Summer 609 –

There are many things we do in the name of truth and justice. We will stand for these concepts, fight for them, kill for them, and die for them. Some see that as a worthy cause, some could care less – they are noble things to be sure, but only so noble as who they are wielded by – truth and justice are not a blade to be wielded to smite a foe, but a winding tapestry of nuance and discussion.

This past market I witnessed firsthand the dichotomy of this – firstly, at the behest of Aspen I sought to eliminate the Veneaux malefic known by me as “Truth”. This being who hurt my aunt and uncle by taking memories and forcing knowledge, who has tortured the Veneaux for centuries, who stood as anathema to Aspen. This I felt was just – but what wasn’t so was the method by which Aspen sought to do it – the murder of one who Truth abducted and sequestered and fed off their agony – the mother of Baz and the wife of Father Belette. She had not committed crimes against Vecatra or Luisant, but she stood as the most expedient way to defeat Truth, and so Aspen asked for her death. I refused – after all, the pursuit of justice should not result in an unjust act – and Aspen relented – I convinced a spirit that their way was not THE way.

But I would not stop there – for I knew that it was important to spread this message to the people of Luisant – I gathered those who have been wronged by Truth together, and though I had no experience with bow or blade we devised a plan and successfully killed truth. I knew that this was not enough – I told Father Belette of who I was and why I knew of his wife, and how we might save her, and that I would be willing to lay down my life to protect her against Truth’s torture or Aspen’s vision of Justice. I know not how he will react to his wife returning, but I hope he will see past his bigotry and hatred to see the truth – that a Vecatran, one who he has sworn to kill – managed to save his wife where he could not.

Secondly – the arrival of the Inquisition has left the town in a state of panic and dread – these monsters in the shape of men use the “truth” and “justice” they’ve been indoctrinated into as a cudgel to form the world around. I hold out hope that they may be shown actual truths, and actual justice, but I fear that their eyes have been blinded by the light and smoke of their pyres, and their minds poisoned by centuries of dogma and vile rhetoric that is unsustainable and will lead to either their downfall or that of the world.

I stand at these two pathways of truth and justice, trodden often by those misguided by promises of black-and-white morality, of simple solutions, of the justification of acts unjust and untrue, hidden by the banner of authority and power. But I don’t take these paths, I turn to those walking down these paths, and say that Truth and Justice are not what a person tells you, nor is it words on a page – Truth and Justice can never be one thing and one thing only – Truth and Justice are; forever and always, what the community will accept as truth and justice, and for an outsider to tell or force upon us their ideals – be they from the inquisition or the court of trees – is nothing short of colonialism and assimilation.

Luisant’s Truth – Luisant’s Justice – has and will always be its people, their ideals, and the community that binds them.