[h1][color=yellow]Otios'yyia'thala[/color][/h1]
[sub]Location: Town of Belfleur[/sub]
[sub]Interaction(s): Yasoi battalions [@Tackytaff], Eskandr army and Belfleur defenders [@Force and Fury][/sub]
[hr]

Otios did not know when his butt had hurt this much the last time, but he also didn't want to know how much his horse's back must have hurt at this point. The ride had been harsh to say the least and many, if not most of the combatants  he and Talit had brought with them probably felt the same issues of tiredness and discomfort. Encountering another Eskandr battallion roaming the Parrench countryside had been way down on the list of things he had liked to encounter at this point, but things were as they were and they would all have to deal with them.

The problem was that, even if one was't the most advanced general or even just connaisseur of body language, their own little army seemed to lack an amount of momentum that went beyond the simple explanation of a forced march. As for the why, the past few days and how the whole thing had come to be made it rather easy to determined. For the lack of a hill, Otios stood up in the saddle and put his feet on top of it, maintaining a delicate balance. It really wasn't difficult to see the extremely tall man now as he inhaled air to start his speech.

[color=yellow]"Yasoi!"[/color] he shouted.

[color=yellow]"Can you smell the embers ? Can you hear the faint cries of women, children and husbands once you listen calmly ? Can you imagine what kind of carnage these walls are hiding from your view ? Imagine Loriindton, just with more spilled guts, blood and tears. Is [i]this[/i] how any nation with the honest desire to finally settle some sort of conflict and gain long-lasting peace, whatever it might be, would do ? Is this even anything a nation on a pure, methodic path of annihilation would do ?"[/color]

[color=yellow]"No, it is not! What we have witnessed in Loriindton and what we are witnessing here and now is maybe the worst of all: unsustainable explotation. If you keep cutting more trees than the forest can grow, then what will you have to do in the end ? Right! You have to find a new forest! Today this forest is called The Parrench, and the Eskandr have already burned, killed and extracted an insurmountable lot of it. Tomorrow, the forest will be us. They have proven their lack of hesitance to make that happen beyond any reasonable doubt."[/color]

[color=yellow]"I know there are those of you who say 'Why should we help the Parrench if they have never helped, but only attacked us in the past ?' I have been asking that myself, too, and the first answer I came up with was that the Parrench maybe never were so cruel to us as the Eskandr are to them and will be to us, so we should pick the lesser evil. Yet then I realized that this answer becomes irrelevant once you ask another question: Does [i]not[/i] helping them actually improve the potential outcome for us ? Think about it: If we do nothing, one of the two Huusoi nations will come out of this war or maybe even both, and it or they will be in a ruinous state while our nation will still be  very much intact. Now when has Huusoi greed, envy or sheer desparation ever failed to drive them into yet another conflict at the earliest possible moment they saw fit ? We would be the last tree standing, surrounded by lumberjacks who have nowhere else to go anymore!"[/color]

[color=yellow]"Yet if we help the Parrench and kick the Eskandr out of this whole affair swiftly, we would still be dealing with the more familiar of two enemies in the worst, and with a friend who will remember our deeds for at least a few decades to come in the best case. Also: Right now the Eskandr here don't expect us and we might even have numerical superiority. If we bypass this place and march onto Chamonix without further ado, the Eskandr will first profit from their surprise and numerical superiority against the Parrench here and then potentially fall in our backs once we're there. Which way will cause the greater loss of life for us ? I've been a petty thief for some major part of my life..."[/color]

Okay, maybe that was [i]a lot[/i] of an understatement, if not even an outright lie, but as long as it'd work...

[color=yellow]"I know what it means to have limited resources, and I know that, at the bottom line, very much in life is just about that: resources. I think so about wars, too. We can't manage to decapite the enemy's administration, but we can deprive him of resources while conserving ours here. Also I just think that [i]Ivar The Dead[/i] is a nice alias whereas I can't think of anything similar for baron Can't-Spell-His-Name."[/color]

[color=yellow]"So, do you follow me ?"[/color]

Otios didn't wait for a reply. He jumped off his horse and started running towards Belfleur, only turning his head and looking back whether anyone would follow once he had merged into the shadows.