Zwitterion was tired... Tired of hearing the same stories, the same reasoning, the same thoughts and comments. He tried not to show his frustration, but his continuing silence was the loudest protest to those who knew him. Still, he patiently listened to the account of
the day's events and how his fellow Circlees had committed the slaughter of a whole hobgoblin clan. Once again he thought how easy it was to cross the thin line seperating a real hero and an obstinate self-claimed good-doer...
He fell back in time and his mind slowly drifted to the cheerful days of his childhood. He was still very young as an half-elf, barely in his thirties even without the youth restoring magic of the Mad Mage Halaster, but his soul had aged more than a few decades in the last
couple of years. Those childhood days, which he embraced so vividly now, had never been too far from grief and tears, but had at least been free of the huge responsibilities he had to carry now. He had to be wise and vigilant, even, he joked to himself, even when he slept.
For a fleeting second, he toyed with the idea of running away from everything and embracing the life of a 'monastary monk'. He had always wished to visit the fabled high temple at Mount Talath, and for that split second, going there and settling as a scribe seemed to
be the best thing to do for the rest of his life. He quickly dismissed the thought though, reminding himself that his spirit was too rebellious to be contained in a church.
So he decided to direct his attention back to the conversation taking place. Listen now, he said to himself, for you will have to press your issue harder than ever this time; you have to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again...
But what would he say? Weren't all these people already aware of the meaning of their actions? Weren't they the founders and members of the Circle? The Circle's aim; wasn't it to protect and florish the lives of all races? No, he angrily reminded himself, no, that was
just your aim for the Circle, just your motivation for being one of its founders. Some had already mentioned from the beginning that their desire was to protect and florish the lives of the 'civilized' races, not all. Zwitterion smiled bitterly, realizing how naive he
still was and how easily he could deceive himself about their meaning of the word 'civilization'.
Yes, that was the main point of the discussion here. Who or what was civilized? Humans, elves? As far as Zwiterrion was concerned, a civilized group of sentient beings was a group that recognized and respected the rights of other sentient beings like themselves. In this
sense a Cormyrean farmer could be much more civilized then a gold elf noble from Evermeet, or a court jester could be much better than his king or queen.
Of course, for many who deemed themselves civilized, the real argument was about the definition of "sentient beings like themselves". Zwitterion had met many an elf who arrogantly deemed any other race inferior. Obviously, this kind of `all-others-inferior' belief was not just in the domain of elves; it seemed to be universal: Zwitterion had
witnessed many acts of discrimination among almost all socities he had been in. He liked calling such discriminating people "inferier", more inferior than what their own words about others meant.
Zwitterion liked elaborating on the reason for this kind of universal behaviour. He believed that it lied in a much basic aspect of sentience - the will to survive. Wasn't it true that every sentient being instinctively desired to continue its existence? That was why people were afraid of death. That was why religions could help spiritually, because they relieved you with the promise of an eternal afterlife. That was why some fools accepted to sell their souls to baatezu or tanarri, looking for eternity and receiving eternal torture at the end.
But, how was the will to survive related to the discriminating behaviour? With one word: Fear. Any being with the will the survive would fear everything he deemed dangerous to his existance. Since the unknown and the unusual had the potential of harboring unidentified
dangers, people feared them. And when woven in a fabric of lies and fantasies, fear turned into anger and hate.
Zwitterion had observed that curious individuals and societies were usually less susceptible to fear and that they demonstrated less discrimination. His natural conclusion had then been simple: Since curiosity brought about an accumulation of information, it greatly eliminated the fear of the unknown, allowing the individual to free himself of his prejudices.
Meanwhile, Zwitterion's mind revisited his childhood days once again. But this time he was remembering the pains. The pains of being lonely; the pains of being unusual; the pains of being the subject of so many disgusting jokes. His ears were still ringing with those
awful things the other kids had uttered about him: "Look, the bastard skeleton is here. Oh what's up mister pole?", "Where is the staff of this temple? Oh, they are praying, so this Staff is in charge now," and so on. He had been a parentless half-elven boy then. He had been much thinner than the girls of his age and a foot taller than the tallest boy. He had been unusual and therefore the center of discrimination...
He sighed deeply... He had promised himself back then that he would never allow anyone to be discriminated, to suffer the way he had. Had he been successful? Listening to the ongoing discussion - no!
Well, sometimes heroes also failed, right? He had failed many times indeed. But the worst failure had probably been the lost battle he had had in his own heart. Years ago, he had ended up in the infamous drow city of Menzoberranzan, where he had fallen slave to the hands of a ruthless matron mother. When he and his friends had escaped their sunless prison six months later, Zwitterion's soul had been deeply scarred. He had promised himself to kill and if need be, die killing any drow he would ever encounter then.
Fate, it seemed, had had a sense of irony. He had fallen in love with the first drow he had met after escaping Menzoberranzan. Qilue was a cleric of the drow goddess Eilistree and by Mystra, she was strikingly beautiful. But the real thing that had charmed Zwitterion had been the way she spoke, the wisdom her words carried and how she always managed to convey a sense of solitude in those who listened. She had been so much ahead of him, not only as a cleric, but also as the person he had always aspired to be...
It had been and still was a one-way love, of course; a love which would never die and would always keep his heart warm. Yes, this was a gift from Qilue, an enchanted armor for his soul. He had realized he could have smoothly killed the love of his life if he had had the power, without ever hearing her voice or looking into her beautiful eyes. Mystra had blessed her petty servant once again, curing the blindness in his once-innocent eyes...
As he thought about it now, Zwitterion was realizing how drastically he had changed during that time of his life. He had actually gained more than just one bit of wisdom. Another very important lesson would come, and not from a sacred scripture or the words of a goodly being, but from the mouth of a resurrecting god, Entropy, The Black Heart, The Lord of Chaos... At the moment of his return, probably the weakest moment of his eternal being, he had convinced Zwitterion and his friends that his half-formed avatar and his crazy clerics had had to be spared of harm, for he wanted to bring a hope of survival to those races seen "less-civilized" by others. He had spun a story of how the goblinkin and the giantkin and many others had been thrown out of their lands and driven to swamps, arctic and underdark. He had claimed that he just wanted to give them a hope, a light, a land to settle and eventually a reason to end fighting.
His aims and promises had been lies, of course, but his story had had an undeniable basis. It was true that those races were downtroden, were used as slaves or driven like cattle, were slaughtered without whim. It was true that their culture had molded mostly around
concepts of war and pillage, but they were not the only ones to blame. The attitude of the supposedly-civilized 'inferier' races towards them would not create their culture at the first place perhaps, but could well be the factor that kept it from evolving to a more civil one...
Once Zwitterion had realized this, he had started working on spells to create new habitable places. He was well aware of the fact that the 'inferier' races and the 'war-like' races were far from making any long-term truces yet, and such truces would continue to be very
unlikely for the near future. So he had concantrated on inventing new methods of creating resources. This way, the war efforts to obtain scarce supplies could instead be directed into harvesting of the abundant. And though he had encountered many obstacles on his work,
he had been able to achieve some success: His magic could be used to obtain seeds from useful plants, adapt them to harsh conditions, arctic or tropic climates or even underdark, and then sprout them quickly.
Unfortunately, that success would not be achieved en masse. The adaptation of a plant to a new environment was not hereditary, so the process had to be repeated for every new generation. This required the combined and continued work of many priests. However, other
priests of Mystra were either unwilling to learn his spells, or unable to use them. May be it was just his devotion, his very own belief, that made them work. He had then tried teaching them to friendly rangers and druids but when the church of Silvanus had strongly
rejected using any spells devised by a cleric "foreign to their cause", he had been left with no options. He still produced and sent them around with the help of his ranger friend Lord Termit, but his dream of producing food for everyone was not destined to be come true.
So, when the idea of forming 'The Circle' had come about, he had strongly supported it. He had thought of joining the Harpers once, but realized quickly that they were no good for his aims. 'The Circle' would be a collection of like minded individuals and would allow him to carry out his dreams.
It was sad to see the outcome. His dreams were still far from reaching even his fellow Circlees. The person who was now coldly explaining that wiping out an entire hobgoblin clan was a 'dirty-but-compulsory' thing, had been able to convince his lifetime friends. Had not Zwitterion suffered and overcome so much pain in his life, he would probably go mad with hysteria now...
They all claimed it was so sad and they would never do 'such-a-horrible' thing if possible. Zwitterion found that explanation just disgusting. Yes, one had to fight and kill when necessary, as he had done so many times to protect the innocent, but killing out an entire
clan was pure bloody murder. Of course it was convenient, the terror would hold other fighting parties for some time. Noone cared about a hobgoblin child who may have grown to become a diplomat and brought peace to his tribe. Noone cared about a hobgoblin mother who had reluctantly accepted her husband's war in order to feed her children. According to them all hobgoblin children were destined to be ruthless blood-thirsty murderers and all hobgoblin mothers were fierce animals, nurturing such children.
It was a shame that those coldblooded murderers were now accusing Zeus, Zwitterion's barbarian friend, that he was never stealthy and he had attacked every hobgoblin war party on sight that day. They were accusing him of being unable to control his rage. Ironically,
even in that uncontrollable rage, Zeus would never kill anyone unable to wield a weapon; for he believed in honest battle, not easy dirty slaughter.
According to Zwitterion, a man would never become a hero without compassion. He guessed that the names of many of his Circlees would be remembered in legends one day, but those names, when they were invoked in bedtime stories, would not refer to the individuals in front of him, instead to the compassionate people Zwitterion wanted them to be...
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