Second Session
You spoke a lot about truth and honesty yesterday.
I’ve been told I speak of it most days, though I like to think I speak it always.
I was thinking, shortly after I left, the way you say those words…you seem to add a weight to them. A presence that sounds the same when I use it, but somehow feels completely different.
That’s because we use and think of them in different ways. Honesty, for example, is more than simply speaking the Truth.
What do you mean?
To be Honest is to bear your belief openly and to act in it’s well defined accord. It is the Song of your heart and what you hold to be true. An Honest man hides nothing, when he comes you know exactly what he is. Through Honesty he cannot be made to follow or speak an ideal he does not believe in. Though we try, we are not always Honest for it is a difficult thing to be at all times. It makes you strong and incorruptible, but it is a trying burden that can also leave you vulnerable.
To your enemies? I imagine it might make you quite predictable.
That is a hazard, yes. But what I meant was the danger of becoming too rigid in your beliefs. An Honest man follows his Koa in all things, but in the permeable lens of our Second Truth, the risk that we are mistaken exists. Always. I keep myself Honest, even as I know my Honesty might not be Truthful.
What is…how can you be honest and not be truthful?
To be Truthful is to do or say what was meant to be said or done. It is to blow in accord with the Wind and thus bring about the best eventual outcome. If you slight me, and my Koa dictates that no insult may go interred, then I may be forced to kill you in order to remain Honest. However, it may come to pass that your Death brings about the rebuke of your kin, setting in play a conflict far more damaging than the causal events should have allowed. In this case my reaction would not have been what the Wind intended. My act may have been Honest, but it was not Truthful.
But how could you ever possibly know?! Surely it would only be after acting that the ‘truth’ of what you’d done could be seen? Forgive me, but this all seems like madness! You admit that the koa you wrap your life around could be immensely flawed and yet you insist on strictly following it, with little more than hope that the outcome will not be disastrous. On the one hand you say that nothing is certain but death, and yet with the same breath you talk about the way things are meant to be; implying a system or plan of some kind that we all are meant to follow…How can you live this way, weaving objectivity and subjectivity together as if they were the same? I just…I…
It is natural to be confused, in all Honesty all of us are. We spend our lives guessing. But it is not the blind stab you seem to think it is, at least not when it is done well. Yes, we believe there is an order to things, a Path set by the Wind. But it is Path She leaves open for us to find and to falter from. Death is a marker, a sure beacon that guides us to the Path. It is, however, only a single Light and on it’s own is not enough. Our Koa is meant to be yet another beacon, yet another mark of surety. If it is false, it must change, but this is not an easy thing. In many ways your life is spent making certain that the Light you choose is the Light you Need.
But again, how can you know? Even with your Seer’s who can read and sing a verse or two of your Lightsong, that would only tell you your own path, not this grand path we’re all meant to follow? If death is the only real marker, how can you ever know you’re headed the right way?
By attaining the Beautiful Death.
The beautiful death?
Yes, an act which is Honest that also reveals itself to be Truthful. The greater the Truth and the higher the Honesty, the more Beautiful the ensuing Death becomes. In this way you know that you tread the Path. When Honest acts lead to Truth and Beauty, then your Koa Sings with the Wind. I myself have wrought the Beautiful Death 12 times, it is why I am a Seoman.
That means General, yes?
In a way, but in another it means ‘Wise Leader’. The stories which frighten the people of your Imperium, and it’s Sun worshipping allies, are a result of the Faith we place in our Seoman. It takes Greatness and Clarity to be what I am, to find the Beautiful Death so consistently. Faith is the abiding trust that you are being lead onto the Path. With Faith, a warrior will follow an order no matter how strange. If it would conflict with his Koa, and thereby leave him Dishonest, then he will alter his Koa to find a new Honesty; one which abides with what he has been told must be done. This a rare and precious Trust, not given lightly. It is what makes us Unbreakable.
----------------Journal entry 258: Remus Del Vicchi, 5th Ordinate Chronicler of the Imperium, Cast by the glorious hand of Imperatrix Nineve tet al’Fonse
Third Session
I was hoping we could pick up with what you were saying about ‘seoman’ and ‘faith’?
Tevye nods
Ok, well, I find this idea that soldiers would follow the orders of a leader so completely quite fascinating.
It is a Beautiful thing.
It is, but it also got me thinking…if a seoman, such as yourself, is someone who has time and again proven that they are, for all intents, walking ‘the path’…surely there would be a significant overlap in the actions and beliefs of all seoman? If you’re all headed the same way, then you all must, in some sense, be doing the same thing? And yet there is such huge differences in the various kraals, such that even I have been able to see them in my short time here in the Windswept Lands. How is this possible? Is there more than one path or do some kraals not have a Seoman at all?
I am glad you ask me these questions, it shows that you are not only Listening, but you are Learning. There is only one Path, but it is long and it is wide and we all come at it from different points and in different times. The Path is not Consistent, at least not in the way that you speak that word. It can be many different things at it’s different points, but they are all equal in their place as Steps on the Path. The Steps that Varlish Seoman claim to have found might be vastly different from the ones that bind the Gailish, but what truly puts us at odds are not the Steps themselves, but rather that we view them with no Faith.
So you think that they’re mistaken?
Yes, I do not Believe their Seoman have truly Glimpsed the Path. This lack of Faith is what separates the Kraals. Again, it is not explicitly the Steps themselves, this is often how your rulers attempt to categorise us, assuming it is as simple as differing ideology. If they looked closely they would see, for instance, that the Gailish and the Cainlin agree on many things, and yet we are often at odds. The reason for this is that no Gail has Faith in the Koa of a Cainlin Seoman.
So every kraal does have a seoman then?
A Kraal with no Seoman is no Kraal at all, it is simply a collection of those who are Lost.
What does that mean, to be ‘lost’?
Those who have not found enough Steps on the Path to not walk Blindly, and who do not feel Faith in the insight of another, are considered to be Lost. The Path is a difficult thing, you see. It runs in a circle, ending where it began. To know that you are moving forward, you must know where you are, where you have been and where you must go. This is another reason that Kraals find themselves at odds. With the Cainlin and the Gailish, we believe their Steps are where we have been, they believe it is where we must go.
----------------Journal entry 259: Remus Del Vicchi, 5th Ordinate Chronicler of the Imperium, Cast by the glorious hand of Imperatrix Nineve tet al’Fonse
