Section 3: Pax Obsidia
Have some Gilgamesh~
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~ 4970 BCE // Pax Obsidia
The centuries following the fall of the Silver Moon saw a war as seemingly endless as the territorial avarice of its perpetrators -- the sons and daughters of the Imperium, blessed with talent in magecraft. Arcane conflict in the epic scale defined the very essence of the Age of Divinities.
In the annals inherited by the libraries of Atlas, the fifth millennium before the common era marked the first appearance of the entity called Nehalennia, 'the Black Princess.' Possessed of nigh-legendary combat ability, she decimated the armies of the twenty-six strongest beings, forcing them on the threat of death to covene in the city of Eridu in the land of Sumer. There, in a broken amphitheatre under scarred skies, she explained to them the terms of their defeat.
'The Apostles of the Crimson Moon.' This was the name that she chose for the regulatory body that she and the twenty-six would form -- assembled explicitly for the purpose of governing the behavior of magi and phantasmals.
"The use of abilities not freely permitted by Nature should be restricted," she pronounced, "If employed at all, those unknowledgeable of magecraft should not be made aware, and limitations in scale or impact should be observed. I believe this is for the good of us all."
The only response she recieved was an incredulous murmuring.
"Preposterous," uttered a hooded crone. "You would occult brazen greed behind some thinly pretended code of morality? You ask that we disarm and completely emasculate ourselves before you! Do not add insult to injury!"
"Not disarm," corrected the Princess. "To conceal and restrict. Nonaggression should be observed between the twenty-seven of us, but your freedoms are otherwise unlimited so long as populations of mundanes beyond the scale of thousands are not affected in a noticeable manner. And to clarify, I pursue this course of action neither for convenience nor morality."
"What, then!?" spat the crone.
"The only justification I claim is necessity, and I too shall be confined to the limitations I ask you to observe," the Princess replied. "This is to be a body of peers, as much responsible for policing each other as it is restraining the magical excesses of lesser beings. I encourage you to see to it that I adhere to the terms of the arrangement. If it pleases, think of this as a request."
"A request, is it?" sneered a young man in golden armor. "In other words, you're either incapable or unwilling to force our compliance."
"/Incapable?/" queried a floating cube of metal. "/Analysis unfounded. Observes Subject Nehalennia's event calculation capability bordering Precognition. Flawless evasion of true-randomized swarm projectile offensive at maxumum capacity, thirty times Subject's highest recorded speed. Unable to replicate-defeat./"
"If her so-called 'Precognition' were as effective a skill as you make it out to be, she could simply force us all to comply without requesting consent," explained the young man. "She's demonstrated her ability to defeat us one-on-one, certainly, but she's never directly involved herself in a conflict between any two of us. Why do you suppose that is?"
"/Unidentified event calculation limits .../"
"As loathesome as it is to admit my inability to show this whore defeat, I estimate that the combined prowess of the twenty-six here gathered could overwhelm her." Narrowing his eyes at the Black Princess, the young man asked, "So tell me, why shouldn't we simply kill you here and now? What is this 'neccessity' that supposedly drives you?"
Nehalennia smiled.
"I applaud you for your keen observation," she said. "You are indeed correct. United, you could potentially defeat me. This temporary peace that I've brought about would end, and you'd return to your war, and nothing at all will have changed. But is that truly what you desire?"
"You speak in tautologies, brood-mare," growled an elderly man with dark skin and the head of a cheetah.
The Princess paced across shattered tiles.
"The hierarchy of strength is the law of this age," she said. "For now, you are at the top, and you'll stay there for a time if fortune smiles upon you. However, simply by taking part in the struggle for dominance, you have passively consented to the end that the hierarchy demands. Eventually, somebody will defeat you, and you will die alone. There can be no permanent victor."
"/Subject implies system of alliance as alternative?/"
"Not precisely an alliance in the traditional sense," replied Nehalennia. "There is nobody here with the ability to take the world for their own, and nobody who would lower themselves to serve another. I very much doubt any one of you would be comfortable with the idea of sharing power. The arrangement that I'm proposing, then, entails that if we cannot rule ourselves, we cooperatively prevent all others from seizing control. This is the reasoning behind the policing action I've described."
A gaunt, eyeless giant with the faces of three women stiched across its chest folded its hands before its mouth.
"Why do we not police as well the Sons of Men?" asked the three faces in unison. "Surely by sword and spear they are as able to conquer and take as we, if with more sacrifice. Magecraft differs not so much from the mortal agencies that it alone warrants attention."
"There is nothing the mundanes possess that we cannot easily seize or manipulate undetected," replied Nehalennia, impassively. "Policing them is a needless effort."
"But you have requested also that we keep them unaware of our abilities," continued the faces. "It is suspicious. I posit that your agenda is in fact to protect the mortals out of some arbitrary sympathy, and to employ us to your own ends."
"Not to protect them," said Nehalennia. "To protect us."
"You cannot be suggesting that they possess the potential to harm us?" asked the faces, voices tinged with sarcasm.
"Not directly, no." The Princess paused in her pacing to calmly regard the giant. "They are a commodity, and most here have instrumentalized them as such -- whether to replenish prana, or as components to a spell, or simply as pawns. Provided access to a large population of mundanes and enough time, any prodigy of sufficient skill and intelligence could devise a threat to our power. Why should I permit this?"
"A systematic denial of resources, then," pondered the giant contemplatively, speaking for the first time from its mouth. "An eternal zero-advance deadlock, with the awareness of mortals as a bar for acceptable behavior ..."
"The arrangement is to be stable and self-sustaining," the Princess elaborated. "We are, in short, breeding a culture of terror to prevent the advancement of lesser prodigies indefinitely -- cooperatively striking them down where they attempt to rise. My only agenda is peace by tyranny."
The young man in the golden armor scoffed.
"A coward's rhetoric," he said dismissively. "This necessity you speak of is a fabulously worded nothing, designed to appeal to insecurity. I fight to conquer, and the risks and challenges I face are as much a reward as the territories I seek to claim. If I am to be slain in combat against a worthy opponent, so be it."
"Would you mind, then, if the spoils of war were worthless?"
"What?"
"You are a prince of this land, are you not?"
"Indeed. And what of it?"
The Princess raised a finger to the blood-red streak that marred the sky, stretching from horizon to horizon.
"Twenty-five years ago, you claimed the sword called Ea from its former bearer," she said. "You fought him beyond the walls of this very city, and the earth shook with the violence of your blows. Do you remember that day, sweet prince? The skies were rent with the power of the Enuma Elish, and the people who lived in this district suffered their last moments in vacuum."
Perhaps unconsciously, the young man's face contorted in discomfort. Ignoring him, the Princess faced her audience.
"West of the Seat of Marduk," she said, "there is a twisted land that drives its people to unending battle -- whose very earth sings of pride and vainglory. Leagues sunwards from where we stand, north of the penninsula of Mnar, the country of Sarnath has been reduced to a barren sheet of glass, resonant with energies that could unmake the strongest of us. These are not independent occurences. So long as the martial magicks are unregulated, the scars upon this world multiply endlessly, and entire continents may be one day uninhabitable. You ask why I seek to police the open use of magecraft? This is my answer."
Murmuring filled the abandoned amphitheatre, and Atrouge Brunestud restrained herself from smirking. The extreme egocentrism of the twenty-six before her virtually guaranteed resistence. Where her rhetoric had fallen upon deaf ears, extra 'convincing' would undoubtedly be necessary. Her work was far from completion.
"So what say you, bretheren?" she asked. "Do you agree to my arrangement?"
---
Alulim begat Alalngar; and Alalngar begat Enmenluana; and Enmenluana begat Enmengalana -- four were the generations of kings born to the land of Sumer in the time the Black Princess labored to forge her 'Pax Obsidia.' Of the twenty-six prodigies she'd originally intended to recruit as enforcers to her new order, seven proved entirely unreceptive to coercion, and she was left with little choice but to put them down -- reluctantly drawing replacements from the cream of weaker, more cooperative beings to staff her final roster.
In the end, an institutionalized fear of the Twenty-Seven consigned the heirs of the Silver Moon to go about their business in the darkness of obscurity -- the masquerade called now 'the Moonlit World,' and governed unto present day by the Apostolic succession. Open warfare was no longer a thing of magic.
With the turning of the eras, however, dissenting voices emerged. They asked: 'Is the perpertuation of the Moonlit World justified?' The Age of Divinities was long ended, and the rampant ambitions that had to begin with necessitated the action of policing were by now all but evaporated. Did the secrecy imposed by Black Princess in fact continue to serve a legitimate function?
Somewhere, dreams of the Imperium restored stirred. The groundwork of revolution was laid with whispers.
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Notes on Magecraft I:
Flames of Severance (Class III, Restricted):
Offensive magecraft of Martian origin, designed to vivisect targets along "lines of life" -- physiological expressions of the flows of life-force -- in a destructive process fueled by the target's own prana. Visually resembles black flame, but no relation to the chemical phenomenon of fire truly exists. Inherited use of the spell was incorporated as a feature of the maternal line of the Archduchess of Tarsis, utilizing a process that codified magecraft crests as a part of the heirs' congenitally-occuring prana circuits. Banned following the establishment of the Lunar Imperium. Effects may be entirely negated with sufficient self-domination of Odic force.
Cyrfin (Class V, Unrestricted):
A simple projectile curse that binds certain aspects of a target's physiology to the will of the caster, normally rendering the opponent immobile if the caster does not intend or specify commands for alteration. Effectiveness of the curse may be reduced or eliminated per the target's inherent magical resistance and training. Due to ease of use, the technique is favored by amateurs in combative magecraft.
Die Schwesternschaft des Blutes (Class O, Restricted):
A high-level bounded field effect that requests permission from the planetary sentiences to implement marble phantasms as an ongoing environmental phenomenon. Typically deployed for purposes of terraformation. By decree of the Lunar Imperium, use is restricted to individuals designated as "Planetary Guardians" before the law.
Field Disruption Magecraft (generally Class II, Restricted):
A type of magecraft that interrupts the activity of a bounded field. Restricted by the Lunar Imperium to military use.
The Shadowed Kingdom (Unclassified):
The reality marble created by the entity known as Type-Metallia to transport the survivors of her destroyed world. The interior of the materialized space has been adjusted to resemble the environment of the Land of Metal, and resembles a planet roughly the size of Luna.
Gates of the Kingdom (Unclassified):
A high-level field disruption magecraft that connects a physical location in space with the interior of the Shadowed Kingdom; invasively reformatting the locale such that it resembles the ether-polluted environment of the Land of Metal.
Subroutine 926 - Tsimtzum (constriction) (Class I, Restricted):
Numerology. Creation of spatial quarantine from external interference, implemented by editting access permissions within conceptual parameters. Restricted to use by designation "TYPE-MOON."
Subroutine 72 - Chesed (kindness) (Class III, Unrestricted):
Numerology. Exertion of Akashic pressure upon numerically defined points within the conceptual existence of an organism, resulting in enforced dispersion to the well of souls. Restricted to use by designation "TYPE-MOON."
Subroutine 216 - Gevurah (severity) (Class I, Restricted):
Numerology. Obtainment of administrative authority over the conceptual structure of organism's soul. Restricted to use by designation "TYPE-MOON."
Nevermore (Unclassified):
A marble phantasm phenomenon that resembles a bounded field encircled by a large flock of ravens. Enforces lifespan termination in accordance with the laws of nature. A technique accessible only to entities contracted as "beasts of Gaia."
Event Calculation (Unclassified):
In actuality, the ability known as "Event Calculation" is closer to what would be termed "Probability Enforcement." Systematic, high-speed request submissions for Gaia to simultaneously implement numerous small-scale marble phantasms results in a macroscopic phenomenon whereby the ability user is able to "script" future events -- giving the seeming of "precognition" or unnaturally strong "luck." However, the practical effectiveness of the ability is limited by the skills and mental capacities of the user. A technique accessible only to entities contracted as "beasts of Gaia." |