Spectrum 2

Spectrum 2
by Stephen Lazer
22 October 2001

What of kings and rulers then? Do they not suffer, for they are bound to hurt?
What of a country? Should enemies be tolerated so they are not hurt?
Indeed, kings and rulers are men, no more.
They are men and shall be punished for their misdeeds.
Remember, yet, intent is important.
And good can be done by preempting hurt.
*Questions*

**Kiev, History of** FN1

Prince Igor son of Rurik was an early convert to Spectrum Submission. Igor was twenty when the Next Prophet appeared in Kiev, and he quickly became a follower of the new religion, placing the Norse preacher under his personal protection. This may well have encouraged Prince Oleg, who was acting as regent for Igor, to announce his own conversion in SE 130 [902 CE]. Igor succeeded to the rule of Kiev in SE 140 [912 CE] following Oleg’s death. Igor ruled Kiev and the Dnieper Rus for over thirty years, dying in SE 173 [945 CE] in an ambush while collecting tribute from the Derevlians, a tribe of pagan Slavs who lived west of the Dnieper.

Igor’s widow Olga of Kiev served as regent for their son Sviatoslav, ruling Kiev for fifteen years in her son’s name. Unlike Igor, Olga favored the orthodox Submissive faith and announced her conversion after becoming regent. As she did not attempt to enforce orthodoxy on the people of Kiev, the Spectral priesthood that the Next Prophet had established made no effort to oppose her.

When the Derevlians sent an embassy to Olga to demand that she marry their prince, she had the envoys buried alive, then sent the Kievan army to Dereva to burn their capital of Iskorosten. These actions, being contrary to the tenets espoused by the Next Prophet, caused a rift to open between Olga and the Spectral priesthood. It was only their fear of the Kievan army, which was overwhelmingly loyal to Olga (and tended to be more orthodox than the Kievan population at large) that kept the priesthood from attempting to depose her and make one of their own number regent for young Sviatoslav. Later Spectral sources claimed that Olga traveled to Constantinople and converted to Christianity in an effort to form a military alliance with the Byzantine Empire. Given her devotion to orthodox Submission, it is likely that this claim was fabricated after Olga’s death in an effort to discredit her.

Olga’s son resisted her efforts to convert him to orthodox Submission, and as his majority approached, Olga sought to bolster her faith’s position in Kiev by sending an embassy in SE 188 [959 CE] to Otto I, the High King of the Elba asking him to send her a group of learned Judges to help her try to win Kiev back to the orthodox faith. Otto agreed to the request, but the arrival of the Judges in Kiev made no difference; when Sviatoslav came of age and assumed power as Grand Prince of Kiev, he restored the Spectral priests to their former positions in the principality’s government.

In the early 190s, reveling in his newly-gained power as Grand Prince of Kiev, Sviatoslav launched a series of campaigns against the Khazars, the Alans, and the Kasogians. However, by SE 195 [966 CE] the suffering he had inflicted on his defeated enemies began to weigh on his mind. Sviatoslav’s Chancellor, the High Priest Halldor, reminded the Grand Prince of the Holy Angel’s words, “Most important is your care for you own kind.” Halldor explained that Sviatoslav’s victories over his Ananite and pagan enemies had secured peace for the Kievan Spectrals, who were "his own kind." However, this answer provoked an uproar among some of Halldor’s subordinates in the priesthood, and the resulting controversy would split the Spectral faith and would never ultimately be resolved. The controversy left Sviatoslav uncertain as to the proper course he should follow, and he would never take the Kievan army on campaign again, focusing instead on trade with Kiev’s neighbors and public works ....

....After Sviatoslav's death in SE 201 [972 CE], his failure to name a successor led to worsening disputes among his three sons. His two legitimate sons Oleg I and Jaropolk went to war in SE 205 [976 CE], with Jaropolk defeating and killing Oleg. The third son, Vladimir I, was the son of Sviatoslav’s housemaid Malusha. He had been named ruler of Novgorod by his father, but Oleg’s death at Jaropolk’s hands caused him to flee to Scandinavia. Jaropolk had banned orthodox Submission from Kievan Rus, and Vladimir was able to recruit an army by promising to restore toleration for other faiths. In SE 209 [980 CE] Vladimir marched on Kiev, conquering the city of Polotsk, killing its ruler and forcing the heiress Princess Ragnhild to marry him. Jaropolk fled Kiev when his brother’s army approached, and Vladimir followed him to Rodnja, a town at the confluence of the Dnieper and Ros Rivers. Vladimir promised his brother safe conduct for a parley, then had him killed in an ambush.

Unlike his father, Vladimir accepted the High Priest Halldor’s interpretation of the Holy Angel’s answer, and he expressed no misgivings over the actions he took to claim his father’s throne. Nor did he hesitate to campaign against members of other faiths, whether it be the Ananite Khazars, the Jabrite Bulgars, or the Orthodox Christian Byzantines. On the other hand, Vladimir saw that he could better the lives of his people by encouraging trade, and so his campaigns also set the stage for trade links between the Kievan Rus and their non-Spectral neighbors. By the time of his death in SE 243 [1015 CE], Vladimir had made his realm the strongest power in Eastern Europe, and Spectrum Submission had grown to encompass millions of worshipers ....

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