frill

hey it’d be nice if there was a way for the chat to change styles depending on the syntax used (like last time :-]) instead of having to change channels each time you want to change how you emote. 

A rather formal and printed flier would be published and posted around the City of Ves – unlike other remaining fliers, this was set in clear, readable type. The contents of its text ellucidates quite clearly just why it has such legible text.

The Guild of Writers.

“VERBA VOLANT, SCRIPTA MANENT”

Learned Wardens and Assistants of the Golden City of Ves.

As Drafted and Codifed on Establishment by the Master of the Guild, E. Haraqqa.

1717

***

[ 2 Grunwalder Gate, City of Ves. ]

There is an increasing number of secular persons engaged in the production of manuscripts. These are the scriptors, escriveners and text-writers of the Golden City of Ves and it was they who sought to establish themselves into an organisation. The Guild of Writers acts as an association of artisans of the learned trades - journalists, accountants, lawyers, typists et al.

Through professing in, and supporting the education of the written word, the Guild wishes to act as a public service to both citizens of Ves and foreigners utilising its expertise.

The founding of the Guild of Writers is to ensure the integrity in business, and the competence in practice, of those engaged in the written crafts, thus strengthening their social position and enhancing the confidence of members of the public using their services. The further bolstering of the reading and writing skill of the laymen is but a byproduct of this mutual goal for financial and social security.

The earnest goals of the Guild.

The Guild wishes to act in the following capacities to the people of Ves;

• A school for the learning of the unread folks,
• Apprenticeships and education in the legal artes, and improving lay-knowledge of the Imperial Code,
• A house for the drafting of legal documents,
• Confidential negotiation of contracts and loans,
• The typesetting and printing of manuscripts,
• Encouragement of the arts of poetry, prose and the musical.

Membership.

The Guild will grant free membership to all formally qualified accountants, lawyers, magistrates, notaries, chartered secretaries, actuaries or similar kindred occupations.

The Guild will accept applications for membership from any other learned man.

The Guild will consider applications for membership by patrimony.

Annual Subscription 20 Mina

Joining Fee 50 Mina

Deed of Members.

Eidr ibn Ahsanullah Haraqqa           –           Guildmaster, Founder

Zahret al-Qataffi

Guy Haas, High Pontiff Daniel VI of the Church of Canon

Naasiruddeen el-Amini

Abdul al-Samra

Fareed al-Abaasi

Othodoric Aurelius Helvets

Caspian Rutledge

Deed of Patrons of the Guild

Alfred of House Myre

Nedric of House Arkazniv

Jan Haas

Eidr takes to ink and quill, scribbling out a letter to the handless-prince Demetrio. On being finished, it would be sent by courier to the man’s last known address; although the magister Farfolk took little thought on it ever arriving, with the bandits camping outside his dear city and the constant mugging of the common-men. There would be no name or post-mark to signify it coming from the quill of the good Farfolk, the man instead hoping that the intent of the correspondence would spark some familiarity if the letter, tho’ unlikely, were ever read by its recipient.

Amico Demetrio;

I know whether your concern for the people of Ves lies in a public good or that of a supplicant who wishes to rule, post-war, as tyrant-king of our golden city.

Perhaps in another time we could have sat and discussed this as amicable partners serving the greater public good, with what benevolent words we scribe trickling through the halls of power before blessing the good common-men of Ves. Maybe in this other ‘verse, we would be discussing topics like the current Prince as lay-sophists, sat in fireside comfort as we mused on matters political. But this is not what hand we were dealt.

You are a learnèd man and know well that one good word would warm a commoner’s heart for three full winters. But I fear that the sum of your treatises are only a feeble attempted to claw some claim of power from the depths of your own obscurity.

I assure you that not all men are beyond redemption, and I am sure whatever fate GOD is delivering upon you will be a reflection of the intentions of your rulership. Thus I take you eventually reading my meagre words as a blessed sign. 

We will talk again, but I doubt in this life.

, 1717

“The good prince can finally get some rest.” is the lone comment of a lesser magistrate, who seems to have secluded himself to his tiny lodging.

There would be a growing pile of sodden paper in the gutter outside Eidr’s modest abode, the proposed bills and amendments hastility strucken through by a thick-nibbed quill.

“A Freeman’s Petition to Emperor Joseph I”

OR

What utility the emperor will acquire from the cultivation of post-bellum justice 

c. 1716.

ALTHOUGH the Emperor is a just and learned man, it is understandable that he is querying the utility in such observation of the statute of the rule of Imperial law on those who dared plot against his divine right to rule. The Good Emperor must thus observe that the reward for such great legalistic effort is found through the future, in so far as his empire will be preserved through the lineage of his sons for time immortal. 

But since the eternity of the lineage of the good emperor can be extinguished by the minutest act of successful treason, it is only in the interest of GOD - for the emperor does act as his representative on these earthen lands - that the emperor does use his Imperial Court to bring those who sought to plot against his divinely right rule to justice.

It will be readily evident that it has always been permitted of the common man to flatter the treasonous - as seen with the previous flattery of the people of Ves on the false proclaiment, and those supplicating to your great pretender; yet it has been permitted to deceive them and it has been honourable to kill them if they could not be otherwise restrained - this act by those of nobler blood being unseen. 

I do not deny that those plotting against the Emperor are acting in accordance to the judgement of God, who by His just judgment has will over both their soul and body. By GOD performing the great reveal of treasonous men, the evil are punished and the good are corrected and trained - although it is up to the judgement of his good emperor to enact this punishment.

I thus petition the good emperor to bring forth the just word of law onto those supplicating the treasonous, those supplying him with arms, and all those engaging the many other acts against him of which it is tedious to enumerate. Although some few persons, as I have expounded, are victims of forced-hand and situation, this is up to a grand court of the empire to decide.

I supplicate the Emperor to establish a trial for those he deems treasonous, following the quelling of the tides of war.

As it was written,

Eidr Haraqqa, freeman and common scholar of the Golden City of Ves.
 

A tertiary political manual-turned-thinkpiece from the good Farfolk Assemblyman is circulated through the city of Ves, bound in the same mundane and flourishless style as the previous two editions – no impudent decoration as signature, simply block text bound together. Some of the peasantry have taken to using the stacked collection of tomes to prop up tables and weigh down sheathed leather waiting to be tanned, but a minority of the learned folks are keeping them as coffee-table decor. 

Views of a Ves Freeman On ‘Imperial Treason’;

OR

A Tertiary Thesis on the Act of Treason within The Empire, as both an Affront of Religion and a Curse Beyond Caste.

Eidr ibn-Ahsanullah Haraqqa, esq.

c. 1716

A Crime of the Whole.

ON NOW MEETING the grace of his Imperial Majesty, I feel pressured to write on the subject of Treason - if but only due to the civil war apparent. For myself, I am of the firm belief that pledged subordinates should uphold the power of the ruler; and not only do I submit to the power of the True Emperor patiently, but with pleasure, as the emperor does exercise as a subject to GOD and follows his will. 

But on the other hand if the Imperial Majesty were to resist and oppose the commandments of our GOD, and wishes to make me share in its war against GOD; then with unfettered voice I must answer back that GOD must be preferred before any man of his realm.

Therefore inferiors should split and join to their superiors’ will, and all the limbs of the Body Politic should be in subjection to the head of the state; but always and only on condition that the state’s religion remains unviolated.
  
Whatsoever is therefore attempted with craven malice against the head of the Body Politic, or the democratic corpus of the members of his government, is a crime of the severest gravity and, per the Imperial Codices, to sacrilege; for as the latter affront is an attempt against GOD, so the former is an attack upon the Emperor, who is charged by divine right to be as the likeness of GOD upon his earth. 

Only in punishment of such immoral man, all social class in the grand market of life are treated as of equal class and treated in like case; in almost all accounts it comes to pass that such persons are not even released by the kindness of death, as written in the Codices; but if they are convicted by imperial court, then after death their memory is condemned and their chattel, lands and titles are forfeited by their heirs.

However, the accusation of high treason against the imperial crown is not to be dealt with by judges as an opportunity for displaying their subservience to the emperor’s majesty, but solely based of the truth. 

The moral fibre of the accused must be looked to, as to whether he could have committed the act, and whether he actually committed it, or whether he devised plan for  it, and whether, although often presumed so far into court hearing, he was of sane mind and capacity of criminality. Nor ought a mere slight remark, written or verbal, to be drawn readily for punishment; as although the good fools of the realm are often deserving of punishment, still even these men should be spared if their offense is not one which is derived verbatim from the letter of, or by way of analogy of, the articles of the Imperial Codices.
  
Within court, there are many acts which constitute the crime of treason, as for example if one conceives the death of the emperor or his agents of state - dukes, lords, princes, et al. or has risen to arms against his country through civil war, or, forsaking his emperor, has deserted in the public war, or has incited or solicited the people to rebel against the Empire; or the enemies of the people and True Empire are aided with armor, weapons, money, or any thing else whatsoever, or if, from being friends, they are turned into enemies of the Empire. And lo, these men now number many.

It is imperative of the good courts of this land – after the tides of War have quelled – to use the iron fist oft hidden behind their silken mitt to cleave the justice as deserved to those who sought commission of this crime through both civil war and direct attacks to the imperial head, as is their decreed prerogative. And may GOD save them all.

As it was written,

Eidr Haraqqa.

“On False Claims to the Ves Political;”

OR

Brief notes on the attempts to violate the  ‘Body Politic’ of the Golden City of Ves and the usurption of democracy.

Eidr ibn-Ahsanullah Haraqqa, esq.

c. 1716

On Supplanters to Democracy.

WITHIN the political scope of the Golden City of Ves, there is mainly this difference between the tyrant and that of a prince: that the latter is obedient to law, and rules through the election of the people by a will that places the prince himself as a man of their service. The good prince therefore administers rewards and burdens within the republic under the guidance of law in a way favourable to the vindication of the power of his post, so that he proceeds before other self-titled leaders to the extent that, while individual leaders may merely look after individual affairs, princes are concerned with the burdens of the entire city.

Therefore, the power conferred onto the prince through the divine process of the true democratically elected City Assembly of Ves is in order to give said Prince sufficient means to bring about optimal condition of the City Republic, as would be the wishes of the people. Through the mandate of the people of the city, the prince is raised to the apex of the, forgiving the fallacy of Nature, pack. The Prince, in this illustrious and decided capacity, is therefore in possession many and great privileges which are as numerous and extensive as are thought to be necessary for him.

Certainly this is a system of true representation and right rule because nothing is proven useful to the people except that which fulfills the needs of the prince, since the will of the Prince, as a ruler of the Direct Democratic, should never be found opposed to justice. 

Therefore, the prince acts as both a manifest of the needs of the common man and a power of the public.To resist this power, as was ordained by both GOD through the will of the masses, is a plague upon the ruler. A claimant-tyrant, or supplanter to the will of the people, is he who instead wishes to proscribe democracy and to oppress through domination.

This exercise of tyranny is not over just the learned men, but of all citizens through the flowing influence of the ‘body politic’, as was previously written, of the People of Ves. This is as, one does not simply dominate states to half degrees; a supplanter, or heir pro-claimant seeking to wrest power from the democratically decided of the people of Ves seeks domination to the greatest extent that his self-power can afford him. Although the life of a truly political creature is always under the scrutiny of the public lense, a self-proclaimed monarch of Ves, without the process of Ves democracy, would be free from examination and accountability.

With the ambition of the singular growing stronger, the injustices that will be provided advance of the then-oppressed equity of the Ves masses, the origins of tyranny being seeded. This oppression of the democratic, as supplanted by a royal proclaimant -  and thus those who wish to support his cause through bearing arms, as power by force requires on the power of others - plants fertile soil for tyranny to thrive.

As was written,

Eidr Haraqqa.

“...waste of ink.” Eidr takes a penknife to a quill, readying himself to begin re-drafting his long treatise and praise of the Ves democratic system, albeit with significantly larger letters and far fewer long words.