19.III.1665
06:14 (Shirekeep)
Esteemed seniors of the Directorate,
Pursuant to your instructions to commence field research operations with regard to the popular movement of horticultural character recently emergent within the Imperial Duchy of Brookshire, the preliminary assessment of the Shirekeep Residency is outlined below.
Upon initial examination, and contrary to the hopes expressed among your estimable number, it would appear that the so-called "Ecological Movement" led by the individual calling himself "Sir Thalva" does not, in fact, represent the welcome return of the Greater Garden's benevolent caress to Eastern Benacia and to characterise it as such would only be injurious at this stage. Rather, within the context of the wider Shirerithian political landscape, the movement's verdant theme presents something of an enantiodromic hazard with potentially adverse implications for the carefully cultivated state of the present Sxiro-Kalgachi relationship.
Per standard procedure, a financially-pliable informant of Southern Goldshire heritage was recently approached at Cabbagefall docks and furnished with a legend to cross into Brookshire, infiltrate the Movement and return to debrief his handler in Cabbagefall after one week had elapsed. To the surprise of the Field Research Office he made the appropriate dead-drop signal to arrange the return meeting after only two days. Upon said rendezvous, the handler reports that his asset had undergone a complete personality change and was less than intelligible in his account of joining the Ecological Movement, his previously rough countenance being replaced by the serene recitation of horticultural mantras and exhortations for the handler himself to "walk with us on Sir Thalva's salvational path." He also offered the handler a bundle of pamphlets (I have placed these in secure storage as a Grade 2 memetic pathogen and request their forwarding by diplomatic pouch to Lapivril for deconstruction by suitably-warded initiates of our occluded brethren). As standard precaution the handler subsequently delivered an anonymous tipoff to the Shirekeep City Guard, along with a pre-fabricated dossier framing the compromised informant as an agent of the Vanic Web - the man was observed being picked up by cudgellers that same afternoon.
From the information this residency can safely peruse, the Ecological Movement itself is assessed to be of neglible integrative potential with the Ketherist Creed, based as it is upon a militant biomic expansionism of quasi-Doronist character and a personality cult of Froyalanish intensity around the personage of Łudo Thalva (whose name, whilst styled as "Sir" in the Movement's own publications, does not appear in any official public listing of the Shirerithian peerage). Whilst the hubristic excess of this ideological mode - having contributed to the corruption and demise of Minarboria - is plainly disavowed in the modern day by our own learned Church, the unwashed Shirerithian public cannot be expected to factor such theological subtleties into their assessment of the Movement's relationship with the Ketherist faith - a relationship which will doubtless be alleged with gleeful intensity by the Movement's political opponents this Folksraad/Adelsrad election season with little regard to the facts of the matter. In particular the grass-root strata of the Nationalist & Humanist Party and their fellow travellers, being somewhat on the back foot due to recent events in Elwynn, are predicted to sieze upon the Ecological Movement as a nest of Ketherist agents and in doing so drag the name of our cherished Garden back into the reputational mire from which it has only just begun to escape.
It has been mooted in conference with this residency's field researchers that it may be possible to destroy the Movement by inferring that it is, in fact, a Kalgachi puppet organisation - a notion which, if 'confirmed' by us, would invariably bring the full weight and fury of Shirerithian public opinion (not to mention Imperial firepower) against it in a single, fatal blow. It cannot be ruled out that such a course of action may, however, present a sufficiently persuasive casus belli to overpower the laboriously-cultivated IAC veto on Fall Endsieg which remains our single greatest diplomatic achievement and ultimately a cause to which all our other efforts in Shireroth are secondary. I trust the Directorate shares my assessment that this cannot be jeapordised by indulgent political interventions of a Knotty/Lymiron character.
Instead I must advise that any response to the inevitable accusation of Kalgachi collusion with Mr Thalva's cult be limited to a selection of strictly-reactive denials of varying verbosity, to assauge upon demand the full spectrum of beholders from uneducated followers of the news cycle through the more demanding nobility to erudite theologians and other principal archonic servants. I base the latter suggestion upon my recent audience with the Prince of Modan, a man whose intellectual calibre must be experienced directly to be believed and goes some way toward explaining the state of near-omnipotence his offices enjoy within the Imperial Republic. By bringing to bear upon the Imperial leadership an emphatic and detailed distancing of Kalgachi policy from that of Mr. Thalva, it is feasible that their archonic creed of unquestioning obedience will in turn moderate the baying mob in their service and ensure that the inevitable tendency of any Shireithian political process toward gratuitous bloodletting will in this case be directed exclusively toward Mr. Thalva and his legion of dupes whilst sparing the reputation of the True Garden and the bodily integrity of those few of its children who walk the streets of Shirekeep, most of whom reside in my office and make their conclusions appropriate to the skin they must presently commit to the game. These conclusions I now commend to you, my brothers diplomatic, from the City Between the Rivers.
Hortus Manet.
-Pezaknik
P.S. The residency acknowledges Oktavyan's report that one of our signallers has been re-using encryption keys. I shall look into the matter with the utmost urgency.
Pursuant to your instructions to commence field research operations with regard to the popular movement of horticultural character recently emergent within the Imperial Duchy of Brookshire, the preliminary assessment of the Shirekeep Residency is outlined below.
Upon initial examination, and contrary to the hopes expressed among your estimable number, it would appear that the so-called "Ecological Movement" led by the individual calling himself "Sir Thalva" does not, in fact, represent the welcome return of the Greater Garden's benevolent caress to Eastern Benacia and to characterise it as such would only be injurious at this stage. Rather, within the context of the wider Shirerithian political landscape, the movement's verdant theme presents something of an enantiodromic hazard with potentially adverse implications for the carefully cultivated state of the present Sxiro-Kalgachi relationship.
Per standard procedure, a financially-pliable informant of Southern Goldshire heritage was recently approached at Cabbagefall docks and furnished with a legend to cross into Brookshire, infiltrate the Movement and return to debrief his handler in Cabbagefall after one week had elapsed. To the surprise of the Field Research Office he made the appropriate dead-drop signal to arrange the return meeting after only two days. Upon said rendezvous, the handler reports that his asset had undergone a complete personality change and was less than intelligible in his account of joining the Ecological Movement, his previously rough countenance being replaced by the serene recitation of horticultural mantras and exhortations for the handler himself to "walk with us on Sir Thalva's salvational path." He also offered the handler a bundle of pamphlets (I have placed these in secure storage as a Grade 2 memetic pathogen and request their forwarding by diplomatic pouch to Lapivril for deconstruction by suitably-warded initiates of our occluded brethren). As standard precaution the handler subsequently delivered an anonymous tipoff to the Shirekeep City Guard, along with a pre-fabricated dossier framing the compromised informant as an agent of the Vanic Web - the man was observed being picked up by cudgellers that same afternoon.
From the information this residency can safely peruse, the Ecological Movement itself is assessed to be of neglible integrative potential with the Ketherist Creed, based as it is upon a militant biomic expansionism of quasi-Doronist character and a personality cult of Froyalanish intensity around the personage of Łudo Thalva (whose name, whilst styled as "Sir" in the Movement's own publications, does not appear in any official public listing of the Shirerithian peerage). Whilst the hubristic excess of this ideological mode - having contributed to the corruption and demise of Minarboria - is plainly disavowed in the modern day by our own learned Church, the unwashed Shirerithian public cannot be expected to factor such theological subtleties into their assessment of the Movement's relationship with the Ketherist faith - a relationship which will doubtless be alleged with gleeful intensity by the Movement's political opponents this Folksraad/Adelsrad election season with little regard to the facts of the matter. In particular the grass-root strata of the Nationalist & Humanist Party and their fellow travellers, being somewhat on the back foot due to recent events in Elwynn, are predicted to sieze upon the Ecological Movement as a nest of Ketherist agents and in doing so drag the name of our cherished Garden back into the reputational mire from which it has only just begun to escape.
It has been mooted in conference with this residency's field researchers that it may be possible to destroy the Movement by inferring that it is, in fact, a Kalgachi puppet organisation - a notion which, if 'confirmed' by us, would invariably bring the full weight and fury of Shirerithian public opinion (not to mention Imperial firepower) against it in a single, fatal blow. It cannot be ruled out that such a course of action may, however, present a sufficiently persuasive casus belli to overpower the laboriously-cultivated IAC veto on Fall Endsieg which remains our single greatest diplomatic achievement and ultimately a cause to which all our other efforts in Shireroth are secondary. I trust the Directorate shares my assessment that this cannot be jeapordised by indulgent political interventions of a Knotty/Lymiron character.
Instead I must advise that any response to the inevitable accusation of Kalgachi collusion with Mr Thalva's cult be limited to a selection of strictly-reactive denials of varying verbosity, to assauge upon demand the full spectrum of beholders from uneducated followers of the news cycle through the more demanding nobility to erudite theologians and other principal archonic servants. I base the latter suggestion upon my recent audience with the Prince of Modan, a man whose intellectual calibre must be experienced directly to be believed and goes some way toward explaining the state of near-omnipotence his offices enjoy within the Imperial Republic. By bringing to bear upon the Imperial leadership an emphatic and detailed distancing of Kalgachi policy from that of Mr. Thalva, it is feasible that their archonic creed of unquestioning obedience will in turn moderate the baying mob in their service and ensure that the inevitable tendency of any Shireithian political process toward gratuitous bloodletting will in this case be directed exclusively toward Mr. Thalva and his legion of dupes whilst sparing the reputation of the True Garden and the bodily integrity of those few of its children who walk the streets of Shirekeep, most of whom reside in my office and make their conclusions appropriate to the skin they must presently commit to the game. These conclusions I now commend to you, my brothers diplomatic, from the City Between the Rivers.
Hortus Manet.
-Pezaknik
P.S. The residency acknowledges Oktavyan's report that one of our signallers has been re-using encryption keys. I shall look into the matter with the utmost urgency.