war its sole profession.
As for Chief-of-Chiefs Second-Gaci, he fought one last great battle at Bisrium itself two years later, and destroyed what remained of the Bisrian king's army; and having taken Bisrium and purged it clean of evil, he became the King of Bisria and the Chief of All the Bisrian Families, and he granted the northern, eastern and western frontiers of the country with their populations over to the assorted Moti families, satisfying them all, and afterwards came back to Gaci-city to oversee the start of a new age of goodness and justice.
And though by the end it had turned out that this war had not quite destroyed all the evil in the world, its tide was nevertheless stemmed, wealth, piety and justice were all multiplied, the center of the world returned to its rightful place and the Good God stood up from his knees and injured the Evil God's arm.