December 21, 3014

Dread sovereign,

I am writing to you having just arrived in the new capital city of the province of Over-The-Eastern-River, where I will be spending some time with Royal Governor Guillaume Septimus, who is the older brother of the diplomat I spoke with previously who negotiated with the Western Forest people in North Bravia. It may seem unusual, even to Bravians, that a diplomat would travel so heavily in a country outside of anything that could be considered as an embassy or a consulate, but considering the security needs of our nation, I feel it is worthwhile to examine the effort that Bravians are undertaking in internal development as a demonstration of their lack of interest in expanding in other countries at this time. At least by my observation, Bravia has three internal provinces where there is heavy expansion: the Over-The-Eastern-River is receiving the most attention at this time, and thus has been of particular interest to me in observing how the development is proceeding. In addition, the Fremen are being settled in the Eastern River Delta province, which is having to be built up entirely from scratch with a refugee population, including military fortifications given the threat from _______. In addition, though the Bravians do not appear to be focusing on it at this time, there is the strong possibility of development of infrastructure in North Bravia if they are able ot move beyond the Western forest, and this would open up yet another fresh area for Bravian settlement, which would tax their capabilities even further htan they are already to settle whatever is beyond that forest, which has not been surveyed or mapped yet.

On top of all of this, there is a possibility that the Bravians will gain large territory in our neighbor and may even conquer the entire country–having seen the might of the Bravian military, and their willingness to completely wipe out their enemies, it is possible that _______ and its elites may be wiped completely out of existence. A Bravia that is settling five provinces is not going to be interested in expanding at this time to our own area. While this is certainly favorable in the short term, though, it only makes our long term strategic dilemma more severe, because the expansion of Bravia into these lands will give it a higher demographic basis, and the possibility of having yet more land to pour into may allow the Bravian fertility rate to remain high for generations, which means that they will only become bigger and stronger and more difficult for other nations to deal with. We are already hard pressed to be able to deal with Bravia given its current strength, and a Bravia that has fully settled four or five more provinces while maintaining its research and development advantages would make them impossible for us to challenge. The peace efforts you are working on here will pay dividends for your son in allowing him to inherit a nation where he has likely two fewer nations to worry about than you have had during your reign, and I hope he is appreciative of the gift of peace that you will give him.

I do not wish to tax your patience with more recommendations at this time but I do believe it is necessary for me to explain the journey I took from New Porterville, at the very gateway to the province of Over-The-Eastern-River to Cueva Septimus, which is the new capital of the province which is just being opened, and whose opening I was able to observe as a guest of the Bravian government. (I hasten to add that I was neither the only nor the highest ranked of the ambassadors who visited the occasion. However, none of the other ambassadors came from nations of interest to us. The Bravians have a close relationship with a variety of what I understand to be smaller nations to the west of the Western River as well as north and east of their territory near the Eastern River. While none of these nations are of interest on their own, though, it should be noted that their close relationship, which includes strong mutual defense and optional offensive pacts, serves to make the Bravians still stronger in conflict, though I am assuming that these relationships are largely defensive in nature, as the alternatives are far too terrible to consider concerning Bravian power. There is the additional language that while some of the people of these nations speak languages that are close to Low Bravian, they have their own languages that we do not speak and so engaging in diplomacy with them is a challenge, as I have found in my own discussions. If you wish, though, I will give suggestions as to how these nations and their potential strength and use to us may be ascertained.)

It has taken about six days or so of horrible travel to get from New Porterville to here. I thought that North Bravia was rugged territory, but that was easy territory compared to this new province, which lacks even the towns and villages that we found in North Bravia where we were abl4e to stop and eat within a few hours of each other. As it happens, the vast majority of current Amphoe within the province of Over-The-Easter-River are in one of two locations, and that is in the area just east of the Eastern River which–like New Porterville–have easy trading access with already developed land in Middle, and to a lesser extent North Bravia, both through rivers as well as through roads. Before too long, though, one gets off of the good roads and moves to considerably rougher territory. As the quality of roads deteriorates in the areas east of the Eastern River and its immediate neighborhood, travel becomes pretty slow as one has to deal with unpaved and unimproved paths where small villages may be found. Indeed, in many of these cases travelers must bring their own gasoline supplies as gas stations are not to be found in many of these areas, at least at present. Our route was slow because it is simply suicidal to waste precious hours of time and gallons of gasoline driving in the wet conditions of weather in December when they are less than ideal. Two whole days were lost entirely to waiting for a blizzard to melt in the foothills to the mountains that rise along the western edge of the new province that make up an international border. Another whole day was spent riding on donkeys moving uphill from the nearest point where we could travel by vehicle to get to the new provincial capital, which is in a secure area of mountainside close to that eastern border of the province in some very high mountains where it is possible for people to get altitude sickness. I do not wish to exaggerate matters but the conditions in the area are extremely primitive.

It appears that at least some of that primitive development, as is the case in North Bravia, is deliberate. The need to travel up the hill to Cueva Septimus by donkey (as Bravisns are militant against the creation of sterile animals by mules crossbreading species) appears to be designed to keep the capital from being rapidly overrun, with the High Bravian mountain people being able to make roadblocks and mount ambushes on any force that comes through the mountains. Still, it appears that the vast majority of the difficulty of traveling through the new province is due to their lack of development. From what I can gather, it has only been a short time since this province has been opened, and so it is little wonder that initial settlement has focused on developing those areas closest to the existing Bravian territories. It is hard to extrapolate given what we see, but it seems pretty likely that it will only take a generation or two for the new province to be fully developed to be something like another Middle Bravia, which is the most populous province of Bravia proper, which would give the Bravians some considerable strength, along with the potential of driving another path north through the Eastern forest to settle new territory if they are able to make the same deal with the Eastern forest people that they are looking to make with the Western forest people right now.

The big question that we and any other nation that has to deal with the Bravians around the Southern Sea have is how many things can Bravians do at the same time when it comes to development. If Southeast Bravia is focused on helping provide logistical help to the Eastern Delta Province, Southwestern Bravia is settling up new trading posts across the Western River among friendly allied neighbors and across the Southern sea in the ___________ territory, and North Bravia is engaged in some internal development in preparation for a push towards the north, it seems very unlikely that Bravia will have an interest in engaging in an intense settlement of any of our own territories. There is only so much that a nation can focus on at the same time, and Bravia is already growing in all directions at present. What is concerning to us is not that Bravia will suddenly try to invade other countries, as it is very disinclined to do so, but there is one attitude that Bravians have that I consider to be worthy of warning you about. The Bravians, as I have said, have a high respect for property rights, both an intense interest in acquiring property for themselves as well as a respect for the property rights of others. That said, Bravians consider any land that is not platted as being open for settlement. Land that is left open with no improvements made to it, no marking of boundaries or setting up of infrastructure or anything of that nature is considered to be open land that they are free to take and develop for themselves. It is the tradition in our country, and in many of our neighbors, to have a large amount of land that is set aside for the enjoyment of you, your family, and those close to you, in order to engage in “hunts” of what is unspoiled territory that others are forbidden from developing on. Such territories would, unless they are clearly marked out as some sort of national park or grassland or forest, be considered to be open territories.

I want to stress to you that from my observation, the behavior of Bravians in open land is pretty shocking. Their ability to group up and immediately settle good land as a jumping off point for further development would immediately jeopardize our hold on valuable and important territories. This is something that we must avoid, so I recommend that when we finish our negotiations with Bravia concerning the establishment of trading posts that we need to clearly demarcate the land that we are setting aside for royal pasture and parkland. This will be necessary to keep that land from being innocently but irrevocably repurposed as Bravian settlement and farmland, for once Bravians are in a territory it is going to be nearly impossible for us to dislodge them, especially as they become stronger and even more numerous as a result of their expansion. I think it is worth pointing out that I highly value the Bravians and deeply respect them on a personal level. I have always found them to be honest and fair dealers, and their reputation for probity is no mere puffery. They have a genuine ethos of service and have a strong moral push across their entire culture to refrain from taking advantage of others based on their strength or knowledge. Yet they are a people who is continually seeking space to fill, and that makes them a people whom everyone near them must be concerned about. For example, there are some rumors that have come to me that the province of Across-The-Eastern-River was originally the southern third of a nation and that the problem that nation had with the people of the Eastern forest kept that land from being explored or even settled despite having been claimed for decades. The Bravians, seeing the land to be empty, are now in the process of filling it with what is likely to be something on the order of a million and a half or more Bravians, and once that is done no force under heaven will be able to remove them from that land without a horrific struggle. We must take precautions to keep this from happening to our own precious lands.