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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 180307" data-attributes="member: 2020">The taraakian regards the situation with a grave expression, disquiet in his eyes.  Hazen, as an Angel, realizes that there is some distress in that mind, evident in the body language, in the nervous movements of the fingers in the hands.  The taraakian waits, and communicates nothing, until Siobhan and Kalanyr have plighted their troth.  Then he looks at Kas, and communicates:  Please shealth your sword, Kas.  I am an ambassador, and speak the will of my government.  I am not here to do battle, unless such is forced upon me.  I am given considerable latitude in what I may say and do by my government ... and I will exercise that latitude now.  I wish to explain to you, how we see the situation, and why we have taken the position that offends you so greatly.  (It is evident that the taraakian is choosing his words carefully, and communicates slowly and cautiously)  We were summoned by peoples with whom we had made agreements that could not be broken, and could not be denied, for such is our nature.  We arrived to find very serious destruction.  Whole worlds destroyed.  Entire races become extinct.  Our ethics require retribution against those who kill those we swore to protect.  We quickly traced the source of the attacks back to these Spheres.  Our initial assessment was that sterilization was necessary.  He regards everyone solemnly:  Yes, sterilization.  The slain souls of billions cried out to us for retribution against those who had done this thing, without provocation, without reason, without sanity.  Indeed, a case could be made in our courts that most of you either directly contributed to the ascendance of the (untranslatable - he is referring to the Red Goo), or you were collaborators in the crime.    However, we are not a people who take life without need, and we do not kill without cause.  We choose instead to send a scout to your Spheres, to access the situation, and send back to our government the facts uncovered.  That was my task, and this has been done.  It was upon the information sent to them, that my government made the judgement it has made, and instructed me to relay that judgement to you.  The taraakian pauses, considering his words, then continues:  We appreciate the monuments you have created with your magic and your science.  The Penumbral Hub.  The Mana Fortress.  The Hive Cluster.  The great cities of the United Commonwealth.  However, we appreciate far more the institutions you have created.  The World Forum.  The Torilian Parliament.  The Alliance of Oerth.  Even the Cydians have their merits, as well as their drawbacks.  We are delighted at the strength you have found in yourselves.  The strength to restore Oerth and Luna, undo the damage and ravages of war.  The strength to stand against what some amongst you call the One God, and your willingness to turn your backs to her.  The strength to fight for peace, prosperity, and diversity, yet in that fight you do not choose to conquer, and destroy the very thing you struggle for.    The laws of your enlightened institutions, their willingness to allow diversity, their insights into Magic and Science, and the ways in which they have used those insights for good, show how far you have risen.  You have risen very far.  Very far indeed.  The taraakian continues, and Hazen detects a growing sadness in him:  Yet, as you have grown, so has your capacity for destruction grown.  Some among you have eschewed wisdom and growth, and have chosen to exercise that capacity for destruction.  They have not demonstrated any adequate reason for their decision, for they have no reasonable justification for their actions.  The taraakian looks troubled, his eyes sad:  We arrived just in time to halt you from destroying yourselves.  The vision that you were shown is the truth that would have been if we had not intervened.  Everything that you worked and fought for, sacrificed for, gave the entirety of your lives for, would have been ended.  Your monuments, your institutions, your civilization, completely erased from the Spheres.  Your people, their inherent potential for greatness and achievement, killed in body and soul, forever gone.  You appear to believe that this is freedom.  If this is freedom, then it is an undesirable freedom, for this is the freedom of death, the freedom of oblivion.  Is this the freedom that you desire?  For this IS the freedom that you choose.  The taraaakian looks at everyone present, one by one:  It is obvious to us that, if we leave, you will destroy yourselves.  We do not believe there is freedom in oblivion.  We believe that oblivion is the end of all choice and freedom, forever.  Yet this oblivion, is your choice.  You choose the most unfree path of all, and you call this your right.  You have been repeatedly warned against this path by those who understood it.  Your Alliance of Oerth warned you.  Your United Commonwealth of Toril warned you.  The increasing level of destruction warned you.  Even the Angels finally chose to intervene, and warn you.  You did not heed them.  Repeatedly, time and again, you choose not to heed those who were wise, and you insistantly and insanely continued down the path towards oblivion.  We have no reason to believe that you will, of your own free will and volition, choose to turn aside from that path.  If you will not heed the vision of the Angels, then you will not heed any voice of reason.  You say that our inclusion of you into our Empire is an act of tyranny.  It is an act of mercy.  Mercy, in that we will restrain you from destroying yourselves, until you gain the insight and wisdom to never again walk the dark road into oblivion.  Mercy, in that we will teach you better roads.  Roads, to true strength and true peace.  If we were to turn our backs on you, and depart, which some of you are ardently demanding, that would - truly - be an act of pitiless horror and an act utterly devoid of compassion and mercy.  If we turn our backs on you, and you destroy yourselves, your blood is on our hands, and we will never be free of it.  However ...  Restraining you from self destruction will require that we exercise what you call heavy-handedness.  In removing choice from you, we are by default being heavy-handed.  We must remove choice from you, if we are to restrain you from destroying yourself.  And yes, my government has decided to impose our law upon you, and incorporate you into our Empire.  We are removing a very considerable amount of choice from you.  You are too dangerous for us to reasonably choose otherwise.  You have destroyed our friends and allies, killed those we swore to protect.  You have destroyed hundreds of worlds, killed billions of people.  You have wantomly employed and used (untranslatable - he is referring to the Red Goo), when you clearly knew that it was wrong to do so.  One amongst you, Alzem the Celestial, knew the nature of this substance at once, and he warned all of you against it - you did not heed him, or you choose to ignore him, because it was not conveinient to heed wisdom.  You have wantomly employed magic to alter reality for your own selfish ends.  In halting the fusion of the sun of Athas, you have destroyed all living beings on the other three worlds of that system besides Athas itself.  You have harnessed fusion power, and you wantomly use it to bombard whole planets, to destroy whole worlds (he gestures up into the sky at ruined Luna.)  We clearly perceive that many of you desire, not freedom, but oppression - your oppression, over all other forms of life.  If you cannot easily gain this oppression, you will commit whatever acts of murder and destruction that are required to obtain this oppression.  Not all of your leadership acts in this way.  However, enough do holds these tenets that you are a menace, not only to yourselves but to all the other Spheres.  Should we allow you to continue to threaten, not only our allies and friends, but all the rest of the Spheres as well?  If we allow that, our hands are again stained with blood.  We believe in consequences.  We believe in the consequences of non-intervention, when intervention is called for.  Sometimes, non-intervention, a lack of caring, is as terrible and the results as grim, as the acts of the most vile of evil beings.  Thus, we have decided to intervene.  We have decided to impose our will upon you.  We have decided to restrain you from destroying yourselves, and leaving a legacy that will menace the other Spheres for millennia to come.  We will declare war against you, if you will not agree to our terms.  We do not particularly wish to carry on war against you.  However, we WILL carry on war against you, if you refuse our terms.  If in this you see tyranny and horror, then we pity you, for the tyranny and horror, is within you, and that is why we war against you - to crush that tyranny.  Why do you think the (untranslatable - he is referring to the Mists) have Touched you, have come for you, have nearly claimed you?  As for our laws ...  We permit diversity among our subjects.  Our subjects are permitted to live apart from us, in their own societies, comfortable among their own kind - or comfortable amongst many kinds.  Our subjects are permitted to carry out their desires, fulfill their dreams, accomplish the goals they seek in life.  Our subjects may choose to access all of our science and knowledge, subject to our approval, for their own protection.  Our subjects are free to intermingle with us, if they so desire, and they are treated with the respect and dignity due to them.  If some of our subjects behave poorly, they are not accorded respect and dignity, for it is not deserved.  Our subjects enjoy a life of immortality, free of sickness and disease, free of debilitating age.  Our subjects may choose to lay themselves down, and peacefully pass Beyond.  Our subjects may choose to explore the countless avenues of Science, to grow eternally in the infinite search for the ultimate realities of the Multiverse, to engage themselves in the infinite mysteries of the greatest force of all - Magic.  Our subjects are free to love, free to feel, free to live, in a society where Science and Magic have granted true choice.  However, our subjects are not free to kill.  They are not permitted to commit murder.  We do not tolerate rape and other such grim crimes of hatred, harm, and brutality.  We do not allow our subjects to force their ways on our other subjects.  We do not permit theft ... we do not believe that ownership is nine tenths of the law.  We do not permit corruption.  If our subjects must pursue petty feuds and hatreds, if they must select biased judges and officials, if they must enforce their local laws one way for one people, and another way for another people, then that is where we step in.  We do not permit racial war.  We are not sympathetic to those who state other races must be destroyed simply because of what they are - your elves and drow, for example, would not be allowed to assail each other under our rule.  We do not permit religions that espouse hate, harm to others, destruction, murder, oppression, or religions that openly espouse evil and the dark.  You have asked concerning our laws.  Our laws are not the laws of your Angels.  If you viewed us as Angels, you are in for a disappointment - we are quite mortal, like you.    We do not believe that evil, darkness, should be tolerated.  We do not condone it in our society.  We do not condone it in ourselves.  We DO recognize it for what it is.  We appreciate it's power, and it's danger.  We urge you to accept our terms.  I have explained that we are obligated by our ethics to protect you.  I have explained that we are obligated by our ethics to protect others from you.  We follow our ethics, and they demand that we deal with you, and restrain you.  We will not back away from those ethics, and we will not shirk what they require of us.  If that means war, then we will conduct war.  You will not be permitted to destroy yourselves, or threaten others, or leave a legacy of danger to the Spheres.</blockquote>

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