Pride.
Vanity.
Profanity.
Hubris.
ARROGANCE.

The words from the neophobic used to condemn the actions of the dauntless and to mollify their hesitance, their misgivings, their fear, their failures. Lamentations of what should be done by those who lack the stomach to claim fortune by the hair, wrench, and bring it to bear.

Fear takes the reigns of fortune from the timid.
Fear burns the skin of the humble as they attempt to affect their lot.


And just as iron struck with a weak wrist will shatter when it meets the blade of the enemy, providence laughs in the face of the fearful who lament in her rampage.

Fear peels off of so many like smoke, curling and acrid. It smell pollutes the air, its taste fouls
the water, its decay melts the fields. Its rank presence offends me. Painful choices abandoned for the sake of peace, to preserve threads that serve no purpose, enact no change, and do nothing but compromise the severity of the axe of revolution that ought be free to cut through the air like a bird's wing.

Fear is a shackle. Compromise is defeat.

And gentle tongues will never be free.

Even now, in an age where fear and trepidation are the status quo, there are those who have shown courage in the face of compromise, who have shown integrity in the storm of uncertainty, who have chosen a road at the fork where many would balk, who have, in the end, shirked the manacle of morality and the approval of those who desire only to hold them back from greatness: The Akkari.

Yea, the Akkari, in this age of uncertainty and indecision, have chosen power over weakness. Where their peers would have them compromise, they have chosen profanity, blasphemy, in order to grasp the reins of fortune and carve their name into the flesh of history.

They eschew that which they have been told for centuries in order to see their will enacted upon the world. They abandon The Cycle, eschew the will of the Underking, in order to seize the arrow of change from the very air. They blaspheme against Varian and align with the Dejaani to empower themselves against the encroachment of Ohlsana, and reject the will of Dhar in joining the halls of the undying alongside the Vampire and Ivoln's Children. In so doing, they step upon new ground as profane children and throw fear to the side, regardless of the consequences.

Pride. Vanity. Arrogance. The declarations of the fearful and the weak. Let these not deter you, blasphemers, and let this chorus drive you to greater and higher accomplishments.

Know that She, the Indelible, sees your prodigious ego, and it pleases Her to see you abandon your ties with mortality, to choose action over inaction. To choose the chorus of disdain over the mewling cries of compromise.

For their bold rejection of the status quo and their shattering of the status quo, for their vanity and their hubris, the Akkari are welcome among Lexadhra's fold, along with any other of the world with the courage to break the wheel of inertia.

Let us meet on the battlefield of history, and carve a new legacy in blood.

Tetchta V. Mesis,
The Nine-Fingered Tick

Penned by my hand on Tisday, the 8th of Variach, in the year 505 MA.