Councilor Ernestine Helthor presents the following prepared remarks at the Council Podium, abruptly finishing and leaving after those in attendance begin to shout out questions and objections.

Citizens of our Sanctuary, we have swayed from our moral obligations. We have abandoned our citadel of virtue and have embarked upon a path of viciousness, and as has become undeniable in the last few days, this path leads only and inexorably to our destruction. I come before you today, on the 15th of Uktar, one hundred and fifty years since the founding of our Sanctuary, to proclaim that all is not well. Fire and ash from beneath our feet are the very harbingers of our doom, a presage that portends our future desperation. Our vice breeds weakness, and our weakness breeds strife, and our strife breeds barbarism. It is this fate that we are obligated to avert.

For too long, we have sacrificed our laws and our order in the name of ease and simplicity. We have grown weak as a people and brittle as a state, feeble and inept as a moral society of free and equal citizens. We have dug up our foundations and overturned our established institutions, hoping to find unity in the smouldering ruins that we ourselves create. We have neglected our duties, abandoned our virtues, and compromised our choices, taking the easy path. We can afford to do so no longer.

Some of my fellow candidates are trying to win you over by claiming that they will lower taxes. I make no such claim. Taxes are the lifeblood of our society and a necessity of our just government. Who pays for the swords and steel that keep you safe at night, guarding our gates and patrolling our streets? It is your gold, willingly given to the Council, given because you, each of you, knows that it is your binding duty to do so. It is not a question of policy. There is no alternative in a world governed by laws and reason. And you know, each of you know in the back of your mind, that however easier your own life may be made by lowering the taxes that you pay, when we as a society lower our taxes, we are stunting our own development and ultimately weakening ourselves. We limit our capacity to defend ourself against our enemies. We limit our capacity to protect the weakest amongst us. We limit our capacity to grow and expand. We revert toward the burning uncivilization, the violent flailing of savages and the tyranny of the strong, that characterizes chaotic, primordial barbarism. And I say, this shall not be! Taxes will be raised. Tariffs will be imposed. Our society will not collapse on my watch.

Some of my colleagues propose to lower tariffs. Why, I ask, ought we lower tariffs? Do we want merchants in our city who are attracted only by base coin? Are these the type of people who we want to rely on for our arms, our weaponry, our stones and swords, the foundational blocks of our very community-- unprincipled, greedy merchants who have to be attracted to our town by promises of cheap wealth? I think not. It is folly, unreasoning folly, to depend upon whores of coin to uphold the crux of our society's order. We undermine all that we have worked for, and betray our every discipline, if we ground the key instruments of our society in the actions of untrustworthy, unprincipled men, who cannot see father than their own purses. Such colossal ignorance would betray everything that we have worked for and every sacrifice that we, as a people, have made. And I say, this shall not be! We will never lower ourselves so far that we must rely upon the greedy, the unprincipled, those with no respect for the safety and liberty that this town provides. Tariffs will be raised, and only those willing to pay, those who recognize the inherent virtue and worth of the free city of Sanctuary over the wretched hives of slaves, only they shall provide us with our essential trade.

One of my fellow candidates has offered assurances that he will raise the Watch wage to reward the Watch for having purged corruption within their own ranks. This type of blatant bribery and political grandstanding is shameful. Corruption ought be scoured out because it is the duty of every citizen to do so, not because of the potential for some petty monetary reward. We are upright men and women, even far removed from our lands of birth. We are not cowardly mice and greedy rats scurrying about in search of scraps of food, selling out all principles and virtue to the highest bidder! I will raise the Watch wages, and I will work to raise them twice as far as has been proposed, but I will do so because the men and women of the Watch have demonstrated time and again their loyalty to our Sanctuary, their commitment to duty, and their iron resolve to uphold the laws of our community. They deserve powerful laws, the rightful instruments of justice, and the full support of the Town Council. I shall not deny them this. Can any of my fellow candidates truly say the same?

Citizens of our Sanctuary, vote for me in the upcoming election. Show your principles and your moral worth, your understanding of the real issues that face this town. We were founded upon principle and virtue, and only by preserving our government, upholding our laws, and not selling the town out to the highest bidder, can we hold true to our great purpose and protect the Sanctuary that offers so much to us all.

Vote Ernestine Helthor for Councilor in Nightal.