47.2 Worthy Gardeners
General Summary
Hope: Day 1
The rest of the evening passes with conversation and company amongst the city's rulers. When Dak told me it was a 'banquet', I feared that the wealthy would be hoarding food for themselves...instead it is a meagre meal enriched with conversation and support. There are two spirits - Dakirim and Epsila, and I see them both abstaining from food; I suppose they don't technically need to eat. Everyone present clearly cares for their city and the people within it, but are stretched thin at the limits of what they can do to affect change.
Epsila is an impressive light spirit and wizard who is gentle, like warm candlelight. Unlike many of the light spirits here in the desert, she is not as blinding as the sun. Liva is a luminous, snakelike spirit folk who is remarkably beautiful.
The council explains that have been under a prolonged crisis for a long time, to the point that it no longer feels like there will be an end in sight. I can tell that the burst of hopefulness and perseverance of the initial moment of crisis has passed but they have not yet reached the wartime steadfastness of the Empire in our many-year battle with the Collective.
People seem to be in two states:
- Jagged hopelessness of having tried to weather the storm and failed.
- Naive hope that everything will be fine once the food arrives and the army moves out.
It is all incredibly fragile - counting on the arrival of help or the eventual demise of their enemy, relying on the certainty that the worst has not (and will not) reach them where they are. Epsila is unique in her view that it would be better for everyone if Norcrack’s forces did reach the city so that the people could truly band together and put up a stand where they hold power.
From my military perspective, the city is not easily defensible. We may have access to water, but the urban layout does not lend itself well to fighting in the streets and giving a defensive army the home advantage - it doesn’t lend an advantage to either direction necessarily. The city walls are better suited to keeping the place safe from sandstorms and weather, not titans hurling boulders. And there are encampments and shelters even beyond the walls where the ‘sand people’ live, and not everyone agrees on whether these people should be forcibly brought into the city just like the other refugees. For now, at least, the gates are open to them but no one is being forced to come in. And this is the best-fortified city positioned around the lake, according to Dakirim.
When I point out that the city is not defensible, Epsila points out that the strength of the city is in the diversity of its spirits. Here, spirits could band together and draw upon many elements while Norcrack only has sand and rock. She believes that not everyone could be mobilized into an army, because many would not choose to fight unless their fortress is attacked. People here are not used to fighting for their survival, and so it is rare to have soldiers or people who are able to step forwards and fight offensively.
People don’t understand that there is no difference between an army 100 km away and an army at your gates - it’s the same threat. But marching to war and protecting their home don’t feel the same, and people haven’t felt the danger enough to merge those ideas. Epsila herself hasn’t felt it, I think.
Dakirim admits that they could conscript, but that never ends well. It would likely be the last thing their council could do before resigning, even if they win.
All of this makes me feel that the city’s leadership is just not familiar with how much people can be counted on the stand up and be brave when what they love is in peril. I recall the lessons in cultural shaping and persuasion that I sat in on in the City of Song, and I explain that it is never enough to use cold logic to persuade people to summon their courage and march into danger. Epsila shrugs at this - what else is there? People here do not have a tradition of self-sacrifice for the common good.
This is a tradition I’m intimately familiar with, and it can be created again and again with the right method.
- Remind people of what they have to lose - their family, their home, the future they are counting on for their children. People lose track of what they have when it is not being threatened.
- Remind people that all peace ends, just like all war ends. People forget that during long stretches of one or the other, but it is the transition between them that sparks the greatest hope and cultural change. Epics, songs, and stories are written about these moments. They are the cornerstones of a culture’s identity.
- Make sure everyone knows that everyone around them feels that same tie to home and hearth. When you look around with fear and anxiety, you are not in competition with your neighbours. You all feel that pull together, and you bind yourself together into one people because of the things you cannot bear to lose.
- When you call people to move out of their home and march to war, you help them keep their home with them at their backs. The feeling of attacking and defending is not so different if you keep the warmth of family and community with you as you move - always sharing songs and stories of what you love.
- In that moment, as people are aware that everyone is marching for the same reason, it becomes one family back home, and one army marching together for the same reasons. That is the thing that unites people.
You’re speaking about shaping culture - instilling a tradition. Is it right for us to do so?
Liva’s question surprises me, as an artist. Art is the shaping of culture, and she seems to be a premiere artist in this space.
You’re people who live here - who else would shape culture?
She draws an analogy between wilderness and gardens garden: Which is more beautiful? Culture can emerge organically as many voices pool together and shape one another with some things flourishing and some things dying. This can happen without shaping and guidance, and wildflowers are still beautiful. What I’m talking about, she says, is gardening - giving some flowers prominence and maybe removing others. It is producing a structured kind of beauty. She thinks it is dangerous to engage with.
Why are you all here then? If not to garden?
Epsila’s perspective is that they were always meant to be ‘ineffectual’ gardeners. They are meant to represent different, conflicting interests and keep one another in check.
I have to hold back my sigh at this - it is a peacetime perspective. That their council contains a ‘war minister’ whose hands are tied in a time of war is a sign that they have not had to do this before, and no one knows how to act. So I drill down - asking each of them as individuals for their goal in confronting Norcrack.
It is exceedingly difficult to get a straight answer out of any but Dakirim. Epsila’s terse answer of ‘survival’ has to be honed to ‘survival for as many as possible’. Liva’s fears that their people will become something different (and worse) need to be tempered into an awareness that she doesn’t want conflict to destroy their identities. Each time one speaks, the others leap in as well to voice their disagreement or point out the flaws in someone’s perspective. For a moment, I’m a teacher again - hushing the class so that one student at a time can speak without shyness.
- Epsila: Survival for as many as possible.
- Dakirim: Destroy the enemy, protect our people.
- Liva: To come through this conflict unchanged.
- Shal-neyah: Be unified through the experience of conflict.
Dakirim points out that their goals are the same but their methods are what differ - everyone wants to protect the hundreds of thousands of people who are counting on them. Liva shakes her head a little, Shal-neyah seems ambivalent. I point out, again, that this is speaking for the others and contradictory with what they have said. ‘Protect’ is his own goal. So they ask me for my perspective:
I think surviving means spending lives, and that is a reality you have to face before you encounter it. If you don’t, you will be unprepared for the hard choices that war demands. I think it is impossible for people not to change - change is what people do, and conflict is meant to change people. There is plenty of room for individuality amidst the unity created when diverse people come together. Not everyone wants to be a hero, and not everyone wants to contribute in the same way. The best things come about in the roiling mess of all these goals.
I try to be as diplomatic as possible, because I do not want to be the gardener for this city. I want to teach these four people how to tend to their grove. Realistically, I think that Dakirim is right, and the others would be wise to follow his lead.
It sounds like you believe we can have it all.
Shal-neyah’s observation is like a chime in my head. Yes - this is hope. I believe we can have it all, and that is the belief that drives people forwards even when the odds are impossible.
It’s an inspiring speech, I think, and one that Liva receives in a very strange way.
I acknowledge that we have to garden a bit otherwise some sprouts and seedlings will never get a chance to flourish. It seems that we are in the habit of snuffing out torches so that candles can be admired, but what if we were to let the torches burn bright? Dakirim is a valued general. Epsila is a capable wizard and teacher. Shal-neyah is a profitable businessman. All of their value is clear. It hasn’t been easy becoming a celebrated artist and finding my way to the council - it took more than just art.
It is the most cryptic, strange thing to say, and Dakirim cuts off the conversation before I can ask what on earth she is talking about. He recommends that we all spend some time alone, introspecting after hearing wisdom from ‘the blessed one’.
As he escorts me back to my room, I ask him quite bluntly what Liva was taking about. He tells me that Liva killed several people to get where she is, while Shal-neyah lost his son in some of his more bloody dealings. Epsila seems to be an ivory tower academic, for the most part, and it is why she is so naive to the ways that war will brutalize their city.
My opinion of Dakirim rises yet again, and I am still more determined to figure out what Liva possibly wants out of this situation. I don’t understand her goal, and I’m sure there is something I must be missing.
