It is right and proper that every citizen of Hallifax should have a deep love for his comrades. I do not refer to romantic love, nor that which is felt between friends, or family, or even for objects of admiration. I refer to a love that is deeper, more profound, and even more rarely felt. It is a unique love, found only between those who live within the noble spires of Hallifax. It is a love of the noblest and deepest kind, rooted in deep trust and affection and tempered by harmony.

This deep love was embodied by two paragons of the Collective who spent their entire lives united by both their love for each other and their dutiful devotion to the Collective. These two men, Etuo Shevat and Haralo Windwhisper, served the Collective with both honor and excellence in the earliest stages of its history. The records that remain of their lives are fragmented, and the details must be drawn from many sources and pieced together. This account of their noble lives has been assembled with some difficulty, and it must be recognized that there is a chance of inaccuracy in such matters.

Nonetheless the records of the lives of these two men are surprisingly intact, given the number of years that have passed since their deaths. That records exist in any form is a testament to their great virtue and achievements, and thus in spite of the risk of error in determining the details of their lives, the study of such an account is likely to be of great use to any true Collectivist.

Etuo Shevat and Haralo Windwhisper were born to their noble families on the same day, at the very start of Spring. Etuo was the older of the two by several hours, which gave him the opportunity to witness the birth of his future comrade Haralo, for their mothers were close friends and gave birth side by side.

Although the two boys came from different parents, and although Etuo was born a lucidian and Harolo a trill, they seemed to share a special bond from the very moment of their birth. Etuo had been in tears from the very moment of his birth until his eyes first fell upon Haralo, at which point his tears ended. From that point on, neither of the boys would shed so much as a single tear unless he was parted from the other.

The pair grew quickly, and it was soon apparent that they were and always would be stronger and quicker than many of their peers. This physical excellence was matched by their intellectual potential, which was quite evident in both of the children.

While some portion of this is likely due to their excellent ancestry, the greater part of their excellence must be attributed to their influence on each other. Neither would permit the other to rest when he could instead be exercising or studying. When Haralo first learned to read and write, Etuo urged him to practice ceaselessly until he was a poet. When Etuo was first exposed to the simple games of strategy employed to cultivate potential military officers, Haralo would not rest in encouraging him until Etuo could best his instructors.

Thus the two boys spurred each other on towards excellence as they grew from little boys into tall and strong men. They came of age on the same day, and on that day they began their training as military officers in the Collective's service. They excelled in their training not only in aeromantic techniques and swordplay, but also in the arts of strategy and command. They proved to be meticulous in every aspect of their training, from the mastery of their skills to the maintenance of their uniforms and personal appearance, which they held to the highest standards.

The Hallifaxian High Command knew better than to separate the two men who had such a strong bond. They were issued a joint command and deployed with their troops to fight the enemies of the state. They distinguished themselves in this capacity. Etuo Shevat proved himself to be a master of battlefield tactics, with a great talent for deploying a small number of troops to achieve a large effect. His excellence was in the cold calculations of command and the swift allocation of resources in response to new information. In contrast, Haralo's place was that of the commander of the battle line, for he was capable of inspiring soldiers in battle, and for quickly responding to unforeseen problems.

They were rightly lauded for their individual skills, but their true greatness lay with their synergy. Acting together, the two proved themselves to be amongst the greatest field commanders of their day. This evident greatness led to their deployment against a dwarven fortress in the mountains which appeared to serve as a base of operations for agents of the Illuminati in their covert attacks on the Collective. This fortress had resisted several attacks by other commanders, and it was hoped that the pair would succeed where their comrades had failed.

The fortress was a gigantic structure of stone, with a bizarre gate built of flesh and framed in gold. This gate had resisted all of the conventional siege weapons that had been deployed against it, for it was reinforced by the foul crafts of the Illuminati. It was apparent to the two men that a conventional attack on the fortress would prove ineffective, and a long siege seemed prohibitively slow. Thus, they were forced to develop a new and untested method to complete their objective.

The pair resolved to place the gate between two powerful aeromantic blasts, with the expectation that the gate would be torn to shreds between them. The two blasts had to come precisely at the same moment, or else their power would be wasted. With that in mind, Haralo snuck over the wall and into the fortress. He could not fly, for fear of being seen by the sentries, and so he climbed hand over hand until he reached the battlements. At that point a confrontation became inevitable, and he fought and killed several sentries on his way to his objective. One of his wings was shattered in the fighting on the wall, and although he pressed on despite the pain, he would never fly again.

He made his way to the gate and prepared the spell. He had no way to signal to Etuo that he was ready, and had to place his trust in Etuo's sense of timing and hope that he would know how long it would take his comrade to get in position. He took a breath, placed his hand upon the gate, and released the power of the winds.

The gate was obliterated by their combined power, and the two men met each other's gaze. At that moment Haralo's injuries overcame his will and he passed from consciousness. Etuo caught him as he fell, and laid him down gently to the ground before leading his men to a glorious victory, purging the fortress of all agents of Gaudiguch.

Their victory was celebrated throughout the Commonwealth, and in honor of their victory the two men were given command of the fortress' new garrison as it was converted into an observatory.

They stood guard over the observatory for three years. During those years Etuo turned his attention to the design both of new siege weaponry and new fortifications that could defend against those same weapons if they were ever captured by the enemy. These weapons were of a revolutionary nature at the time, a merger of both mechanical and aeromantic expertise. These weapons, the designs of which survive to this day in a fragmentary state, allowed the deployment of certain destructive aeromantic techniques without the presence of an aeromancer, which greatly increased the tactical flexibility of the Hallifaxian army. Haralo returned to the poetry of his youth, putting the details of their campaigns into epic verse, a practice which slowly spread throughout the military. They were both rightly acclaimed for their innovations and for the careful watch they kept over the observatory, which quickly blossomed into one of the greatest scientific institutions in the Collective.

This displeased the foul denizens of Gaudiguch, who were determined to take revenge for the fall of their fortress and strike out against science and civilization. There was no subtlety in their attack, only a great mass of barbaric bodies. Nearly ten thousand barbarians marched on the observatory and arrayed themselves against a garrison of only one hundred good men.

Etuo and Haralo realized that there was little hope of defeating such an army. Instead they resolved to arrange for the evacuation of the observatory's scientists, and then to hold their position as long as possible in the hope of relief rather than to surrender it to the enemy. The scientists were led out of the observatory through a series of\\ secret passages that had been constructed at Etuo's command, and as they escaped they were cloaked in illusions of his own devising. Although they escaped detection, their journey back to Hallifax took them many months.

The besieging army soon pressed the attack, laying countless ladders on the walls, digging trenches to undermine the gate, and sending a hail of arrows down upon the battlements. The garrisonresisted ably for several weeks, and killed many hundreds of the enemy. Even so, the defending soldiers died one by one and the barbarians eventually prepared themselves to storm the walls.

Few of the soldiers remained alive on that fateful day, and each of them knew that day would be their last. Etuo and Haralo embraced each other and swore an oath to die before allowing themselves or the observatory to fall into the hands of the enemy, and to kill each other rather than to see their comrade be captured by the enemy. Their soldiers followed their example, each in turn taking the same oath. Then the men planned their last stand, embraced once more, and parted company. In their separation, both began to weep.

When the Gaudiguchi army made their final attack, they found the few remaining soldiers on the wall led by Haralo Windwhisper. As they defended the walls Etuo remained within the citadel, desperately constructing a new war machine. They sent hundreds of enemies tumbling from the battlements, but one by one they each man shed his last drop of blood until only Haralo remained. He bled from a dozen wounds, and as the enemy surrounded him he was disarmed and forced to the ground.

Etuo, who at the moment had just completed his preparations, looked down from the citadel and saw that his dearest comrade was doomed to be taken prisoner and tortured to death by the enemy. With great sorrow in his heart he sent the winds down from the citadel and wrapped them around Haralo's throat. Shedding the last tear of his life, Etuo drew the winds tightly together and spared his friend a more painful death.

Then Etuo blew open the gates of the citadel with a wave of his hand, and he stood upon the threshold and raised his arms in challenge to the barbaric army of Gaudiguch. This enraged them, and the great horde charged towards him. Faced by that vast mass of innumerable enemies, Etuo simply activated his new machine and resolved to die bravely. For a moment there was nothing but the screaming of savages, first in wrath and then in pain as Etuo struck out against them. Then there was a loud rumbling, and a great burst of aeromantic energy was released into the observatory's walls. The stones shattered and fell, burying all of those who had fought against the Collective, and all of those who had bled to defend it.

Thus died Etuo Shevat and Haralo Windwhisper, paragons of the Collective.