Record:Tune in to RLR2!
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[Action. Minutes after sunset, a button is pressed inside a studio in Padeno. The entire island tunes their receivers to Radio La Rossa 2.]
[Advisor Morobaldi sits upon a podium, giving a final glance to his Deysachni challenger. The nationally unpopular Rossan rebel stands in a quaint position, placing his own nation on trial. The tension between them is broken as the debate moderator opens his mouth. The rules of the debate are concisely explained for the listeners at home. The end of his speech ends with a question.]
Moderator: "...why should La Rossa continue to work with the nations of the wider archipelago?"
Qôl: There is much to be had economically from trade with other nations. La Rossa, and the people within, stand to gain immensely from foreign wealth and innovations. And we states outside La Rossa have as much to gain similarly.
Advisor Morobaldi: Bah! What do my working constituents have to gain from what lines the pockets of the Families? That they lost their seat in Padeno just proves my point. The people of this nation are starting to feel what it's like to be abandoned by our government.
Qôl: I do not say that it is just the Families who seek to benefit. Free trade means free, trade. If anything, I see trade with foreign markets as a way for the common man to build his own fortune.
Advisor Morobaldi: Yet it is what we see, it is what the people feel. The Dux had good personal reason to pursue his agenda. Our revolt 40 years ago had clearly not gone far enough. That they managed to recover a fraction of their wealth after it was taken is a travesty.
Qôl: It will always be there are those who are more wealthy than others. In Deysachin, it once was that there were many kingdoms, and in many of them the ruling elite cared little for the people. When Lord Modhes Ywl came and did away with them all, he found he could not simply do away with aristocracy, and so created his own new one, the priesthood. But there was a difference you see, for Lord Ywl ensured that only the competent would rule. Any who were self serving, or lazy, or apathetic, they would be pruned. What it is I say, is that it does not matter that there are the rich, but that it is that the rich are those who of good merit. With La Rossa open to foreign markets, any man can rise through his own will to equal the Families. Then it shall be that wealth is found not just among the powerful, and as such power will not be found not just among the wealthy.
Advisor Morobaldi: Tolia continues to suffer, as it always has under the Dux! Government contracts go to his men, the old nobility buys back what it has lost. What little we see are scraps off their plates, riches gained by trading with the despots outside our borders. Have we not spent thousands of years in self-sufficiency?
Qôl: you have, and so have many other states. La Rossa cannot sit back idle as the rest of the world moves past them! What if, in a hundred years time, Akaria comes knocking, and they say "you will give us what we want, and we will take it by force if you resist"? They will crush you, for in that hundred years they have become far more advanced than you. It is better then, to trade now, to improve the state through means of trade, to build relations with allies, so that you are not crushed. Deysachin has learned this well, and now it is a power itself.
Advisor Morobaldi: When violence and anger comes clamping down on him, the Rossan has proved in the past that he will stand up against it!
What have we seen in these relations that we have built? Our navy stands in tatters, our relationships are floating upon smokes of dhaas! Our fearless leaders have been preparing a vacation in Nieuyjar, from what I hear, ready to cleans their lungs with their air.
Qôl: La Rossa has been in the wider world for merely five years. In this time, you have become close allies with Deysachin, the rising power of the day, Okrit, a pivotal block in the northern trade, and Utlia, the biggest economic powerhouse of the archipelago. I would not call that nothing.
Advisor Morobaldi: You don't have to travel far to see how much our island has been beaten by such agreements. The House of Light entrenched itself upon land taken from our island of Soluga. Is there a better way of showing how we have been sold to the whims of foreign powers and interests?
Qôl: Lighthouse island has not been lost, it is a prime example of cooperation and mutual gain! Deysachin has been on the island in some capacity since the time of Saint Sarrhu, over a century ago. When La Rossa and Deysachin looked ready to war over the isle, what occured? A miracle! Now the island is a mutual property of both, as well as Okrit, and it stands as a monument to the fact that men of all nations can coexist and cooperate.
Advisor Morobaldi: Preposterous! A miracle it was, only for those who benefitted from it! Does the Rossan worker have anything to gain from his country being sold to the dogs, chewing and tearing his industry up? Where the Rossan once ate alone, he now shares his table with five others...
[It does not end. Not anytime soon, at the very least. Even as it is seeming to be winding down, another burst of energy fills the plump, mustachioed man. No sense or reason lines his words anymore. And then - a loud buzz shakes the room. The radio emission has been taken off air. Abruptly, RLR2 switches to its regularly scheduled news program, and the audience waiting is left with nothing but time to spend pondering their thoughts.]