Weaving - Mortuum Priums - 3
The Dead Progenitor Expedition - Lead Researcher Jacklyn Spearhead’s Log - Day 150 - 2/2
The different accounts, rumors, and retellings of how Lord Gallahue conned The Eethryli and gained us The Alliance Tome probably outnumbers the tome’s very own page count. And The Tome has 1248 pages. You would think I’d know the real story, being familiar with nearly half of the emissaries The Enclave sent on that expedition. Two of whom were my parents. Sadly, I do not. The meeting was said to be so loud, long, hectic, and intense that everyone remembers different details about it. Their claims cast a wide range of conflicting narratives, but there is a common thread at their core.
A little over nine years ago we were to begin assimilation discussions with Eethryl. Personally, I think our willingness here is our people’s greatest shame. Though, I’m a scholar, not a politician. I should clarify that not every member of the council was enthusiastic about the decision. Our hands were, in a sense, tied as Eethryl was on track to make a formal declaration of closed borders if we did not assimilate. This is the intergalactic way of saying “give us what we want or quit bothering us”. We also weren’t sure they’d remain peaceful after the fact. In hindsight, it is easy to see the bluff that it was. However, at the time, it felt like our society was trying to hop on the last Spelljammer as it was leaving port.
We were oblivious of Eethryl’s gambit. At least in every way that mattered. Because of this meeting’s result, we now have good reason to doubt our neighbors and suspect Eethryl is keeping us a secret from the rest of The Cosmic Alliance. They are not our friends. We hope their scheming is because we meet some criteria for power of negotiation, or possibly even the criteria for joining the alliance ourselves. Eethryl doesn’t want this to happen as, like I mentioned before, they are a relatively unimportant society on the cosmic scale. We expect this could change with control over The Lumina Pearl Trade. Our theory is they mean to play the gatekeeper of The Crimson Alliance, and everything that should come with that relationship. If they can assume power over us before we figure out what is being kept hidden, they can gain control without overtly breaking Cosmic Law.
But enough condemnation. We return to the proceedings of the assimilation meeting. The conference began and things were proceeding in favor of Eethryl. However, when Lord Gallahue took to the stand everything was turned on its head. Mind you, this was his first time meeting the foreigners. Lord Gallahue is a friendly, albeit weird person when unprovoked. But it is said that he screamed, wailed, sang, confused, accused, mocked, and flirted with the Eethryli emissaries. Order was called for— demanded by Eethryl, but none was given. As I said, no one’s stories agree on the exact course of action he took as he was engaging in multiple, passionate conversations at the same time. Whatever Kentucky did, he overwhelmed the Eethryli. My best guess as to why he did this is he saw their pristine society and knew that they’d respond poorly to a surprise confusion tactic. However, when asked about his reasoning he provides little beyond “I didn’t like them”.
Regardless of motive, his tactic worked. Lord Gallahue is either a genius or the luckiest and most aggressive man The Cosmos has ever seen. Kentucky transformed the formal Eethryli emissaries into a discordant orchestra of which he was the conductor. Factions, millennia old, turned against each other. Their decorum devolved and they began making competing offers with The Enclave. Their peerless society fell to even ground in an awkward heap. I have heard that his tactic caused three separate bouts of crying, two divorces, and one minor civil war amongst our otherworldly neighbors. Again, the validity of these claims is thin at best, but these are the stories people tell.
As the meeting progressed, Gallahue maneuvered the conversation further and further in our favor. This was at the cost of Eethryl’s respect of course, but that was a fee we could afford. While Lord Gallahue was adept at wearing people down, the Eethryli never lost sight of their original goal: sure power over The Lumina Pearl Trade. At this point, Lord Gallahue had gotten them to admit that the Pearls would be used to better their alliance-merchant relationships. They wouldn’t elaborate beyond that, but it was evident how important they were to Eethryl.
Every offer posed to us was a path that would eventually lead to sacrificing sovereignty. Their different deals all provided gifts, forms of compensation, lengthy transition periods, and varying degrees of retained power. However, offered resources were still only the ones present in our worlds, and any authority left to us would merely be that of a figurehead. Their offers now had genuine merit but were still insulting.
Despite the displeasures, their manipulative bids gave us a ledge to stand on. A slim one. The mere act of offering unknowingly gave us the most expensive thing in the universe. Information. Their hasty proposals allowed us to infer all we needed to know about intergalactic trade and policy. Eethryl is far more advanced, and wise in the ways of the universe, but easy living had made them soft. They were attempting to con a people whose stories, history, and economy are laden with piracy. And there is no honor amongst thieves. The keen ears on our side of the room began to pick up on a pattern as Kentucky fished for better offers. The only real things of value they had couldn’t be given to us by the Alliance’s laws.
To summarize, we quickly understood the key elements of the situation. Eethryl would not be satisfied without a deal, but they couldn’t offer us something we didn’t already have without breaking cosmic law. Their search for something that would make them more relevant to The Alliance had grown desperate. To Eethryl, status is of the utmost importance. Their supposedly great civilization had stooped to employ manipulation tactics, and it was evident they were inexperienced and insecure about their conduct. They feared The Cosmic Alliance’s scrutiny and were treading lightly.
We suspect their unctuous behavior would be frowned upon— possibly even punished. Until that meeting, there had always been a line they wouldn’t cross. For example, Eethryl would not let us handle their technology, allow us to roam their worlds unattended, teach us their language, give us their medicine, or reveal information about other societies in The Alliance. The list goes on and on. Kentucky had pushed them to the point where their toes had begun to creep over that line. You can imagine The Enclave’s elation when Eethryl suddenly made an exception to their laws. They did not budge on the items I have listed, but one area that was previously off-limits was suddenly used as a bargaining chip. The history of The Cosmos.
The idea was presented to us as a show of good faith. They were making “an exception” by allowing us to gain some benefits of joining The Alliance “in advance”. It should be noted that to them, joining The Alliance meant assimilation with Eethryl. Based on what we understand about Cosmic Law, they committed an illegal act here as a last-ditch effort to assume control. Sadly, we have no way to know how severe this infraction is. Regardless, not only would this give us information, but a sliver of power over them. The trade’s associated conditions reinforced this. We could not pass the information along to other societies, we could not speak to the rest of the Alliance about this deal in the future, and we even had to limit its distribution within our worlds. They had no real way to police the latter, so we went on to ignore this rule.
It is both to Lord Gallahue’s credit and discredit that he spat on this offer the same as all the others. His drama hid the expressions of academics in the room who would’ve given their left hand for any cosmic secret. All present scholars looked to High Archivist Jemseg, their superior and my lovely grandmother, with pleading eyes. Not dissimilar to how children beg for a puppy. Fortunately, the equally excited High Archivist was wise and reserved in the moments to follow. She let Kentucky go at them for another few minutes before calling for a recess. Supposedly they only got Lord Gallahue off the podium when the Grand Phsyic made him weightless and the triton royal was pulled from the hall like a fitful balloon.
On their way to the caucus chamber, members of The Crimson Enclave’s emissaries were independently hatching different versions of the same plan. Eethryl had lost its reputation as our advanced, paradisic neighboring society. Their dishonesty was now evident, and they meant to take advantage of us. Unfortunately, The Enclave was not in a place to discuss countermeasures. They were in enemy territory, and could only assume they were being watched.
There is an old Spelljammer captain’s saying. It’s used as a command when one’s smaller ship encounters a larger, more fearsome enemy vessel. Cut and run. They were the only words offered by Sigfried Ren, captain of the Dawnbreaker during the recess. A vague suggestion, but fortunately our people’s dependency on astronautical vessels meant everyone knew what he was hinting at. Get what we can, and get out.