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Governor: The Empire of the New Sun of The United Lands of Ash

WA Delegate (non-executive): The Armed Republic of Askif (elected )

Founder: The Terran Covenant of Teutionia

Last WA Update:

Maps Board Activity History Admin Rank

Most Advanced Defense Forces: 90th Largest Black Market: 112th Largest Manufacturing Sector: 180th+41
Largest Arms Manufacturing Sector: 184th Highest Average Incomes: 282nd Largest Information Technology Sector: 286th Most Corrupt Governments: 289th Highest Poor Incomes: 323rd Most Patriotic: 383rd Most Scientifically Advanced: 404th Highest Economic Output: 413th Highest Wealthy Incomes: 428th Most Avoided: 429th Largest Mining Sector: 439th Most Subsidized Industry: 461st Largest Timber Woodchipping Industry: 495th Most World Assembly Endorsements: 595th Largest Governments: 617th Rudest Citizens: 666th Most Armed: 691st Fattest Citizens: 704th Largest Automobile Manufacturing Sector: 708th Largest Retail Industry: 715th Most Nations: 723rd Smartest Citizens: 781st Largest Agricultural Sector: 798th Most Advanced Public Education: 919th Largest Furniture Restoration Industry: 1,025th Most Advanced Public Transport: 1,210th Lowest Crime Rates: 1,381st Most Cultured: 1,388th Most Extensive Public Healthcare: 1,390th Most Advanced Law Enforcement: 1,722nd Most Valuable International Artwork: 1,795th Largest Cheese Export Sector: 1,966th Most Secular: 2,064th Largest Insurance Industry: 2,066th Greatest Rich-Poor Divides: 2,232nd Most Devout: 2,232nd Highest Unexpected Death Rate: 2,346th Largest Publishing Industry: 2,437th Healthiest Citizens: 2,480th Largest Basket Weaving Sector: 2,736th Most Developed: 2,743rd
World Factbook Entry

The Universal Order of Nations

We aren't dead, we are on discord


LinkMap (Earth & Space) | LinkRequest map space

Getting Started Guide and Rules and Guidelines can be found on our LinkDiscord


LinkRegional OOC Charter

Roleplay Year: 2656



  1. 8

    Rules and Guidelines

    FactbookLegislation by The universal guardian . 1,312 reads.

  2. 16

    The RP Problem: Loss Aversion, and the Erosion of Human Error

    FactbookMiscellaneous by Calamari . 331 reads.

  3. 9

    Getting Started Guide [phased out, see discord]

    FactbookMiscellaneous by The universal guardian . 1,157 reads.

  4. 3,719

    The Complete List of NSCodes

    MetaReference by Testlandia . 175,812 reads.

  5. 2,630

    NationStates Guide

    MetaReference by Amerion . 116,977 reads.

  6. 292

    Depression and Suicide Support Resources

    MetaReference by Europeia Dispatch Office . 4,399 reads.

▼ 3 More

Embassies: The Erviadus Galaxy, The Bar on the corner of every region, Pax Britannia, Commonwealth of Liberty, Portugal, Solar Alliance, The Great Universe, The Vast, Argo Navis, Greater Middle East, and The Western Colonies.

Tags: F7er, FT: FTL, Fantasy Tech, Featured, Future Tech, Magical, Map, Medium, Multi-Species, Offsite Chat, Offsite Forums, Outer Space, and 7 others.Regional Government, Role Player, Serious, Silly, Snarky, Social, and Video Game.

Regional Power: Moderate

The Universal Order of Nations contains 29 nations, the 723rd most in the world.

Today's World Census Report

The Lowest Crime Rates in The Universal Order of Nations

World Census agents attempted to lure citizens into committing various crimes in order to test the reluctance of citizens to break the law.

As a region, The Universal Order of Nations is ranked 1,381st in the world for Lowest Crime Rates.

NationWA CategoryMotto
1.The Arkanis Combine of The Ebony RepublicIron Fist Consumerists“NA”
2.The Iron League of Legion Of PeaceFather Knows Best State“Rock and Stone”
3.The The Star League of TitananiumPsychotic Dictatorship“Gold in peace, weapons in war”
4.The Königreich of SilberflussLibertarian Police State“Together Against Death”
5.The Empire of the New Sun of The United Lands of AshFather Knows Best State“Through Fire and Brimstone, Ash shall Remain”
6.The Collective Combine of Commonwealths and PrincipalitiesDemocratic Socialists“Ultima Ratio Regum”
7.The Terran Covenant of TeutioniaLibertarian Police State“Actions, Not Words”
8.The Theocratic Stratocracy of Sub Sector ProtractisIron Fist Consumerists“Our Empire's ashes glow brighter than your future.”
9.The Northern Pacific Empire of Republic Defense ArmyPsychotic Dictatorship“昇る太陽の国!”
10.The Holy Empire of SeterranInoffensive Centrist Democracy“Vivat imperium”
123»

Regional Happenings

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The Universal Order of Nations Regional Message Board

Meanwhile…

In her office deep within the Megaron of Tsoulio, at a desk covered in retrospective reports of the past war annotated by analysts ranging from Vergni Guard generals to Zephyri legates, Colonel Kynani Alketas leaned back in her seat and glared at the intruder at her door. “What is it this time?” she demanded.

A lieutenant stood at attention in her doorway, neatly-stacked binders resting in his left arm as he saluted. “Colonel, thirteen messages from Lady Xianna So Scipiones awaiting your signature, madam,” he answered. “I also have three messages from Vergni at lesser priority, by your instructions.”

The colonel scowled. “Give me Lady Xianna’s messages and tell me about Vergni’s tomorrow.” She glanced at her cluttered desk and, with a growl of frustration, shoved a pile of papers several inches to the left and jerked her head at the resulting space. “There, please,” she added, purposely ignoring the fact that the binders in the lieutenant’s arm were clearly larger than the meager space that she had made for them.

The lieutenant, used to this behavior by now, simply set the binders down on top of the existing mess in the general area of the cleared space and stepped back. “Is there anything more I can do, madam?” he asked.

“No,” Alketas scoffed. “Carry on, Lieutenant.” So dismissed, the lieutenant snapped off another salute and departed the office, closing the door behind him. Alketas barely noticed.

The colonel stared at the new binders for a moment, wondering yet again what Lady Xianna So Scipiones thought she could demand or enforce on Noverra when she was bottled up in the Diet on Evvia – at least as long as the latest reforms held sway, preventing her from returning to military command while she retained her political position in Sardavar. Then Alketas huffed and got to her feet, pointedly turning her back on her desk and all of the reports she had yet to properly file still lying on it.

She didn’t need to reread them to know what they said. The population of Noverra remained perilously small, now consisting primarily of Old Isaurians in Glys and peculiar Biotian contingents shipped in to finish the Gorvikian War and stamp Aurus Adeni’s authority onto the Isaurian homeworld. The slaughter of the latter in the battlefields of Azarel, Pseros, and Pernigov made victory in the eastern hemisphere possible; yet their arrival had been the mark of another kind of conqueror, Makaria perverted to Zephyri use, and even now they wore the badges of Uhlek’s soldiers as though to distance themselves from the religion that birthed them, that which would have condemned them had it not been whored to foreign warlords. With Old Isauria dwindling – the fighting being almost done in Gilead for many years now already, and the tragedy of Aglai and the violation of Glys by the Gorvikians being a recent and traumatizing thing – these soldiers, the model representatives of Aurus Adeni’s army, constituted the future of Noverra, both biologically and spiritually. It was…

To Kynani Alketas, it was nothing short of a travesty. Could such people really be considered Isaurian? By nationality, they could be called such, but then, so could Adeni himself at present, and his dubious origins were less a secret and more a propaganda story of a man converting from darkness to light. By blood, too, perhaps, their origins could be traced back to Noverra, but only through the medium of deliberate and unconscionable mortal meddling. Now genetic abominations grew into the possession of the Isaurian homeworld, so that their descendants alone would soon be named ‘Noverran.’ For the Isaurians who had suffered for more than three centuries to see their homeworld returned to them… their ancestors and their gods were surely weeping, even as the fools on Evvia continued to cheer their own good fortune.

Real Isaurians, many of whom were real Makarians and real Biotians, had come to Noverra under Adeni’s orders to retake the homeworld for their people. Under those same orders, they had been mercilessly butchered, almost to no purpose. Tsoulio, Sarnath, and all but the very closing stages of Azarel had been unmitigated bloodbaths, aided and abetted by what appeared to be purposeful incompetency. Rather, it had to be purposeful: Aurus Adeni was a hardened veteran of Cheng I Sen’s invasion of Isauria, a trained and tested commander of soldiers who inherited power in the province solely because he was a trusted aide to Cheng and to her immediate second-in-command. Adeni would not have been kept in such a trusted position – he would not have survived the Isaurian Wars – had he been as incompetent as his orders to the generals of Biotia made him appear. The decisions he made, those which resulted in the massacre of tens of thousands of soldiers under his command, could not have been made in error.

Alketas burned to think that the thousands of people she had tried and failed to save in the rubble of Azarel, whose remains had stuck to her boots and washed over her uniforms and clogged her sinuses, might not still be screaming in her ears as she awoke every morning if they had not been ordered to die by Aurus Φούκιγγ Adeni. She burned even more to know that, had they lived, the soldiers she had survived by little more than luck would have served alongside her in the reconstruction of the planet, thousands of Isaurians – real Isaurians – living, growing, and (importantly) raising children on this world that now, instead, would be dominated by the descendants of… what? Vat-born tools of a foreign potentate, blasphemous to the goddess in whose name they’d been created, and expected to turn away from her in kind now that it was no longer expedient to sing her praises? Noverra was to be handed over to people like these?

What had been the point of the Reclamation, in the end? Those sins that the Isaurians had piled upon themselves and their descendants, it had taken the blood of hundreds of thousands to wash away. The debts of the ancient past had been paid at Azarel at long last, the Isaurians suffering a taste of the charnel fate that their ancestors had delivered upon their Noverran brethren. And a foreigner overlord saw fit in the end to cheat the gods and their people anyway.

Colonel Alketas glared at her cluttered desk one more time. Lady Xianna awaited her attention. Who was she, a mere survivor of the bloodbath her overlords had perpetrated against her, to keep the Zephyri μπίτζ waiting?

hello I just joined

Hallo and welcome.

Just as a heads up most of our activity tends to be on our discord, which is linked up on our page.

The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.*

Bubbling Waters was a troubled man. Elections were upcoming, and while the campaigns were already hard and furious for newcomers and past politicians alike in an effort to carve out their places on the Lawgiver, most of the incumbent contestants in the race were… lackadaisical, the representative thought, in their approach to interacting with a clearly-angry populace. Perhaps, he thought, they knew that competing for election was a fruitless exercise: Most of them had garnered votes through a profusion of lies, and their collective refusal to fulfill those promises – and, one might argue, their dedicated and very public efforts to accomplish the very opposite of the goals they had claimed to espouse – had endeared them to no one. Even aboard the ever-isolated Lawgiver, the public’s anger and disgust were obvious enough that the few honestly-elected representatives of Congress, stymied in their efforts by a supermajority of March-bought cronies, were close to bankrupting themselves on the sheer scale of advertising necessary to declare, I am not like these others, and I can prove it if you’ll let me. But while those who could not make such claims might not have seen the value in arguing otherwise to an unfriendly public audience, Bubbling Waters had to wonder just how many of them expected to enjoy peaceful retirements after their inevitable election defeats, as they departed the security of the Capital Fleet to return to home Dominions now likely populated by very hostile neighbors. Even without hope of victory, in the veteran politician’s opinion, they would have done better to make the attempt, rather than accept a defeat that in itself was almost certain to end in a violent death.

Bubbling Waters, of course, was among those eagerly draining his life savings to purchase the advertising space necessary to combat this evil association of the current Congress with corruption and moral vacuum. He had had plenty of practice in deflecting similar accusations aimed toward himself in the past, of course, having merely attached himself to the most popular idea at any given time for most of his political career; the voters had certainly taken note of the resulting inconsistencies. But defending changes in his personal position was one thing, and separating himself from a crowd of colleagues who had made the exact same promises in the previous election that he had made was quite another matter. And while failure in previous years would have been an embarrassment that he might reverse one day, a defeat in the coming elections would be proof that the voting public viewed Bubbling Waters just as it viewed a cretin like, for example, Illustrious Descent – and would likely treat him accordingly once he left the protective confines of the nation’s greatest warship.

At the mercy of such desperation, it was no surprise that Representative Bubbling Waters had easily agreed to a… humble request, made by a concerned and patriotic good citizen. It had never been humiliating for him to demonstrate loyal subservience to whatever man was popular enough to hold the presidency, after all, no matter how many times that office changed ownership and, by that means, the opinion of greatest popularity. Now, though, it was not merely natural – and expedient – to make himself so useful to those who were most likely to hold power in a matter of a few short months, but wholly necessary for Bubbling Waters’ intention to separate himself from the pack of legislators whose rhetoric he had echoed, and whose example threatened to end his life at the hands of the angry populace. And if it so happened that this necessity was simultaneously very profitable, Bubbling Waters would be the least likely to complain: He was fast running out of money in his election campaign, after all.

So, as President Valley Shadow sealed the Chamber doors to begin a new session of Congress, it was to Bubbling Waters that Congress’s attention turned, on cue from the announcement from the Chamber’s computer that he had business to bring before the legislature. The representative rose from his cushions with a nod to the President and a brief motion of acknowledgment toward the rest of Congress as they turned their curious eyes in his direction. Then he began: <Senior Admiral High Starburst, loyal officer of Honorias and honorable candidate to enter this Chamber in the coming year, bids me to deliver his verdict on the conduct of this Congress according to the collective and unanimous opinion of Command.>

The computer pinged as several representatives lodged immediate protests, while at least two spoken voices shouted in objection. Pausing, Bubbling Waters held Valley Shadow’s gaze with one eyestalk while the President consulted with the computer, cracking his tail blade above his head to silence the shouters and allow him to arbitrate according to law. After a moment, the President, visibly troubled, nodded to the representative. <Representatives’ objections to the deliverance of an unelected official’s testimony have been raised, and are dismissed on the grounds of acceptable precedent,> Valley Shadow declared. <You may proceed, Representative Bubbling Waters.>

The representative nodded again, before turning his attention more fully to the rest of the Chamber, whose occupants now viewed him with a great deal more hostility than they had before he began. <Senior Admiral High Starburst greets this Congress,> he started again, <in the midst of his extremely busy schedule. His days are filled with reports from his subordinates regarding the defense of Honorias Proper on the borders of Austria, meetings with his colleagues regarding our position on Zeikeutsyr, dispatches to his agents regarding our authority over Isauria, and discussions with our allies abroad regarding the future of military cooperation in the Orion Spur. His nights are spent in contemplation about the nature of our partnerships, our alliances, and our sudden and inexplicable enmities, all of which arrive and depart in great haste and without prudent consideration by those who create them: those in this Chamber. He relates to me, and thus to all of you, that this past week has cut into his time of contemplation by no less than forty percent, as still more meetings, still more dispatches, and still more discussions are dedicated to bearing arms against our newest enemies, suddenly arrived just as all others before them, the Al’terrans who subscribe to the authority of Marcus Aeneas. Senior Admiral High Starburst congratulates Congress on discovering another threat against whom our limited military resources must be directed in such a record time. Surely it will take some doing to improve on this new mark.>

Bubbling Waters turned slowly, directing his main gaze across the Chamber as he considered his colleagues’ reaction to his obvious sarcasm. Some were more offended than others, and some more surprised than offended, evidently unaware that Command would be anything less than pleased to have something new to shoot at as soon as it was deprived of its previous target. He noted serious doubt and worry on some faces, though: veteran politicians who understood Command’s role in complementing the role of Congress, not to be itself commanded but to guide and direct the efforts of the civilian legislature for the benefit of the Honorian people. President Valley Shadow appeared visibly sick as he looked down from his dais, but still the computer made no effort to wrest the floor from Bubbling Waters’ possession, despite an increasing number of pings chiming into the great machine, and despite the obvious signs that the President would like nothing more than to rest the topic of discussion entirely.

<The purpose of declaring these enemies, of pushing our nation into the fires of conflict without due preparation or even public desire, is less to do with the security of Honorias – a partner to several of these nations, a peaceable neighbor to several others, ever before willing to coexist and be at peace – and much more to do with the state of the Honorian armed forces, and the purposeful attempt to degrade that state until Command is left with little more than a militia at its disposal while its prepared forces are bogged down in bloody standoffs abroad. Command’s state of readiness is being put into question, and to this Congress that is all to the good. It is Command’s stated mission that you despise, Representatives, and it is that mission that you act so impetuously to undermine from the start: to maintain Honorian unity, and to protect the people of Honorias from those that would call themselves lords among them. Senior Admiral High Starburst has held many discussions with his colleagues of Command regarding the legality of this Congress’s decisions in session, and the legality of the actions taken by individuals outside this Chamber that benefit from the decisions made within it; and he has asked many times just what the punishment should be for those who assist such criminals from a position of national trust and authority. What a question, Representatives. What a circumstance we find ourselves in, needing to ask it at all.>

Representative Illustrious Descent rose to his hooves, expression thunderous, drawing the attention of his nearest colleagues and prompting a number of them to wave him back down to his cushions. <President Valley Shadow,> he interrupted angrily, <I protest that this testimony has been allowed to continue as long as it has, and I condemn this notion of criminal activity in this Chamber – >

The President pressed a button, and the computer screeched; Illustrious Shadow and Bubbling Waters both fell back on their haunches, reeling from the noise. <You do not have the floor, Representative Illustrious Descent,> proclaimed Valley Shadow. <You will await the permission of the Chamber, as all of us do.> The President turned his eyestalks back to Bubbling Waters, who held his head in frustration at the obnoxious computer’s only method of maintaining order among the representatives of Honorias. <Representative Bubbling Waters, you may continue.>

The representative breathed deeply and got back to his hooves. <Thank you, President,> he replied with a sharp nod, and a sharper glance of an eyestalk at Illustrious Descent to match. He took another breath and then, as bidden, continued on: <You should all be pleased to know that the senior admirals of Command are collectively unwilling to declare law and punishment to be their purview. Despite High Starburst’s gravest misgivings, the representatives of our nation need not fear that their colleagues among the military are likely to turn against them by force of arms. We are not yet at a time when the continuation of our present conduct is less disastrous to the national welfare than the purposeful eradication of centuries of democratic governance.

<This is, as I have already pointed out, not a unanimous view of the present situation,> Bubbling Waters added meaningfully. <And I would be remiss if I minimized the danger of a different point of view growing to become the position of the majority. As long as Congress directs Command to waste its meager resources on distant foreign conflicts while the ties of national unity are purposely frayed and cut without any response from this body, we come closer to a time when the necessity of democracy becomes less immediately pressing than the necessity of eliminating this democratically-elected assembly by the most expedient means.>

The computer pinged another dozen times, and this time declared on its display, President Valley Shadow has the floor. President Valley Shadow has the floor.

The President rose to his full height once again, this time glaring at Bubbling Waters as the representative reluctantly gave way. <Representative, you are out of line! While no one may object to testimony that expresses differences of opinion between Congress and Command, we will not be subjected to threats of armed rebellion, no matter where those threats originate. You will refrain from threatening this body in future, Representative, and you may inform the senior admiral to do the same if I do not meet with him again before you do.>

A rumble of anger and not-unreasonable fear echoed in the back of everyone’s mind to second the President’s warning: Honorias’s elected representatives not only objected to any conversation involving a military overthrow of Congress, but refused to even contemplate the possibility. For Bubbling Waters and the message he delivered, time was decidedly up. Rising to meet the glares of the assembled representatives one more time, Bubbling Waters merely bowed his head toward the President’s dais and replied, <These words are mine only in that I relay them to you all. If you will not countenance them, I will not repeat them. Bear witness to my restraint, and imagine if you must what I cannot simply describe for you.> The representative turned his full attention toward the rest of Congress and proclaimed, <The senior admirals of Command are willing to wait for the legitimate election before they come into possession of this place, regardless. None of us are ignorant of their campaigns, and none of us dare to stand against them in any way that matters. Guns will not conquer this Chamber, but the votes of an angry people will accomplish just as much if not more. And the people are angry, Representatives. They are angrier at the people they have entrusted with these offices than perhaps they have ever been before. We would do well to remember that before we decry mere words brought up to defy us.>

Bubbling Waters returned to his cushions, head held high even under the weight of hundreds of glaring eyes. Finally, for the first time since the last election, he was confident in the message he had delivered and the public image he had projected, so far removed from his fellow representatives that not one of them could look at him without anger. He was… content, at least somewhat, in the knowledge that, even if he did not return to the Chamber in the wake of the upcoming election, he had done what he could to avoid the fate he was certain awaited the short-sighted idiots that surrounded him. He couldn’t be happy to be thrown from the Lawgiver in defeat, but he could accept it if it meant his survival.

Let the March’s trained puppets complain about comparisons best left to Golden Cloud and Sharpness Everlasting, Bubbling Waters thought to himself as the first representative of more than a dozen took the floor at the computer’s instruction. When reality sets in, I’ll live in peace, and they… probably won’t.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Within the week, Congress deliberately ordered Honorian soldiers, those who had sworn to defend the people and the territory of Honorias to the exclusion of all else, to take part in a war against freedom-seeking rebels on Elysium, and to consider taking up arms against the Empire of Yamato for good measure. Bubbling Waters stayed put on his cushions, and resolved to converse in private with his friend in Command at his earliest convenience. Certainly it was clear that the election could not come soon enough.

Will Rogers

The Prophet of Landfall

From Aruhn to Sadrith, to Amaya, and thence to Branora and Laconia; and from there, emerging in the midst of vastly foreign stars, the two ships raced as quickly as they could among the worlds of the friendly Silberflussi, shattered and healing from their recent strife so close to the open wound of the Eye, unsure of just which eyes that spied them believed in their cause or condemned it. There was desperate risk to this mission, and even the journey to undertake it was fraught with danger, particularly when the states of friendly governments could not guarantee the agreement of their violent peoples, but the Honorians pressed on regardless, outpacing the rumor of their coming, until at last they materialized into physical form bathed in the glow of a yellow sun.

There was no disguising their arrival above perhaps the most highly-valued world in the Orion Spur, gliding in from their coalescing point farther out in the star system and decelerating as they approached the hub of the system’s attention under the watchful gaze of half a dozen great interstellar empires. Two Recovery-class carriers were a novelty in this region of space, where Honorias’s military reach was a joke shared by Teutionians over drinks and cigars and the coreward edges of the well-explored Spur were regarded as barbarian territory best exemplified by Cheng I Sen; nonetheless, there they were, their guns primed and their crews ready even as their communications officers broadcasted the Ashian invitation and declaration of safe passage that had brought such alien vessels to the cradle and the very heart of humanity. Before the eyes of billions, the prows of these massive ships touched the first wisps of atmosphere, and within moments they were totally embraced by the air of Elysium.

That’s when their hangar doors opened at last.

Dragged to the launch deck by motorized hooks, massive air carriers awaited signals from the bridge. One by one, the catapults did their work, launching the great machines into the skies above Sartaria, their precious cargoes awaiting the moment of their use. They departed on an expected journey of hours, while their mother ships remained high above conventional cruising altitude with their sensors and their weapons pointed directly downward, awaiting the potential for conflict with the rebels of Ash or the so-called volunteers who bowed to Emperor Sasaki; none of these threats rose to challenge them.

As they progressed through the air, ten carrier planes turned their noses toward safe territory, the rendezvous city of Port Dread. Ashian regulars, STO allies, and the collected supplies of an empire held together by the strength of a sometimes-capricious military juggernaut whose comfort and willingness to fight relied on timely and copious rations. The remaining two, on the other hand, turned eastward over the strait: Enemy airspace awaited them, where so many thousands of Ashian airmen had been immolated in an instant, now to be avenged as best as Honorias could provide. As stealthy as they could be, and as prepared for violence as they could manage ahead of time, these two planes drove into the heart of Ashian Sartaria, the so-called New Frontier, until the wilds of the southern continent stretched out before them, where no one would easily spot their arrival.

Only then, in secrecy, did the back hatches of the great carriers open.

Leaping from the hollow bellies of their hosts, four winged steel beasts activated their jet stabilizers on their way to the ground below, until they crashed through the forest canopy and arrived with a rumbling crunch. Briefly-glowing eyes scanned their surroundings for threats before the first tentative steps proved that the machines had suffered no immediate damage from their rough landing. For a moment, the giant robots stood still, as if convening a meeting that only its participants could understand. Then, as one, the four ZD-4 Sunders moved off toward the nearest known enemy location, to scout or to plunder as circumstances required.

Their cargo delivered and their planes recovered, the Recovery-class carriers in the sky above engaged their engines at full thrust once more to escape the gravity well of this world, known among the peoples of the Spur for its tendency to drag every nearby civilization into its wake. The captains aboard could only hope that the soldiers they left behind would eventually rise out of that crushing weight, and at the same time feared that they had delivered their fellow Honorians well past the point of no return.

Yet, they thought, let the Sartarians and the Yamatans fear in their turn. Honorias had landed on Ashian soil.

Honorias wrote:The Prophet of Landfall

From Aruhn to Sadrith, to Amaya, and thence to Branora and Laconia; and from there, emerging in the midst of vastly foreign stars, the two ships raced as quickly as they could among the worlds of the friendly Silberflussi, shattered and healing from their recent strife so close to the open wound of the Eye, unsure of just which eyes that spied them believed in their cause or condemned it. There was desperate risk to this mission, and even the journey to undertake it was fraught with danger, particularly when the states of friendly governments could not guarantee the agreement of their violent peoples, but the Honorians pressed on regardless, outpacing the rumor of their coming, until at last they materialized into physical form bathed in the glow of a yellow sun.

There was no disguising their arrival above perhaps the most highly-valued world in the Orion Spur, gliding in from their coalescing point farther out in the star system and decelerating as they approached the hub of the system’s attention under the watchful gaze of half a dozen great interstellar empires. Two Recovery-class carriers were a novelty in this region of space, where Honorias’s military reach was a joke shared by Teutionians over drinks and cigars and the coreward edges of the well-explored Spur were regarded as barbarian territory best exemplified by Cheng I Sen; nonetheless, there they were, their guns primed and their crews ready even as their communications officers broadcasted the Ashian invitation and declaration of safe passage that had brought such alien vessels to the cradle and the very heart of humanity. Before the eyes of billions, the prows of these massive ships touched the first wisps of atmosphere, and within moments they were totally embraced by the air of Elysium.

That’s when their hangar doors opened at last.

Dragged to the launch deck by motorized hooks, massive air carriers awaited signals from the bridge. One by one, the catapults did their work, launching the great machines into the skies above Sartaria, their precious cargoes awaiting the moment of their use. They departed on an expected journey of hours, while their mother ships remained high above conventional cruising altitude with their sensors and their weapons pointed directly downward, awaiting the potential for conflict with the rebels of Ash or the so-called volunteers who bowed to Emperor Sasaki; none of these threats rose to challenge them.

As they progressed through the air, ten carrier planes turned their noses toward safe territory, the rendezvous city of Port Dread. Ashian regulars, STO allies, and the collected supplies of an empire held together by the strength of a sometimes-capricious military juggernaut whose comfort and willingness to fight relied on timely and copious rations. The remaining two, on the other hand, turned eastward over the strait: Enemy airspace awaited them, where so many thousands of Ashian airmen had been immolated in an instant, now to be avenged as best as Honorias could provide. As stealthy as they could be, and as prepared for violence as they could manage ahead of time, these two planes drove into the heart of Ashian Sartaria, the so-called New Frontier, until the wilds of the southern continent stretched out before them, where no one would easily spot their arrival.

Only then, in secrecy, did the back hatches of the great carriers open.

Leaping from the hollow bellies of their hosts, four winged steel beasts activated their jet stabilizers on their way to the ground below, until they crashed through the forest canopy and arrived with a rumbling crunch. Briefly-glowing eyes scanned their surroundings for threats before the first tentative steps proved that the machines had suffered no immediate damage from their rough landing. For a moment, the giant robots stood still, as if convening a meeting that only its participants could understand. Then, as one, the four ZD-4 Sunders moved off toward the nearest known enemy location, to scout or to plunder as circumstances required.

Their cargo delivered and their planes recovered, the Recovery-class carriers in the sky above engaged their engines at full thrust once more to escape the gravity well of this world, known among the peoples of the Spur for its tendency to drag every nearby civilization into its wake. The captains aboard could only hope that the soldiers they left behind would eventually rise out of that crushing weight, and at the same time feared that they had delivered their fellow Honorians well past the point of no return.

Yet, they thought, let the Sartarians and the Yamatans fear in their turn. Honorias had landed on Ashian soil.

how are you doing this?!?!

Why believe in anything they praise when one hand holds them the victor while the other holds the shovel to their grave?

The front page of every newspaper in Honorias, the leading story in every news broadcast, and the purposeful subject of legislative debate for the coming week was never anything other than the deployment of Honorian ground forces on Elysium, and the exact source of the semi-expected military response to that deployment. Congress in particular was obsessed with the issue – a situation of the representatives’ own making, as ever, whose time in the public eye was only ever intended to assist their personal interests. Representatives Summer Gust and Illustrious Descent led Congress’s efforts to bolster support to the Ashian war effort on Elysium, requisitioning five more Recovery-class carriers for immediate deployment (three of which were taken from the newly-reinforced defenses at Piran) and assigning a total of eighty largely-untested ZD-4 Sunders for their use. Unlike the heroic Endusal and the tragically-sacrificed Samsi, these ships would not be asked to voyage alone, but would instead be guarded by four Insistence-class battleships, eight Flagbearer-class light cruisers, and – importantly when considering the lessons of anti-Zaku warfare under I-Field conditions – the full fighter complements of two Meadow-class carriers, in addition to the fighters that could be packed into their own hangars alongside the air carriers necessary to transport the Sunders to the planet’s surface. The fact that these forces, too, were largely pulled from Piran’s defenses was not lost on anyone, prompting an immediate condemnation by the Piranese mayoralty that Congress voted, with only a few exceptions (including the President), to ignore outright. Nonetheless and simultaneously, Congress voted unanimously to send a delegation to the Third Swarm, intent on learning as much about these Sossaeth rogues and their purpose on and around Elysium as could be gleaned from a relatively-friendly faction with a tangential relation, and to guarantee for Honorias that the people with whom they had traded so profitably in the past and present were not already turning their weapons against their erstwhile partners. Piran was expendable, perhaps, but the whole of the Western March could not be put at risk so glibly, especially by those whose incredibly large payments came from that place.

While Congress’s response to the Elysian crisis was swift, aggressive, and largely uniform, public opinion on the entire matter was far more divided. It had been less than a year since the general public had been urged to support the war effort against the so-called Sister Republics in order to liberate the states conquered by their armies either individually or as a whole, in particular the suffering peoples of Isauria and (it was hoped) Britannia; it had been only a few months since Congress had brought Honorias into the Silver Treaty Organization with declarations that these new allies wanted nothing less than to defend the helpless and punish the wicked, and followed that up with a hasty alliance-wide challenge to Marcus Aeneas’s new Al’terran Empire over possession of the free nation of Kuushan; but it was now weeks into a new campaign on a world that had once been considered off-limits to non-human intervention, in which the Ashian monarchy desperately sought to maintain power over the peoples of an unrepentant colonial exercise. The war had its supporters, both in and out of the military, whose thoughts turned first and foremost to nearby Austria and its never-humbled constitutional dictatorship, ready to strike against Honorias at whatever moment was convenient; it was Ash, among all of the nations that had fought against Austria and Zeikeutsyr, that had reached out to the Lawgiver and had come away with agreements to base their warships, crewed by their soldiers, directly under Austria’s avaricious gaze, for the protection and security of Honorias. For such stalwart assistance, provided by a nation to whom Austria was no threat at all, many Honorians firmly declared that there should be no limit to their own reciprocation when the need arose, as it had clearly done. But the war was also deeply resented, again both in and out of the military, as a needless distraction at best, and a stark violation of Honorian principles at worst. Honorians in general had been apathetic toward international politics for a very long time, encouraged by the nation’s plethora of trading partners often being at odds with one another and, in the case of the Third Swarm, sometimes a known hazard to the continuation of civilized life in the Orion Spur. Only the strident efforts of Congress, in particular this Congress, had begun to change that, bringing hard moral stances back into the public consciousness by declaring that Honorias had a duty to do its part for the defense of civilization as a whole, for the freedom of those who had already fallen under the crushing weight of tyranny, and for the common good of free-thinking sentient life (including Honorian life, of course) whose collective future would surely be darker in a Spur ruled by militant conquerors. Many Honorians ignored such calls, too jaded to be moved by appeals to the common good, but many more were truly swayed by this declaration of moral righteousness – and it was this group, hearkening to a new purpose, that was the most disappointed at Congress’s own moral apathy toward the Zephyri leadership of Isauria (intact and in power, regardless of stated nationality), the continued dictatorship of Austria (and the continued Urstean occupation of oppressed Britannia), the acceptance and even friendship of imperial and tyrannic powers throughout the Spur, and now the determination to give material and military assistance to one of these imperial powers against its own domestic independence movement (without mentioning, of course, the continuation of such a movement within Honorias itself).

The knowledge that Honorian lives had already been lost to this conflict, of course, only inflamed the existing opinions. For those that decried the war, it was proof of Congress’s perfidy that they would send their people to die for another’s tyrannic enterprise. For those that defended Ash’s sovereignty, it was equal proof that Honorias would suffer for its allies, and would expect no less from those allies in turn. Interestingly, and fortunately for Command, those who laid blame for the conflict turned their anger on Congress alone, while those who gave praise to those involved in it praised only the soldiers and their officers – so that, in all cases, Congress was tolerated at best and hated at worst, while Command and its men at arms were tolerated at worst and far more often lauded for their bloody sacrifices and given sympathy for the unnecessary political difficulties that were laid upon them. As the images of Captain Blue Haste, several of his senior pilots, and the hulk of the Recovery-class carrier Samsi were disseminated throughout Honorias, Command created its first heroes of the new war, and basked in their reflected glory, whereas Congress was quickly and easily overshadowed by them.

But even Command was not invulnerable to criticism. A week after the return of the first Honorian expedition to Elysium, and two days after Congress pushed its second military authorization through the Chamber to pursue the conflict on Elysium more seriously, a reporter from the Dominion of Nabia asked Senior Admiral Glorious Advance, by now the leading military candidate for legislative office in the coming elections, just how an admiral-led Congress would direct Honorian actions on Elysium. The senior admiral’s response was less than popular among a great division of the current Congress’s furious critics: Conflict on Elysium is a distraction from our more potent threats closer to home, but it remains to be seen if we are incapable of concluding this war in our favor and must withdraw. Given the sacrifices we have already made to enter the war, the lessons that the conflict is already teaching us, and the importance of our friendship with an empire that has guaranteed an equal reciprocation against our own enemies, we will simply have to monitor the situation as it develops and make our decision based on the information that comes to us. It is my hope that we will win this war swiftly and thus return to more important matters sooner rather than later.

Command’s collective share of the Honorian vote took an immediate hit as anti-war protesters took to the streets, now aware that neither of the important factions aiming for a place in Congress had any desire to end a war that had few (if any) moral merits. The situation gave rise to an apparent third political faction almost instantly, with new campaigners, including some prominent veterans of the Boethian War who had since left military service, declaring their candidacy for Congress in competition with Command’s senior admirals in order to stop the war as soon as the coming election was held. Most of Congress’s existing representatives found that detail amusing more than anything, but it did nothing for their own reelection chances, as the few moderates among them – the President included – dourly noted among themselves. It was good, Valley Shadow noted to his few allies on the Lawgiver, that the democratic legislature of Honorias would not simply be handed over to a military government, no matter how popular; and while certainly the senior admirals would have a strong, and probably the strongest, position to direct Congress’s affairs in the coming year, the presence of opponents to challenge them in the present and to compete against them in the years to come would ensure the strength of the Republic and the primacy of civilian leadership in the long term. But that was a matter of theory, affecting others of the future, and irrelevant for his own place in Congress today, and in history tomorrow: Valley Shadow’s belongings were already packed, his new home decided, and his farewells given, as he awaited election day and the arrival of his successor to the Lawgiver and to the Chamber.

Whether or not the warmongers of Congress were as prepared for their inevitable departure as their powerless President, only they could attest.

Where else can you get to watch this talent fall? One by one, they drop.

You know the name.

Samarys, even to the untrained eye, was obviously new. From its low population to its partially-unfinished infrastructure, its dubiously-shiny buildings and empty roadways, and its fields that were in many cases more dirt than grass, Samarys presented itself as a Dominion without a people, and a project without an end date. Indeed, those few who made Samarys home were mostly unwilling residents, always comparing their bleak surroundings to places far away and lost to time, hoping still, even now, to one day return to those parts of Honorias that had been the pride of their ancestors until, with a finality Honorias had never quite matched since, they had been destroyed – by the Vapor of Sharpness Everlasting, perhaps, or by the unhurried death squads of the Ash Banner.

The Colonies of Inanius, once a glorious attempt to create a corporate fiefdom in newly-claimed space, had mostly been given over to the image of a permanent refugee camp, and nowhere was this more apparent than Samarys, the very edge of Honorian influence in the Orion Spur, beyond even the Lawgiver’s usually-comprehensive itinerary. Here was a habitat pressed into service long before its intended opening, without facilities, offices, bureaus, governing structures, or authoritative staff who might otherwise have filled those offices, bureaus, and departments. Into this place, against their will, came migrants on a permanently-paused journey, defeated and embittered, uncivilized in their despair and uninterested in whatever authority might call on them to move on from it. Living amongst the relics of a project intended for the rich and powerful – gleaming office buildings, state-of-the-art docking facilities, impossibly-wide boulevards cut deep into Samarys’s urban center stretching from one end of the city to the other – they were given all the more reason to submit to anger at their lot, to see but never to have, and to mourn but never to reclaim. They were, in short, corruptible… and not only by their natural feelings.

Those who had fled the shadow of the March did not always cleanly escape the cloud that glowered over their flight. Those who had come to rest upon Samarys, willingly or no, did not always appreciate the supposed blessings of Sharpness Everlasting’s divine aid. And Vapor always, always had blessings to give.

All of these things together explained why a white-furred Sadrithian topping out at twelve feet tall, complete with a withered tentacle trailing down his right-front leg, was brandishing a pistol and an oversized hammer in a dark corner of the habitat’s central control bunker, glaring at the only other person in the room as though the sight of his lightweight armor and mask, decked out in yellow and red, were a personal affront. <You are a blundering child, Enesa Jeopardy,> the albino declared, his tail blade cracking in the air above his head even as he waved his hammer about with the intensity of his anger. <Your vaunted Captain should have taught you: This place has been plundered already. Why would I be here, unless to trap you where no one will ever think to look for you again?>

Enesa Jeopardy glared from behind his mask, tail blade ready but not, admittedly, very steady as he faced down the very dangerous weapons in a very dangerous man’s hands. <The Captain knows exactly where to find me,> he asserted. <Not that I need to wait for him to have a handle on you. You make a threatening case, Devourer, but you’re not going to add to the colony’s death totals today any more than you were going to yesterday when you robbed the irrigation offices and left everyone there alive and healthy. You don’t want official attention on this colony any more than anyone else does, and you’re not going to do anything that will threaten that.>

(Left unmentioned was the reason that an office building associated with the habitat’s irrigation control should have enough money on hand to warrant a robbery in the first place. In those places where necessary infrastructure was incomplete, particularly in terms of automation, the embittered and often-desperate residents of Samarys often had no qualms about privatizing whatever public services they could acquire by trickery or force. Irrigation might have been irregular in some parts of Samarys, but those prepared to pay hefty fees tended to have the greenest fields of the colony.)

<I have always avoided bloodshed among my fellow colonists,> the so-called Devourer answered easily. <But you are not a colonist, are you? You are nameless, faceless… and without an identity, your death will mean nothing to anyone outside this colony. Perhaps the Captain will mourn you – but you should have learned by now that you are not the first to call yourself Jeopardy, and he will surely find another to take your place when you fall. Enesa, Enesa, what a lie for those of us with memories longer than the past six months…>

<There is only ever one Jeopardy, Devourer, and I am him today,> Enesa Jeopardy hit back, though he was clearly stung by the implication. <Surrender your weapons now, or answer to the Captain when he arrives.>

The Devourer replied by snapping his tail blade forward, prompting Enesa Jeopardy to block it clumsily with his own. The strength of the blow alone was enough to make Jeopardy stumble, but even then it had been naught but a feint: The Devourer’s hammer came up like a thunderclap, and Jeopardy fell to the ground with a snap of bone, his arm limp and flailing. The Devourer slammed his front hoof onto the floor in front of the stunned Jeopardy’s nose, taunting his downed opponent, before his tail blade came crashing down –

A personal shield snapped into being around Jeopardy’s prone body, sparing his life. The Devourer immediately backed away, his eyestalks sweeping the darkened room for another intruder even as he leveled his gun at his downed opponent. <Your tricks won’t withstand a sustained barrage, Captain,> he snarled. <Reveal yourself, or I’ll put a few bullets into your comrade that you’ll have a hard time explaining to whatever family he has left.>

<No need to be threatening,> replied Captain Sam as he emerged from the shadow of a nearby doorway, darkness clinging to him and his own deep-red armor as he stepped fully into the control room. <Whether you believe it or not, I guarantee already that Enesa Jeopardy would be missed without delay, even if neither you nor I cared to report on it. He is a colonist, rest assured, and so is every member of his family he cares to claim. You will do well not to antagonize the people of Samarys so blindly.>

The Devourer swept his gun away from the fallen Jeopardy toward the Captain, sending shots flying toward his more senior opponent. Captain Sam dodged quickly to the side, ducking behind a control console that already showed signs of extreme abuse from previous scavengers, so that it didn’t even bother to spark as bullets perforated its exterior shell. Before the Devourer could shoot again, the Captain sprang up from behind another console entirely and rushed toward him from the rear; the albino caught sight of him immediately, but with the shadows clinging to his form it was impossible to aim a blow accurately, and the Devourer’s tail blade soared through empty space. Captain Sam responded by tossing a miniature flare toward the Devourer as he galloped forward, forcing the larger man to turn all of his eyes away to avoid the blinding flash. Recognizing the tactic for what it was, knowing that he could no longer see the Captain’s approach, the Devourer galloped hard in his turn, trying to put space between himself and the colony’s best enforcer – and Captain Sam appeared in front of him, emerging from the long shadows created by the bright flash of light to bar the Devourer’s way, another shield shimmering into place to keep his target contained. The Devourer swung his hammer, hopeful that he could break through the barrier with brute force, only to stumble as he was rebuffed.

Then another tail blade crashed against the distracted brute’s back, driving the Devourer to his knees. Behind him, still cradling his damaged arm, Enesa Jeopardy had gotten back to his feet, glaring at his downed opponent as he stepped forward. One eyestalk rose to meet Captain Sam’s gaze. <Thanks for the save.>

<You wouldn’t have needed it if you had taken the time to think, Enesa,> the Captain grumped, stepping forward through the now-flickering shield and kicking the Devourer’s dropped gun away. His own tail blade came down with a bang on the stunned giant’s head, knocking him out cold; like his sidekick, he struck only with the flat of his blade, unwilling to kill even a deadly enemy for fear of closer outside attention. <We’ve been up here two times already. You know there’s nothing up here worth a criminal’s time!>

Jeopardy looked askance at his partner. <What about that stash of The West’s Best Equisians videos we dug up last time?>

<You know perfectly well those weren’t real Equisians,> Sam snapped back. <Those videos wouldn’t have made ten Isaurian sherds on the open market and you know it. No, you fell into an obvious trap for the second time this week, and once again I had to abandon a lead on the Ranger case in order to rush here to rescue you. Do I have to stuff your sister into that costume to see if she’d figure the job out more quickly?>

<Hey, don’t bring my sister into this,> snapped Jeopardy, pointing a threatening finger at the Captain even as his other arm hung limp. <I’m ten times the man she’ll ever be…> The ridiculousness of that statement hung between the two for a moment before Jeopardy added, <She’ll drive you insane before the end of your first investigation and you know it.>

Captain Sam held his younger partner’s gaze for a long moment, prepared to argue, before he blinked and replied, <Yeah, I can’t argue with that.> He shook his head. <Whatever. We’re safe, we’re done here, and we can get the Devourer back to jail before he wakes up and decides to get cranky again – >

Both partners’ eyestalks glanced down at the floor below them… which was conspicuously empty of a giant albino Sadrithian with a vestigial tentacle limb and a bad attitude. Their main eyes, still looking at one another, widened in horror. <He’s gone!> they exclaimed simultaneously.

<Quick, the elevator!> began Jeopardy, already turning to sprint away from the control room.

Captain Sam was already gone. <Already ahead of you!> he replied as the sound of hoofbeats pounded down the corridor in the distance. <I think I see him moving to the second floor…>

Another day passed in Samarys, the newest and least-remembered Colony of Inanius. Its people, bitter and yearning, lived in the polluted remnants of someone else’s industrial dreams. Some took their circumstances poorly. Others made it their mission to protect the many from the superpowered tantrums of the few. Through it all, the golden rule was only this: that nothing be done to attract the eyes of Congress, Command, or the nation as a whole.

For that, the good and the bad alike had reason to thank Captain Sam and his young partner in justice, Enesa Jeopardy.

A broad incision sits across the evening…

Most of the time, Kand’s long-term residents took no notice of the outside world. The so-called Dominion had been, in many ways, a political project, but politics had changed drastically, far beyond the imaginings of its builders even a brief seven years before, so that Kand’s place in the larger whole was not only changed, but made mostly obsolete. Ash and Honorias together had lost their interest in impressing foreign politicians by great industrial or infrastructural works, focusing instead on the science of war as popularized by the Zephyri juggernaut of the past half-decade, garnering foreign attention (good and bad) through stand-offs, interventions, and fiery conflicts to the occasional detriment of the domestic audience and, in particular, the complete disinterest of the people of Kand. On that now-completed habitat, Ashians and Honorians alike persisted without bothering to consult the interest of their homelands, knowing that their erstwhile masters had already forgotten about their existence. Only Kand’s immediate hosts had any reason to interfere in the day-to-day inertia of this orbiting habitat, and they… well, they almost certainly understood that the people left behind there had no connection with and no interest in the governments that had once commanded their obedience.

Kand was an anachronism and an anomaly: a relic of the past to many of its residents, and a newfangled interloper to those people whose civilization played host to its stable, but ever-precarious, orbit. Its Ashians existed far from the eye of their Emperor and his Sochana, much, perhaps, to their relief and pleasure; its Honorians, though, lived in the shadow of monuments proclaiming the coming victory of ultimately vanquished lords, the rising glory of a goddess now cast down, and a national unity that had once again failed to deliver its fruitful promise. Kand persisted like a window into some mad alternate universe, observed with disinterest by its foreign hosts and otherwise forgotten by all except those who lived there – whose own memory of their erstwhile homelands was equally warped and tarnished.

Whenever Red Horizon raised his eyestalks to the skies above, he spied through wisps of cloud a gleaming visage in the night. It was forbidden to him and to his countrymen, held so far apart from the rest of the civilized Spur that its people’s entire language was purposely kept secret from outsiders to prevent ideological contamination or political interference in the heart of their society; yet it was in orbit of this place that the international community had constructed their wonders, eager to instill envy in both their hosts and their fellow visitors. Red Horizon wondered if the sight of such foreign detritus in their skies prompted any such emotion in the residents of that place, or if the self-proclaimed glories of Bright Jewel and its superior civilization really were enough to prevent every Tuvhalian citizen from suffering the same wanderlust known to every other, lesser sentient being.

This had not been Red Horizon’s first choice of self-imposed exile, for certain. Once upon a time, stranded in Drethan at the conclusion of his goddess’s failed war, the devoted Boethian had yearned to embark with his better-connected comrades for the trials of Ahanibi, doing his part to establish a new home for the faithful rather than biding his time surrounded by signs of his enemies’ victory. By chance or by the grace of Boeth, he was raised up from that accursed place by the greed of others; authority, and a second chance, beckoned in the boardroom of a company made into his own image, the face of Honorias as it should have been, self-assured and prepared to deliver judgment on any that got in its way. But in his second war, as with his first, he was not good enough – too weak, too indecisive, or perhaps too decisive when he should have been more cautious. His company collapsed in disgrace. His shareholders cast him adrift. His goddess… surely, surely, his goddess turned her back on him in disgust at his shame. And with what little money his ill-fated venture had garnered him, Red Horizon departed the Western March entirely, not to endeavor with the faithful at Ahanibi where his failures would mark him out as a lesser man, but to wallow in his grief and fantasize of a new reality among the Boethian monuments of Kand.

Joy and punishment mingled here, in a place where Boeth’s victory was touted by Sharpness Everlasting’s most determined diplomats for the benefit of uninformed, uninterested foreigners, and in particular those whose authority and cultural shadow extended over this demonstration of Boeth’s divine mission to raise her people, unified and whole, above all others. Determined declarations of intent, appropriately patriotic and moving, were written in foreign script side-by-side with Sadrithian; inspiring sculptures of Honorian labor and progress shared space with a foreigner’s ignorant proclamations of mirrored struggles and mutual respect. On this island of divine peace, Boeth reigned supreme, at least in the minds of her Sadrithian subjects… while Bright Jewel dictated law and order that could, at an unpronounceable word uttered by masked lips, simply end the fantasy and bring the whole colony crashing down.

Red Horizon considered this all as his nightly vigil came to its customary end before the monument of unity, the holographic map of Honorias complete under the proud gaze of Phthalo Green and his junior martyrs, still unmoved since its unveiling at Kand’s first opening for the education and amusement of foreign eyes. From this, Kand City’s central point, all streets radiated outward as their own contribution to the allegory, illuminated by hundreds of lamp posts and thousands of overlooking windows. Like a hundred nights before this, Red Horizon lifted his main gaze to the street leading east – according to the cylinder’s arbitrary cardinal rules, at least – and brought his eyestalks up one more time to contemplate the reality of Bright Jewel above him. He took his first steps home… and stopped, his full attention spinning back to the west, where a man stepped out from the long shadows of an intentionally-oversized portico to approach the monument and take his own turn gazing at the perfection of a Boethian nation.

It was immediately clear that this humanoid shape was no Ashian. His own long shadow was almost matched by his actual height, seemingly stretched from the base of his toes to the top of his too-pale crown like a taut string – yet there was a waver to his form, or so it seemed, that no amount of tightening at his roots could firm up. He was unnatural, and in no way divine; by process of elimination, he must have been Al’terran, of some relation to the people whose gleaming capital outshone Kand’s would-be theology in the evening light, unholy and perverse. He stepped forward into the light, and the light shimmered as though it yearned to fall elsewhere. He was abominable, yet he was not Adabali, and so Red Horizon took his cue.

<Al’terran friend, what brings you to forgotten Kand?> the Sadrithian asked, stepping closer to the unclean visitor.

The man came to a stop a few steps away, giving Red Horizon a greasy smile and a close inspection as he replied, “A recommendation from a friend. He said I’d meet some old acquaintances here, and maybe learn some history for a change. I decided it was close enough to home that I shouldn’t be shy in looking.”

His accent was almost unrecognizable – almost, save for recordings that made their way once upon a time to the Dominion of Holamayan of the turbulent factions of Jenayu. General Kalinn’s voice had been hard to forget, considering how often the man himself had featured in Honorable Seyda’s boardroom discussions, either as a potential ally or, as it had eventually turned out, as an enemy of the peace. This voice was… not similar. It was impossible to describe it as similar, but it was related, somehow, and that was enough to tell Red Horizon all that he thought he needed to know.

<An old acquaintance… I might be your man,> the Sadrithian agreed, taking another step forward. He held the newcomer’s gaze with his main eyes while his eyestalks flicked across the other man’s body, looking for hidden weapons and other threats. <I imagine you knew that already, of course, or you wouldn’t have revealed yourself to me. Who are you, friend?>

“Keil,” the man answered easily. “And you are Red Horizon, I’m told, who sent your people to Jenayu like so much warm soot, ashes from the last fire hoping to float on the breeze of a new one.” He turned his eyes toward the holographic star map at the heart of the monument Red Horizon had been contemplating for the last few hours; the Sadrithian imagined that his eyes were somewhat distant from the displayed borders of Honorias, given the context of this disturbing encounter. “My people were on Jenayu, too. They belonged there. Your people did not.”

<Al’terran exceptionalism never fails to amaze me,> Red Horizon replied, shaking his head. <We are so many disparate parts of the same civilization, we nations of the Spur. Do you believe that only Al’terrans have the right to direct – ah,> he interrupted himself. <What a silly question. Of course you do.>

“I’m glad I don’t have to point out the obvious,” Keil said, his smile widening slightly as he turned his attention back to Red Horizon. “Every people has its place, my friend. Generations have lived and died with this knowledge; its study is the scientific basis of Al’terran civilization. Where our people reside, there is no cultural space left over for peoples who do not share our origin. You barbarians have never understood this.” The unsettling visitor turned his eyes over the brick facades ringing the square around him, illuminated against the dark backdrop of night. “You plant yourself in soil that was meant for us, and if we do not weed you out, we must otherwise grow around you. We would choke one another by proximity. Surely you agree that such a fate is unworthy of our great peoples; your presence in our space cannot be allowed to stand.”

Red Horizon snorted. <Do you mean to erase the cylinder, Mister Keil?> he asked mockingly.

“Why not?” the Delek replied with a shrug. “You meant to empty Port Kasrani of millions of its native residents. Surely a few thousand fresh transplants would be a simple task by comparison.” Keil sighed and shook his head. “If only we had the time…”

<It would be much easier all around to send you packing from here instead, I think,> Red Horizon proposed evenly, struggling not to balk at the man’s gall – until he blinked in comprehension. <We?>

His last-second realization meant that the high-caliber gunshot that ripped his left-front leg off at the knee was less surprising than it otherwise would have been. Even as he collapsed in an agony made all the worse by the fortified strength imbued in his body by the blessing of Boeth and the gift of her Vapor, Red Horizon’s tail blade cracked forward. Keil, almost lazily reaching for a weapon of his own, stumbled back with a startled shout as his right hand fell to the ground, almost before Red Horizon’s own shattered body met the poured concrete. With his target now almost out of his reach, the Sadrithian fought through his pain and swung his tail blade again, but taking the extra moment to gather his strength had cost him dearly. Keil was ready, retrieving a dagger with his remaining hand that effortlessly struck against Red Horizon’s tail blade and, having halted its momentum, swiped again to cut it cleanly off, even as the Sadrithian himself keeled over onto his side from the pain.

Red Horizon’s sight was swimming, and the shadows around him shifted and shuffled forward even as he struggled to focus his eyestalks to see them more clearly. One such shadow audibly scoffed, confirming the Sadrithian’s unfortunate assumptions against his wildest hopes. “You’re getting slow, Markul.”

“Replacements aren’t hard to come by,” Keil replied, no matter the suppressed agony in his voice as he regained his equilibrium. “Who’s got the rope? Good, get over here…”

Five or six of them came forward, close enough for Red Horizon to make out their features in the night… and then they were on him, and there was good, strong rope, and the thrashing of an already-dying man was nothing compared to their racially-ordained purpose, and the weight of a Sadrithian past his prime was lifted like an Elysian babe – or like a Valkyrian in the last throes of death.

Kand found him dangling by the neck from the nearest lamp post long before daybreak.

_ _ _ _ _ _

In Dagon, in a business office that had doubled as an unofficial government headquarters for most of the last year, an unremarkable missive was delivered to First Senses’ desk, whose news – and whose helpful reminder of the exact fee owed for that news – prompted an expression of cautious optimism to spread on the tycoon’s face. Buying business interests in Tuvhalia again had been a so-far profitable venture, but locals interested in revenge for the slights of Jenayu had to be cajoled into service through other means; and now, with one man’s death, First Senses had added another violent asset to his collection, willing to serve the Western March’s interests for suitable pay for as long as those interests aligned with a foreign general’s, while the mistakes of the past were washed away in blood. The math was firmly on First Senses’ side: The more pieces he possessed on the board, the more impotent his opponents would become, no matter what conflicts might exist within his overall organization as a result of his prodigious and undiscriminating recruitment. Strength at home and weakness abroad would preserve his investment and establish a new order in the March for years to come.

And above Dagon, in the heart of a Mallet-class warship now caked in soot and rank with the stench of scorched flesh and an unnatural fume, a whisper in the back of his mind stirred Admiral Parting Waves to righteous fury and holy determination. His host was a wealthy businessman and a savvy trickster to be sure, but Boeth was not with him or with his assassins abroad. Devotion to the goddess and responsibility for the welfare of her people would, as ever, win the day… and, while First Senses was bereft of both, Parting Waves was now ready to teach him some important lessons on the subject.

You’ll be better off when you get home.

You flashed your colors at me way prematurely…

The day before the election, as excited pundits both on and off the Lawgiver looked forward to a long day of electoral returns and vote counting, the capital ship’s crew considered their own preparations for the upcoming (potential) transfer of power. The newly-elected would be expected to board the Lawgiver within a week of their victory, while those ousted from their positions needed to be shown the exit within the day; with Congress consisting of hundreds of representatives, the range from minimal change to government purge was a vast one, and the Lawgiver had to be ready for either extreme and every possible variation of in-between. Clearances had to be produced for every newly-elected official and rescinded from every former representative – and the respective staff of each – all of whom had to be ferried to and from the most important and secure warship in Honorias. Elections, in short, were a headache for the Lawgiver’s crew, usually tempered by a small shot of vindictive pleasure when it came for their own turn to cast a vote… while possessing much more intimate knowledge of the incumbent candidates than almost anyone else in Honorias could claim. There was a reason that the Lawgiver’s crew, and servicemen within the Capital Fleet more generally, voted in prodigiously-high numbers to replace the status quo with new faces year after year after year.

They would surely get their wish this year. The electorate was furious at the unflinching perfidy of Congress’s representatives, brought to power by promises they never even pretended to keep, and happy to demonstrate their authority over everyone and everything except their paymasters in the Western March – where such authority was needed the most, of course. Opinion polls throughout Honorias were thorough in their denouncement of Congress’s current course and general behavior, to the point that one local publication from Hairan jokingly added an option declaring, I’d Rather Vote for Al-Esh, only for surveyed citizens to select that option enough times to attract threats of a government investigation on the Chamber floor. Several veteran representatives had already resorted to flamboyant displays of dissent against the prevailing political direction, seemingly to no avail. President Valley Shadow, powerless in his position of ultimate authority, had already resigned himself to the end of his once-promising career. Bureaucrats, separate from but inextricably linked with the politicians of Congress, struggled to erase their names from every record of policy implementation over the course of the past year, fearful that associating themselves with unpopular policies would destroy their livelihoods while equally frightened that future historians might discover some less-than-enthusiastic implementation of Congress’s declared policy and call the bureaucracy’s impartiality into question. Aides for all of these people rushed to and fro throughout the ship, seeking last-minute agreements from their counterparts in other government offices for one last day of debate in Congress before the powers of their masters dissolved and disappeared. And, to the side, the media, the crew, and the few honored visitors to the Lawgiver watched on with fascination and no small amount of glee, knowing that this blatant pack of fraudsters was soon to get its long-awaited reward for a year of disservice.

The crew, drilled to perfection by the long-serving Captain Long Tail, did its duty regardless of the circumstances. Nothing, either disaster or heightened anticipation, could be allowed to interrupt the daily functions of the Lawgiver, the first and finest ship of Honorias. Thus, even as tension built and eyes turned to the distant Dominions – as if paying them greater attention would bring news of their votes a whole day early – the ship and its crew continued with their daily tasks, altering their course only as the necessity of the election required. Of course there would be enhanced attention on the Lawgiver during this process; of course there would be a massive increase in the workload; and of course there would be the usual last hurrah instigated by a collection of egotistical fools whose time of power was now tangibly coming to an end. The crew had seen it all before, and the ship had withstood it all time and again since its inauguration.

Each election day, as well as the hectic days preceding and following on from it, had idiosyncrasies, of course. Veteran crew members still claimed to shudder at the memory of a year in which not a single representative was sent away by the public’s vote, which supposedly prompted such an outrage among a fellowship of defeated candidates that they attempted to smuggle themselves aboard the Lawgiver to stage a disruptive protest; the stories of just what trouble these would-be politicians caused for the ship’s crew as they were rooted out before they could interrupt the business of Congress, or the smooth operation of an active warship for that matter, were so outlandish that newer crew members had come to regard them as fancy and embellishment, as opposed to an accurate retelling. There were multiple years in which security protocols had to be adjusted to account for the election of representatives with previous criminal records, who had been sent to the Lawgiver as either a protest against the law or a statement of trust in their rehabilitation – or, most usually, as a demonstration of national ignorance regarding the nature of the candidates on offer. Compared to these strange frustrations, even the predicted purge of Congress’s incumbent representatives would be a simple affair, made simpler by the evident disinterest of those same representatives in maintaining their offices of power (at least if their lackluster reelection campaigns were any indication). There would surely be more traffic, at first going as the old representatives departed, and then coming as the newly-elected politicians arrived to begin their terms, but that was well within the ability of the Lawgiver’s crew to manage. Indeed, the unexpected request of a chartered passenger liner for clearance to dock with the capital ship and disembark a full complement of angry (but peaceful, law-abiding!) protesters, intent on mocking the departure of their hated representatives for all the nation’s press to see, only solidified the crew’s general opinion that this year’s election would be more entertaining than troublesome overall.

The assigned civilian hangar was unsurprisingly filled with members of the media when the liner, appropriately (and likely intentionally) named People’s Witness, set down with a fanfare of horns and pre-recorded orchestral accompaniment. Officers kept watch as the disembarkation began, ostensibly as part of their duties as opposed to any curiosity or smug sense of justice – they were, after all, strictly impartial – casting their eyes and sensory instruments over the crowd as men and women largely hailing from Berandas, a known quantity of anti-Marcher sentiment ever since its new colonists had arrived to discover just what Sharpness Everlasting had done to the Dominion’s previous population, organized themselves into an orderly line, rolled out their banners and lifted their signs, and struck up a semi-respectable tune with which to march throughout the public areas of the Lawgiver, particularly those surrounding the Chamber of Congress, according to a path that had been provided to their leaders by Captain Long Tail in accordance with long-standing policies on non-essential access. Even ignoring the earlier-referenced attempt by disgruntled candidates to smuggle themselves onto the Lawgiver, the super dreadnought had played host to legitimate protests and demonstrations before; this was an unusual case and an unusual cause, but not an unusual event in and of itself.

The captain and most of his officers went back to their business, while the media kept their cameras on the protesters as they began their rounds of the capital ship. They began with the main corridors leading away from the hangars, populated mainly by security officers and on-call assault forces that enforced Long Tail’s prescribed march route, but likewise traveled by several of the political aides whose scurrying had taken them too far from the safety of the representatives’ private chambers and offices. Held in place by the mass of newcomers flowing down the corridor, these aides were made to wait until the whole parade had passed them by, at which point the head of the march was already in sight of the ship’s central plaza. This large open space, designed in the style of a Sadrithian city square in the heart of an active warship, was bounded by the fashionable facades of civilian apartment complexes, markets and entertainments to service them, and the public entrance to the political spaces of the Lawgiver, a door that opened directly into the antechamber of the Chamber of Congress. By Captain Long Tail’s instructions, the protest march was not permitted to get any closer to the Chamber than this – there was not enough room in the antechamber for so many people at once, and furthermore it was unlawful to disrupt the business of Congress while it was in session, as such a gathering outside of the sealed doors of the Chamber would surely and intentionally do. But the plaza was spacious enough to allow for some delay in the march’s progression, as its leaders focused their attention on the doors leading to the antechamber and to the representatives doubtlessly hiding in the sealed Chamber beyond, calling for reforms, demanding satisfaction, and accusing the elected officials of Honorias of betraying their oaths and their nation for their personal gain.

Long minutes later, as the last few stragglers of the march shoved their way into the now-packed plaza to add their clamoring hooves and beating drums to the cacophony that was already driving the observing reporters mad, the doors to the political antechamber suddenly and unexpectedly opened. The leading group of protesters faltered in surprise as President Valley Shadow, accompanied by a quartet of guards, stepped out through the doorway into the open air, meeting the eyes of as many front-rank protesters as he could as he came to a stop just out of their reach. Quickly enough, the protesters pushed aside their shock, helped in large part by the noise and energy of the marchers behind them who could not see, or else simply had not noticed, the President’s arrival; demands went up, almost incomprehensible considering the number of complainants presenting their widely-varied grievances to Valley Shadow at the same moment. The President looked on without reply, taking in the crowd and the noise as stoically as he could before bowing his head and letting the accusations and demands crash over him.

It was a victory for the protesters, seen and recorded by the accompanying media frenzy, and more than a few newcomers erupted into celebrations as they took in Valley Shadow’s defeated countenance. But to accept these accusations of ineptitude was Valley Shadow’s only reaction; without any other interaction, what were the protesters to do now? Their leaders, purposely marching beside the loudest drummers for just this reason, signaled to their partners, and the chaotic banging, stomping, and screeching of instruments farther back were overcome with a regular cascade of booms, drawing all attention to the front of the march and, importantly, to the demands of the protesters’ organizers and spokesmen. The echoes of the drums faded into the corridors and hallways of the capital ship. The reporters and onlookers, as well as many of the protesters, recovered their wits and turned their eyes back to the President and his opponents. And the foremost marcher stepped forward, dangerously close to the scowling guards in front of him, and demanded, <Where are the traitors who abandoned their oaths and promises to the people of Honorias?>

President Valley Shadow replied simply, <They are going home.>

_ _ _ _ _ _

As the echoes of drums faded in the corridors behind them, Summer Gust and Illustrious Descent let their eyestalks wander across the almost-abandoned hangar one last time. Being the primary civilian port of entry into the capital, it was, while not sumptuous, certainly impressive in its style and elegance; this was the first glimpse given to those lucky enough to visit the seat of Honorian government, and it was built to give a good account of itself to those who would likely never see the Lawgiver again. It was also almost never this empty: Eyes were understandably on the angry mob marching through the center of the most important ship in Honorias, and it was only a small gathering, not including the crew of the People’s Witness, that looked on in disbelief as the representatives of Congress stole away aboard the very ship that had been brought to the Lawgiver to condemn them.

As the last of their colleagues got aboard the waiting liner, chartered for this purpose no matter what the political activists had been led to believe, Summer Gust finally sighed and turned an eyestalk toward his colleague. <This was not how I imagined that my political career would end,> he admitted.

<How many of us imagined that we would get into politics at all?> Illustrious Descent responded. <I was a business executive before they brought me in to organize protest marches. I didn’t realize that working on the side like that was going to take over my actual career – until they instructed me to run for office, anyway.>

Summer Gust nodded slowly. <I never meant to leave Sadrith,> he agreed. <And once I was forced to leave in the war anyway, I decided that I would never leave Inanius. I wanted to ensure that there would never be another war, and that the West and the East could go their separate ways in peace. I’m not surprised that they liked my opinion, but I am surprised that they knew anything about it before they came to me in the first place.> The representative threw a brief and undeserved glare at the People’s Witness as he added, <Now that I leave my home once again, perhaps I will ask them how they came to know of me when we arrive in Dagon.>

<It is not a bad home,> Illustrious Descent promised. <At least, Holamayan has never been a bad home. If Dagon is not the same… you will be welcome in my Dominion, Summer Gust. I’m sure they’ll take care of us, one way or another.>

<They have so far.>

The two were not always friends, and indeed their shared time in Congress had seen plenty of debates between them – particularly where Summer Gust’s pragmatism and Illustrious Descent’s zeal came into conflict, often enough when they backed the same general policy. But they were partners in a strange time, seeking power to defend the document that had returned their nation to peace even as their fellow citizens demanded that document’s dissolution; and so it was that they had joined with their colleagues to defy their whole people, for the benefit of the nation, and of course for personal benefits to themselves. Generations of Honorians would vilify their actions, but, no matter their regrets, Summer Gust and Illustrious Descent felt no little pride in their accomplishments. The March was as secure as a year’s delay could make it. Command was well-funded and – importantly – turned toward foreign threats, engaged in keeping Honorias safe rather than turning their guns against fellow Honorians. Those who might have threatened Honorian independence were neutered. Those who sought Honorias’s safety were counted as friends to the nation. No matter who won the election the following day, this Congress had done its part to defend the rule of law at home and the defense of Honorias abroad, and the abrogation of those policies by any following legislature would be nothing short of treasonous. The representatives of Honorias, their duty done, could depart the Lawgiver with clear consciences.

And as the People’s Witness, now observed by so few curious eyes save for the attentive records-men of the Lawgiver’s bridge and the cold gaze of Captain Long Tail, rose from the hangar deck one last time, the representatives of Congress (for one day more, at least) relaxed at long last. The capital had been their residence for a year, but it had never been their home. Now, at long last, they were free – well-rewarded and free.

Protest all you like before the empty Chamber, Summer Gust thought to himself, an eyestalk trained on the Lawgiver’s dwindling thruster flares. Your children will thank us, even if you will not.

And now I know what you’re up to, and it feels so good.

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