The Bard's Approach

Silver Snow
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Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2016 5:28 am

The Bard's Approach

Postby Silver Snow » Thu Mar 09, 2017 5:40 pm

For a long time now, since the depths of the unnatural winter, the Kingfisher Tavern and Brewery had gone without the musical and entertainment talents of the bardess Abigail Beaumont. It could hardly be argued that for a time the city of Sarshel became an unwelcome place for a bard's craft, though perhaps not necessarily an adventurer's. Beaumont's absence had become a thing expected in the circles of friends she had made, in the various halls of performance she brought her music to, and in the taverns she so often caroused in.

A letter from Abigail was in itself not a surprising thing. That it was addressed to the half-elven lord Silaunbrar of Torm and whoever else was in his judiciary body was less usual. While clearly intended for private exchange, its contents somehow became proliferated among the city's most well-visited establishments, attributed to either accident or a feat of bardic intent. There is a bard's passion to the letter that, made so public, is bared and offered up for anyone to see. Perhaps, that passion might just touch the public as well.
"To Esteemed Lord Silaunbrar and whomever else this may concern,
May I start with admitting that the contents of this plea are with an inherent bias of two parts. The first is that I know the man you have condemned well, if not as well as some that may have heard your sentence with their own ears, and so I cannot be held to impartiality. The second bias is a bard's, and is one of stories, destinies, and the measures of men.

Of the man Valroc himself, I am sure you have already heard plenty. I am sure that his name is frequent among those adventurers that put themselves between the threats the Warswords do not handle and the people of your country, be they goblin-kin in the mountains or vile unliving below them. I am sure that you were informed that his name is one among an august few that braved Impiltur's long winter and ended it. I am sure, Lord Silaunbrar, that his name and deeds are intertwined, when he and others stood against the Demon in the courtyard of Elethlim himself.

And yet, these are things of legacy that can make little out of a man, aside from his blade and armor. The man, Merney Valroc, is as much sword and armor as he is flesh and bone, that fact his life has made certain of. More than prowess, he holds a sense of duty and cause that has only here, in your Impiltur, been put to honest use. He has held more upon his shoulders in the defense of Impiltur than would make most men buckle in the knees and break in the mind, and with none of the selfish reason that drives so many men. What I try to make clear, esteemed War Captain, is that Merney Valroc can be the champion of a cause, if he is given the right one that his talent can support.

Whatever else my bardic license is worth, it helps me see that the severance of Merney Valroc's hand is not the removal of a rose's thorns to render it both esteemed and harmless, but instead a cutting of the flower itself. Whatever nourishment you may think your justice may have on him, it will not be any kinder or more certain a thing than his slow death as a man. You may think to separate him from any capacity to violence, but it will instead separate him from all that he has accomplished and all that he still can.

May you know that this man has done much and could do so much more for this land, and that your initial decision can take away from him and Impiltur alike. May you find the wisdom to temper punishment with foresight, which no doubt so very few could do. With a greater insight into the man that I and others could offer, perhaps you might. May you present him with a cause, a purpose, and leave him the means to serve it for the good of the man and every Impilturan life he may yet save.

Respectfully,
Abigail Beaumont
"
The bardess herself makes hardly an appearance in the city.

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