AbydosBoard

I'd like to revisit this, and offer my response to it. While I do not necessarily disagree with your ruling here, I also believe that your ruling abandons several important points.

The Eye of Abydos is, In fact the most supreme law of the land. As Section 2 states, it does superceded all other documents in the region, and that includes the Abydos Axioms. Where, I think there may be a confusion, if you will, is in the understanding of the relationship between these documents. I believe that when one understands the relation between these documents, any thought of contradiction will be eliminated. I tend to view it like this: If you were to ask "What is Abydos?", the Eye is your answer, but if you were to ask Why?, then the Axioms is your answer.

The Axioms were written first, written in a time when there were no laws, legislation or constitution. They do not claim to be superior to anything legalistically, and yet they have remained at the core of everything we do. Why is this?

The Axioms are like our foundation, our reason for being. They are synonymous to, say the Declaration of Independence of the United States, they provide our reasoning to do what we do. With this strong foundation, everything else has been built. From these, we wrote the Eye, to stand atop this strong foundation and from there, we have the society that we do because of it. No matter how Grand we build up, it expand out, at its core are 13 basic ideas which support it.

Not only is it a foundation, but like a seed, it has the ability to continually provide life. We as a region have not had the opportunity to witness total collapse. Should Abydos fall, the Eye be ruined, and our proverbial city to be bombed out, burnt down, or otherwise destroyed either by our own negligence and pride, or by outside forces, The Eye can be destroyed, our society collapsed, but beneath that rubble exists an idea, the Axioms, which if adopted can serve again as our foundation and we can build anew.

I think it is false to equate the Eye with the Axioms, despite their obvious symbiotic nature. One is the rock upon which we build, the other is the building which shelters us. The shelter can be destroyed, but that rock can not.

As an Oracle, and indeed as all citizens, we are obligated to abide by our Eye of Abydos. The Axioms tell us how. I believe this should not be forgotten. If this is done perfectly, there will never be a contradiction, there will never be a reason to question it. If we fail at this most basic of tasks, and forget our reasonings to exist and our way in which we should forge our actions, then it is our duty to either stomp it out. If that can not be done, we risk losing everything but the very idea which was born with this place for we can be robbed of all our possessions, but can never be robbed of our ideas.

An Oracle protects those ideas with the same ferociousness as you would seek to protect your house if someone was attempting to destroy the foundation upon which it was built. Not only that, but when called, you interpret the laws. This is achieved by first insuring conformity with the Eye if Abydos, which itself required the conformity of the 13 Abydos Axioms. Lastly, you spread that foundational idea and teach. To not teach a generation about these fundamentals is to insure that they will be the last generation and our light will extinguish.

This issue isn't about power, as the lenses of your view shape it with your words above. This issue is about maintaining our own existence as we define it, as we have so chosen. These matters are not about what power it has, or what is gained or what is achieved. These documents are our humanly attempt at not losing what we have. The Axioms werent written for fun or to add a new quirk to an interesting reason, but because the threat of actual loss is real and merciless. To lose the Eye is to lose everything we have created. To lose the Axioms is to lose our very legacy, our soul. The Curse of the Ancients, written in the Eye sums this up beautifully:

By the blessings of the Ancients who inhabited these lands before us, Abydos shall forever be protected from calamity and destruction. Those who seek to desecrate this law of Abydos through illegal nullification, exploitation, circumvention, abolishment, manipulation, revolution, or to otherwise cause discord shall be cursed by the Ancients who guard this land and banished. Likewise, Abydos itself shall be lost to the sands, should we as a people forget our Axioms, stray from the lineage here established for the Grand Luxarch, or seek personal glory before the glory of this place.

Despite the glaring threats of our extinguishment littered throughout the Eye of Abydos, its promulgation, its curse, the Axioms, and in other historic writings, this threat of either forgetting or rebelling is very real, and creeps in many regions from time to time. When left unchecked, regions collapse. Abydos is no different in this regard. We are just as much capable of losing everything as any other region out there. Since our founding, several major regions have collapsed after years or decades of existence. We as a region should not be so arrogant as to think it can not happen to us. It can. I can be smitten out tomorrow by the mods, the region can be invaded if no founder exists, and the people can lose interest and decide it is not worth it. All of these things could happen, and in time, are very likely to happen. The Eye and our Axioms are there, in part, to remind us of this threat and to adjust our actions in a way which both prevents it and provides a way at which we can continue on. The Abydos Axioms can be applied to any region and their core ideas still be true. The Eye can just about do the same thing. With these seeds of life in our hands, given to us to protect, no threat, no destruction, no annhialation can ever possibly be total unless we, ourselves, or of those we teach forget. That is what these documents are, why they are the way they are, their relationship to one another, and our salvation if we so need them to be.

Katniss Everdean wrote:

You know who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of nations...the Shadow knows.