5th Movement: Presto Universo

Garlemald, oh Garlemald.

You expanded, conquered, made yourselves as powerful and as great as you could possibly get. Every territory was yours for the taking, every land, every sea, every stretch of sky. Your goal to create a world without fear of the primals, a world where your people, who had endured so much suffering in their past, who were themselves disabled and disadvantaged from birth, would never have to suffer again.

'Twas truly a grand and glorious dream you had.

But in dreaming, you created a nightmare for the rest of the world.

Now, I look at your capital -- ruined, broken, unrecognizable. Decayed corpses and dusty bones already lie between the debris of each building, kept company only by the biting winds and the war machinas that turn against what few survivors are left. It is hard to feel any sympathy for you and yours.

After all, the very survivors that walk your ruins, not even a year ago, were enslaving, conscripting and torturing me and mine. If I said I never killed a Garlean after they called me a savage, I would be lying.

And yet...

One needs to remember where those attitudes came from. They were not birthed, but taught -- by systems with power, interests, bigotries, goals. Their people are not innocent, but they do not carry all the blame.

After all, prey quickly learn to fear their predators if they are to survive; and if you're taught to think everyone else is a predator...

Learned behaviors can be unlearned, and so, despite refusing to participate in the Eorzean contingent, I will not begrudge their efforts.

Every Garlean is also a person, with a family, and a home, and loved ones, and a history. Learned behavior can be unlearned, and the survivors can always become better people.

It would certainly be cathartic to kill them all, for all the pain and suffering them and theirs have caused; but it would achieve nothing. They have already suffered in the death of their old lives, they have already lost most -- if not all -- serious power that they had over others.

From what I hear, the Eorzean Contingent is already doing good work in deprogramming the survivors. Once their thoughts are unpoisoned by propaganda, what is left is just the simple desire to be good people; to protect them and theirs, and to do as little harm as possible.

It is encouraging, really; I sit here among the ruins of a civilization so depraved they might as well have been the Allagans. To think that no matter how far gone you are...

One day you will remember.

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