Alt: From the Maw of the Shadow Lord

(Spoilers - Throne Room 5-2 BC)
Bastokan Tribune
Darksday May 20th

On Darksday morning strange creatures were seen fluttering about the Bastokan sky as dawn broke. Imps, the personal messengers of the Shadow Lord, carried a missive to Bastok Mines all the way from the Northlands. By all reports, each of the missives read the same, containing the following message:

My brothers throughout Vana'diel...
It's been thirty-five years since we last met.
I cannot die. Not until I have eradicated your cruel masters and freed our kind from their slavery.
Thirty-five years ago I was in a group that came to this cursed land, seeking to uncover the secrets of a lost civilization.
And it is here that I fell, betrayed by one I trusted with my life.
My friend Ulrich could not abide the fact that I was the best swordsman of the Mythril Musketeers. That I was advocating peace with the beastmen at the time was not to his liking either.
Cornelia died protecting me...
But I came back. Not even death could keep me from exacting revenge on those who wronged me.
A power hidden deep beneath the earth gave me a new form and granted me control over nether beasts.
It was then that I became aware--that I was made aware--of the dark anger smoldering deep within my soul.
I realized it was no revenge that drove me, but the old, undying anger of our race: the wrath of the Galka!
Others cannot fathom the depth of our rage. But I willingly cast myself into its flames, and broke the chains of mortality.
Their kind awoke the fury within me, and I was reborn into rage incarnate--as the Shadow Lord!
I swore to myself then to purge this world of their kind, and I will not rest until I crush every last one of them!
Hume, Tarutaru, Elvaan, and Mithra. None of their kind shall survive.
I underestimated them twenty years ago, but I will not make that mistake again!
Stand and watch, my brothers. Search for the dark rage, the flame that burns in the souls of us all!
I will cleanse this world of their filth, unless I am first consumed by fury!
Pick up your swords and join me.
Come, it is the hour of reckoning! Death itself failed to stay my wrath. They too will fail to stop us.

Ever since these messages arrived the Mines District has been in an uproar, with numerous riots reported. Read this evening's edition for further details.

Bastokan Tribune
Darksday May 20th

Shortly after our story broke earlier today, President Sha'Arhe gave an official response to the Shadow Lord's claims:

We can't speak for the validity of the claims contained within the documents distributed by the Shadow Lord's messengers; for all we know they might be true.

What's important for us to realize is that even if they are, the Shadow Lord's forces massacre all who oppose them equally regardless of race. His actions speak much louder than his words, and they are certainly not sympathetic to Galkan plight.

Not only were his forces responsible for the slaughter of his brothers in the Crystal War, but recently he's conspired with the ancestral Galkan enemy, the Antica.

I believe the rioting in the Mines is vastly exaggerated and merely an expression of grief. I am confident that Bastok's solidarity will not be threatened by this, and that together Hume and Galka will march forward to crush the Antica and then the Shadow Lord.