Welcome to the White Room of Peaceful Contemplation. Here I conduct my social activities at AncientWorlds and in the Orient. If you find me absent, please do not hesitate to leave a message with the Majordomo and he will pass your words on to me at the soonest possible time.

Though this castle is a sign of our preparedness for war, I have endeavoured to use it as an instrument of peace. All men of good will are welcome to linger within its walls for rest, relaxation, and scholarly debate. Here, in this very room, I have spent countless hours negotiating treaties of peace with my fellow daimyo to secure a lasting end to what we call the Sengoku Jidai, the Age of the Warring States.

Let us rest for a moment, then, and contemplate the brief quotation inscribed upon the silk scroll that hangs before us. These words will be spoken by a young girl of this very same country hundreds of years from now, a girl whose city -- known as Hiroshima -- will be utterly destroyed by an instrument of war powerful beyond imagining. Dying from the effects of something they will one day call 'radiation-induced leukaemia', she set out to fold a thousand paper cranes in the belief that the gods will grant her wish to become healthy again. Sadly, she passed away at the age of twelve. Though my wife and I are Christians -- having adopted the faith brought to our shores by Portuguese traders not long ago -- and as such no longer worship the native Japanese deities, we are truly moved by this story and hope that it will impress upon all of us the utter futility of war.