The Shining Lady's Gift

There's still revelry to be found in conquest,

Not to the extent of the First Empire

But forbearance has become our greatest test,

For our kind to survive, it is required.

Now by the crafting hands of the Shining Lady

We are given a second chance at greatness,

The banished Velnibeth and our enemies,

Humans, cloned, raised by us, so to become us.

Our realm was what our wards' forebears overcame;

Taking the worlds our ancestors had conquered,

Forming theatrical soldiers of our slaves,

Avenging the misery they'd long suffered.

Our navy and soldiers had grown complacent

Whilst the humans still held their youthful fury.

Predictably grim, that's how the long war went,

Till ended forever seemed our revelry.

Pinioned at our home-world, lost to confusion,

It was then that the Shining Lady appeared,

With resources that defied explanation

She plucked us from our doom and ferried us here.

Without a sliver of a reason given,

She bore us to a world so much like our own,

Then implored us to rebuild what was riven

And see our former nature revived and honed.

The inexplicable aid of a Goddess

Is far more than our fallen nation deserved.

Of course we heeded her wishes nonetheless

And now the Velnibeth do themselves preserve.

Our once-human, now Velamehen, children

Helped the second Empire to grow swiftly;

Their kind is... faster, faster to grow and learn,

Faster to work for our reborn destiny.

And on that point, let's speak of the present day,

Of our first conquest in this new stretch of space,

The Malathanrin, who thought to bar our way,

Are bested and consigned to their proper place.

Once it would have meant sacrifice and torment,

Burning of cities and the taking of slaves,

But our impractical tendencies are spent;

Like us, the Malathanrin shall be remade.

But that's not to say we shall not have our fun,

Their fleet which opposed us is shattered and gone,

Their terror is nurtured, their hope is undone,

Their world is ours, they think they'll die, they are wrong.

We pack them by the thousands into slave ships

And take them trembling to New Velsiveithus;

Tis a delight to have their lives in our grip,

That ancient delight, ever a part of us.

Of course, we shall not kill nor mutilate them,

We have learned that a gentler hand in conquest,

Along with great cunning, is proper, for then

We win everything. By cruelty, we win less.

We will train the Malathanrin as we did

The Velamehen, they shall join us as friends.

Of hatred and fear for us they shall be rid

And beside us, to new conquests we shall wend.

Praise to the mercy of the Shining Lady,

By which our bygone prowess we have reclaimed.

Let the crusade suffer no complacency,

Let the Velnibeth's glory nevermore wane.