In response to the Jackals and all others:
>From the Illustrated Man
I've recently been reading some of Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom novels.
Now there's a world where calling a man a warmonger is no insult, and even
one's enemies are respected when they hold fast to their friends.
Now back to Provinia, where the opposite seems to be true.
What we have here seems to be a set of differing priorities. Jheremai
went to bat for us when we sorely needed aid...the Eagles know that better
than most. But now, evidently, Mr. Brand expects us to stand idly by and
make baskets while our friend is cut to pieces by an invading horde, merely
because a treaty that we signed does not give us an explicit justification
for helping him. If that's the way he feels about friendship, then all we
can say is, we're glad Mr. Brand is not OUR friend. :)
Perhaps our friend is less than perfect. When half the world looked like
it was coming to invade us, we didn't send out a quiz to ascertain whether
everyone who offered us aid had attained a Seehawk-like level of moral
purity. We accepted aid when it was offered, and we considered a debt to
be a debt. Whatever Jheremai or his confederates may have done since then
has done nothing whatsoever to cancel that debt.
If the Lords were paragons of moral purity then we'd understand the world
expressing outrage at our actions. But clearly this is not so. Both sides
have their flaws.
It is true that Jheremai did not specifically come begging to us for aid
when he was attacked. Back when we were attacked, we did not go begging
for aid either, but he offered it, just the same. We are a proud alliance,
just as Harn is a proud alliance. After Harn was invaded, we wrote and
offered assistance, and he accepted it with gratitude. That's good enough
for us.
So for purposes of clarification, while it is true that Jheremai did not
ask for our help, the statement
>the IC declaired war in support of the Harn Alliance without their
>knowledge or consent.
is NOT true. We had both. If that makes us a "super-alliance," then so be
it.
We'd like to point out that it is only outsiders to this war -- mostly
members of the Eagle Alliance -- who have been obsessed with pointing
fingers and finding out who are the "good guys" and the "bad guys." The
major participants on both sides have been acting on their senses of honor
rather than on legalism, and we applaud that. In the eyes of the Inner
Circle, all participants have acted properly at every step of their
engagement:
The Horselords felt insulted, so they did something about it. They rode
their horses around a bit, scuffed up a bit of turf, and went home.
The Lords of the Crown didn't like it, and now they are doing something
about that. They didn't go whining to the Times and the GCA about how
their sovereignty was invaded. Instead they expressed their displeasure in
a time-honored fashion: the Overwhelming Surprise Attack. And by the way,
allow us to take the time here to commend them on a well-thought-out and
executed campaign to date.
Neither did the Harn Alliance go whining around at this point. They dug in
to defend themselves.
And now the Inner Circle is going to get involved. Why? Because one of
the targets of the Lord's reaction is Jheremai the Scarlet, to whom we
feel we owe a debt.
The Inner Circle does not need a treaty to keep peace with our neighbors
if our neighbors behave themselves. Likewise, when it comes to the
repayment of a debt of honor, we will not let a treaty stand in our way.
But it seems that, for Mr. Brand, the repayment of a debt of honor is not a
good enough excuse to go to war. He keeps waving around a piece of paper,
and hints vaguely at retribution against those who break it. He writes:
>I am not aware of any violation of the Yellowleaf Accord made by the LotC.
>I would be interested in learning of one if it has occurred. But I am only
>interested in violations of what was written and agreed to, not speculation
>on the "spirit" of the accord.
Very well. If you insist on searching through this conflict to find "good
guys" and "bad guys," and you believe that the bad guys are the ones who
first broke the treaty, then read on.
The Treaty was agreed to by the Lords on February 8. The revelant article is
12) The remaining New Empire provinces (after item 11) will be
divided between Inner Circle and Lords of the Crown. Inner Circle
will receive 20% and Lords of the Crown 80%. The division is as
detailed below:
Inner Circle will control
>>cx77<<,
cz77, da77, db77, dc78, dd78, df78, dg78
>>and all points EAST<<
within former New Empire land.
Lords of the Crown will control all provinces WEST.
(Emphasis added.)
On turn 52, run on February 10, at the same time the Treaty was being
published in the Times, the following was going on:
Desert [cx78], desert, in Provinia, civ-1
------------------------------------------------------------------------
4: Lonely Cavelier [7844], with one riding horse, arrived from the west.
5: Lonely Cavelier [7844], with one riding horse, entered City [s06].
27: Lonely Cavelier [7844], with one riding horse, ten soldiers, arrived
27: from City [s06].
28: Garrison [1096], garrison, on guard, with ten soldiers now guards
28: Desert [cx78].
29: Lonely Cavelier [7844], with one riding horse, entered City [s06].
Province controlled by High Palace [1325], castle, in The Moonlands [cz72]
Ruled by Sir Codric [3910], duke
Routes leaving Desert:
North, plain, to Land's End [cw78], 7 days
East, to Forest [cx79], 8 days
South, swamp, to Land's End [cz78], 14 days
West, forest, to The Moonlands [cx77], 8 days
On turn 53, Lonely Cavelier (1) evidently went east to garrison cx79 as
well, since that too was loyal to the Moonlands when we showed up to
garrison it later.
So there you have it, Mike: clear evidence that the Lords broke the
treaty, both letter and spirit, on both the turn it was signed and the turn
after. Perhaps you will now condemn them with the same fervour that you've
been condemning us?
We didn't feel that this violation was cause enough for war. For us our
debt of honor was enough and more than enough. But if those with
legalistic minds insist, we will add this clear violation of the treaty to
our list of causus belli.
This does NOT mean we feel that, just because their side of the treaty was
broken, we're justified in breaking our side as well. We intend to stick
by what we agreed to. This is not a war about take the Lords' lands, and
we'll state right now that we aren't doing this to expand our territory.
We respect their borders...we just don't want Codric's nobles to be inside
them any more, or anywhere else either, for that matter!
If, when all the bodies have been buried and/or the peace treaties have
been signed, the fortunes of war leave us in possession of lands assigned
to the Lords in the treaty, we will try to find someone to pass them on to.
If anyone answers our call for mercenaries, perhaps we'll give the land to
them as payment. Perhaps we'll let those surviving Lords who agree to
leave us alone keep some territory as a strict DMZ. Perhaps we'll turn the
entire area unto a giant safe zone for newbies. Perhaps we'll turn over
their castles to the next newbies to show up in Yellowleaf. But we won't
try to add their lands to our empire, unless further escalation of the war
causes us to change our current goals.
We believe that this policy is in line with our reading of the Yellowleaf
Accord. We do not find anything in the Accord that says, either explicitly
or implicitly "All signatories agree to be always at peace with all other
signatories, no matter what they do, for ever and ever world without end
amen." If the Accord had contained anything like that, we never would have
signed it, and we doubt if anyone else would have either.
One more point: both the Jackals and Cendage have said, in effect, that
they feel we tricked them into leaving during our previous confrontation.
We are quite surprised at this accusation. They made their grievances in
that confrontation quite clear at the time, we felt. Their first was a
sense of betrayal related to our brief membership in their organization,
and they professed themselves satisfied on this account before they left.
Their second was a sense of obligation to their member state the New
Empire, which is not involved with this dispute at all. At no time did
they link themselves or their interests with the Lords of the Crown in any
way. Why do they now feel that an assault against the Lords is evidence of
duplicity against them? We're puzzled.
The Illustrated Man
(1) As an alumnus of the University of Virginia whose mascot is the fabled
horseman of long ago, I suggest that Sir Codric or his ally look up the
spelling of the word "cavalier." The spelling is the same in French,
n'est-ce pas?