Moondance's eyes are distant. "Ma'ar, certainly, would not have listened." 

He's not sure the gods of Velgarth give good advice. Vanyel thinks but doesn't say it. 

6 months before the Cataclysm

I have spoken to King Leodhan, and his decision is made. We will not wait for Ma’ar’s armies to move in on us. The day he is crowned King, as we suspect that he will be, we attack. 

...The advantage is always to the first mover, and we cannot afford to wait. The risk is too high. Ma’ar’s empire is growing too quickly, and I shudder to think what he will do with more power. 

It is my advice that led Leodhan to this conclusion. I have spoken to him of my once-student’s ambition, of the callousness I saw in him, the cold disregard for all that is sacred – and also of his warmth, and how once he risked punishment, fighting to defend another child. I tell Leodhan that perhaps Ma’ar cares too much, and it blinds him. ...I feared for his path twenty-five years ago, and I was unable to guide him to the light, and so now there is no choice but to stop him. 

And yet, I wonder if it something I will come to regret. I am not sure. 

In his heart, does Ma’ar still call me friend? If I betray him, it will surely be too late for that.

There are more journal entries during the war, though only a few. King Leodhan is incapacitated early on and Urtho is in charge, and evidently very busy. Ma'ar sends repeated messages to Urtho, trying to broker peace talks. These are ignored, with some fretting about it on Urtho's part. Various atrocities are described, though to Vanyel at least they seem less bad than what he, himself, did during the Karsite wars. 

The last couple of entries aren't even dated. 

I wish there were magics that might let one take back the past, and do it over. There is no such spell; this is my bed, I have made it and I must lie in it. 

I think now it was a mistake to let Leodhan push for war. Perhaps it would have ended so all the same, and with Tantara in a weaker position as the unprepared defender – and yet, I sometimes think that if it had, it might have been over more quickly, mercifully, and with less bloodshed on either side. 

What is wrong with me? War has left me so weary, I catch myself wishing that my worst enemy might have won sooner. 

I never wished to call Ma’ar my enemy. 

Perhaps I made a wrong turn sooner, and in some other world I might have salvaged my young student, and guided him to a kinder and less destructive path. Perhaps in some other world, we work together now, as allies and friends. 

...Even now, he sends letters, and tries to broker an alliance that I can no longer offer him. He has strayed too far. The atrocities of this war are unforgivable. 

No matter what comes, he must not take the Tower, and the powers that lie within my sanctum. ...And so it will end as it ends, as we tear apart each other’s armies in fiery destruction, and perhaps history will remember a foolish old man who misjudged his greatest enemy. 

I wish it were otherwise.

"Do you know anything of the laws of war, among your people, in this time..."

"Starwind?" 

"We do not have records of that. The Shin'a'in do have records of many things, so perhaps it was not codified and written down." 

"There may not have been any real agreement between countries. I'm not sure there is now. Valdemar has our internal Laws, but in the war with Karse they were using blood-magic and summoning Abyssal demons all up and down the border. And I - technically broke our Laws a couple of times. I crossed pretty far into Karsite territory to assassinate one of their mages without even having formal permission from our command, once. I used blood-magic in Sunhame. This...isn't really worse than what I did, not in terms of harm done to actual people, maybe worse in terms of precedents set I guess." 

"The thing I am trying to figure out is...Urtho considered some line to have been crossed that made negotiating terms unthinkable. And...I can't actually think of a line an enemy could cross that would drive me to that conclusion. ...mass executions of captured populations with that spell that sends people to Hell regardless of their alignment, maybe. And I am unsure whether - Urtho, who never sought political power in his own right, was very naive about the necessity of peace agreements with people who did awful things while at war with you, or whether something happened that didn't make it into his journals."

“I don’t know.” Vanyel makes a face. “Ma’ar wasn’t even the one who started the war. It...doesn’t sound like Urtho gave him much indication they were headed that way, there was no warning... Maybe he felt like it was par for the course, who knows, but if I were in his shoes, that - would’ve hurt a lot.”

"If you don't want people to commit atrocities in a war with you you shouldn't invade them."

"Or you should be very sure to win on the first day," he says very mildly. "I'm just not entirely satisfied that we're not missing something. Because based on what we know - Urtho started a war, immediately lost it, and then blew up the world rather than surrender - expecting to blow up the world at least somewhat less than he did, admittedly..."

“It does seem foolish. But - perhaps not implausibly so, for a scholar who had interacted little with politics and war before he wound up unexpectedly in command.”

“He seemed to almost consider wanting power to be what Ma’ar had done that was - beyond the pale, made him impossible to trust... I’m frustrated by how much he seemed to think the fear-artifact thing was an unforgivable atrocity, when it let Ma’ar win a battle without killing almost anyone.”

He nods slowly. 

"None of this worries me about Leareth's plans for the war with Cheliax, even if we are to take it as directly applicable."

:I mean: Yfandes, listening through Vanyel's ears, jumps in, :if someone's problem is fighting wars ruthlessly when they probably shouldn't, once you already know a war SHOULD be fought ruthlessly because it's literally against Hell...: 

"Yeah. And when Hell is defeated...Aroden is frankly probably going to be inclined more expansionist than I'd prefer Cheliax's government to be - not just reasoning from this, Cheliax under his patronage was very expansionist before - I suspect this is why Abadar is arranging to be owed a bunch of favors -

- but it's still really unambiguously good if they win."

Nod. 

"...Are we going to tell him? I don't think he has any records of this that survived, if I were him it'd - mean a lot, to know more about what actually happened. I'm not sure he even remembers that he isn't the one who started the war, or he would've said." 

Nod. "Do you want to bring these to him?"

"Sure." 

Starwind and Moondance stay behind a moment after Vanyel goes. They glance at each other.

"Is there any progress on figuring out plans for the Worldwound?" Starwind asks. 

"Yes. We're expecting magic to be used to takes out most of the existing entities in the area, and we want to move the wardstones in, at which point there'll be a lot of distorted land on our side of it..." and he can pull out a map and discuss this in more depth.

This seems almost like the ideal case for their help! Starwind is making a list of people they should request from k'Treva to assist Moondance's work, Savil can Velgarth-Gate them over before the Valdemaran contingent comes across via the pharaoh's kind of Gate. 

The interworld Gate may instead be cast by Vanyel, who Leareth can probably teach it, but they can work out those minor details later.

And Vanyel goes to find Leareth. 

Leareth is talking to some of Khemet's researchers and looking at magic items. He also looks very tired for some reason; there are dark circles under his eyes. Other than that his manner is normal.