I'll speak as a player who doesn't play Battle. I feel that there are ways Parity can be interpreted without being a bludgeon against the Battle cabal players, but I still feel that mechanically the #### they put up with is well-deserved and unless a player has specifically built or prepped to kill Ragers, they have huge advantages against the vast majority of the MUD (not tricked out paladins, liches and tricked out enemy cabal leaders) that their amount of con-deaths does not justify and that are not practical to counter relative to their disadvantages that in practice become minimal with reasonable assessments of risk and reward.

Courage is difficult to define without overlapping with Strength and humility. Courage is defined as making the more difficult choice when an easier option exists in a situation of conflict. This is not limited to combat, and this does not always mean that there are long-term benefits to such a choice, it is simply by definition the harder/braver/more reasonable choice. This is independent of one's emotions on an issue, but for poetry and movies they are very often intertwined.

Parity is acting in a manner that preserves your reputation as a ruthless yet competent warrior. Wars aren't won without winning the hearts and minds of the people and Ragers believe this is done by being examples to the rest of Thera. They have a long lineage that proves and exemplifies this concept. Many of the concepts of Ragers are lifted from Sun Tzu's Art of War and this is one of them. Courage is related for respect for oneself including a realistic assessment of one's own abilities and skills, pushing oneself to the limit. Parity is regarding the perception of you to the people you are trying to conquer. Tyrants, sociopaths, and despots have no parity in combat.

A siege is a situation that directly threatens the Village, the Destructor, and variably the long-term health of the Village. This means a Siege can be defined as both the internal politics of the Village particularly when the standards of Parity and Courage are relaxed, but more practically it is regarded as a defensive war in regards to defending the head NOT that of enemy cabal items. This is a distinction that is ignored for convenience, and is an example related to what we were discussing.

A skirmish is defined as a smaller-scale combat, both personal stuggles related to race/ethos/personal grudges. It is also regarded as situations involving combats on Eastern Road, deciding whether or not to 'save' a cabalmate from things like The Hunt, cheap shot, binder thieves, grand nocturne, neurological disruption and other disadvantaged matchups, defending the Village from small numbers of counter-retrievers that obviously cannot take the Head from the Destructor and the rules for tackling explorations. Skirmishes are where one truly defines Parity and their personal reputations. Sieges are necessary battles in the War on Magic and are vastly more difficult to distinguish oneself from the crowd in. Sieges require Courage to distinguish oneself, Skirmishes require Parity.

Many players honestly and intentionally mistake certain Skirmishes as Sieges. Just because a binder knocks out a warrior doesn't mean an assassin should walk in and wake his mate up and make this determination solely on whether the victim has a lagging move to hold a thief in the event of a failed blackjack, once the knockout lands the skirmish has begun. This is because in the vast majority of cases unless someone has spent several hours beforehand preparing dependent on their particular character, they in most cases deserve the respect of a skirmish that gives them the opportunity to distinguish themselves and hopefully wean them off of magic usage.

Yes, the Village's focus is often on winning Sieges, but Skirmishes are where they win the hearts and minds of the people as honorable, credible warriors.