December 12, 3014

Most Dread Sovreign,

I have, I must admit, recently made perhaps the most harrowing journey yet in Bravia. After my return from my previous assignment where I witnessed the strange dealings of the Forest people who are allied to the Bravians and who may be coming to forests near us, which would be a very surprising and perhaps even an unwelcome outcome, it was not long while I was resting and cooling my heels in the capital before I got your instructions as to what kind of treaty that you wished for me to pursue with the nation of Bravia. From what I can tell there are a variety of possible treaties that could be feasibly achieved in time, but the choice of a Non-Aggression Pact as an initial treaty does appear to me to be the right move, especially when combined with the trade treaty you are pursuing at the same time with the Free Port of Bravia for mutual free trade. It may be possible for us to do better than this, but this is a very good start to our relationship, and I will pursue the treaty with you and inform you of how negotiations proceed.

Indeed, I do wish to inform you that when I expressed to the Exilarch your desire to pursue a Non-Aggression Pact, I was told that there was a standard format for these things that would serve as the basis for conversation, and that while an acceptance of these terms would lead to an immediate acceptance, that any deviations from these accepted and standard terms would require negotiation and passage by the whole Grand Parliament. I hesitate to tell you exactly what ought to be done as you know your own mind better than I and I do not wish to exceed my own competence or place, but I can see no immediate dealbreakers within the standard terms. What appears to be to be the most complicated term is that the acceptance of a Non-Aggression Pact allows the free travel of Bravian people into our land as well as their settlement and being able to live under Bravian laws and according to Bravian ways. At least from what I have seen, Bravians tend to move into an area not individually as people or merely in family groups but frequently in larger communities that create a settlement that exists under Bravian municipal law and contains a ready group of people capable of running all of the functions of a town capable of and interest in self-rule, including religious freedom as well as the training of a well-organized local militia capble of considerable self-defense. Apparently, from what I was told, any nation that wishes to have any sort of official relationship with Bravia must recognize Bravia as at least an equal–no terms of inferiority are to be accepted–and with full freedom of Bravian citizens to trade and settle within free areas of the other nation. From what I understand, this is also true of the Free Trade Treaty proposed with Bravia, which includes a stipulation that Bravian trading posts are liable to be placed wherever the Bravians are able to obtain land as well as build some sort of dock or marina or obtain long-term contracts to use existing port facilities to the same effect. I will leave it according to your judgement whether or not these terms are acceptable to you.

I do, however, believe that I can provide some independent evidence as to what it means for Bravians to settle in an area, and what is involved with that. I have told you already of the perhaps cautionary tale of the Fremen and how it was that our neighbors in the Kingdom of ___________ found that they bit off more than they could chew by attempting twice to surprise attack the people of Bravia, first in their trading posts and surrounding farmlands within their own national territory and then by foolishly allowing their entire fleet to be drawn into a naval battle of annihilation in the home waters of Bravia. I trust that we are not as foolish as our enemies are in such matters, but our neighbors are so foolish that it is quite possible that we will end up being the neighbors of Bravia after their war is finished, and thus our relationship with them will take on a much more urgent nature if and when they directly border us instead of trading across the span of an ocean or from fairly small trading posts on a nearby coast. Bravians are a hardy and expansive settling people and there is a lot of open land that we have where they might see it fit to build settlements. What I wish to do is to give to you a couple of accounts, taken from my own firsthand observations, as to what is involved when Bravians engage in settlement so that you may be equipped to determine if you wish this to happen within our own territories as has happened in many areas closer to Bravia and will likely continue at a high rate given the Bravian natural increase and their attitude towards expansion.

I have been invited to travel to the province of Over-The-Eastern-River, which I have judged from the appearance of their Amphoe representatives to be a pretty rough frontier province, and am scheduled to spend a great deal of time in two places, namely the Amphoe of New Porterville, and the Provincial Capital of Cueva Septimus, which is apparently about ready to be introduced to the world with me as one of the representatives at its opening ceremony as the new provincial capital in a range of mountains at the far Eastern edge of the province where suitable territory has been found for the characteristic Bravian mixture of secure caves for royal governors, open flat land for legislative discussion, and nearby high places for the construction of a provincial temple as well as the settlement of High Bravian watch posts to protect the capital from sudden incursions from neighboring areas. While it is clear that my tour will not include the viewing of any critical security areas, it does allow me the chance to meet the older brother of Prince Robert, who has established himself as a provincial governor and who will provide a fair example of someone who can serve as a possible type of the person who will be sent to work with us should Bravia create any provinces nearby in the land of _______, which will be very vulnerable to Bravian conquest now that their navy has been consigned to Davy Jone’s Locker.

While I do not think it would be possible to convey to you in story form exactly what is involved when Bravians settle an area, I hope through my view of new Bravian settlements and how they operate that I may give you at least a flavor of how quickly Bravians settle areas and provide them with the rudiments of self-government as well as the infrastructure necessary for trade and Bravia’s religious practices. I know, based on your comments to me, that you were particularly interested in knowing more about the Bravian religious practices to make sure how they matched with our own, and I thought that this would be a good time to give a brief explanation of the Bravian religious system as it is highly complicated and not something that is well-understood by most people who write inaccurately about Bravia.

It should be noted at the forefront that Bravia as a whole is considered to be a nation of priests. The entire people, as near as I can tell, has at least some ancestral connection to the tribe of Levi, many of them with the priesthood of Aaron. However, only those who are Zadokite priests and who can show an ancestry on the paternal line to this particular part of the priesthood serve as religious authorities within the nation as a whole. That said, every Bravian household has the ability to have its own specific laws written as a code and shared with neighbors and others, and thus can perform some priestly duties within the household as a whole. I do not wish to go into a detailed discussion of Bravian law, but at least some mention of it is useful here as Bravian law exists on a variety of levels, starting from the bottom up. Each individual household has its own laws, negotiated between the parties and including common standards and enforcement procedures, that are agreed upon by all of the members of the household, and renegotiated and amended as necessary when conditions change. Each neighborhood has its own covenants that govern the behavior of people within home and again requiring common consent and negotiation. This is true of districts within cities as well as cities themselves, and also districts that surround the communities known as Amphoe as well as smaller individual hamlets, villages, boroughs, and the like within them. Provinces have their own body of law and there are other laws that exist on a national level for those areas of common concern, and which serve as minimum standards that can be exceeded but not lowered by provinces and other levels of government. In all cases, the law requires common consent and negotiation before it takes effect and it can be a lengthy process to ensure the code of laws unless a Bravian settlement is formed from another settlement and takes the laws of the mother city as their own laws, as is frequently the case, so that people may continue to live under the standards and ways that they are accustomed to in a new environment, to be edited as conditions require but starting from a place of familiarity. The same is also frequently true of household codes of law as well. I won’t bore you with the details, but this is a key aspect of Bravian religious law, that laws are not forced from above but are agreed to mutually between parties via free and informed consent.

Moving on from Bravian law, Bravian religious practice is striking in many areas. All Bravians, being Levites, pay a tithe to support the religious establishment within their areas. This tithe, which is known as the first tithe (there are three of them), supports those people who serve in the local religious establishment, involved in preaching, teaching, music, security, and other concerns, all of which are viewed as being part of the religious establishment, which even includes baking and catering for church events. A second tithe is saved by individual Bravians as well as households and pays for the attendance of Bravians at the three missionary feasts that take place throughout the year, at minimum at the provincial temple locations, and for those who can afford it at the chief temple at the capital of Bravia. The first of these festivals is in the spring of the year, which involves the celebration of the death and resurrection of the Messiah, whom we call Jesus Christ, as well as the eating of unleavened bread and the avoidance of leavened bread. The second festival is about seven weeks later, for a brief festival called Pentecost or the Feast of Weeks, which takes place in early summer. The third set of festivals begins halfway through the Bravian year, which is a lunar-solar year of twelve or thirteen months, beginning on the first day of the seventh month, with a fast some nine days later and a festival of eight days later beginning on the full moon, where the Bravians live in temporary dwellings. A third tithe is paid every three years, based on the schedule of land, and is used to support the poor, especially widows, orphans, and foreigners who are unable to access land and who are in a vulnerable economic position. In addition to these three tithes the Bravian people pay a taxation that is no greater than a tithe for all other governmental functions, most of which are served by people who are chosen by their neighbors and associates to represent them in some capacity or who are selected for civil service as a part of the priestly establishment to serve as judges or as secretaries or counselors to rulers at various levels.

From the foregoing, it can be easily understood that the Bravian people take the Bible very seriously, and live in the fashion of a nation governed by the Old Testament laws that nevertheless also lives under the New Covenant of Grace, where laws are nonetheless written on the hearts and in the minds and are freely assented to by people who internalize the law and seek to understand its logic and apply it to all areas of life. It is fortunate that the Bravians rule with a light touch and that the most important sort of regulation within Bravia is self-regulation, as the Bravian tendency to codify law and practice could be very damaging in a world that was regulated by self-government and instead believed as most nations do on imposing laws from above without seeking or desiring the consent of the governed. Bravia’s intense focus on consent means that while Bravians are in general a deeply regulated people who behave in very proper and consistent ways, they do so by their free choice and not because they are pressured or forced to do so, and that seems to make all the difference. I could go on and on about this point, but I do not wish to bore you, and rather think that there is a better way to explain myself, and that is by telling you a story, when I can find it, of how Bravian settlement and how their priesthood operate.

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