Journal #1: For the Sake of Friendship

I am unsure of what to make of Rory. The vulpera, even at the best of times, seemed to have no respect for me from the moment he laid eyes on me. He feels that I should have understood that all of his insults, all of his jibes, were all part of some good-natured ribbing that all those who enliven the Wyvern’s Tail seem to share in. At the time, though, they did not seem good-natured, they seemed barbed and pointed, like sharp sticks that he liked to jab me with. Perhaps it was because I stood my ground, defended myself, that made him so irksome toward me, moreso than he does the others.
 
But then he comes to me after telling me I’m nothing more than a Big, Dumb Brute, after defending the Syndicate tooth and nail to tell me that his concern, his REAL concern is for me and my Light. He tells me that I’m pretty and lovable – I cannot tell if this is genuine or his way of continuing to make fun of me. He tells me that he doesn’t think I’m a warmonger. That he understands that I have been hurt and am still hurting.
 
Do I believe that he is as sincere as he claims? That he wishes to “start over” and come to some kind of… friendship? I don’t know. I don’t know what he wants or what he expects out of me. I don’t know what I want or expect out of him. I know that there is no real moving forward, though, until we find some kind of common ground. Some mutual tolerance for each other – if not respect.
 
Part of me wonders if this isn’t a last-ditch effort to save himself, because he believes that I will no longer help him. He said himself that he was watching his best bid at freedom go down the drain. No doubt Orillidril and Salen’nyl would help him – but not in the way that Rory prefers. They will lay ruin and waste to the entire Syndicate, down to the last man, woman, and child. Rory will most certainly be saved, but his soul will be stained as a result.
 
The paladin in me knows that there are other paths we could take, other more peaceful choices – but as with any combat situation, one must know their enemy, and adjust one’s tactics accordingly. The Syndicate and other entities like them view peace and peaceableness as a weakness, an exploitable weakness that they can prey upon. They are wolves and the peaceful are but sheep.
 
Rory cannot separate the evil they do from lives they live off their ill-gotten gains. Their families, their children live in peace and prosperity built on the bones, the blood, and the misery of others. He believes them to be merely beleaguered Alteraci, scraping by to make their living. They chose lives of criminality, out of thousands upon thousands of other options. When Camp Taurajo burned, my people scattered to the north and south to make small encampments for themselves in the Barrens and in the Tangle. We did not turn to banditry, we did not turn to evil.
 
These Alteraci could have chosen differently for themselves. Hillsbrad Foothills is rife with farmable land or even the Hinterlands adjacent. They could have found better, peaceable ways of living that didn’t prey upon the hapless and the desperate. They did not have to become criminals. Or slavers. Or extortionists. Or strong-arming brutes. These were all willful choices to which they should have known the repercussions of. Any who say they didn’t know, clearly live their lives with their eyes closed. It is not hard to see what the Syndicate stands for and how they operate. They are all culpable accessories to the organization and its crimes. Only the children are true innocents.
 
For now, though, Rory has no trust in any of us and why should he? None of us knows much, if anything, about one another. An’she’s Grace, I know more about the warlock among them than I do any of them. Is that not irony?
 
So, it is Rory’s decree that we should all get to know one another before any further discussion about freeing him from the Syndicate is made. I will have to stand aside and watch, again, as he comes in, beaten and bloodied, when the Syndicate catch up to him again. I will have to turn a blind eye to the atrocities being committed right in front of me – for the sake of friendship.
 
An’she grant me patience.