Nation
A people of barren ground, bound by fear and by force.
I have not gone to their lands. This entry comes wholly from the pen of a nation that counts them an enemy.
They bind not by love but by fear. Rank is not inherited but seized; the crown is taken from the head of the defeated. The scribe’s sentence: “where there is no trust every man is on his guard, and a man on his guard cannot be merciful.” — A Treatise Upon Devran, leaf 12b
The scribe traces their hardness not to ill nature but to the ground: they live where nothing grows, and plunder is not pleasure to them but livelihood. — A Treatise Upon Devran, leaf 12b
Hunger does not oblige the return of what was taken — but neither does it make a monster of the taker alone. The one who leaves another hungry is as much a monster as the one left hungry. Every judgement that fails to see both at once is incomplete.
— A Treatise Upon Devran, leaf 12b
They cut what they write into stone, into bone, into walls. The scribe draws an uncomfortable conclusion from this: paper rots, ink fades, hide dries; rock remains. So the water nation’s library holds more records, while the fire nation’s stones hold older ones. — A Treatise Upon Devran, leaf 12b
We take pride in being the nation that knows the most; yet the oldest lines are reachable only from the wall of our enemy.
How many fortresses, who rules, how they describe themselves — none of it. I do not hold a single line written in this nation’s own hand.