>>@KEBECHET | TO: @ALL.

[agogenpc]

By now, you may have noticed some among your number missing. I can assure you they are being well taken care of with what supplies we have in this time of war.

Our struggle here is drawing to a close. I presume both sides would like to avoid further loss of life. The Empire-- the Regency, as you call us-- certainly would. I myself grow weary of slaughter, especially this senseless murder of my soldiers.

This can be ended. I do not have the credentials necessary to surrender. You do. Call off this useless struggle. Your people will be returned to you.

Of course, if you have questions, I beg you to ask them while we have the time. This transference into your network will not last for long.

[ooc Discuss surrender here! Threadjacking welcome.]

Comments

[agogenpc]

Why would it count to you? They aren't your kin or comrades. You keep secrets from them. You do not converse deeply with them. They are soft targets in a war fought a hundred years distant from your birth.

You boast much of your knowledge of me. Do you think I wish to hear your faults?

[hakanai]

If you don't understand why that would count to others then you are unlikely to succeed in this effort at diplomacy. I do not have a soft heart and am well aware of the casualties necessary in warfare but many in my unit are full of that kind of purity, that kindness, and will not sacrifice these 'soft targets' easily.

I tell you this as a simple fact. It may save you time and effort or it may not. Do as you will with it.

What I think? I think you are interesting. It has long been my goal to talk to more members of the Regency, even if from a distance. You are correct that there is much we have not been told and I cannot find the truth from one source, after all. Thinking that I could would be foolish.

[agogenpc]

Yet you follow them anyway, lavishly.

[hakanai]

So I should follow your side blindly instead? I do not know the full extent of what COST is yet but I have seen enough with my own eyes to know the Regency can demonstrate deep cruelty both to those who defy them and those who let them down.

My remaining lifespan is short anyway. If I work out what the best path to the future is before I die then I might defy the flow for its sake, whoever's hands shape it, but until then I am content to drift in the current.

[agogenpc]

You underestimate, then, what COST is hiding from you. They have bombed cities, burnt villages, exploded railways and murdered politicians, all in the name of their precious free will. But I suppose your hands are clean, so long as you wash them in the current of your 'flow'.

[hakanai]

Clean hands? Don't be foolish. No side of a war can claim to have bloodless hands and I as a strategist certainly do not possess them. Nor do I doubt that COST has done their fair share of bloodletting considering what must be done to preserve history as it is currently shaped; maybe they will even ensure that the deaths of my lost loved ones happen in the future in the same violent ways that they happened.

But I have yet to hear even from the mouths of your agents why the Regency's definition of peace is a good thing. They merely insist that it is. Countering the reality of your own brutality with the brutality of your enemies is hardly a good argument for swaying others onto your side and all in all is a poor strategy.

Unless, of course, you don't actually care to do so and merely wish to damage morale.

[agogenpc]

There is a special place in hell for bloviators, though I'm sure you'll give me a point-by-point analysis of why you don't belong there, how it doesn't exist, or how I am too weak a debater to register all your myriad complaints. In truth I simply tire of the preemptive eulogy.

Though I do wonder what misguided fool told you that the aim was history's preservation. Such innocence I have not seen in a long time.

The debate between peace and chaos is such a simple one, if you cannot grasp it, I cannot help you to do so. My life is busy enough without slotting in the elucidation of a simpleton. Suffering is bad. Peace is infinitely preferable. Anything else said on the matter risks redundancy.

Your morale is something I do not wish to touch, should it become contagious and infect me with the apparent necessity of protesting its strength with suspicious alacrity from every opportunity availed.

[hakanai]

The opposite of peace is not suffering; the existence of peace does not equal a world without suffering. That statement makes you more naive than some of my fellow warriors.

How very interesting, though. I've learnt something very valuable. I'd offer you my thanks but I do not think you would want it.