(2025-02-15) Sil's Adventure Journal, Entry 24

Details

Author:	Alli
Summary:	Sil's adventure journal, describing his time working on politics in Ramkahen. ~800 words.
Rating:	T for Teen

Arc: Season 15: The Sands of Uldum

Skywall was pretty cool, but since then we’ve been mostly doing political adventures in Uldum. We’ve been trying to convince the Ramkahen council to go to war with the Neferset and Deathwing, which is kind of a weird little moral dilemma on its own. Like, I genuinely believe that convincing them to join us for war is in their best interests. Even with the threat of sandstorm annihilation, Deathwing’s whole eventual thing is annihilation, right? For his allies and his enemies both. But then also, it’s not our place to decide policy for a whole other people. I think I’m of the same mind as Colson and Cressidha on this one, though Sir Atley and Azizia seem more frustrated by the situation. I think we all have the greater good in mind, just different ideas on how to get there.

For the first council guy, the High Priest, we helped him clear up his visions. I still don’t really get where his visions were coming from. Water spirits? I guess the mysticism of another culture is not necessarily for me to get or not get, though, I’ve just got to accept it. Colson was pretty clear on this one, that we’ve got to respect their traditions, and I agree with him. Then there was the Vizier, who was pretty much just anti-war because they’d kidnapped his son and were threatening to kill him. Turns out they were just planning on killing the guy anyway, whatever the Ramkahen did, so that just shows you what kind of people the Neferset are. Oh, I should add that we did rescue him, just in time. He’s okay. He is zero percent eaten by crocolisks, though I can’t say the same for his captor.

While we were doing all this work, I also got to spend some time looking around the Ramkahen village. Ben and Bran and them are working on archaeology and titan stuff out here. Ben is talking like a real scholar now, like he’s learned about all this stuff. Maybe he’ll write another book, one about Uldum? Bran I think blew the Ramkahen’s minds by showing them a ram. I wonder if they thought of rams the same way we think of tikbalangs. Seems like it's probably their namesake, so it’s a shame there aren’t any down here.

Velrin seemed to really like the sun and the sand – I think she might make a winter home down here. You know, it actually is pretty nice in a way? If I wasn’t sweating so much in the sun from the armor and the fighting, I could see it as a place to rest peacefully by a river with a little umbrella drink. I also saw Lady Alaisa, the translator, who was keen to learn new languages, and I introduced her to the Vizier’s son. I think she’s really smart – I’ve never been that good with languages myself.

After all that we helped out the Commander, who had us recruiting farmers and helping train a guy who wasn’t great at being a soldier. I know what that’s like, when people get an idea of who you ought to be and then blame you for not measuring up, so I felt for him. Sir Atley says that’s just how the military works, that you’ve got to break the person down and then build them back up to what you want. I can’t say he’s wrong, but I just don’t like it. I guess that’s one reason I never tried the military. I’ve had enough of being broken down myself, and I don’t like seeing it happen to other people. I can get that maybe the military has to do it like that. But Cobalt isn’t military, and I don’t want us to conduct ourselves like we are.

Anyway, as for this tol’vir guy, they wanted him to be a footsoldier but he was more like a tactician and a beast master. Turns out he had a lot to offer the Ramkahen – It just wasn’t what they’d been asking for. I hope we got the guy to a better situation, where they can respect him for who he actually is instead of looking down on him for who he’s not.

Then, of course, came the final vote, where the High Priest in the end said his visions told him the council shouldn’t decide, only the King. I really am not quite sure about this whole ‘the visions told me you shouldn’t listen to your advisors and instead just do whatever you want’ thing, but I guess like we said before, it’s not my society. The Ramkahen have to do what’s right for the Ramkahen. Then we heard that Prince Nadun, the very first guy we ever rescued here, got hurt bad in a skirmish. King Phaoris decided on war then, right away. So I guess it ended up exactly like we wanted, if not the way we expected. I hope we win.