Correspondence from Vance to Odak

To His Illustrious Nuetrality, Grand Hierophant Odak of the Continuum, Keeper of the Wand

It is perhaps unorthodox that I write you directly, though I suspect unorthodoxy is a thing you have grown accustomed to encountering of late.

The death of Peredik the Highborn—and let us not pretend it was anything but a political murder wrapped in ecclesiastic silence—removes one of the last barriers between the ambitions of the Grand Temple and the full erasure of the arcane free orders. I grieve his passing not only as a man of consequence, but as the single voice of temperance within an ever-tightening circle of incense and iron.

I will not waste ink on veiled accusations. You know as well as I that the Dweomersecte exists to counterbalance the Grand Temple, not because we hate the divine, but because we have seen too often what becomes of men who claim to speak for gods. Our purpose is not chaos, but resistance. We are the memory of the world before the ten gods were named, and we will be its memory after.

If they force our hand—if they drive the Art from the cities and burn the last free lorekeeps—we will not martyr ourselves, but we will answer. And the answering will be seen in every sky and under every stone.

Let us not make it so.

You have power, Grand Hierophant. If the Dweomersecte falls, the Continuum will be next. You know some of the danger, but you do not yet have all of it. I offer you this final prophecy from your own Lords Continuous, not as a warning, but as a courtesy:

Not all who kneel do so in reverence.

Some kneel to bury something.

By light unblessed,

 

Vance