Perhaps out of touch too, but they were definitely surrounded by people who needed. Many needed basic things, like food, shelter and such, but many needed “justice”, wrongs to be righted, revenge, some perhaps even blood. Quite a few them probably needed all of the above.

And those were not things the Mystics could offer. And while Iver probably could not either, he certainly promised to do so.

And while the Mystics had very little to offer the needy people, the one thing they could offer was the lack of civil war.

Had thry taken a stand against Iver, no doubt many would have followed. But not all. Not even enough, as Gravedust saw it. They could not force Iver and people who followed him.

Thry could have opposed him and in the end Savasi would have fought Savasi.

But instead they decided to remove the last bit of opposition. They allowed the Savasi to move ahead as whole, as one, hopefully strong enough to weather where ever Iver was taking them.

At least for long enough so the Mystics could find a better need that all Savasi could follow without strife and war.

Sadly Iver, being the type who’s willing to usher kin against kin, he could not fathom that another could be that much different from him, scheming and manipulative as he is. So he only could think of how if he had been left to his own devices, he would seek to undermine, to backstab any who disagreed with him!

So he moved to make sure that the other, who simply could not be so different to not do the same, would never have the opportunity of it…

The decision of the mystics to leave strikes me as one made by people who aren’t really in touch with realities as much as they thought. Which means they probably made Iver’s rise to power that much easier, even long before they left. Which would give them a bad conscience, and as a good monk, that’s what you do: you shut yourself off and have thoughts.

Interesting, by the way, that Gravedust says pretty directly here that he’s not just somewhat critical of Gastonia but that actually his heart is not in it the way one might expect the Gastonian crack military commando do be. Which tells Magda, who is considering if/how far she will follow Iver, that he won’t unconditionally stick to Gastonia, either.