## Three weeks ago:                
 
Archon Soter watched with rapt attention both to the news program and the weekly intelligence briefing going on in front of him about the specifics of the riots that had occurred. The juxtaposition of sensationalist reporting and the reading of testimonies with the dispassionate machinating of his security staff, Soter found striking. He learned that the suicide bombing was a terrorist operation conducted by Usonian terrorists, and that this may be a sort of macabre “advertisement”, meant to show foreign governments and bodies that the Usonian resistance was viable.

                    He couldn’t help but sigh at the coverage coming out of Alleghany of a brutal crackdown by Eraetian soldiers. Events such as these gave the Syndicalist swine rhetorical arguments and made trouble at home. At the same time the Malassakian government needed to show the difference between the Eraetian system of government and the one exercised in Paurava, the largest colony of the Republic.

                    In some ways, the difference was obvious. Control of Paurava was not recent, like the Eraetian control of Colongo, but medieval. People were accustomed to Malassakian rule and compared to the disparate princely states that formed up the Pauravan area 600 years ago, whose reign were marked by feudalism and perpetual war, the relative liberty brought by the Malassans was significantly greater. Compared with Eraetian rule, they had much greater liberty. They were given representation in the Epikrateis  (however, that most wealthy Pauravans were either Malassan or pro-malassan was no concern of the federal government). They had a great measure of local autonomy, (which justified no representation in the Foroglia). They had freedom of speech and press, although “Hate speech” against Malassans was tightly controlled. Time and experience had allowed the Malassans to perfect the art of ruling a people initially against their wishes while convincing them they wanted to stay, where Eraetia was acting like the young in their form of colonial government; brash, impulsive, violent.

                    But they were ruled inequally from afar, and no matter how he and the Malassans tried to spin or assuage concerns, there was always a chance that they would rise against them and demand their own state. For the moment, the possibility seemed remote, but if Colongo became independent or waged a major rebellion, that possibility could increase. Soter thus had to face a dilemma of looking like he was for freedom while at the same time supporting a repressive regime.
                    Malassa and Eraetia weren’t ideological allies, that was certain. The market liberal parties of Malassa differed greatly from the militaristic heads in Eraetia, but they had very common interests. Malassa needed Eraetian battalions in a war, just as much as Soter believed Eraetia, an archipelago, needed the preeminent sea power’s ships. They benefitted much more from cooperation than competition, and as allies they were a force to be reckoned with.
 
He prepared the following statement and had it released through the press secretary. “On behalf of the people of Malassa, I express the deepest sympathies for the people of Eraetia and total solidarity with them. Malassa stands with its ally in its time of need and reaffirms its commitments to defense and will actively assist in investigation and retribution should attribution be made to an external organization, pursuant to article 7 of the Malasso-Eraetian treaty.”
 
The private letter he wrote to Minister Wilde four weeks later (OOC: The present day) after all the intelligence had come in had a far different tone.
 
“Minister Wilde,
I have received most troubling reports about a violent crackdown  conducted by your soldiers, and an excessive use of force. Worse still, I’ve received news that your government cooperated in a media blackout of any coverage of this. Is this so? If it is, minister, you must get your house in order. I can politically withstand the cries by the peaceniks, but I cannot look like I am involved in supporting a government willfully massacring its people. Was the decision to crackdown in this manner from your level of the administration, and if not, have you held the perpetrators to account?
 
Archon Antiochus Soter,”