This entire sanctuary is doomed.

The regime is crumbling. The play for power by its mages and elements of its military has been altogether sloppy, undisciplined, and horribly overplayed. Some idiot or collection of idiots forgot that tyranny succeeds best where the lie of freedom is best preserved. Some idiot also forgot that people will accept tyranny so long as it maintains basic order and protects them.

From the accounts I've heard, the previous Sheriff managed to maintain the discipline of his fighting force. His replacement by a glorified clerk and a politician who hide in their offices while their subordinates beat up random civilians seems to have had a debilitating influence on morale and discipline. This has been greatly exacerbated by recent conscription. In quick order, what I have heard was once a fighting force has become little better than a collection of undisciplined petty thugs in uniforms totally unprepared to meet the monumental threats which now face them.

Not that the regime is altogether focused on the threats that face it in the first place. It seems not to understand that it is the existential threat provided by the external enemies which most threatens its fragile relationship with the public and offers the most opportunities to win the public's affections, not the rebels. The people will willingly and cheerfully accept their masters so long as they believe they are being protected in return.

No, instead the regime is obsessively focused on crushing a rebellion they could afford to to turn the public itself against were they simply doing more about the external problem. There are those in the regime who seemed to at least understand that this was the right message, but I've seen perilously little follow-through. At times like these, mere words ring hollow when every day further demonstrates the growing impotence of the regime.

Impotent, openly tyrrannical, and beset with armed opposition, this regime is so weak that it cannot hope to long stand without a serious righting of the state. And with the external pressures being what they are, the fall of this regime will likely be accompanied by a fall of the entire city.

What is fascinating to me is how anyone watching Simms' speech yesterday could mistake it for being a demonstration that Simms is somehow still in control. That anyone cannot understand that it was an act of desperation by a desperate man is at once both saddening and amusing. After spending decades in seclusion, he came into public not from choice, but from necessity. A promise of protection against such dire threats is a means by which he can salvage the legitimacy of his crumbling regime. Given the reasons he was compelled to make such an unusual gesture, one must strongly question the sincerity of his promise.

Frankly, I wonder if he looks back at what lead to this turn of events and regrets any decisions he made which lead to it. In gaining control of the state in such a brazenly undisciplined fashion, I wonder if he realizes he probably doomed it.

As for the rebels, they are little better. Simms and his cadre may have been the ones to cause this catastrophe, but it is the rebels who now largely fuel the fire in which all of Sanctuary will burn. They have even recently proclaimed quite openly that they are more willing to let everyone die than to live with this regime. Even if they really believe that (which is insane enough) it is unbelievably stupid to put into the public. The bulk of the people will pick survival every time and they will rightly fear those who think it would be better to commit mass suicide.

And then we come to the Sovereign Host. I was fooled at first into thinking they'd actually struck on the truth and were working at what needed to be done. What an idiot I can be at times. These naive fools have, in the time I have heard of them, done absolutely nothing but hide out and issue an endless string of excessively wordy pronouncements, edicts, charters, and other rubbish. Their place of hiding was also apparently chosen quite strategically. It was as far from Sanctuary and its problems as possible and was amongst a camp of 'perfectly friendly' duergar that these men actually trusted to protect them while they spent their time publishing papers rather than swinging swords.

It should probably be a sign of just how doomed this city is that these men are actually wiser than the alternatives!

Though, in fairness, I have left out another party. Chuckling Bill is, perhaps, the only man with any damn sense left in the city. Well, him and those who've decided to hole up with him (aside from any who might be working with the rebels to kill Watchmen). The open question that remains unanswered is where in the hells they intend to go when (and I suppose I should say if) the city falls. It's not like the drow or the ilithid will fail to find them there. They are going to need to find a new hiding place and they are going to need to find it soon. With the Chosen and the threat of an awakening Appetite being the threat they are, the options are not altogether appealing.

Which leaves me wondering where in the hells -I- am supposed to go in all of this mess. For now, the temple with Chuckling Bill's folks is the obvious place geographically, but that does not answer the larger question. I seem by sheer dumb blind luck to have gotten roped into exploring the machine and the bowels of Dunwarren twice now in two days, so perhaps I should look into doing more of that sort of thing - though I am certainly NOT eager to be risking my neck like this daily. Inevitably, you lose it. I'm really rather attached to my own, though I'm not adverse to losing it for the right reasons.

Huh. More to ponder. I may need to look into more of this. I need to offload some of this junk weighing down my pack anyhow and I think I'm starting to see where some of it needs to go.

Finally got rid of most of the gear that has been weighing me down. I'm richer, lighter, and have a few more contacts. Progress, if slow.

Right now, I'm more interested in figuring out where to land. It concerns me that Simms wants to herd the population into the near ruins in the event of an attack. Given what I believe, I do not judge this to be from altruistic motive and am frankly concerned at what it could really imply. Simms does not strike me as a man who would desire such a population move - or to ask for it with an unprecedented public address - for any reason other than that he has some specific reason he needs a large population in a very specific location for reasons having little to do with protecting it.

The drow raids seem to demonstrate that the city is indeed doomed. The Watch, as I've noted, is unprepared. Their morale is low. They look exhausted. Discipline is a joke. The ones on the street bully random civilians while the ones on the barricades look ready to break at the first sign of battle. Their commanders hide in their offices. Without a credible military leader capable of giving them discipline, training, and courage, they are almost wholly worthless.

The rebellion seems well-lead, if a touch insane. What popularity they would gain by the sheer undisciplined tyrrany of the regime is potentially lost in idiotic claims that they're perfectly fine with the city committing mass suicide.

The larger problem, however, is that the city has needed the Spellguard. The people can complain. They can wail. But the Spellguard has been necessary to the city's survival, even despite the many crimes I've heard attributed to them. With dependency comes political power and there is simply no way around that.

But that's why, as we begin to get the idea that not even the Spellguard can protect the city, that the entire reason for their power is being quickly lost. Without fear and a credible promise of protection to compel people to accept their rule, their regime is crumbling. If Simms cannot protect the people, the people have no reason to care what he wants.

I remain amazed that the rebellion has not exploited this weakness and that the regime has not addressed it except through making possibly empty promises.

But this all returns to what in the nine hells I'm supposed to -do-. I honestly do not know. The Watch is a dead end. The rebels aren't really helping right now unless they can consolidate their own power and find a way to protect the people. The Sovereign Host.... I don't even have the words.

This Reynolds' theories about Simms I am simply not buying. Simms' behavior is more easily explainable to me as a paranoid human mage than as an ilithid. I don't doubt that he's done all manner of extremely seedy things and it is entirely possible that he's been doing business with the city's enemies - whether out of personal interest or appeasement I may never know. But an ilithid? He doesn't need to be one to do such things. Human beings are perfectly capable of monstrosity all on our own.

So where do I go? I'm still looking for the answer to that one. Both the options and time are dwindling quickly.