Jackal Among Snakes

The Age of Reclamation was a period of great prosperity. The times after the Last Calamity represented the greatest period of opportunity that the wider populace would be granted for all time, ostensibly. Bolstered by lack of competition, solidarity after suffering, advances in healing arts, and exceptional government, the diminished population exploded toward previous levels.

By the end of this age, the general consensus is that the population had recovered from its losses—an astounding fact, though somewhat marred by the knowledge that much of this population were yet to reach the age of majority. The imperial court incentivized forming families, offering not only tax exemptions but subsidies and land settlement priority for those with children.

These policies, in tandem with the countless other benefits offered by the age, created a thriving generation of young men and women with intense national pride, many of whom reached their adulthood in 25AC or some few years before it. These children had grown up seeing the constant efforts of the government to erect a civilization from the dirt, alongside tremendous support for their parents in all their endeavors. The soil of the age was incredibly plentiful, and advances in farming made laborious fieldwork less necessary than ever. This freed these young men and women to pursue other lines of work.

Many men ended up joining the imperial army, holding tremendous loyalty toward the Blackgard Union, the emperor and empress, and the soil upon which they stood. As much was encouraged by the zeitgeist of the age. Galamon deemed women more important for the growth of the country than men, and thus restricted their enlistment outside of spellcasting roles. They were, however, increasingly welcomed to become skilled laborers or civil servants. The prominence of figures such as the empress or the prime minister eroded many biases of the previous age. Indeed, the civil service likely had more women than men at this point.

I describe this scene to the reader to set the stage for the beginning of the Age of Fury. Hot-blooded youths with pride in their hearts and love for their country far outnumbered those with scars from the calamity. Part of this had been deliberately fostered by the imperial court for the sake of stability, but much of it was the natural results of the magnificence of the Age of Reclamation.

Thus, the time that came to be known the Age of Fury unfolded.

Age of Fury, 26-37AC

The seed that sprouted into the inciting incident that would spark the Age of Fury had arguably been sown before the Last Calamity had ended. Argrave’s coup of the Great Chu led to its emperor being reestablished with little power. The majority of that power was turned over to him as its military commander—the Grand Commandant. Upon his departure from the Great Chu, the role of Grand Commandant had been turned over to his father-in-law, Patriarch Dras.

After the Last Calamity, the Veidimen under Dras’ command were less damaged than the fighting forces of the Great Chu. It’s a hotly contested point whether or not Dras deliberately sacrificed human lives to preserve Veidimen. Regardless, the military force of the Great Chu was effectively wiped out, and much of its martial tradition necessary to raise new armies ceased to exist. This enabled Dras and his Veidimen to cement highly-effective control over the nation.

It could easily be claimed that Patriarch Dras was more effective than the Blackgard Union at uniting the land. Order was restored incredibly quickly. Emperor Ji Meng remained the nominal emperor, and Dras maintained his position as Grand Commandant. With that as pretext, the survivors of the Great Chu were quickly reunited. Indeed, it was as though the nation had never broken at all.

It could not be claimed, however, that Dras established as effective a government.

Dras saw the merit of the robust imperial bureaucracy and the thriving network of canals connecting the cities. He endeavored to rebuild these institutions and infrastructures. Rather than employing the citizens of the Great Chu who were already well-accustomed to such apparatuses of the state, he elected to prioritize Veidimen for what was being built.

To this point, Garm has commentary.

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The notion behind what he was doing was simple. The imperial bureaucracy had already shown entirely capable of subverting an emperor. Even a strong ruler like Ji Meng had been effectively puppeteered by their machinations. Dras hoped to avoid such a mistake by establishing loyalists to take the place of what had been.

The favoritism, however, was quite glaring. To have both the troops guarding your cities and the people administering your lives be Veidimen? The snow elves were a fair people, certainly. They took to the intricacies of the system very well, likely because their now-dead god, Veid, so strongly promoted values such as honor, fairness, and legalism.

Regardless, Dras continued to press the issue. Veidimen men were encouraged to take additional spouses of Great Chu women, while Veidimen women were strongly discouraged from seeking Great Chu grooms. Veidimen were practically exempt from castration as a punishment, while every single imperial eunuch was human. Veidimen further received unspoken priority in the distribution of land, and consequently, reaped much of the opportunity that all enjoyed in the Blackgard Union.

Nothing was law, but it was undoubtedly terribly unfair. Year after year, it bred resentment like water slowly boiling. The Veidimen population expanded near as massively as the Blackgard Union had. Great Chu natives were able to ignore this for a time because they weren’t actively impeded… but as both populations grew, conflict took root.

This point greatly concerned both my mother and father. They sent inquiries to Dras—polite protests, reminding him that what he was doing could have dire consequences. These requests did have some impact, curbing certain practices, but it was clear that greater action would need to be taken to fix things before they erupted. Already, violent incidents were sparking across the Great Chu.

To that end, my brother Enrico eagerly suggested that he be allowed to head a diplomatic mission to the Great Chu to help rein in the excesses of Dras’ regime. He considered himself perfect for the role, possessing our father’s dark hair, our mother’s amber eyes, and subtly elven ears—the very picture of a man half-human, half-Veidimen. ‘The very picture of unity,’ as he often said in attempts to persuade the court.

In the end, our parents relented. Enrico was appointed head diplomat, assigned a large guard of Knights of the Sun, and given leave to head overseas to help resolve the situation in the Great Chu before it turned into a civil war. He was welcomed with open arms into the imperial palace, where he was greeted by a banquet celebrating the eve of the twenty-sixth year after the end of the calamity hosted by Emperor Ji Meng and Dras. The rest is too painful for me to recount, so I shall leave to my colleague to cover. n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

By surviving eyewitness account, the banquet went quite well. Patriarch Dras admitted some excesses on the aspects of his rule. The burgeoning violence worried him—though his people had prospered greatly, they were still greatly outnumbered and knew this terrain less than many of its natives. He claimed it to be “…entirely unreasonable to assume that [Veidimen] could continue on as [they] have.”

Regardless, this event was cut short by an ambush. Patriarch Dras’ head allegedly exploded into gore as he raised a toast to cooperation between man and elf. From there, armed assailants supported by spellcasters stormed the imperial palace. It turned into a massacre in moments. Survivors claim every single Knight of the Sun perished in defense of Enrico. The entire diplomatic mission was wiped out entirely.

The young Prince Enrico, nineteen years of age and yet a B-rank spellcaster, defended himself as best he could. He escaped the banquet hall, yet a foul poison concocted to turn the black blood in his veins against him eventually took his life. He was later found in the imperial gardens sitting by the roots of a tree, his fingers clutching a necklace that his mother had personally crafted for him.

To this day, the identities of the assailants isn’t public knowledge. Whether the imperial court kept that private, or whether they themselves don’t know, there are many speculations.

Some suggest that Patriarch Dras was the architect behind the incident. Most disbelieve this in light of his death, but others say it was common knowledge he wished the Blackgard Union to inherit his domain. Moreover, his Veidimen-centric policies alongside simultaneous cooperation with the Blackgard Union strike many as contradictory, implying a deeper motive. They suggest he wished to give the Blackgard Union no choice but to involve themselves in the affairs of the Great Chu.

Others point to Emperor Ji Meng. As an S-rank spellcaster, he was one of the few able to escape from the banquet alive, even if injured. He had the most to gain from the overthrow of the Veidimen yoke, and may have carried a grudge against Argrave for his role in his diminishing power. Opponents to this theory argue that Ji Meng had grown highly-accustomed to his powerless role, spending far more time with his family.

Regardless, emperor and empress soon received the news of their child’s death. And in the Great Chu, organized opposition rose up, headed by someone who was to become the crux of the Age of Fury. This person was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be unrelated to the assassins, but nevertheless carried on their ideas. ṛÀɴ𝘖𐌱Ёș