Foreign Concerns Gazette/State of the Cosmos - Year 541

Category:Session Summaries
A Gazette Retrospective
International Relations
Imperial Space
The last decade (530-) has deviated substantially from common expectations at the outset of the 530s about the form and motivation of the next Great War. Rather than conflicts among Imperial Powers, the defining conflicts of the 530s were waged by combinations of these powers, or as they became known during the Dominions War, the "G4" (Aeldrum, Alusia, Bishant, Fialta Imperium) against outside threats. When any of the G4 did not participate in one of these conflicts, it essentially maintained a posture of friendly neutrality, perhaps issuing a rebuke of some action by a belligerent Imperial power but never ultimately rising to the level of any serious economic sanction.
The Aeldman policy toward Fialta Imperial intervention in the decisive stage of the Middle Kingdom Succession War is emblematic of the delicate game of deference now played among the great powers (and the Fialta in their turn would help to strongly establish this pattern, as we discuss under "Shantine Provocations" in the next section). Aeldrum swiftly provided economic and diplomatic support for the establishment of a Celestial Defense Community anchored by the Brass Cities and the Kingdom of Aksai (recently humiliated by Fialta arms) and with which to contain Fialta interventions in Celestial Space, but essentially accepted the situation of the Middle Kingdom as a fait-accompli.
This remarkable shift in geopolitical orientation and the rules of the great game may be explained by the rise of credible existential threats, which were characterized by 1) their high level of immediacy (preventing scheming and creating a spirit of tolerance toward emergency action by the great powers), 2) their generally uniform threat to all of the G4 powers (or at least a threat sufficiently serious to each that no possible advantage from relatively greater harm coming to a rival could warrant the risk of leaving a cosmic threat unanswered) and 3) the high level of uncertainty attached to the nature of the threat (despite the general credibility that there was a threat), leading to maximalist responses (read: null bombings) that committed all parties to a seemingly irrevocable course of action (hence narrowing the possibility of defection).
This overall pattern of defensive neutrality is not to suggest a lack of sub-military competition among the great powers, however. Intelligence agencies continue to prosecute shadow wars and, more openly, the Republic of Sermaye has broken strongly from the hegemony of the Bank of Valdos, nationalizing Bank assets and repudiating Valdosian influence in its politics. The Serene Duchy of Aeldrum, while not openly endorsing this extreme reversal of policy, has since widely publicized the development of its own alternative technologies to soul contractsThis technical revelation harkens to the threats at the beginning of the decade from rogue Saldanese agents to the integrity of the soul contract where, by contrast, Aeldrum backed the stability of the Valdosian contract and helped to contain the economic fallout. It was Bishant that leveraged the economic risk to the Bank of Valdos and actively sought to help individuals with faulty contracts to achieve more permanent freedom (especially if they would accept Kirvan salvation). amidst a highly ideologically tinged movement within Aeldman politics against foreign religious influence.
One principal example of intra-Imperial conflict is the Shantine civil war, in which the angels Leandra and Adarnum battled for control of Bishant, and the Bank of Valdos utilized its soul contracts to restrain the power of Adarnum and (it seems) forced Kirva to recall her archangel and thereby spare Leandra. However even here the Shantine government was Leandran and in alignment with the Bank, which thus threw in its lot against a divine intervention into the mortal (or mostly mortal) affairs of Celestial Space. The paradigm of Imperial unity against cosmic threats writ large thus appears to hold even within the context of the Great Pantheon.
The policy of international cooperation against cosmic threats has been accompanied by an almost total indifference to atrocity from the great powers, infecting not only those arenas of existential threat but also foreign policy in general. The deaths of millions in Alusian null bombings and tens of millions in Fialta null bombings have been blanketly excused as necessary losses to preserve cosmic security. The harvesting and enslavement of millions of Celestials by the Brass Cities has received little diplomatic attention from the G4, seemingly because the Brass Cities proved convenient allies against the Veiled Dominions.
While the early 530s were characterized by significant international angst over the creation and rules of engagement for Null Bombs (and possibly other superweapons), no successful regime was ever established for their regulation. In moments of apparent existential threat from superweapons (the Dominions' Demon Virus), the G4 has banded together to defeat them with conventional arms, but has certainly not been averse to deployment of superweapons against cosmic-level threats. Indeed, there is currently no clear line for what constitutes an "acceptable" superweapon deployment except by ad-hoc consensus of the G4. The implications for development and use of superweapons against alleged cosmic threats are undoubtedly destabilizing, though no power has yet exercised the will to stake out a firm public position in the shadow of the Enclave Bombings.
Celestial Space
The nightmare that motivated Nipponese policy within Celestial Space for nearly two centuries has been swiftly realized since the Dominions War: the region is now carved almost entirely into spheres of foreign influence. The Middle Kingdom is ruled by the erstwhile Prince of Keshig, put and kept in power by the might of the Fialta Imperial navy, which now enjoys a permanent position in "Free Kolong" from which to strike anywhere in Celestial Space. The former Dominions are partitioned by the G4 and the Brass Cities. The Grand Celestial Confederation is now ruled by a regime installed at Aeldman gunpoint and serves as the anchor for a celestial defensive alliance with the Brass Cities and Aksai that exists mainly to contain Fialta Imperial proxies. In effect, Celestial geopolitics are driven by consensus of the Imperial powers.
With this new geopolitical order come the economic and ideological contests of Imperial space – the Bank of Valdos (implicitly backed by the recent memory of the annihilation of Aksai's naval power by the Fialta Imperium) is making swift inroads throughout the region, promising to gain a level of economic influence perhaps greater than the one it enjoys over Alusia and the Imperium. The chief economic peer to the Bank seems to come not from one of the great powers, however, but from the unlikely vehicle of the Celestial Etherrail project, a vast infrastructural venture of the Republics of Sermaye and Semal, the Orcish Directorate and Deutschreich (though even this possible source of leverage has been partitioned between the Bank and the Serene Duchy of Aeldrum, which are now shareholders in the enterprise).
While fearful alarmists claim that the Bank aims to remake Celestial Space in its grim economic image, the grey burden of life under an arrangement like the Valdosian Free State would be a mercy, perhaps, compared to the horror of Brass Cities occupation. Millions have died to Imperial arms but untold millions more have been irrevocably enslaved to the Porcelain Lords through cybernetic augmentation and mass lobotomizations. Public opinion within Imperial space on this subject has been relatively mute.
Though defeated decisively in the field, the Veiled Masters remain a potent boogeyman: most of Celestial space is gripped by paranoia about surviving agents of the Veiled Masters, fueling a foreign and domestic political crossfire among corrupt and porous institutions accusing each other of hosting "stay behind" cells of the VM. Whether the Veiled Masters might ever become a symbol of resistance to the foreign yoke upon Celestial Space remains to be seen, but if so they will be the symbol of a popular movement. The accusations of Veiled Master infiltration that Celestial magnates trade among each other ring with such desperation because all may reasonably fear that the destruction of the Dominions will be visited upon them next.
Wars and Disasters
Cauterizing Cosmic Threats
Three times in the 530s, perceived cosmic threats have been answered with overwhelming force: first against a mortal power in the Dominions War, when the G4 undertook a campaign of annihilation against the Veiled Masters for their secret development of the Demon Virus. This war fought by the G4 on a mostly conventional plane, except for the use (as it later transpired) of secret etheric routes through the Underside by the Fialta Imperial navy to strike at the heart of the Veiled Dominions.
Second, as a consequence of the Demon Virus being unleashed upon the cosmos (in VM retaliation for the invasion of the Dominions by the G4), the Empire of Alusia and the Fialta Imperium coordinated against the emergence of a malign artificial intelligence calling itself Baradun 2.0: as this would be revival of the long defunct God of Automata sought to claim dominion over the Brass Cities, two prongs of response were used. The one was conventional and undertaken by the Fialta Imperium -- destroying virus carrier ships en route to the BCs; the second saw the first recorded destruction of a planet by null bombing, and was carried out by the Alusian null fleet to destroy any trace of the master copy of Baradun 2.0 that had fled to an out-of-the-way Conduit Space backwater. The resulting maelstrom of null space clawing at the fabric of the aether was resolved by a concerted action of the G4 to deploy additional null bombs to strategically fold space and seal away the possible hole in reality that had resulted from Alusian action.
The pattern of escalation of force against cosmic threats having been established, the Fialta Imperium engaged the third cosmic crisis unilaterally (and simultaneously with its conventional war against Aksai). Identifying a breakthrough of Unnamed-corrupted Baradunite hordes into the Elvish Enclaves, the Imperium acted swiftly to stop these forces from reaching the rest of Imperial Space. The Imperial navy destroyed three Enclave planets with a null bombing campaign and sealed up the rest of the Enclaves to find their own means of defense or (more likely) be condemned to impossible horror.
Threats to the Partition 
While threats to the cosmos may come from the Unnamed, or the resurrection of dead gods, or simply economic devastation by occult weapons of war, an entirely separate category must be reserved for the erosion of the Partition, which allows the mortal universe to exist free of devastating intervention by the Great Pantheon. In the past decade, two major patterns have emerged in threats to the Partition, one technological and the other theological.
The first pattern is threatening the integrity of Valdosian soul contracts; in the early 530s, soul computer assisted occult searches by Saldanese radicals led them to uncover novel vulnerabilities in boilerplate Valdosian soul contracts. With the dissemination of soul computer technology on a commercial scale throughout the last decade, the result has been an arms race between the Bank of Valdos, developing ever more rigorous methods of validating and correcting soul contracts, and would be contract violators using unprecedented computational resources to seek new loopholes. The soul contract is inherently an instrument of the Partition, and both are entwined within the power of Valdos, so that a threat to the validity of the contracts is potentially a threat to the integrity of the Partition and most certainly to the continued power of Valdos to enforce it (as in the case of the second threat to the Partition raised in the 530s). A less direct threat to the Partition, but no less direct to the monopoly of Soul Contracts, comes from the alternative contracting devices developed by the Aeldman Industrial State Cooperative – these contracts do not undermined the structural validity of Valdosian contracts, but they may replace them and thereby starve the Valdosian soul economy which is one of the key guarantors of the Partition in extremis.
The second, external, threat pattern is divine conflict, most directly embodied by the hostilities between Leandra and Adarnum. For beings that compete across time as well as space, the prize of mortal worship has become greater in the modern era than any past epoch. A soaring population, greater political and media centralization with which to gain dominance over the beliefs and practices of billions, and, increasingly, the threatening possibilities of soul-based technologies to disrupt conventional logistics of soul-acquisition and harvests of divine energy, lend special urgency to competition not only among gods but within divine hierarchies. Such is the case of the contest between Leandra and Adarnum, which was barely restrained from becoming a decisive Adarnan victory (and actual violation of the Partition) by the intervention of Valdosian resources from within the current era and subsequently intervention by Kirva from without.
Silence Plague
Following the economic chaos unleashed by the Demon Virus, and against the staccato of null bombings to keep the cosmos safe from threats named and Unnamed, the historian of this turbulent period might almost be forgiven for omitting the Silence Plague except for its role in starting the Shantine Civil War. Beginning in , a plague (sources later indicated a biological carrier of some occult construct) would break out on Korinth and swiftly spread throughout the cosmos. This disease disrupted the connection of the infected to their gods, sometimes permanently – the effect of an extended bout of the plague was especially devastating on Valdosian and Dalthadi faithful, because it triggered violations of soul contracts and caused incurable withdrawal effects from the divinely infused drugs preferred by many Dalthadi practitioners. Yet the destabilization was greatest for the Shantine, triggering a religious schism over the origins of the plague and its apparently disproportionate rate of infection among Leandrans. The schism over the plague and its proper interpretation would ultimately lead to the devastation of Bishant during the conflict between the angel Leandra and the manifestation of Kirva's archangel, Adarnum.
The political consequences of the plague are perhaps more significant than the magnitude of harm to its direct victims, which so far have numbered in the hundreds of thousands across the cosmos. The Fialta Imperium and the Empire of Alusia led the development of vaccines, followed by a soul-therapy solution from the Shantine (thereby also reasserting apparent Shantine supremacy in this field): in , the Silence Plague is still an undercurrent to cosmic malaise, but it is considered treatable and has been forced below pandemic levels of infection through mass rollouts of vaccines and therapies.
The Celestial Wars
With the total destruction of the Veiled Dominions in the Dominions War, the independence of Celestial Space from Imperial hegemony rested precariously on three pillars: the Kingdom of Aksai, the Brass Cities, and the Middle Kingdom. The Middle Kingdom, depleted by half a decade of civil war, proved not an actor but a battleground for hegemonic competition, and the resolution of this conflict has decisively ended any pretense of Celestial independence.
Though each protested that it acted in defense of Middle Kingdom autonomy against the rapacious invasions of others, the Middle Kingdom civil war was swiftly driven almost entirely by foreign actors. In In the first phase of the war, the "native Dukes" of Volune and Kolong who claimed the throne were thrown back by the forces of the Prince of Keshig, or the Prince of Kolong or the Grand Celestial Confederation (briefly the Grand Celestial Empire). The Prince of Kolong annexed his ducal neighbor, while the GCC destroyed the forces of Volune and added the Prince of Limei as their proxy claimant to the throne (and naturally as the GCC's latest member state).
What would have been the decisive battle between the GCC and Keshig, and almost certainly have ended Keshig's military capacity to participate in the conflict, instead became the flashpoint for a far more devasting war. The Veiled Masters demonstrated the capacity to paralyze both fleets from a distance in a stunning show of occult power – by denying either side the ability to harm the other, the VM could impose a definite neutrality in the spiraling Middle Kingdom conflict, while asserting themselves as the guarantors of a celestial defense community (with the implicit promise that members would be free to carve out territory at the expense of non-members). The response of the Imperial great powers was explosive when they discovered that the technology the VM had devised was a sentient etheric virus, and Celestial Space was plunged into a two year conflict that claimed tens of millions of lives and saw the annihilation of the Veiled Dominions as a political entity. During this period of chaos and information blackouts (imposed by the various belligerents and bystanders because the so-called Demon Virus could spread through ethernet communications), the Middle Kingdom conflicts simmered, with the GCC making the greatest gains but unable to seize a decisive victory.
The postwar settlement of the Dominions War lifted the shadow from the Middle Kingdom battlefronts and introduced two new belligerents – the Kingdom of Aksai and the Brass Cities. These two powers unified to expel the GCC from Middle Kingdom affairs, threatening war if the GCC did not withdraw its forces and revert territorially to the status quo ante. Amidst political crisis within the GCC over how to respond and the still-mysterious disappearance of the leading figures of the Confederate government, Aeldrum invaded the GCC to install a pro-Aeldman regime. This regime swiftly acceded to the demands of Aksai and the Brass Cities, which respectively invaded Kolong (both principality and duchy) and Limei (expelling the Prince) to "safeguard their neutrality." The GCC fleet in the Middle Kingdom, disgusted but unwilling to embark on a suicidal mission of liberation against these combined forces, mutinied from the puppet government and turned pirate.The GCC renegades quickly found their way into the fast shifting politics of the Thalranese privateer states, reverting in an historic irony to the heavily armed fringe role in Celestial politics that had been the province of their Margravate ancestors. The second phase of the Middle Kingdom succession wars was thus concluded, with the GCC and Kolong apparently neutralized and Aksai and the Brass Cities seemingly content with their territorial gains. Aksai threw its weight behind a relatively neutral committee of domestic nobles who would undertake a long legalistic process to determine the most legitimate non-foreign claimant to the still-vacant Middle Throne, while the Brass Cities held the armed defense of the Kingdom's neutrality as their only public position.
In , the Middle Kingdom question was reopened and then swiftly resolved when the Fialta Imperium invaded the Kingdom of Aksai, nominally in defense of Middle Kingdom autonomy and to liberate Kolong. The invasion was more clearly as retaliation for the religious intolerance of Aksai toward the Valdosian faith and as a source of land and booty with which to appease mutinous elements of the Imperial Navy. After annihilating Aksai's naval power and destroying the famous etheric defenses of Great Aksai to hold the capital for ransom, the Imperium promptly placed Kolong under indefinite "protective occupation" and engaged in a "navigational tour" of the Middle Kingdom to overawe the domestic and foreign belligerents of the succession wars into finally accepting the Prince of Keshig as the Middle King (son-in-law to Grand Duke Tulan'Kai, the cousin and intelligence chief of the Imperial Regent Grand Duke Neptos).With the Prince of Kolong an Imperial vassal de-facto, and the Prince of Limei living in precarious exile under a GCC regime that was firmly held on the Aeldman leash, the last of the rival claimants to the throne had been effectively defanged in any event.
Shantine Provocations
The chief public exception to the trend of G4 unity on military matters in the 530s was the apparent use of Thalranese and eventually ex-Confederate proxies by the Empire of Bishant to disrupt the Valdosian Free State, the Kingdom of Veran (an Aeldman proxy state) and the Fialta grand duchies. Yet the response of the aggrieved powers reverted strongly to the trend of friendly neutrality (or studied indifference) -- the generally lackadaisical posture of such proud military powers might have shocked the leaders of previous generations (choosing not just to ignore the alleged Shantine aggression, the great powers made no effort to punish the Thalranese Marches for the actions of their countrymen) but the context for each flashpoint bears some attention.
The violation of the Fialta grand duchies and the Valdosian Free State occurred more or less simultaneously with the chaos and confusion of the Dominions War, leaving the Fialta Imperium in no position to answer the Shantine challenge to its protectorates – by the time Fialta economic or military attention could be turned to answer Bishant, the postwar settlement of Mandatory Nippon (and the opportunities offered by the decisive end of Aeldrum's brittle monopoly on foreign intervention in Celestial Space) proved too valuable to risk on a conflict with Bishant.The conveniently timed change in regime from Leutarus I to the regency of Leonus I also provided cover, though the Regent Grand Duke Neptos would suffer domestically for his apparent weakness toward Bishant in future struggles with the Imperial Navy and the Fialta Princes. The Bank of Valdos, perhaps even more severely aggrieved, had no military leverage to punish Bishant or its Thalranese proxies, but also did not exercise its feared economic powers (in notable contrast to its attitude toward the Republic of Sermaye in ).
When it came to Bishant's apparent engagement in Veran, revealed after Bishant had already been sundered by civil war over the religious crisis of Adarnan-Leandran schism, Aeldman policy was to blame fringe elements of the discombobulated Shantine power structure and ignore the matter: while historic policy might have been to exploit the Shantine weakness at the moment of this embarrassing revelation (whether or not Aeldrum genuinely believed that fringe elements were responsible), it seems that the fact of Bishant's instability led Aeldrum to adopt a policy of forbearance, valuing the long-term health of the G4 system over answering Shantine provocations.
Aeldman Interventions
Aeldrum has largely restricted its military activities, with the exception of the multilateral Dominions War, to unilateral interventions within its own sphere of influence, such as heading off the pirate invasion of Veran or its two naval interventions into the Grand Celestial Confederation to reel in its unruly client state. Yet even within its sphere, Aeldrum has adopted a new policy under the Secular Nationalists of authorizing minority partners, such as the Republic of Chelonia, to undertake military interventions on behalf of the interests of the Aeldrum-led GATO defense community. Chelonia, with Aeldman blessing and munitions, has executed the first fraternal war among the Aeldman successor republics, invading the League of Sovereign Republics to reinstate a democratic government and clear from power both the current communist regime and foreign mercenary forces invited and funded by domestic business interests.
Economic Trends
Four major economic events dominated the last third of the 530s. These are the Soul Computer Boom, the Soul Contract Race, the Great Etherrail Network and the Artificial Frontier of Kyrashvell.
Soul computer hardware is now being manufactured on an industrial scale by the Aeldman Industrial State Cooperative, fueling vast speculative investments as commercial firms purchase soul computers or, increasingly, begin to manufacture their own. Aeldman soul computing programming languages have also become the dominant standard, allowing unparalleled technical control over occult phenomena and even replication of a simplified form of Elder Script using soul computers. Soul computers appear to be at the heart of every new innovation from Aeldrum, and they have quickly taken on an ideological dimension – the Church of the Spires claims to have built superior computational solutions by simulating the etheric lanes in accordance with its theology, while Thannasid embedded technology has become a point of pride for many Aeldman technologists who see it as a point of defiance against foreign technological norms.
In contrast, the once burgeoning Sermayan soul computer industry was devastated by evidently Valdosian-backed court decisions recognizing soul computers as intelligent beings protected by Sermayan prohibitions on slavery or trafficking, though the rejection of the Bank of Valdos by the new Lawe regime could spell a reversal of policy to reenergize this sector of the flagging economy. The other great powers have demonstrated internal soul computer capabilities, chiefly the Bank of Valdos and the Shantine Empire (in conjunction with continued Shantine leadership on soul therapies), though these have not matched the scale of production and certainly not the degree of private usage encouraged within Aeldrum.
Soul contracts are continually threatened by vulnerability-seeking soul computer technologies (especially as commercial soul computing capacity grows steadily), presenting an endemic threat to the economic stability of the cosmos. In addition, Aeldrum has announced the development of a contractual device that can imitate key features of soul contracts (especially monitoring), including between soul computers, without the need for Valdosian divine power. This technological innovation is widely hailed (or decried) as the first step to economic obsolescence for the divine powers of the Great Pantheon, though such wild forecasts are of course dismissed by the Bank.
The promise and triumph of Etherrail – stable, high-speed shipping across the vast ether -- represents a significant economic and political moment for the cosmos, because it binds together secondary and minor powers across Imperial and Celestial Space under the economic aegis of Sermaye, Semal, Deutschreich and the Orcish Directorate in a quiet parallel to the dominion of the G4 and the Bank of Valdos. The economic impact on the planet of Semal has been especially pronounced, lifting it on a par with Aeldrum for Celestial trade, while in fact putting the Directorate Quarter of the Pin Jump ahead of the trade receipts of the Aeldman-owned segments. In effect, Etherrail makes it possible for Celestial Space to participate in Imperial economic activity to an unprecedented degree – commodities once too bulky to transport economically are becoming tradeable, and the one-way flow of trade goods into Celestial Space is becoming significantly more bilateral while enriching all parties and carrying ever more Imperial influence into the region (even if it is on infrastructure technically owned by some most unusual suspects for cosmic empire building).
Alusia's technological marvel, the artificial world of Kyrashvell, represents an economic moment unto itself, not only for the fine-tuned control of the planet's environment enabling unprecedented agricultural yield (and ideal tourist attractions)The defensive implications of a fully tunable etheric atmosphere are also significant, and make Kyrashvell perhaps the most secure planet in the cosmos, with etheric gates that seem able to open and close at will with a perfection unmatched by any etheric damming system. but for the implication that new worlds might be created at strategic points to anchor entire new etheric lanes. These lanes could be "true" etheric patterns, rather than artificial ones, allowing accelerated and safer trade (over which Alusia would exercise the stranglehold) – combined with the stabilization of etheric space through etherrail, the potential is very real for a rapid system of warped and folded space to create shortcuts that could reduce journeys of weeks to mere days or even hours.
Fialta Imperium
The Imperium has always been affected by sectarian conflict, seemingly almost as a necessary result of the pluralist and yet militant culture of the Fialta. Yet these tensions boiled to the point of open rebellion in the Thalranese Mutiny of 538 and still cast a long shadow over Emperor Leonus as the young monarch comes into his majority. The Mutiny was resolved, in classic Fialta fashion, through a combination of quiet dealmaking and the grandiose gesture of an invasion in Aksai and Kolong to deplete and mollifyingly enrich the ranks of the mutineers in one swoop.
The Fialta have found that they are once again feared – there is no doubt in the public imagination, and perhaps in that of foreign military planners, that the Imperial navy is the premier fighting force of the cosmos by far and away. The Fialta have parleyed their military prowess into a bold position as the defenders of the cosmos – though this role was pioneered by the Alusian action against Baradun 2.0, Alusia's defensive null fleet cannot match the force projection of the Fialta, who seem able to defend against threats on all sides, at all times. The Fialta have utterly put the lie to Aeldman military hegemony outside their now much more starkly defined sphere and found little challenge from a distracted Shantine Empire. Their prize is the latitude to remake far-flung territories in their image, to punish offenses from lesser powers with utter disproportionality and total impunity from any power with the means to oppose them.
Fialta nationalism is at an all-time high, driven by victory after victory in defense of a cosmos that Fialta poets increasingly cast as defenseless without Fialta magnanimity. Religious unity around the person of Leonus seems to be strengthening: the loudest sectarian disagreement is over the right of access to his person, not over his perceived loyalty. If this assumption of inherent neutrality can survive as the monarch takes actions on his own account, then the dream of his late father for Pentacle Unity under the Fialta state may yet be realized. This vision alone is a great victory for the Fialta to achieve unchallenged. Yet outside of its borders, the reach of visible Fialta soft power is still barely greater than their hard power. Key allies such as the Bank of Valdos are now being openly rejected by populist forces in the governments of such formerly stalwart partners as Sermaye. The Fialta have not won the love of the cosmos for themselves or their allies. Fear is proving a currency easy to amass and put toward far-flung diplomatic ventures, but rather more difficult to spend on projects within Imperial Space.
Shantine Empire
After almost a century, the Shantine Golden Age appears indisputably over. The Leandran sect of the Kirvan Church, though still the confessional choice of the Empress and her family, has lost its social preeminence within the Shantine Empire. The Adarnan sect controls the Patriarchate of Bishant (in the same person as the Grandmaster of the Knights of Adarnum) and has extracted public and indelible admissions of Adarnan superiority over Leandra in the hierarchy of Kirva's angels.
Yet Bishant remains the largest of the great powers economically and by population. While the Church has been substantially reorganized in the fallout of the Leandran-Adarnan schism, the Imperial regime is still clearly Leandran, with a surprising base of pro-Leandran religious support in Celestial space. The shock of the clash of angels at Bishant seems to have been muted by cultural and geographic distance in Shantine Mandatory Nippon and its surroundings, whereas the protective presence of the Knights of Leandra has an immediate and compelling power, redoubled by the presence of the newly reestablished Patriarch of Celestial Space. In this respect, the healing of the Adarnan-Leandran schism has also revised the relationship between the Shantine Kirvan Church and foreign churches – far from chastened, the Shantine Church has reneged as clearly as possible on its historic promise to leave Celestial space to "neutral" Kirvan sects, by establishing a Patriarchate that is indisputably Shantine, grounded in a Shantine conquest.
Technologically and economically, Bishant appears backward among the G4, except for those specific technological channels that are supported and directed by the Shantine Church and its companies, such as soul computing and soul therapy. Here, the ideal of a "Kirvan" branch of technology and economics seems to hold true, and to offer prosperity consistent with the principles of Kirvanism. However, even this symbolism appears marred by its indelible association with the Leandran church and the Imperial family, which remain in uneasy accommodation with the Adarnans and the glow of their moral victory.
While the navy and much of the bureaucracy remain essentially pro-Kataph and hence pro-Leandran, the people appear to have sunk into a more indifferent posture. The damage to Bishant is far from repaired, physically as well as symbolically, and there appears to be a national hangover among the Shantine, who have now seen many of their cherished religious beliefs castigated by their own god. Moreover, the need to insist publicly on religious unity as a form of atonement for the Leandran attempt to usurp Adarnum has also made Bishant responsible for many of the actions of its fringe religious elements – Shantine-Thalranese relations have been degraded almost to the point of war as Bishant has been compelled to apply state forces in defense of the Knights of Adarnum accused of stealing the Sword of Dres'Fialt, while the Knights (all the while denying the theft) gleefully escalate hostilities with the Thalranese.
Whether Bishant can reclaim its confidence and zeal remains to be seen. More pressingly, perhaps, it whether the current regime, still married to the legacy of Leandra, who inhabits the twin of the Empress, will effect a separation from the patron-angel of the Kataph dynasty, or choose to keep their fortunes allied.
Serene Duchy of Aeldrum
Aeldrum is perhaps most of all the power where the moral exhaustion and disaffection of the 530s have taken their insidious toll. Ten years after the ascension of Serene Doge Garry LaPaix, a compromise candidate to keep aboard the religious and progressive parties that gave the Industrialist party its majority coalition, the Industrialist party has ceded all moral differentiation from the Secular Nationalists and lost two elections for Serene Doge in the bargain. Following the death of LaPaix, the Industrialists fielded Count Kelvin against Governor Vendrin – Vendrin narrowly won the Serene Dogeship for the SNPs (despite an enthusiastic and historic amount of bribery and spoils-promising from Kelvin), ending seven decades of Industrialist rule, and promptly extended an invitation for Kelvin to stay on as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Kelvin accepted, instantly legitimizing the Secular Nationalists and demonstrating Vendrin's willingness to compromise. For two years, Vendrin presided over a Secular Nationalist party that appeared to walk a fine line between its nationalistic principles and the sensitivities of the majority of the Aeldman electorate. He scrupulously continued the investigations of foreign influence in his own party that had been launched by Rykard Drost (whose shocking assassination might have given the Industrialists a martyr, except for his tainted career of violence against civilians).
Serene Doge Andre LeFine, the first human Serene Doge in history, took Vendrin's political foundation and won a larger one-party majority. LeFine's Secular Nationalists reverted strongly to the firebrand norm of their party, but kept one critical innovation of the Vendrin administration (which Vendrin had inherited from the efforts of ISC Chair Schmates under LaPaix) – they allowed the ISC to be a symbol of national pride, a tool of Aeldman power and a treasure to be guarded. Immediately, LeFine's party asserted its function in using and protecting this asset, revealing evidence of a large scale program of espionage by foreign powers to undermine and corrupt the ISC. From this symbolic ISC issued the first broadside of the SNP administration against the religious power-base – a thinly veiled competitor to the Valdosian soul contract that amounted, at least in the breathless interpretations of the SNP-friendly press, to a declaration of war.
The Aeldman Industrialist party has essentially lost its position as the premier political party of the country, with Industrialists now openly voting in coalition with the SNPs when it suits them. The political exclusion of the SNPs is shattered, and while for many Industrialists the two parties now represent a distinction without a difference on economic issues, the loss to the religious and progressive parties is profound. No longer crucial to an Industrialist coalition majority, groups such as the Kirvan Labor Party find themselves adrift within Parliament and increasingly open to alternative sources of support and patronage (including the loudly unionist Shantine Kirvan Church as established in the new Adarnan-Leandran accommodation). The Church of the Spires, fondly regarded by many of the Industrialist old guard for its association with Serene Doge Montreal, is now castigated as a public enemy by LeFine, a wolf in sheep's clothing for offering religion in an Aeldman guise. If the Industrialist coalition is a casualty of the moral turpitude of a geopolitical order that required Aeldrum to accept planetary scale destruction for the preservation of its security, it remains to be seen whether the Secular Nationalists can successfully rekindle an Aeldman sense of pride and national fortitude, or if they will find themselves unable to improve substantially on the Industrialist record.
Empire of Alusia
Amidst civil war in Bishant, mutiny in the Fialta Imperium and rolling political crises in Aeldrum and Sermaye, Alusia has been relatively unperturbed, and the peoples of the cosmos have taken notice. Of the leaders of great powers that began the 530s, only Darko Korascik remains – Alusian propagandists crow that the Aeldman and Sermayan regimes of today are unrecognizable compared to the early days of this period, the Shantine have lost two Empresses and the moral certitude of Leandran hegemony, and the Fialta have tried and failed in their bid to win the culture war, becoming the thankless sword-arm of cosmic security. Where Alusian action against Baradun 2.0 cost the lives of hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions, their approach appeared almost surgical compared to the wholesale destruction of multiple Enclave Hinterworlds by the Imperium in the name of cosmic security. These are the claims, at any rate, of some in Alusian media – but they have a surprising resonance, all the more as Alusia begins to achieve something it could not during the great existential crisis of last century in its lethal duel with Bishant for the souls of millions of Kirvans. Alusia is acquiring a culture.
The administrative efficiency of Alusia was both its great economic strength and a source of much historic mockery: endless rows of state-sponsored, state-manufactured housing offered shelter and comfort, but not aspiration. Alusia could only define itself by what it was not – not blinded by zeal like Bishant, not corrupt and venal like Aeldrum, not militant like the Fialta. Not like other Great Powers. But the world of Kyrashvell and all its promises has given Alusia something to be, and something no other power has – an indelible mark on the cosmos, made by the hand of mortals. Alusia can create, as well as destroy, and millions flock to the frontiers it has opened literally and figuratively. Alusia is hope without recrimination, blossoming from the rich bed of a prosperous state that cherishes differences among its peoples more credibly than the corrosive pluralism of other lands. The state is finally secure enough to relax its control and allow independent cultural expression to emerge while nourishing it with national achievements. That, too, is what the propagandists say – and perhaps for the first time, far more than just the Alusians believe them.
Republic of Sermaye
The Republic of Sermaye is in an existential struggle on two fronts. One, public and cried loudly from every television screen, is with the tentacles of Valdosian influence. Reagan Lawe, President of the Republic, is all that stands between Sermaye and enslavement. Lawe the Defender of Truth. Lawe the People's Man. Lawe the Revolutionary. In this epic struggle of a nation against a god, the economic casualties are severe and the mobilization of national productivity is total: Valdosian property is already forfeit and being fed to the masses, but it seems all-too apparent that the property of any who stand in Lawe's way will be next.
Embedded in Lawe's masterstroke to break two years of electoral deadlock and seize the Presidency for himself is the second front of the existential struggle. The Sermayan public has been activated against the centuries-long political privilege of property within the Sermayan electoral system, and the conflict is redefining the rules of Sermayan politics. The original exponents of this public attitude, the One Person One Vote Party, have been forgotten in the escalation of their fringe political issue to the center stage. Their bargain with Alexander Wynn won them relevance, but cost Wynn his administration. Wynn, now in exile in the Serene Republics, remade their movement in his image: efficient and technocratic underneath a friendly exterior of feel-good moralism. This concoction proved a slow but effective poison against the Valdosian-backed Hayward administration, which was forced to depend on Reagan Lawe to appeal to the masses and answer the populist challenge from Wynn. Wynn was beaten not in the public arena but by attacking his technology, making his soul computers illegal: he was forced to quit the field, but the mobilized masses did not follow him. Lawe, still the only answer Hayward seemed able to give to the masses, seized the moment and cleaved himself from the Valdosian nature of the regime, casting it as the barrier to public participation in electoral politics and intertwining populism with anti-Valdosian thought. So the struggle with the Bank has become confused with the struggle for a wider democracy, and Lawe has successfully made himself the champion of both.
Sermaye began the 530s full of economic promise, but it has languished under the uncertainty and instability of its politics. The Valdosian influence over the country's economy has undoubtedly led it to cede ground in key arenas of economic competition, while making it more difficult for Sermaye to present itself as a neutral third party within the Aeldman sphere. Sermaye has successfully established itself, nevertheless, as a third-way among the great powers, both before and after Valdosian leadership of the country – the great success of the Etherrail system speaks to the viability of this position for the largest of the secondary economies. Now, however, the economic success of its magnates is dangerously associated with foreign influence – whether the populism of the current political era may turn Sermaye into a hero-nation among the secondary powers, or paralyze it, remains to be seen. Certainly for the current administration to lose in its conflict with the Bank of Valdos would be difficult to interpret other than as a crushing loss to national prestige, salvageable perhaps only as an apotheosis to some higher form of internationalism.
Bank of Valdos
The Bank of Valdos, perhaps more than any great institution, has been challenged by the technological transformation of the last decade. It has proven a target of opportunity for the deployment of soul computers and the hard-turn of Sermayan politics to populism, without losing any of its apparent threat to other great powers. This double-edged sword of convenient enmity and power has led to the Serene Duchy of Aeldrum apparently piling on to the rejection of Valdosian influence with its competing contract vehicles.
Yet the last decade has also seen the Bank emerge as an autonomous power in its own right, with spheres of influence far outside of the Fialta Imperium (but no less influence over the Imperium itself). More importantly, the Bank has defended itself from attacks on its economic integrity and the soul contracts that serve as the foundation of its differentiation from economic competitors – for every Sermaye breaking from the Bank, there are Semals and Marches hastening to reaffirm their friendship, and countless Celestial princes eager for Valdosian gifts and investments. Across the cosmos, the International Bank of Valdos is a byword for responsibility and reliability. The Bank continues to serve as a broker and mediator among great powers, and to public position itself as the anchor of international affairs. When atrocity is an acceptable price to pay to avert seemingly random and indiscriminate threats of calamity, the cold and definite predictability of the Bank seems almost reassuring, and opposing the Bank can seem like a bid to wrench the cosmos from its moorings. For some rivals, that may indeed be the point.
Marches of the Ascendancy (Thannasids)
The last decade saw the emergence of the Thannasids onto the cosmic stage, no longer a fringe boogeyman but an active, humanized player in the great game. The Thannasids have been legitimized within the Aeldman sphere by diplomatic recognition from the Serene Duchy of Aeldrum, swiftly followed by recognition from the Serene Republics and the Orcish Directorate, full normalization of relations with the Academy of Saldan (which was the first power to enter into public negotiations with the Thannasids but waited until an Aeldman signal of support to undertake this final and boldest step) and a status of semi-recognition from the Celestial Confederation, the Republic of Semal, the Republic of Chelonia and the League of Sovereign Republics.
The other members of the G4 rejected all public Thannasid outreach, and the Bank of Valdos appears to have successfully pressured Sermaye into cleaving from Aeldman foreign policy by refusing to recognize the Thannasids. However, the wholesale rejection of Valdosian influence by the new Sermayan government could spell a reversal in policy towards the Thannasids. The premise for normalization of relations was both economic, in that the Thannasids offered superior occult technologies, and ideological. The Aeldman Secular Nationalists took the position that rejection of the Thannasids, when they appeared to offer such boons, was tantamount to surrendering foreign policy to theological interests who acted on old hatreds of the Thannasids for making war on the Great Pantheon in the distant past. In contrast, Bishant, Alusia and the Fialta rejected the Thannasids on the grounds that they were a cosmic threat (perhaps similar to or even greater than the Veiled Dominions)Ironically the Veiled Masters had been among the most consistent rivals of the Thannasids, also on the basis of the fundamental irresponsibility and vainglory of Thannasid designs for godhood., thus allowing fiercely secular Alusia to act in concert with the two great religious powers.