End of Empires - N3S III

In my opinion, 150 years would be a better turn length for the ET. 300 years is enough time for multiple political paradigm shifts, and it's not as fun to create a new sociopolitical reality just to sweep it away without closer examination, which I probably would have to do to stay realistic.

I mean, imagine narrating all of American history from the Stamp Act to the present, and still having almost 50 years to go into the future, in one update. That seems almost like it would be impossible to do without sacrificing a lot of details of the events concerned.

I can also understand the desire to achieve technological development, but I'm honestly concerned about my ability to map out the truly vast amount of change 300 years demands.

As NK said himself, my last BT orders weren't detailed enough and that was only for two centuries.

It's going to be 300 years.

ooc: Thankyou North-King, your example answers for the most part my query.

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The Laws of the Aitah, recorded in the Laws of the Union of Aya'se by the jurist Pa'sa in the year 105 SR as of their notation by the scribe Ta'Pa in the service of one of those detestable Aitahs who name themselves divine, declare that for cursing, "spreading lies" against, or insulting in general the false goddess Aitah, and for worshipping the false god Taleldil, murder, or committing treason, a man is to have his eyes drawn out and he is to be placed out in the wild to die of exposure as his kin are forced to watch. With anyone rendering aid to one so sentenced to be subject to the same punishment, with his kin innocent of no crime likewise being subject to the same punishment should they seek to provide succour to his suffering, or solace before the guilty parties coming death.

The faithful of the true god Opporia, naturally are repulsed by such laws, which offend against the true religion and allow for no degree of mercy to the accused. Indeed under the Code of Pa'sa all the followers of Ardavan, even those who reside in abject ignorance of anything but their erroneous religion, exist under pain of death. This perhaps is why to this day in the Union of Aya'se within the Farubaida o Caroha no satar or ardavanist is to be found living (indeed the city of Caroha itself is famous for barring any Satar from entrance to that city) For although the Faronun codes temper the severity of the Sehorsehockye law, the essential legal doctrines of the Aitah remain in force throughout many of the states of the Farubaida, with the Farou lands, being least influenced by Aitahism being also the most just. The same code likewise was incorporated into the laws of the Dual Empire, and remain enforced in that Empires successor states which keep to the Eastern Aitahist cults.

Yet remonstrating against, as we do, the barbarity of the Aitah, we must not forget the divine teaching, known by all right thinking men that crime as the actualisation of the corruption of sin and rebellion against the divine order, merits punishment in this life in addition to having the consequence in the next of leading the soul to oblivion if it remains unpurged from the spirit. Thus the faithful of Iralliam must recognise that abominations against truth and Our Lord, and the corrupting foulness of Istria made manifest in the evils of murder, incest, cannibalism, apostasy, heathen war waged in odious hatred of the faith and other such abominations truly merit the punishment of bodily death in addition to the ultimate judgement of oblivion, just as the righteous who live in this life, live eternally in the divine life of Opporia in Iralliam. For remember the words of the Great Grand Patriarch Xephathor who wrote in the 201st year of the Seshweay reckoning, "Beware you who trample in the garden of Heaven, for you are trampling on the love of a vengeful god, and he awaits you round the last corner" by which he meant that they who wage conflict against the society of the faithful (for he spoke in the wake of the great invasion of the Satar) in the name of darkness and spit upon the loving mercy of Opporia, are condemned by divine justice in this life and the next to perish, with all their works being cast to ruin, for as the same saintly grand-patriarch proclaimed "Stone falls and crumbles, the spirit endures".

But Opporia is in truth as the tenets say the most merciful and all-good, and our Lord desiring that all the souls of light may be returned to his side, has opened the way for the sinner to be saved from the fate of oblivion to which the sinners own impurity and sin condemns him through his limitless grace. For the purpose that man might receive his grace, Opporia revealed through his prophet that the hand of judgement is to be exercised with mercy, that the sinner and the criminal may through penance and purgation in the light of faith find once more life in the grace of Light, and travel the way to Iralliam. Thus it is revealed for all to see that where the false deity Aitah condemns to death the follower of Ardavan without exception, the true deity Opporia grants he who has known nothing but error and who inadvertently through ignorance "tramples on the garden of heaven" clemency, that the sinner may chance by the teaching of the prophet to repent his error and find life anew and be restored by Opporia to good health and purity, insodoing become a flower in the very same garden he previously attacked. So where Pa'se dictates death by decapitation with a blunt axe for the thief, the Church dictates in the spirit of Opporia that the just punishment for such a crime be tempered with mercy, and dictates only that the offending hand be cut off, that the thief might be reminded of his sin and resolve himself to penance and lawful living that he may yet find solace in Iralliam.

In addition to the necessity of justice being tempered with mercy, the prophet also allows that the victim and lawful authority have the right by their virtue to exercise pardon, laying aside punitive chastisement in the name of forgiveness, or for the giving of blood-money for crimes in which ones kin is slain in acknowledgment of the love of the offenders family for their kin, and the suffering they would pay for crimes not their own. This allowance in the prophets teaching for forgiveness and pardon, is why the Ayasi's allowance of the longtime followers of the Aitah on the borders of his lands (speaking not of the recent abomination of apostasy by certain godlikes) to continue their ways, hopeful that by the teachings of the Church they might in time find salvation from the oblivion awaiting them in the light of truth, is permissible, despite the grave offence of those people against religion and truth.

Observing thus that the law of Opporia allows firstly for the consideration of extenuating circumstances, and allows for mercy that through penance the offender may yet find his salvation. Then observing secondly that the law of Opporia proclaimed by the Prophet and exercised by faithful Iralliamite sovereigns grants to the victim and the lawful sovereign (against whom in addition to Opporia the criminal offends) the right of forgiveness and pardon, is not the superiority of Iralliam over the false doctrines of the Aitahists or the Ardavanists clear? Law which does not recognise mercy as the other hand of justice leads only to savagery and vindictive spite, that corrupts the executor of judgement as much as it denies the soul of the condemned the right to penance. Let this essential truth be taken into mind, as we proceed to describe the customary laws exercised by the faithful in the just punishment of crimes, and the means and methods by which truth can be discerned from lies in matters of justice..

North King said:

It's going to be 300 years.

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Why, though?

It's shorter than 400 years.

Thlayli said:

Why, though?

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Because that's just long enough to be sure that the Karapeshai and any successor states won't be superpowers any more, obviously

Obviously, the choice of 300 as opposed to, say, 250 or 350 is pretty arbitrary, and in fact it'll probably be more organic than that. As for why it'll be somewhat longer as opposed to 150 or 100 years, well...

1) It seems to me that the current geopolitical paradigm is both mildly unfun (for most people, not for everyone) and not likely to change soon. The Satar and the South can't really hurt one another. There's just too much nothing in between, and trying to hold stuff in the south is impossible when you're next to the enemy's power center and vice versa. They also seem stable enough to resist any kind of outside contests. Ironically, the instability from Talephas' death might be the most dangerous thing for Satar hegemony over the north in a long time, but oh well.

2) Where we currently are chronologically, there's unlikely to be a technological paradigm shift that changes this, either. I don't peg EoE's tech level to Earth particularly closely, but barring something REALLY unexpected (for which I would probably have to end the ET anyway), this is not an avenue for changing things, either.

3) 100 years runs contrary to one of the selling points of the ET, which is that people can start with a culture and really make it theirs.

4) I reiterate that if something world-exploding happens, I'd stop the ET and enter an IT. I'm not stupid.

5) I'll probably solicit minor input over the course of the ET anyway.

When's the deadline?

11:59 PM Eastern Time, March 14th, 2014. Get them in earlier, if at all possible. Feel free to bounce ideas off of me whenever I'm around, especially if you're uncertain about how your orders should look for this update. I'm giving a lot of time so that people do not put it off to the last second; I want to do this right.

Claiming Kilar.

OOC: Kilar is almost certainly going to have attempts performed on it by the Kothari Exatai to peacefully incorporate it or otherwise conquer it during the BT, so you know.

ooc: More the challenge over the long turn

spryllino said:

OOC: Kilar is almost certainly going to have attempts performed on it by the Kothari Exatai to peacefully incorporate it or otherwise conquer it during the BT, so you know.

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The Kothari Exatai is almost certainly going to have attempts performed on it by the Karapeshai Exatai to peacefully incorporate it or otherwise conquer it during the BT, so you know.

Hey it's an eminently reasonable thing to point out! If Wrymouth wants to play Kilar, then he needs to know that so that he can make contingencies interacting with it - and, besides, I shouldn't be happy with myself if Wrymouth went off and gaily wrote long orders expecting still to be in existence in some self-determined form at the end of the ET, when there is surely a decent chance that that won't, all things being even, be the case, one way or the other.

For all you know, the Kothari and Karapeshai Exatais may collapse into dozens of smaller successor states leaving your respective targets at ease . Its an awfully great assumption people seem to make that their great and powerful nations will endure.

Goodness me. You're the one being intolerably smug with your winky smilies, not me. Of course the Kothari Exatai may dissolve; but it's perfectly obvious that the way it does so is consequential, and will have a huge bearing on the area. The effect, though, that Wrymouth may be able to have on Kilar's post-ET state is less obvious, and it is necessary to indicate that, in the relative short-term, Kilar may not still exist (and if it does, then that will need to be in interaction with Kothari policy). I will not consent to be idiotically patronised by someone who clearly thinks, as it were, I don't know my right from my left.

Admittedly spry, your original statement, which could be read as, "You shouldn't take this smaller nation I have designs on because I have designs on it," could also be interpreted negatively. Kilar isn't your puppet yet, even if you wish it to be.

But, I think you were more seeking to inform him than deter him, so it's fine I suppose.

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I think I'm going to produce a few excerpts from scholarly treatises over the next few weeks, representing the most notable works that will come out of the Sephashim during the ET. I have a work of philosophy of religion/pseudo-anthropology first, and then a work of astronomy, to give Satar names for the planets and the constellations that NK has been begging us for.

[I would say that at least 40% of our constellations will be derivations or translations of Southern ones, so hopefully Iggy and I can coordinate on that.]

My goal is to produce at least one major work from each of the Five Great Sephasai [Knowings]: Heaven, Earth, the Living, the Dead, and War. The Nakhas-ta-Sephashim, the great dome that is its largest building, is composed of a larger central dome built on a base of five smaller domes (which was one of the ways in which the architects solved the problem of building such a large central dome to begin with,) each one being thematically reflective of (and dedicated to) one of the Sephasai. These categories began to develop around Avetas' time and became fully codified by Talephas' reign.

Axilias-ta-Alma, arguably the greatest Satar historian of all time, was instrumental in its establishment. [Though of course subsequent generations will castigate him as an effete Accan Zelarrist hopelessly biased by his associations with that party.]

The Discipline of the Heavens is a merger of mathematics, philosophy, astronomy and what we could call 'practical theology,' being an examination of the supernatural and metaphysics as well as elements of what we would call astrology. While it does engage with theological concepts and usually falls in line Ardavani teaching, it doesn't involve direct theology or religion since that's the purview of the Oracular temples and orders.
The Discipline of the Earth encompasses geography, geology, and metallurgy. There's some very basic chemistry concepts in here as well.
The Discipline of the Living encompasses mostly biology, botany, and medicine, though there are preliminary stabs at a mishmash of anthropological and sociological concepts, mostly relating to classifications of human culture and behavior.
The Discipline of the Dead encompasses history, and performance history, which is Lay drama.
The Discipline of War draws on elements of the other four disciplines, since war is the princely art and requires knowledge of many things. In fact, in order to be a scholar of war, a thorough grounding in the prior Four Disciplines is required, with at least some experience with war itself considered a plus. Strategic and tactical writings, commentaries on past campaigns, and diagrammatic instructional booklets on how to fight are among this Discipline's output. Due to the practical and scholarly requirements being pretty heavy, and the princely patronage involved, War is probably the most prestigious of the Five. Over the course of the ET it will be considered de rigeur for most princes' sons to have a tutor who is an accredited Disciplinarian of War.

The Sephashim is not like a modern university in that its primary purpose is the production of useful knowledge for the Exatai and its leaders. Pedagogy (except for a very few extremely well-born children) is unheard of. As such there are not large groups of students; and princes who seek scholars from the Sephashim simply import them directly to their courts. A Disciplinarian will only take at most two or three students, with the main aim of replacing him when he dies or is called away to one of the Princedoms.

Disciplinarians seeking students generally hold auditions pitting prospective students' knowledge against one another, (exatas) with the sole winner from the academic bloodbath being accepted as the apprentice Disciplinarian.

Women are occasionally permitted entrance into the 'abstract' disciplines of the Heavens and the Dead if they really have something to say, but rarely the practical ones. Sometimes a female Oracle or a princely family member will do this.

As previously mentioned several times, the Confessor is the head of the Sephashim and its chief administrator and judicial officer. He's always a scholar of high renown.

Traditionally the Prince of the Scroll and/or the Redeemer (depending on who cares) is allowed to choose the Confessor, but the Disciplinarians (as the Confessor's technical princes/tarkanai) have the right to acclaim him or name a challenger to the choice, with the two then engaging in a public debate to determine the superior academician. (This has never happened, but it might happen over the ET, though.)

spryllino said:

Goodness me. You're the one being intolerably smug with your winky smilies, not me. Of course the Kothari Exatai may dissolve; but it's perfectly obvious that the way it does so is consequential, and will have a huge bearing on the area. The effect, though, that Wrymouth may be able to have on Kilar's post-ET state is less obvious, and it is necessary to indicate that, in the relative short-term, Kilar may not still exist (and if it does, then that will need to be in interaction with Kothari policy). I will not consent to be idiotically patronised by someone who clearly thinks, as it were, I don't know my right from my left.

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Too bad CFC lacks a birthday cat smilie.

At any rate I know you know what you're doing (afterall, we did scheme together when Thlayli decided to bring about that "Armageddon"), my point is (in addition to what thlayli noted, your statement did come across as very presumptuous) is that everyone seems to think that everything will be fine and dandy for them and their nations will reach new heights of glory. This of course is makes me roll my eyes, considering part of the stated reason for a long turn is to shake up the status quo.

Hey, lets all let me do my orders and diplomacy before anyone decides they want to annex me at extreme haste.