it is done. we will have peace again, as it was meant to be.

the black cloud rises from the burning place, ash pouring once more into nighttime skies.  With that smoke rises our hope up to the stars. What friends fed themselves to the smoke this time I wonder, i must not forget their sacrifice.

The angry voices grow quiet below as the smoke spreads. Tar-Gowen’s followers who protested so loudly before the ceremony stand silent as the ash cloud drugs them into apathy and calm. Tar-Gowen will not stay mollified long however, she has seen this sight too often and the dust has changed her too much for her to forget her furry. Does she not see the dedication in the burned?  Does she not see what they have done for peace?

Sap boiling in splitting trunks that moan as white fire devours them from the inside. It must not be an easy death... but they burn so that we can buy the safety we have always enjoyed. 

The price is high but paid willingly.  How many of us have given themselves to the pyre now i wonder?  How many millions have fed themselves to the furness? Even the deep grown ones do not know how many Groves have burned for centuries of peace. The price is high. I Now wonder if war would truly be worse than this repeating ritual of agony we impose on ourselves. 

Tar-Gowen cries out for change, to end the burning at any cost.  She claims that war is a lesser evil than peace enforced through suicidal fire. she claims that a war has an ending but that this perpetual sacrifice has no end.  could she be right? could her desire for blood and violence actually be the moral path?  In my own pacifism am I perpetuating a far worse crime than war?  

Looking up at the star filled sky I am struck by the size of it all.  We are spreading into a galaxy full of life with millions of world's, thousands of species.  I want to see hope in those stars but now i see blazing bonfires in the dark.  Every sun merely a furness hungrily awaiting our arrival.  A whole galaxy of burning unfallen drugging billions more into submission with the ashes of their own blackend corpses.   I see a future of peace bought with horrible suffering that never ends.  Is this madness?

I should feel distress. No. I was distressed, I suppose, a moment ago.  I might have raged and wept, but the ash blots out the stars now. The black cloud rises around to embrace me. I feel a tranquil calm, a wonderful peace.

Tar-Gowen is wrong. I was wrong. What was I thinking? This tranquility I feel is worth any price, no matter how often it must be paid.  We shall grow and fill all the Galaxy with ourselves.

we will have peace forever.

until we light the fires again.

I like the extremism of absolute pacifism.  Just because they won't stab anyone dosnt make them good or altruistic.  The unfallen are probubly the most morraly corrupt race in endless space.  The cravers will kill you and eat you but they need to do that to survive and they never lie to anyone about it.  Cravers are even kinda honourable in a scary way, they don't even pretend to declair peace.  The unfallen on the other hand manage to avoid war by enslaveing populations with addictive drugs which they make by burning there own citizens alive!  And the unfallen have the nerve, the audacity to call that peace.

That is some 1984 level dark twisted thinking.

Also the smoke drug does not fix what made people violent or unhappy.    The smoke either gets people so high that they can't act on there anger and discontent OR the smoke makes them incapable of feeling anything at all

Both those possibilities are horrifying.

Imagine your brother is a soldier and is killed by the unfallen who you are at war with.  Then a bunch of unfallen land on your planet,  and like a wave of suiside bombers they find large population centres, light themselves on fire and as black smoke fills cities you stop hearing news.  Broadcasters sit drooling at there news desks. Police and firefighters stand around grinning at the scene of the attack.  The cloud reaches you and suddenly you are higher then you imagined you could be. You can't think, can't feel, can't resist. You are instantly addicted to a drug you never chose to take.  That drug makes it impossible for you to be aggressive or upset in any way. You want to tell the unfallen that you don't feel like yourself and that you don't want there drug.  But the drug stops you from seeking conflict and so you can't say anything.  With horror You find that you can't remember your brothers name. Remembering his death at the hands of the unfallen would create negative thoughts so the drug removes the memory and the desire to remember.  You know you are unhappy but can do nothing about it. The unfallen move onto your planet, they plant themselves on your lawn.  You cannot bring yourself to tell them to leave... The drug is too strong.  You want to scream but have forgotten how. You are a slave and the drug ensures that all your thoughts are slaveish.  All you can do is stumble about hopeing that a tree will commit suiside so you can re-up your high...

That may be the most terrifying thing I can imagine