"This League once held promise," said Taleus, the Barentine Nuncio, "there was promise here once, and you all know it! A promise of prosperity, and wealth, and fertile years. A promise full of hope."

He was full of bristle and bluster, just as he always was. Just as his state always was. A more hamfisted metaphor Arkato couldn't believe, but here he was yet again - the Chancellor of the League, listening to unending Barentine complaints.

Stars, they never ended.

"And yet, here we are. Centuries later. Centuries! And what happened to that promise? Politics. Utter politics! We cast out the Nayranians, true enough. But then when we were meant to go after them and put them down, this council hemmed and hawed, just like it always hems and haws while it collects its taxes. All the while doing nothing. Nothing, stars damn it! Nothing!"

"Are you going somewhere with this, Taleus?" said the Dargan Nuncio. It sure looked like he wasn't.

"Silence, Petorim, silence! I'll not have yet more of your Darganic humor. It does naught but piss me off."

"If we stopped doing anything that pisses you off then we'd at home," said another Nuncio. A chortle, a laugh, and a smattering of snickers from the other twenty-odd nuncios and their subshamans. Once Arkato might've laughed with them. Once.

"Well maybe we should be," said Taleus, "since this whole league has proven to be little but an utter waste of time. Ever since the Yarell Rebellion, there has been nothing, and before that it had been another twenty years before we got off of our dusty asses and got something done. There is no purpose to this league. There is no benefit. The Lord of Barent has been sending taxes for nothing. Nothing at all!" the Barentine said with an angry cackle. Arkato figured he'd ranted himself out again, and decided that once more - he ought to correct the blowhard, at least for the sake of completeness.

"Yes, thank you for that Nuncio Taleus, but once again the tributes brought to this-" said Arkato, eyes drooping as he gesticulated those same old motions at the start of his explanation.

"And that's another thing! All of your... you! Arkato, 'chancellor.' 'Oppressor' more like it. How long have you been on this chancellor? Twenty years? Thirty? Forty?" It was, in fact, Arkato's fourth, and yet it felt like he'd aged four hundred, "Aren't we supposed to appoint a chancellor? Isn't that our right?" said the Barentine. It was, in fact, not, and that was the case for nearly two hundred years.

Arkato sighed, "Taleus, if you would please..."

"No! I do not please. I will not please any longer! Barent will not please any longer!"

"Oh stars..." said Arkato.

"As of this moment right now, Barent moves to suspend the league, and discuss its revision and dissolution! This has gone on too long, and it will go no longer!"

Arkato sighed even more loudly, "Very well. The Chancery has heard a motion to... 'suspend the league.' Not that that actually means anything, but is there a second."

No, there was not. A silence hung, but Arkato felt that he could feel Taleus seethe.

"Are you satisfied, Nuncio?"

"I am most certainly not, Chancellor! I will not suffer your political shenanigans! I shall second myself!"

"No, no you won't," said Arkato, "and since you're going to proceed with this nonsense for the rest of the day..." rest of the month, more like, "...the Chancery moves to table proceedings for the remainder of the day. Is there a second."

A cacophony of seconds. Even a man who said 'Third!' That joke might've been funny once or twice, but it tired after the seventeenth.

"Very well. You're all dismissed," said Arkato.

"SIT YOUR ASSES BACK DOWN, DO YOU HEAR ME?!" said Taleus.

"Now get out," said Arkato as he got up and left for his abode. His migrane had returned, and he felt like having an ale.