Dianoia Areopag

Keepers of the Old World

## Keepers of the Old World

The Dianoia Areopag is the Symposiums most significant adversary in Earth's realms of the mundane. Not through authority on the stage of the Symposium but by ways of its own does the Areopag subtly influence the world of humankind.

Rooted in the ice of Antarctica, the Areopag was born through the will of the illusive Archon, the oldest man on the cradle Earth. Within the vast noocracy of the Areopag, the Archon alone holds eternal authority.

Over centuries, the vast corporate empire of the Areopag was grown from the ashes of a fallen world. Its expansive holdings encompass nineteen percent of the Terrestrial Swarm, 43 548 inhabited worlds built by humankind and controlled by the Archon's hand. Deeper roots reach further onto the fringes of the solar systems, where the eldritch allies of the Areopag lie.

Many orders and shadows are at the Areopag's command, subversively shifting the balance of power throughout its rounds in the Great Game. Among them are the most skilled of the mundane and some only whispered of as entities from the Otherworld.

## Shadows among the Terrestrial Swarm

The allies and subjects of the Areopag are legions, called upon by ancient oaths they swore to the Archon himself. Nothing is forgotten within the noosphere of the Areopag, no deed unpunished and unrewarded alike.

In the webwork of the Areopag, innumerable bargains, exchanges, treaties, and governments thrive, held together by a network of cabals and trade independent from those of the Symposium.

Knowledge and Information are the Areopag's greatest commodities and traded with utmost secrecy. As its shadowy influence stretches unnoticeable throughout the entirety of the swarm, the Areopag listens patiently, sewing information here and there, rumors and legends in its favor.

Those caught in the web stand to gain an understanding of the Heliopolis granted to no-one else under the sun. But knowledge is closely followed by danger and mistrust. Not many choose to know more than they need to.

## History of the oldest man

### Born out of the Century of Respite

In the year 2059, a child named Jacob was born to the Family Harper, moguls of a consortium rooted in ancient wealth and the trade of energy.

The youth was blessed with the human talent of understanding, seeing patterns and rules in the netting of causality that ruled the world. Growing and understanding quickly beyond his age, the youth grew to a man and the age of twenty-one inherited responsibility.

Eccentricity and overwhelmed praise alike were staples of a life in shadows, behind this veil of high society. With little regard for a life of luxury, the young man spent much of his fortune on questionable endeavors and experimentation of his theoretical studies.

Some histography would make him out to be a secretive genius of the economy, when in fact Jacob Harper was merely a methodical mind, possessing the resources to afford a thousand failures just for one, all the grander victory.

### Master of the Century of Demise

One need not be a prophet to foresee the downfall of a world. Unique perspective was granted to the man, who had set his mind on ambition which exceeded his authority still. What struck the world of the past as disaster and strife came to him as an opportunity he was just ruthless enough to take.

The fall of the world to him was an opportunity of acquisition. Influence and loyalty, ideals and promises are cheap in times of need. When he spent untold billions on the those beset with famine, disease and people's wrath, it was no gamble to him. All of it was to be repaid, all he had to do was to live for another century.

### Games behind mirrors

Out of demise at the dawn of the 22nd century grew a great revolution initiated by the forefathers of the Symposium: The world was to be created anew, cities built away from the old foundations, towering into the sky. It was this which made them the archon's natural enemy, for the old world and the wonders therein were his.

Only through the achievements of humankind could any future be meaningful. Approval of protecting the heritage of ancient generations was rare in these times and an expensive luxury. But as he had before, the Archon spared no expense, this time cutting not into his personal wealth but into that of his family.

The Consortium, however, did not falter, for it played a two-sided game. Where on one side the Archon praised efforts to preserve the Old and handed out aid to those in the deepest struggle, his clandestine ties introduced operations of the Consortium under the facade of corporations into the grandest projects of their time. Greatest among them was the subcontinent of India, contracting proxies of the Symposium for another hundred years.

It was this time that the Archon truly began to think in centuries and underwent treatments to prolong his life. Time was the only truly limited commodity.

### The acquisition of Antarctica

When the Century of Departure arrived, but a fraction of wealth to the Archon remained. Shed to its core had the Consortium invested into projects for a hundred years. But in turn, the erstwhile man Jacob Harper had gained a cornucopia beyond the measures of man and indeed the Symposium.

As the nation states of earth had fallen to eternal strife, natural cause and powers beyond those of the Symposium, others emerged from the passage of time that had been thought lost long ago. Those sunken beneath the sea, displaced by storms and flood, those ravaged once by disease and famine, all granted refuge by the man they knew as the Archon, exercised their right and power in a rise unprecedented in recorded history.

The Archon used their voice to his ambition, one unique to this point in history, not to ever arise before or since. No nation was capable of laying claim on the continent of Antarctica, newly revealed beneath the melting ice. It, all resources and abundance, were taken by the forgotten ones in the name of the newly formed Areopag.

### Waking of a shadowy colossus

Antarctica became the new frontier, not only for the Archon's chosen but for countless scientists that followed his call to a land where they would be provided with everything and no restrictions. For the first time, the clandestine ties of the Areopag were uncovered and grew into a thriving nation based on forbidden technology.

In 2259, Jacob Harper celebrated his two hundredth birthday on the colonized shores of Antarctica. On his last appearance as the Archon of the Areopag Dianoia, he set the path of his newly formed people skyward. Their path to the stars was laid out in the shadows once more, but now on the shoulders of a newly civilized continent.

### The Archon

* Born 9.31.2059 – Age 464
* commonly referred to as the oldest man on earth
* Organic death presumed somewhere in the 2250s-2260s