OOC: It just seemed a bit weird for the Grandpatriarch of Iralliam to proclaim the Ayasi's challenge for Exatas - not exactly an Iralliamite idea. If anything, I would have expected the Ayasi himself invoking such a concept to get odd glances from that corner. Not that this doesn't make things easier for me.
IC:
The Ayasi First-Lerai had once heard that there was once a people in the north called the Satar. Those Satar were heathens and savages, destroyers of lands and slaughterers of peoples; yet they were also brave and mighty in war, worthy opponents to our ancestors. Though one might say that the only language the Satar understood is force, it may also be answered that it was a language they spoke with great fluency; if they only respected strength, they respected it thoroughly and honestly.
The world had changed greatly since those days, yet the Ayasi First-Lerai had heard that the Satar yet remain, and are still as fierce and as bloodied as in the old days, though they may wage war far away from home, not daring to challenge the armies of the Holy Moti Empire or its allies in the open. They still meddled in the affairs of the Ayasi's allies, and they still supported his enemies, beyond the lands that had been previously acknowledged as theirs - but only covertly and from afar, when they thought there was no chance of repercussions.
Prince Talephas has claimed that by invading, we have broken the ancient treaty, in which the Ayasi Fourth-Frei acknowledged the Satar holdings in the north. The Ayasi First-Lerai thought it strange for Satar to cower behind paper treaties, but perhaps they have grown old and weak, and incapable of defending themselves in any other way. That much would be easy to understand; yet the treaty they speak about only came about as a result of a trial of force, one in which the armies of the Holy Moti Empire have shown themselves capable of conquering the Sesh Valley, and the armies of the Satar have shown themselves capable of holding on to their holdings further north. This war had shown that this is no longer the case, and that the Satar could not even protect a holy site of their religion, which now survives solely due to the Ayasi's mercy and respect. And what is more: that treaty has made it clear that the Satar exist at the sufferance of the Ayasi, so long as they do not assist his enemies in the middle of the world, and so long as they can rule the north in his name. They have forfeited this defense in the rule of the Ayasi First-Lerai's father, when they insisted on restoring Amhatr after it had been razed; and their other blunders, errors and crimes against peoples have made it clear that their current rulers no longer deserve that which was granted to their ancestors.
Prince Talephas had claimed that we fight against the freedom of the Satar and that in so doing we have forfeited the moral high ground. Yet we do not massacre those too weak to fight back; we do not invade for no reason; we do not hide from those who would come to fight us. Of what moral high ground does he speak? Is he Farun or Satar? The Ayasi doubts the Farubaida would accept him if he had claimed to be the former. Yet the Ayasi does not recognise him as the latter either.
Indeed, the Ayasi First-Lerai believes that he had been misled, and was mistaken when he went north with a large army. For he had found no Satar there, except for the ones that marched there with him, the Satar subjects of the Holy Moti Empire, and those of the Kothari Exatai; for they have retained the martial and honourable ways of their ancestors, adding to it the learning of civilisation and in many cases the wisdom of true religion.
He does not address this to Prince Talephas, for not only is he not a Satar - he is not even a man, but merely a dog, and there is no point in negotiating with someone whose power is merely a fleeting dream, and whose every frantic bark confirms that he cannot even be that ignorant of his own impotence. But if there are any men left among the nobles of the Karapeshai Exatai, then the Ayasi would urge them to come to Siaxis - either to submit to his rule, or to fight him in the open. Then the fate of the North shall be decided anew.
. Ergo, Im not touching anything relating to the Empires policy or decisions pertaining to the same, Im just pointing out that the Redeemer has shown his unworthiness and that he lacks Exatas, and that correspondingly he lacks the right to rule his people by his action of begging mercy.
