Shadow Warden,

What I consider more regrettable than your 'delayed' response is the fact that you feel the need to apologize for your guild's members confronting me in debate. I've heard tell of disfavors - of limits placed upon the speech and opinions of your members. Isn't Spinesreach a city of freedom? What does it say about you that you would stymie the free debate of existential issues for the sake of your own ego and your guild's appearance?

Your letter didn't prompt this challenge. I was planning to do this since before I won my present title. Take no credit for my actions. It's 'quite the leap' only if my predecessor's inactivity has set false expectations for what the Ascendril Order should look like.

Now, let's move on to the 'argument' - if such it can be called.

You speak of Shadow as an all-consuming, all-destroying element.
In this, you are indeed correct. You'll find none among our ranks,
properly trained, who will deny this. You'll also find none among
our ranks, properly trained, who do not exercise great control
and influence to ensure we do not do more unintended harm than
needed. Direct, precise application of the element to ensure our
strength swells and our enemies fall.

Once again: even small, controlled, well-influenced amounts of Shadow, once introduced to this plane, compound. As Shadow compounds in greater and greater amounts, it is mutually exclusive with Spirit. This is still a long-term existential threat which you, Shadow Warden - charlatan - seek to obscure by means of a claim of competence that reality does not reflect- but more on that later.

I do not know or care about your link to the Shadow Plane, because it isn't relevant to the points I'm making about your use of Shadow and Shadow channels. Once again, the fact that you draw on Shadow and bring it into this plane, combined with a basic observation of its properties, is all that is necessary to establish my point. In order to refute the point, you must refute reality, which you are incapable of doing.

"You speak of Shadow as a dangerous component of the world..." Wrong. I think that Shadow in quantities upset from the balance established at the point of this plane's creation is dangerous. I recognize as well as you do that some small amount of Shadow exists naturally in all aspects of this plane, but that it did not exist in the quantities which it does currently; and that the circumstances which have brought this about, in recent times, have been largely apocalyptic in nature, or associated with direct channeling of Shadow that has not been frequently practiced at any other time in our world's history.

Moreover, 'unrefined' and 'refined' are unscientific descriptions of the physical mechanisms at play - there is no such thing as a 'refined' Shadow modicum, only a Shadow modicum. Your attempt to draw a ludicrously unsupported distinction here is another muddying of the waters, and your attempt to liken its use to that of ylem is inaccurate because - and I repeat myself, again - Shadow's properties are unique to Shadow. They cannot be generalized to ylem, to Spirit, or to any other force, because /only Shadow/ does these things.

You should, like Verrillia, review the section of my book describing 'dynamic equilibrium' to get a better idea of how our world works, and also the chapter on Spirit to understand why an excess of Spirit is not even remotely the problem you're describing. Briefly- Spirit does not multiply and subsume the way Shadow does; Spirit does not imitate the functions of other modicums; Spirit, while volatile, is more stable and predictable than Shadow; and an excess of Spirit does not preclude death, nor maturity, nor an endless growth to cities; are we to lend buildings a Sapient quality, in your scientifically illiterate vision?

I am willing to concede points, as demonstrated in my prior argument; Verrillia corrected me on some of the details of my extrapolation, even if she was unable to disprove the core of my argument.

Now, before, you were making an appeal to your guild's competence. Allow me to disabuse you of that comforting, yet threadbare illusion:

Your guild occupies just one seat of leadership in the city of Spinesreach, and that only a ministerial one. Sciomancers are only occasionally glimpsed fighting at lessers. You have produced no great works of research or writing, instead co-opting my book where you have need of elemental theory. In short, beside the Archivist and the Syssins, your ranks come off powerful, petty, and self-absorbed, particularly given the exercises of tyranny you demonstrate against the speech of your own members.

You aren't competent. Don't play.

The only reason anyone knows the name of Tekias Uymari is because I started this argument.

You're welcome.

Get Verrillia to pick up the argument. She was doing better than you.

-Shachalai

Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 25th of Arios, in the year 468 MA.