Posters are raised all through town, although there are significantly fewer raised in Lower. A few fliers are spread about Upper, and by natural process, some have fallen to Lower, the handwriting is clearly written in print

Men and Women of Dunwarren,

On the surface, I was little more than a shephard. My sole duty was to guide my flock, to keep them safe and alive from the wolves of the wilderness who sought harm. Politics are a new thing to me, I have spent days now trying to find the words which you now read, and have decided it best to speak plainly, honestly, and truthfully to you all. The current state of affairs in Dunwarren is a sad sight, and I fear that as things are, Upper and Lower shall never again be united. Why must this be so? We are all refugees hiding away in Dunwarren from the many dangers of the Underdark. Sanctuary is, and has always been poised upon the razor's edge. The slightest mistake may bring about annihilation for the hundreds of citizens of the city. It should not take a brilliant mind to see such a truth. But I am a shephard's son, and so perhaps this is why I am able to see all of the flock, than just the few.

Citizens of Sanctuary, I fear for the flock today. The wolves bear down on us from all sides, and still we fight amongst ourselves.

That some would consider a civil war in a time and place as this as a favorable course of action is frightening. Should the city be divided in such a way, and one side victorious, would the cost of such a war truly be worth the reward? Would the reward be worth the imminent enslavement to drow of the few survivors who no longer have the strength or forces to resist?

Friends, I do not count myself a citizen of Upper or Lower; rather, I am a citizen of Sanctuary itself. Sanctuary is a force of good in this evil place beneath the earth, and as a Councillor of the city, it would be my sole intent to ensure that Sanctuary remains at peace within, that it might better deal with the threats which oppose us outside.

I desire only peace between Upper and Lower Sanctuary, because if there is not, then there shall no longer be an Upper or a Lower. Sanctuary will cease to exist entirely.

Vote Gibbon Meldren for Council in Eleasis

The original flyers and posters are still about, and these new flyers go up in much the same places, one who reads the first, may very likely read the other, and vice versa.

There are notably more of both flyers in Lower now.

Citizens of Sanctuary,

Sanctuary is at a precarious time now. Enemies ride against the gates, seeking to destroy us. Why?

It is because we are weak! We cannot even solve the civil unrest that divides us. It is as I have said before, if Sanctuary is weak within, all horrors of the Underdark will come against us and slay us where we live. This has been demonstrated twice now in just the past tenday. First the orogs, and now the foul lizardmen of Sslal'teesh.

They were beaten back at great cost, my friends, and they will come again.

That is, unless we become strong. So I say to you all today, Unite! Unite together as the brothers we are and make ourselves strong. Every beast of the Underdark will come against us eventually for as long as they believe we are weak!

Put aside your squabbles, fair citizens, or your squabbles will be the death of us all.

Vote Talontar Gibbon Meldren for Council in Eleasis 1373

A speech given at the Town Hall //Done in game!//

Good dark citizens.

*with emphasis* Good dark…It's a statement that many of us use. A statement we hope is true. *pause* And a statement that I can not in good conscience use this dark, and for good reason.

All around us there is chaos. Chaos that has been troubling our walls and our lives since this city was discovered and Sanctuary was founded, and now, trouble that we cause ourselves. We have been set upon by armies that seek to destroy our city, but is has been our own internal strife that destroys our families, and our unity.

People speak of how we were united in the past, one Sanctuary, one People. But each of us in hearing knows that this is not true…and has not been for some time now. Too many people know pain and suffering.

Too many know oppression here within these walls,

*gestures around him* These walls were called Sanctuary once…and they were a Sanctuary. Not any more.

But for how long has it been this way?

In the past generations, our walls served to keep dangers out, but now they merely lock dangers within. Near to our families, near to ourselves, and near to our lives.

A slaver of a sheriff, under the watchful gaze and guidance of a council that had full oversight into the watch, and a responsibility to protect the people here. The very man they appointed to keep the gates safe, was selling our children to our enemies. Bolstering their ranks, only to have them *raises his voice in emphasis* COME AGAINST US IN FORCE.

For too long we have lied down to the whips of our oppressors! For too long we have offered the last unmarked patches of flesh on our backs that hasn’t felt the whip.

*lowers his voice, takes on a sober tone* For too long we have suffered the pains of those who want us undone.

I say that it must STOP. Each of us alone might be a slave to anything here in the underdark. United and strong though, it would not be this way.

Look around us at this city, at the turmoil and hatred that tears us apart when we should be brothers. This is what happens when we are oppressed! We turn against eachother. -As rats in a cage, we tear at eachother, fighting for the bit of cheese when the oppressors about us watch and laugh, LAUGH, while growing fat.-

Each of us here, is here by luck, by chance, or by trial of fire. Each of us, from the common adventurer, to the faithful zealot is different, there is little common ground amonst us all.

But there is one thing uniting us. *voice rising*

We are HERE. Here in the hallowed halls of what our founders declared a Sanctuary.

And we have chosen to survive! We have CHOSEN to LIVE!

*lower tone* So let us live then. Let us renew our gates and our strength. Let us show these dangers, these oppressors who surround us exactly what we are.

The Lady Talona tests all living beings with Her repertoire of poisons. It is an undeniable law of nature that only the strongest survive. It is the very foundation of life in the Underdark that this is true.

Dissent is a poison as lethal as any of the Lady's, here in the underdark. We are tested as a community now, and only through unity and strength may we prevail.

As Councillor I intend to work to ensure that the travesties of the past never happen again.

I desire safety, not slavery, nor corruption.

The gates will have more men. A standing force will be raised of full reserves. The Watch will be restructured, and checks will be set in place to ENSURE that never again will the power of Sheriff be abused. No more will the Spellguard hide in their tower. Their unceasing works are needed to protect the city, not to enchant their own robes. Their job will be to reactivate these defenses that still, after hundreds of years, lie dormant.

I will work tirelessly to remove the rot and decay and disease of corruption that I smell far too often as I walk the streets.

And when we are strong, we take the fight to those who seek to oppress us. Those who brought upon us the plague we suffered through.

We go to the lizard city, to Sslal'teesh, and we show them we are not to be trifled with.

They wish to see us dead by decay? Then we must repay them in kind with steel.

I wish to keep this city safe. I wish to keep this city strong. Tyrants will not be tolerated. Not now, not ever again.

We must return this city to its namesake. Sanctuary.

That is my pledge. That is what I will strive to do.

A flyer posted up outside the Town Hall

Citizens of Sanctuary,

If you will lend me a moment of your time to read my words, then I would wish to address a few rumors that have been spread about me.

Candidate and Former Councillor Shane has said of me, that during the Rotting Death plague, I 'stood back and laughed at those suffering, asking them to bow down to [my] foul goddess of poison' Such is preposterous. During the plague, I was not even present within the city. I had been betrayed by two I thought friends, left incapacitated for the entire duration of the Rotting Death plague. I would defy Candidate Shane to locate even one source that might claim I was within the city at that time. Certainly someone would have remembered the laughing priest of Talona.

I further would like to address the allegation that I have 'demanded gold for healing' in the town hall.

It is certainly true I have offered healing for small donations, as any self-respecting priest of any god or goddess would do. I shall not bore you with the nuances of clerical life, but you will be hard-pressed to find any favored priest outside of perhaps the Ilmateri or Lathanderite faith who gives away blessings without even making his lord known.

Never once did I 'demand' gold, and never once did I force any person to submit to the Lady's blessings. It was, is, and always shall be an option for someone to turn to the Lady for Her blessings.

Further, I wish to address the remarkable allegations of Sir Julian Fryar.

He proclaims that the lizardfolk city does not threaten us, that there is no reason to wage war upon them.

The lizardfolk city is solely responsible for the rotting death plague which afflicted the entire city. They were responsible for the suffering each and every one of you, fair citizens, suffered through.

But that is not all. Sir Julian Fryar's response is fuelled even more by ignorance. He says they have not continued to threaten us. Only a few days past, THE LIZARDFOLK ATTACKED OUR GATES.

Where was Sir Julian Fryar when it happened?

The faithful of Moander are enemies of our Sanctuary, they desire only to make us suffer and die. It was our suffering that fuelled the return of their lord, and now only more suffering will come to us because he is returned. Candidates Shane and Fryar scorn me because I follow a different god from them, and it seems they support your suffering, that they would let a dire threat such as Moander live on and grow stronger. They are content to assault and slander a priest of Talona while hordes of enemies grow outside our gates and wish our doom.

Truly, I had expected more honorable behavior from my running mates this election, but I fear Candidates Shane and Fryar have proven me wrong. I was not aware that supposedly honorable men resorted to slander, but perhaps in this I was foolish. I shall not further resort to such from now on, except to defend my name.

I thank you for your time in reading my words, Citizens. When the polls open shortly, I hope you remember them.

Candidate and Talontar, Gibbon Meldren

More flyers are spread, posters on bulletin boards are brought to the fore

My fellow citizens of Sanctuary,

If you will indulge me once more to hear my words, I would speak to you of myself. Not my campaign, or my platform, or my intentions for the Council. But of my Faith in the Lady Talona.

There are many among you who despise the Lady, who scorn Her and all she stands for. By logical extent, so do many scorn me as well, that I bear Her blessings.

The unspoken assumption is that due to my faith, I must therefore enjoy causing and watching the suffering of others, as these holy men of Ilmater claim in ignorance of myself and the Lady.

So if you would bear with me then, I shall relate to you my story.

As I've said before, in the time before I was a slave. In my youth, I counted myself a faithful of Chauntea. My family and myself worked as farmhands to a farm in the Dalelands, my father a shephard, and so I was too. He was a kind man, and greatly skilled at what he did. People hailed him as being able to shear a sheep in one cut of the wool, pulling it from the animal whole enough to be worn right off. He was my mentor, for the 16 years I knew the man.

It was roughly 1363 that the drow came in a raid, and took me and my family. For many years we were sold on, and on, from one owner to the next. I was inevitable that I was divided from my parents; we were sold away in different directions.

It was my fate that I should be sold to a drow wizard in Traensyr, with a penchant for cruel experiments. By this time, I estimate 10 years had passed since I was enslaved, taken from my home and my herd. The drow wizard had many slaves, and as is usual for slaves, we were kept in squalid conditions. We were poorly fed, often stewing in each others' waste. Oftentimes the coalskinned elf would summon a few of us to his laboratory. He was an ambitious drow, as all are. The head of his own house, he would frequently search for the most effective ways to eliminate his competitors for power and wealth. Of these methods, frequently he would utilize powerful poisons.

In his collection, he held a great many varieties of poison, and so it was difficult for him to know the proper effects of each. And so he tested them on his slaves. It was no secret to us, and each of us dreaded our turn to be called upon to his chamber to sample his vile potions. Never would we know if the contents of the potion were merely the mild venom of a surface centipede, or dust of the grey underworm, a toxic substance known to cause death, nearly without fail.

I feared for my life often in those days, and I knew that there was no chance of my survival, more and more often those who were called away to his laboratory would not return. So it was that in this place, I turned to the Lady Talona. I prayed, and prayed, and I begged that the others in my number might pray with me, that they would be saved as well.

And it was as I prayed, and as the days passed in the dank pens that I came to understand the Lady, and I grew in health. Eventually I was called to the master's pen, along with the only other man I had managed to convert in that dank place. The master placed before us two bottles of ale, and bade us drink.

We drank, and were unaffected.

He offered two more, and so we drank, and so were we unaffected.

To my companion I cast a knowing grin. It was then, and only then that I knew my faith to the Lady was being rewarded, that by turning to Her in my time of need that she had saved me.

Another bottle of ale for each of us he gave. He had grown frustrated, and so he gave us a poison of great strength. We drank, and this time were affected. Drained of strength, and scarcely able to move our limbs, he thought us dead, and was satisfied. He removed us through a hatch in the floor of his lab. It was on the bodies of those poor other slaves who had died to his experiments that we landed. But we still had our lives, and so we moved.

Through the sewers of Traensyr we travelled. Eventually we were captured by another drow, and forced through a portal to feed some manner of ooze lord.

So it happened that we found ourselves in the sewers of what we came to learn were Sanctuary. As I stood knee deep in the waters of the sewer, the poison the master had afflicted us with passed. The Lady Talona had delivered me from slavery, from poison, and from certain death, to a place of freedom. It was the Lady Talona Herself who delivered me to Sanctuary, and so it was that I have come to Her faith, and preach Her word.

I was a slave as so many of yourselves were. For 10 years I was subjected to the tortures of the drow, bereft of my family and nearly slewn, again and again. I know the trials and tribulations my fellow citizens have been through as slaves, and so I empathize with all my fellow citizens.

And so you know my story, fellow citizens. Do not scorn a man for his faith, merely because it is a faith you do not agree with.

So in the coming days when you enter the Town Hall to cast your vote for the next Councillors of Sanctuary, I beg you not to gloss over my name as a man of a faith you disagree with, consider instead what you truly desire from a Councillor. A fellow citizen, who has been where you have been.

Gibbon Meldren

These flyers continue to be spread around Sanctuary, both Upper and Lower. A copy of the speech is now in print and being spread around as well.