Manwe,

You and I grew up together. We joined the realms together, bashed our
way to Avasyuvian together, transed Elemancy and Crystallism at the same
time. I don't think I'd be very far off in saying that, with the
exception of your wife Samanthia, I know you better than most people.

I mean you no offense by saying this, but I don't think you'd make a
very good Quinta.

Let me lay out my logic.

First off: Activity. The biggest reason the contestation came up is
because of activity. While you say you're "highly active"... you're
really not. Oh sure, you're definitely the most active -of the elder
secretaries-, but that's not saying much. You inrealm maybe once every
other month on good years. While that's still better than Talas'
one-per-three-months, it's nothing like Genviere's track record of six
days a month, every month.

Second: quality of activity. Genviere is not only here six days out of
every month, but -every single minute of those days- is spent helping
the guild or the city the guild lives in. If she's not running a caravan
for the city, she's helping out the novices. If she's not helping out
the novices, she's working on a circle requirement. If a question goes
up on GNT or GT, she always, -always- answers it (although sometimes I
ninja her in the process). She is constantly giving her time to this
guild.

What about you? Name the last time you helped a Mage do anything. Name
the last time you held a training session, quizzed an Apprentice of
Fire, held a tournament, taught basic reflexes, or did -anything-
remotely related to your position as Archmage of Fire. Tyras and Edmund
and Genviere and Mclaren and the new guild combatants have learned more
combat skills from -me- during your tenure than they have from you. And
you haven't taught me -anything-, despite me directly asking you thrice
for advice and training. I had to learn from Galt, who's not even a
guildmate, and -Sarrius-, who's not even a -Mage-.

Thirdly: your blind support of Talas. While I understand and respect the
concept of unwavering loyalty to one's guild, that should never extend
to blind loyalty towards its leadership. Especially when its leader has
done as piss-poorly as Talas.

Let's review.

"Talas can be a bit slow at times, but for the whole he has done an
excellent job dealing with Kinsarmar during a time when our relations
with them were not the greatest." Wrong! Ask any leader of Kinsarmar -
hell, ask any citizen of Kinsarmar whose cityrank is above "Denizen". (I
did.) Talas isn't popular. If he's lucky, said citizen's never heard of
him. If they have heard of him, the feedback is nearly universally poor:
"inactive", "bad judgement" and "unpopular" top the list of common
replies. He is -not- inspiring confidence, nor has he ever - the Erege
council has been pushing for a contestation for almost five years now.
They see him as inept and inactive.

"He has worked to completely revitalize the Circles system." Well if he
has, I haven't seen it. The Circles are dead. Name the last activity,
contest, or competition anyone's started for a Circle. I can only hope
people did some in that decade or two I was inactive, because if they
didn't, there's been no events since thirty years ago. That's not
"revitalized". That's dead-as-a-doornail.

Do you remember back when your predecessor, Adonis, ran Fire? Or even
his predecessor Marcas? -That- was when Fire was active. There were
tournaments on a thrice-yearly basis between Fire Circlers, where the
winner got a guildfavor and the runners-up got free alchemy. There was a
board of duel-volunteers set up and maintained between the cities by the
head of Fire, so Apprentices and Adepts could get their requisite
inter-class duels done easily by just reading down the scroll and
finding those on the list who were inrealm. And that's just Fire! I
remember literature contests for Air that took months to complete, where
everyone could submit a poem or a work of writing relating to a major
event of history. The winner's work was immortalized forever in the
library, and the runners-up got guildfavors from the secretaries. Hell,
even things as simple as scavenger hunts for Earth - go get lost in the
Sienna, drop a flamed monolith sigil somewhere, and tell people to go
find it. First person to PM the name of the room it's in to the Peregro
Dominis gets a guildfavor.

All of these things I got from memory, scanning the TCP and TCC
newsboards, and glancing through the Library Catalog and going "Hey,
that looks interesting, where'd that come from?" The whole process took
me a half hour. There is -no excuse- for why there have been no
circle-based activities for the past ten years - even repeating old
activities while you scramble to think up new ones is better than doing
-nothing at all-.

I could go on and on - We are the last guild in Kinsarmar that still
allows Khandavan citizenship despite our alliance being severed for over
a decade, our swap from the Lady Arcane to Janus simply because Lady
Eloweth is testing our faith by being a little quieter than usual, some
of the really poor choices for secretaries (Mclaren didn't even know how
to embed vibrations until I taught her last year! And Taynne for Air? I
see him even less than Talas, and that's saying something!), the list
runs on for days.

And yet you still support Talas through all this.

I question your judgement, Manwe. I question your judgement, I question
your claims of activity, and I question your qualification to lead this
guild. And I know I am not alone in doing so.

~Vorast Elandor.

Penned by my hand on the 13th of Ferinus, in the year 556 AD.