The Riddler says you make the world better one battle at a time.

It's all the same - no good without evil, no balance...no maat. If we lose one, we lose the other. It's just life, that's all.

Loyalty must be forged - to him, to his: stronger than iron, from experience, from risk - it can't be bought, or taught, or promised before the fact. Allegiance must be earned so it will hold, win or lose.

And as for death - we get what we expect.

Bandara was not an easy place to return to: it could hide from the common worlds whose periphery it inhabited. But Bandara never had, in all its years, completely disappeared.

This is for you. A mage named Randal told me to give it to the Band if you ever came back. 'It surmounts evil,' he told me, 'keeps doom at bay.'

Everyone prepares for battle in his own way.