(Warning : Continuous and repeated listening to Kalafina might or might not have been involved in the conception and writing of this.)
History of Thaumaturgy : Magic and the World at large
3rd Term Course, 4th Week : Fallout of the Battle of Trafalgar (Day 1 : Overview)
Lecturer : William de Cahaines
Course Location :
Middleton Institute of Thaumaturgy, Annex B3
Tickford Abbey, Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire
[...]
The laymen (well, magus laymen, as far as that term has any meaning in our community) often refers to this event as the Battle of the Schism, or Battle of the Clocktower. Truth be told, actual magi-to-magi confrontation was exceedingly rare. Most of the Tower Elite had its accesses to St. James' innermost secrets, and had been ready to flee at a moment's notice as the Coalition Wars' situation went from bad to worse.
Most of the "fighting" was therefore in fact a rather impromptu reexamination of the Tower's "commons" actual ownership. If most of the lesser artefacts and Mystic Codes stored in the Tower's saferooms were, in fact, the legal possession of the old noble bloodines that had loaned them to the Tower schooling efforts, many of them had gone in-use and unreclaimed for so long as to make them de facto, if not de jure, fall into the ownership of the Tower as an entity. (The finer points of actual artefact inheritance from a legal standpoint are not, of course, the subject of this lecture. Interested students should contact Gabriel De Soto, Dean of Law of the Institute, for appropriate courses on the subject.)
[...]
Loath as I am to over-simplify the multititude of issues separating the various members of the Clocktower - issues which were either causes or consequences of the crisis at hand, or dormant stories and feuds set ablaze by the events - the stakeholders in that conflict could be partitionned into two groups. One was the Elite, mainlycomposed of old Noble Families, who had personal, familial and economical stakes in the conduct of the War, and who had the financial capacity to charter a trip to the Atlantic Colonies, or enough political and/or magical clout to bargain passage with someone who could.
The other side was an heterogenous group : from old families down on their financial luck, to well-off magical-wealth-only dynasties, to the more common scholar-type magus, they were those that wouldn't, or couldn't, follow the Brittanian Throne in exile.
[...]
The "fighting" was more akin to an obstacle race, as both sides wished to have access to the Tower's assets for their own benefit while denying it to the other side. Things being as they were, the "Commons" side had two advantages over their opponents : one, as heteroclite as their grouping was, they were fighting as a collegial, united front, while each Family was only fighting for its own interests. The second advantage was that time was on their side : the Old Families had but a limited time before the arrival of the French Imperial Army - not to mention that the rising republican sentiment in the British Isles had started creating additional chaos. Therefore, stalemate was victory for the mismatched alliance.
However, the sheer scale of prana spent at that period provoked the emergence of the hitherto unknown phenomena of Bounded Field Interweaving1.
Magic from multiple sources, additioned to the ambient mana and the existing leylines that had made this place such an interesting melded into a self-sustaining, impredictible system of spontaneous thaumaturgic phenomena. With this, the various ressources of the Clocktower, and in fact, the Tower itself, got out of everyone's reach . The "Battle of the Schism" was thus a losing draw for both sides.
1 also commonly called Barrier Fusion, but don't let the Abujration Instructors catch you using that term...
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Archives of the Brittanian Office of Special Affairs
OSA-Rpt CBAT-0024
Clasf : ECI-Umbra, MARKED
Loca. : Area 11
Tgt. CB-C sight nr 11-24/A (form. Gojōme)
RoI : B+
Act: Witn. repr, SpFor depl., M.L. impl.
FbDel: 8h / +-2h
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The Eleventh Hour Newsfeed
- Rash of Homicide in Broad Daylight Terrifies City : Lord Gant promises "Law and Order"
- Venue Set for Prince Clovis' Victory Day Gala : Recently Built Stadtfeld Manor gets "Heart of the Settlement" Status
- A Blaze from the Past : City commemorates "Horrific Inferno"
- Blotted Benefits : Internal Trouble in Codhopia upsets Printing Industry Results
- Unrest Put To Sleep : Decisive Action from Britianian Forces causes Former Eleven Army Remenant to "Capitulate En Masse"
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Archives of the Brittanian Office of Special Affairs
OSA-Rpt MAT-1293
Clasf : TS-Umbra, PENDULUM
Loca. : Area 00 (EU-GB), Area 01, Area 11
Sharp rise in artef. trad.
Anls. sugg. hist. and myth. figs. relat. obj. as recc. patt.
RoI : A
SuggAct: Links with MAT 1028 & ExOc Ja-0131 implies:
- Inc. Agt-Surv. of Munic. 11/342
- Contact with [REDACTED] (as proc. for PENDULUM-related)
- Intel & Cnt-intel on EMMA actv.
Prev. Rpt. CF
- MAT : 1036, 1028, 0954 (?!), 1003 (?-)
- ExOc : Ja-0122 (Fuyu. SK CldCs), ExOc Ja-0131 (Fuyu. Inf. Inc)
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Area 11 Colonization Plan : Internal Report
Chapter VIII - Education
Preliminary precisions : Ofcourse, it is a well-known fact that most of the policies presented in this chapter won't be appliable as is for most of Area 11 directly after the transition, or even a decade down the line, as the colonization process tends to create outlying urban zones with high concentration unpriviledged Numbers (commonly referred to as ghettos) for which regular assimilation process is nigh impossible.
Therefore, the coming recommandations should be taken as both guidelines for assimilable townships and other municipalities - small- and medium-scale metropoleis should be prioritized, as those often hide a wealth of very productive Honorary Citizens - and as final, asymptotic objectives for more upheaved zones.
[...]
Part 3 : The English Language
- As previous assimilation efforts show, outright suppression of the area native language often provokes a cultural rejection/backlash, that has hampered Britannian progress in the relevant Aera and fostered resistance/rebel movements.
- Therefore, Eleven children should be taught in parallel both languages.
- English should still be valued over the Native Language, in learning hours as well as in scholar 'value' (e. g. the weight of the language course in the student's academic effort evaluation)
[...]
- Valuation of existing (i.e Number-born) teaching ressources should be an integral part of our assimilation effort, and prepared special tracks in the Honorary System. Mimetism of success stories will be a cost-reduced propaganda asset for us (cf. Chapter V - Media)
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Here I am. I do have ideas, scenes and flashes of what could be an interesting FSN/CG story, but I can't seem to make a coherent narrative out of it.
And I hate unfinished stories. So I'll stick with worldbuilding for the time being. Impressions ?
Originally Posted by I3uster
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