Being the 5th Day of Air, Resplendent, Year of Our Realm 767
Dragonsmouth, Scarlet Prefecture, Blessed Isle

My most sincere apologies for the lateness of this letter. By way of explanation, though not of excuse, I can only offer an indictment of the state of travel between the Imperial Mountain and the coast in this sorrowful age of ours.

Regarding the fragmentary text recovered 19 Air, Ascending,
"Certainty is for Clockwork Logicians and Patricians of vibrant mascara who wear it on their sleeve."…

What follows is a brief statement that the phrase is nonsense. However, when the cipher is applied to the quoted text it produces a longer result. Repeated multiple times, it is revealed that the entire letter was compressed into that single sentence. Someone may be showing off.

No doubt an account of me at once less abridged and more entertaining can be found at your nearest house of salacious gossip. Being constrained by the limitations of a letter, know then that I am Ledaal Akashan. It is my honor to serve as the most junior member of the highest councils of my House, chief analyst in the archaeological investigations of the Catala family, First Artificer of Ledaal, and formerly as an adviser and sorcerer-engineer of the Realm for Her Most Highly Exalted Majesty. For what little it adds after such a litany, I also received the Dragon's Breath but 108 days older than my cousin Kes, am a certified graduate of the Heptogram, and command an earning power so great that I am individually listed on House Ledaal's condensed chart of accounts with the satrapies. You will have to forgive me if I take somewhat less pride in these than my various cousins do. (As a personal request, I would greatly appreciate if Whispering Twilight could refrain from causing overmuch trouble in the ancestral seat of my House. Whatever their failings, most dyansts and patricians there are my family and excessive reductions in their fortunes or influence could make my own position far more tenuous).

I write you from Dragonsmouth, here to meet a shipment from my sister marked as particularly aligned with my personal interests. However, I expect to soon be recalled to the Imperial City, at least temporarily, given a number of requests from House V'neef to discuss employing the savants of Ledaal for some project or another. My familiarity with such matters means I am often called to negotiate the prices of these services and must personally perform the most challenging tasks myself. Should the trip prove to be temporary I am well placed here at the gateway to the Imperial City to intercept many of the more interesting flows of goods and people from most of the Isle and the Threshold. If it become necessary, I have considerable sway with the Catala and can direct their efforts to particular sites or areas of focus. There are, after all, some things even money cannot buy.

Besides the skill, connections, and political power already alluded to, know also that I have earned my titles good and ill. Though not a graduate of the House of Well Flavored Aspect I am the only non-Elder known to have fully capped the most powerful demesne of Creation without resort to wasteful discharging of their energies. I have personally supervised the maintenance of key nodes in the Realm Defense Grid and am one of the few people able and by Her Most Exalted Majesty trusted to perform such work. Finally, I have filled the orders for newly constructed suits of dragon armor and greater works. Though notable in light of the above, I do possess the deficiency of failing to initiate into the Terrestrial Circle of Emerald while at the Heptogram, something attributed to my youth at the time, and have been unable to pursue it since.

It may appear surprising that one of my high position would join in this conspiracy that seams aimed at much of the basis of my prestige and power. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. I love the Realm and its people, and they deserve better than what we have managed to do for them. It was these sentiments that first put me at odds with Her Most Exalted Majesty, for much of the structure of Her Realm was designed and calibrated to ensure the security of Her Reign. Yet I am not content to spend the modicum of effort necessary to slay the twin troubles of ignorance and want. From investigations and my own work I know that this is an age of squalor. The luxury that my Exalted kin revel in as is the poverty of the former empires and they do not even know it. The Mandate of Heaven rests with the Terrestrial Host, and with it comes the responsibility to act as good stewards to what Dragons and Heaven have granted us, to properly cultivate and elevate Creation into the full flower of what it can be. Part of this is a change in our relationship with those who are other than we. I do not mean only the Threshold, though that situation is shameful and wasteful in equal measure, but the races with which we shared this world. Our Mandate is for all of Creation, and that includes everyone in it. We ignore or enslave those who should be our sisters and friends. All these are the true heresy against which association with Anathema is as petty as an argument over if Exaltations is of or from the Dragons.

In fire, faith, and blood,
Ledaal Catala Akashan