[This particularly durable hard-covered essay tends to appear, albeit rarely, written in different formats and each version has slight discrepancies with one another, but the core content is always the same. Perhaps the only thing to set it aside in the glimpse of the avid, obsessive reader, it's that it only seems to exist in Draconic, and a fine Draconic at that].

We are complacent. Most of us, we lack the drive to do more, to see more, to experience more. We do not need to, for it is not common for us to crave more. We are complacent.

Some would say that it is our nature to be. That we were "designed" to be this way. Most of us wouldn't care. Why should we? We never cared for anything but the Dragon. Our lives start and tragically end for the Dragon, and most of us are happy keeping it this way. Most of us don't care about defining lines, about "fine print". We like things simple. A project, strong leadership, roles. Keep the claws busy, keep toiling, that's all that really matters for most of us.

Most of us, we need the simplicity. An altar of Kurthulmak. If we dare dream, one of Tiamat. A dragon to serve. A moment every cycle for the Search, the company of our kin and the tools of the trades. Nothing more. Anything else is aberrational. If we think ourselves lucky, we may have one Wrought, but rarely more. They never get along well, like dragons.

We make an excuse for them. We do not regard them as kin; they are blessed beings. They are the lucky ones, those that carry our banner (do we have banners?) beyond the warrens. They are meant to be the best of us, our heralds. We praise the each wrought that the Queen gives us like a cherished gift.

And rarely we find a more awkward shuffling of feet when the wrought hatched is not from Her.

Most of us don't know. The Elders, the Caretakers, the Watcher, and no one else surveys the hatching of the Wroughts. Most of us want to believe that we are Hers, that the Father and his side of the blood have nothing to do with us. Most of us don't like the thought. It makes things... complicated.

But this is not about most of us.

This is about us. The strangers among our kin.

They don't like to talk about us. We are the few of us that go under the rug. Some think we are a mistake, even worse than a draconic gnome. Our kin treat us as such, attempts to end us. Most of us are too young to survive that. The rest of us may be luckier to at least live to fight for it. Exiled, abandoned, or ignored. We are, but they don't know what we are. It frightens our kin.

It's a reality. We exist. And our existence threatens what we believe.

The Queen did not deliver us. The Ninefold did.

There's no simplicity when the two opposites of the same coin can exist in the same... individual. Our simplicity is our greatest strength and weakness, our illusion of simplicity. The effect it has on such things as morale. As to what we perceive, what our kin fights for.

In our simplicity, there's unity. All of us work in unison to the same goal, we toil as one. We are one. There's no divergence, for we are all the same, we are all Hers, and we all act for Her will, for Kurtulmak's, for the Shrouded One. We act without reservation. We are Right, we are Just, we are the Law. We are the afflicted, and we deserve our vengeance. We crusade with the blessing of our divines. We are all that is right in the world. And everything else deserves the death and suffering that we bring. We cannot fail, the gods are on our side.

There's power in such belief.

Belief alone the mountain moves not. Will does.

And the will of our kin is dust.

Us, the mistakes, we want to help. Some of us at least. We try to, but what we are, it conflicts with them, and few of us can hide it. Fewer of us want to. To some extent, we are proud. We are proud to be able to be proud. It's another thing that makes us part of the "them". We are not kin to our kin. We are them. The rest, like the Races of the Dark.

The Races of the Dark, we've always hated them, with passion and good reason. But they've known to do something that we haven't, to prevail. Something that we cannot do, it goes beyond what we want to do. It makes things complicated.

To make allies of our enemies has proven hard.

We see all this, from the outside. From beyond the warrens and tribes, from the Clans. We see it, beyond the speeches of the Watchers, from where we cannot hear their words, where we can see clearly. Act and consequence. We see failure, and an eternal short-lived cycle. We see our kin build, we see them attract undesired attention, and eventually succumb, scatter, regroup, rebuild and try again. We've seen this, we've been hearing this song for as long as we've existed.

And our kin wouldn't listen to us.

For, we aren't supposed to be.

And we aren't supposed to know.

And they aren't supposed to know either.