OOC: Punishing a man for a typo is cruel Terrance. I was trying to say to not and do not at the same time and it became to do. Its the problem with typing in a hurry when one has dyslexia and no time or inclination to proof read. I've edited the post to read properly.
To: Wendell the Tall
From: Elatair
I do not remember your offers of support and you had not been wronged. This is not a common war for land or resources or even over clashing principles, this is a war of the wronged bringing a tyrant and traitor to justice. Thus the wronged will fight it. There was also the more practical point that your arms and men would have not been able to reach my men before Ayra had already been routed from the field and held in his fortress of Ceros. The last point I would make is how well do halflings, and I do not mean your elite warriors, but your slingers, who are the bulk of your army, hold up before a foe who is as insubstantial as smoke yet deadlier than an inferno; a foe that can strike at anytime and in any place, who does not tire, eat, drink, know love or fear; a foe who can rip an elf who has spent over two centuries, ten generations of most moral folks, honing himself into a weapon of war in seconds. In the first season of this war I lost two veteran companies of rangers entirely and the rest of both my own army and those of my allies paid a heavy price for victory. This was with the entire forest united to one purpose, this was with my mind soothing every one of my warriors so he might cling to his sanity a little longer. I value friendship and I value life Wendell. I have preserved life and the chance of friendship by keeping you from the fey wars of the the elves.
As for the details of my proposed route, it is quite simple. You connect Sephira to your road network. This you must finance and police yourself. I will then, with some financial assistance from yourself, build a road from Sephira all the way up to Eragor. From there we can both build a road to Dokieos and Telurgrae. Thus the commerce can flow from Sul, Aurellia Forest, Marburg Fords, the Maldia Plain and the Goldtier Mountains without the caravans having to brave the Crata Grasslands. That is a place that even you, Wendell, with your gilded tongue, will never be able to tame or domesticate.
I should not comment on how you should rule Wendell but I will say this. All rules are based on trust. If the highest councils of my people had not trusted me when I entered this land, they would have slain me. I do not rule the elves as a lord but a first amongst equals. My age and experience lend my words weight but my nature counts against me. I am more fey than the fey folk and the fey folk do not well like it. But do you not see that the very system you describe is how a king rules or a tyrant. You offer your protection in return for taxes and overlordship of their lands. Of course they could refuse your services and they are offered totally in good faith but then who would keep the bandits away at night? Who would deal with beastmen, elves, dwarves and other stranger things? Who would hold the monopoly of violence and command the rough men who stand ready in the night to visit harm on those who would seek to harm your subjects? Who would enforce the rule of law? You are a king Wendell in every way that matters.
My final point was quite simple. Elves are not like men or elves or dwarves or beastmen or orcs or gnolls. We are different from you just as you are different from each other. I have already stated how you do use force to compel people to serve you for you hold peace in a dangerous land and while you command an army and magic stronger than most of this world can dream of, you are forcing those walkers to march to your lands and accept your rule or to die at the hands of monsters and murderers and malign men. The elves would not accept your rule or your protection if they did not wish to, yet you proclaim yourself our lord. The clan of Fallen Serpent are well-known to me for I was fostered in their halls and saw with my own eyes the fabled Bow of the Wyrm-Slayer, which was used in the distant past by a mighty elven archer to slay a dragon that threatened the peaceful community of simple halflings that lived where your citadel of Marburg Fords now stands. Hence the forest was named the Forest of the Fallen Serpent by your folk and it has been known by that name ever since. If that clan chooses to join your realm and serve you they may. All elves are free to choose their fate and all elves must live with the fate they chose. The thing you must not do to an elf is impose on him something that is truly not his own free choice. You cannot claim to be our lord for no man or woman may claim that long-forgotten title over my people again. Ironically if my own people heard you call yourself a lord, they would laugh for that word is now a grave insult amongst the elves and to call someone a lord in the sense of a person lording over someone else, not as an honorific which may translated as meaning lord, would be like calling someone a power-crazy megalomaniac.
Finally as to my experience and age. I am well enough versed in the Nether Sphere to know that time is relative to the world you walk. For the measure of my own life I choose the land of my birth and the one you now dwell in. By its reckoning I have lived well over a thousand years. I have walked across more worlds than I can count and been more things than I care to remember. You may be old by the standards of your own folk Wendell and perhaps being sustained by the power of life itself is phenomenal amongst the Halfling folk, who are truly machine not flesh and blood. Or are you saying that such a mighty wizard does not even realise that mana and life are intimately entwined and thus where they is life there is mana and where there is mana there is life? To say that you are sustained by your own life-force is like saying the sun will rise in the east and set in the west. If you mean to say that you draw sustenance directly from the life-force of those around you without the need for food or drink, that is not so great an achievement. It is a technique the spellweavers of my ranger companies had to use in battle with the Bloodknights to draw strength from both their fellow rangers and the forest around them so they might hold them back awhile. I personally tend to choose the more sensational method of eating and drinking to sustain myself in my everyday existence but each to his own.
I do not seek to offend you Wendell. I merely wished to point out that running a road straight through Crata regardless is a sure-fire way to die and that claiming titles that you cannot truly claim is likely to cause offense. Trade is a good thing between our peoples is it not? Thus we should make it so that trade might flow.
PS: You wished for words. Have I given you enough? This must be the longest diplo I have written to one player or even a group of players. I have no idea where it all came from.
