Many of the people of Westcrown gathered at the trial of Valia Wain yesterday, hoping to see the person responsible for the horrors unleashed upon our city.

But we were disappointed! Because Valia Wain, it happens, is an illiterate peasant child, ignorant in the predictable fashion of illiterate peasants, easily persuaded by whoever spoke most recently, profoundly confused about the law and about everything else; by a near miss not hanged for it, but certainly no matter what not responsible for it. 

So who is at fault? 

That is simple. The Galtan Archmage. The Galtan Archmage freed our country, but not to see it free; to see it burn, as Galt burned. He will not be satisfied until the streets run red with blood; Galtans call this liberty. He is the one who summoned illiterate peasants from the farthest reaches of our country, and demanded they be permitted to speak before assembled bodies of hundreds, and demanded their words be copied and chanted throughout the city. He did this because he hates the people of Cheliax, and he wishes to see us all destroy one another, that being as he understands it the practice of the virtue of Republicanism.

Every man to whom I have observed this has agreed that it is true. However they all counselled me against saying it. He will kill you, they observed, and this is probably Not Technically True, that not being the Republican thing to do; instead he will incite mad political purges in which I will be killed, as is the fashion of the day. And those one can escape by departing this Abyssal city, and this I have done, and write from exile along with all the good men of Cheliax who desired the peace and stability the Archmage will not permit us to have. 

But many of these men have made a second argument against speaking this obvious truth, which is that it cannot be altered. The mad Archmage will do his evil terrible work; no one can stop him; why, then, acknowledge his purposes? Why not just keep our mouths shut and wait for his terrible works to tire him, and then see if there remains anything of Cheliax to be repaired when he has departed from it?

And to this I say, have we not had enough of that? Have we not spent long enough pretending that Evil was Good, raising our voices in cheers for what we knew were atrocities, refusing to contemplate that which would be inconvenient to conclude? We are free of Asmodeus; it would be handing the country right back to him, to tolerate the new tyrant without even a whisper from the safety of exile that he is a tyrant indeed.

So I say it: He is a tyrant. He is the enemy of the people of Cheliax; he hates us and wants us to suffer. He cannot be stopped, and his rule cannot be contested, at least not until the King comes home from his latest foreign war; but know the truth in your hearts, and do not allow him to pretend that the blame for his deeds falls on the random peasants he dragged to Westcrown with which to do them.