My fellow citizens, I come before you with a troubled heart. The times, in an ironic use of the phrase given our environment, are dark. But one particular case stirs me to the pulpit today, something that has gone on for too long. The Council, the body of members that you chose to guide the city and ensure its best interests are promoted, has passed a series of laws recently, clarifying certain crimes and the terms of punishment for them.
Councilor Kainth has disagreed and made some… rather startling and tasteless comments about them. Let me explain them then.
If a citizen attacked an animatron in the streets, do you truly believe that this would be simply ignored before these laws were passed? Absolutely not. He claims that there is no historical precedent. This is an astoundingly uninformed thing to say. Any mage can tell you about the dangers of magic eaters, or the difficulty in combating divination and scrying. And any mage or educated individual can tell you about the importance of the magical wards.
I’m sure you all know the precedent for repeated criminal offenses—capital punishment, usually in the form of exile. The punishment for repeated spellcasting abuse has been lessened, not strengthened! Is this the oppression Kainth speaks of, the elucidation of laws that may have had unfair punishment before and are now clearly explained to be more just? Truly, to borrow one of Kainth’s larger words, I am vexed. How dare we pursue higher justice and pass good legislation?
But this is not truly the heart of the matter. Last term, my rookie term as a Councilor, there were many disagreements. Good Wyric Crowshire and I had many disagreements, many arguments. But they were left at that, mere disagreements that when all was said and done were left on the table. But this term, due to Councilor Kainth’s inability to formulate logical rejoinders to fairly discussed situations and legislation coupled with his extreme crutch of relying solely on his mood and emotions has left me wondering how a man of such convictions can possibly hope to achieve anything worthwhile while seated amongst reasonable men on the Council.
Of all things Councilor Kainth has said, the one thing above all that burns me to the core is the absolute tackiness of his name calling and his direct lies to the public during his abuse of the bully pulpit. Call me what you will Councilor Kainth, but I cannot tolerate his questioning Councilor Rook’s honor by calling him a coward, and even more so his declaration of Councilor Saint as a “two-faced” individual. How brave of him, this mighty man, to poke fun at a tiny woman less than half his size and thrice as sweet. I tell you, Miss Saint is ten times the greater than him in her humility. And the man who makes these public personal attacks calls –me- the venomous one.
But of course, Kainth says that he will stand by our defenders with dignity to protect this city. I would expect no less of a man of such personal strength and fortitude to take up such a role, and here, I am glad to hear his word. My qualm with him in this regard is in his persistence in daring to crack the whip on the backs of our shield bearers in the meantime, the Watch and Spellguard! If there is truly any viable future with the magical bird, Kainth himself has taken absolutely no initiative on the council to contact it on our behalf whatsoever, nor provoke discussion about it. He has not made so much as a single piece of legislation, largely due to the fact that he is utterly illiterate and largely incapable of reading to have even the slightest inclination about how civilization functions.
The Spellguard has been here since the Founders created it. The Council of Stewards is a group of individuals who have no investment in the city, nor any strong interest in her survival.
The Order has long been a peacemaking institution and a center for defending ourselves from this highly unstable, extremely magical environment we live in known as the Underdark. Kainth’s attacks on her are without merit, without reason, and based entirely on his opinion that civilization is a kind of evil.
If you believe in this city, if you believe in the men and women who had the courage founded it, and if you believe that mankind is meant for higher things than picking fungus and eating rats then I hope that you all have the wisdom to have the peace of mind to ignore the poor, ignorant fool who seeks to destroy the city and the establishments that have so long provided for us all.