Otawalle’s Non-Intervention Policy on Anti-Zolian Revenge

Otawalle’s Non-Intervention Policy on Anti-Zolian Revenge is the Sacred Territory’s refusal to prosecute or capture people who might use mittsual against Zol as an act of revenge. Hohsalle explains the boundary to Makokan on their journey toward Makokan’s home: Otawalle will not judge the suspected perpetrators or intervene on Zol’s behalf, but that refusal is not an endorsement of disease as a weapon. Its unpredictability, Hohsalle insists, makes such a weapon impossible for anyone to control.

Policy and Political Boundary

Hohsalle frames the policy as a limit on Otawalle’s jurisdiction, not a finding that an attack has occurred. Even if a Kinma Handler turns out to have spread the disease, he tells Makokan, the Sacred Territory of Otawalle will not judge that person’s actions as a crime. Likewise, someone using mittsual to exact revenge on Zol does not give Otawalle grounds to intervene. The distinction is pointed: the possibility of deliberate contagion is acknowledged, but apprehending suspected avengers is not Otawalle’s role.

That boundary carries political weight because the Sacred Territory of Otawalle and the Kingdom of Aquafa are both ruled by the Zolian Empire. Makokan understands that neither owes the empire a duty to capture and hand over people exacting revenge. The policy therefore withholds cooperation that might otherwise serve imperial enforcement. Yet it does not establish that Kinma Handlers are responsible, nor does it settle what they may have done; Hohsalle presents their involvement conditionally, as something that might emerge from the investigation.

Outbreak and the Question of Revenge

The conversation takes place against the memory of the Aquafa salt mine, where Makokan witnessed a horrific scene and had assumed that anyone behind the attack should be caught quickly to prevent more harm. His instinct is challenged by the distribution of the deaths: according to rumors circulating throughout the land, the disease is a curse upon rapacious Zolians who defiled Aquafa, and most victims were enslaved people brought from the east or Zolian immigrants. In that context, Makokan recognizes that the harm he had wanted stopped was falling chiefly on Zolians, not indiscriminately on every population under imperial rule.

The possibility of human agency changes how Makokan reads the disease. A naturally occurring illness is frightening; an illness deliberately directed at Zol might appear less frightening to those who have reason to resent Zolian rule, and even seem to offer Aquafa and Otawalle something to gain. Makokan’s realization is not proof of a plot or a declaration that revenge is justified. It exposes the political asymmetry shaping his first reaction: his urgency to prevent further harm had not included the same concern for the people most affected by the outbreak.

Hohsalle’s Objection to Disease as a Weapon

Hohsalle’s refusal to intervene is immediately distinguished from approval. He warns that disease is too unpredictable to be used safely as a weapon. Even people who have studied illnesses for years do not know their true nature: disease shifts and changes, involves many complex factors, and is bound up with living things in ways no observer can fully grasp. Human beings may manipulate animals, but that does not mean they can command the sickness those animals might carry.

His anger sharpens the warning. If Kinma Handlers are plotting to turn the illness against Zol, Hohsalle calls them arrogant: their ability to control dogs would not give them control over disease. The policy thus holds two positions in tension. Otawalle will not act as an imperial authority against suspected avengers, while Hohsalle rejects the confidence that a disease can be aimed at one enemy and kept from others. Non-intervention is a political boundary; it is not a promise that contagion will respect that boundary.

Prevention Without Prosecution

The wider outbreak response shows the practical distinction between refusing to punish suspected political actors and working to prevent transmission. Earlier, Hohsalle explains that mittsual means black wolf fever and that infected bodies become safer sources of transmission when freezing cold has kept fleas dormant; isolation and cold alone do not remove every risk. People who touched or approached the bodies must wash thoroughly, including their hair, change clothes, and burn what they wore. In another precautionary plan, he argues that officials must address both infected Ossam and potentially exposed people, because ticks or fleas can move from animals to human hosts.

The same preventive logic shapes plans for treatment and coordination. Hohsalle asks to use Jikalu Wood for a temporary isolation center before anyone becomes ill, judging it suitably distant from the manor, Kazan, and the governor’s palace. He also seeks permission and medical cooperation across political lines: Yotalu welcomes Otawalle’s support, while Governor Ohan requests Hohsalle’s guidance and asks him to develop containment proposals with Lona. These measures do not contradict the non-intervention policy. They show its scope: Otawalle may share knowledge, prepare isolation, and reduce exposure without taking on the separate task of delivering suspected avengers to Zol.

The Larger Conflict Over Medicine and Authority

The policy belongs to a world where disease control is already entangled with political and religious authority. A decade after Limuelle and Hohsalle cured Emperor Natalu’s wife, Otawalle medicine remains officially branded as heresy, even as nobles covertly seek its physicians after being declared incurable by Zolian priest-doctors. The Pure Heart Creed’s accepted response to an incurable illness is to prepare the patient to die in peace; Otawalle physicians instead continue to investigate and treat disease. Their disagreement is not merely a contest over institutional power but, as Hohsalle comes to understand, a conflict over the basic purpose of medicine.

Limuelle argues that Otawalle medicine must not give up on patients and that contagious illness makes such perseverance a matter of public safety as well as individual care. He sees cooperation with priest-doctors as a way to loosen the constraints on Otawalle research and spread its knowledge across Zolian society. Against that longer struggle, the non-intervention policy refuses to let epidemic control automatically become an instrument of imperial punishment. But Hohsalle’s warning prevents that refusal from becoming complacency: no political cause can make a shifting, poorly understood disease obedient to human intentions.