Curse of 400

The "**Curse of 400**" was a curse placed by the Bujanski revolutionaries upon every single Terran and their descendants after independence.

The traumatic memories that seemed to haunt Terrans over various offenses committed for centuries is also known as the "**Buyanian syndrome**", or the "**Bujanski syndrome**". It also represented trauma suffered by most Bujanski upon independence.

## Contents

On 28 June, 1892, many Bujanski people from all walks of life subjected all the Terrans in the country to a great curse.

1. Every Terran who lived within the country, and anyone of pure Terran blood, is haunted by every harmful action they committed in life.
2. Even if they are trusted by society, even if they are happy and forgiven, they will never forget their own actions.
3. Their own crimes will forever haunt them until the day of their death.
4. Their curse will last for four hundred years, going all the way to their descendants.
5. Even though they can get killed, they cannot hurt themselves at all.
6. They will never be truly satisfied for their hurtful methods to achieve their goals.
7. Every child born to two Terran parents will also suffer from the curse.
8. The vitality and years of the Terrans affected by the curse will go to their victims, and at the end of their lives the Terrans will feel more hollow and sick.

The approximate end of the curse will be somewhere in the distant future, on 28 June, 2292 AT (3092 ZE).

However, some Bujanski added that the only way to weaken the curse and stay alive, is simply to resolve any offense shown, and be forgiven by those affected by the crime. This is one reason why penance has become part of Bujanski law, to force people to resolve their own problems with other people in order to truly move on.

Earlier, people also cursed the Terrans with similar curses, in private, wishing for their oppressors and everyone who hurt or angered them to die horrifically. Many of the targets were online offenders, from bloky to online trolls, protchers (predators and abusers), and frauds.

## Effects

The curse seemed to manifest as many Terrans reported seeing visions of their own offenses, continuously flashing into their minds. They were disturbed at first, but they learned to live with those visions.

### Terran plague

One other curse, possibly related to the Curse of 400, was a mysterious disease that affected hundreds of Terrans. In most victims, they suffered from coughing and headaches, along with the usual visions of their own crimes in their minds.

Those who completed penance were able to become healthier. Every act of forgiveness from their victims, and every crime repaid by compensation and reparatory work, weakened the disease and restored the victim back to good health.

Those who refused to complete any penance, or showed any signs of hatred against Bujan, suffered from complications. Their internal organs began to fail: they eventually suffocated from their own poisons, and died.

The strange disease was unable to infect others, but only the victim. It only manifested on Terrans and Salvationists, as a punishment for their hatred against Bujan and its mourning people.

It was later revealed, upon investigations, to be caused by several Bujanski who experimented with Wannaenid sorcery stolen from supersoldiers who were doing the same to some villages. Their intention was to force every Terran to confess their own crimes, and face the "consequences" they always boasted about. Some of the same sorcerers died after their arrest, showing some of the same symptoms as their victims. The few survivors that were placed in a prison were praised by some Bujanski as heroes, for punishing and forcing Terrans into paying back for the latter's collective crimes.

### Perun's Gift?

As much as it was originally meant to torture the Terrans, they instead viewed the curse as also a gift from the Gods.

As they were able to identify every single mistake and error, the Terrans did much to satisfy the people they hurt, in order to be forgiven by the victims and society. It made them smarter, having sharper memories that were able to remember anything aside from their own wrongdoing.

Some of the same people who cursed the Terrans were surprised that the Terrans themselves put the curse to good use, just as they themselves had repented and freed themselves from their own sins. Perhaps that was not just a punishment, but as an instrument of justice, has it become a gift from Almighty Perun, the Lord of Justice?

After all, as the ancient proverb has taught, their use of the curse to restore justice has earned them peace in life, at last.

But even then, they still cannot escape their own actions, just like everyone else in Bujan.

### Responsibility?

Many Terrans during the Bujanski Revolution knew that many of the people targeted by angry mobs were accused of wrongfully blocking people online, which was regarded as one of the most offensive actions in Bujanski culture. At first, they derided the Bujanski revolutionaries as an unhinged mob of stupid fanatics, but some of them felt guilty.

They wondered if they would be responsible for so much death in Bujan, which made them hated as "raendoblokky" and shunned from society. Some mourned and weeped, that even if they reconciled with people whom they blocked, feeling as if they were to blame for many of the deadliest incidents of mob violence in that troubled island.

Their overwhelming guilt was itself seen as a manifestation of the Curse of 400. Even though the Bujanski would have chosen to let blockers live in shame, rather than kill them on sight, many former bloky kept wondering if they were all responsible as the causes of the mob violence. Their questions and shame haunted them even after they were forgiven, and spared from the ruinous July purges, until they had to call their former enemies to accompany them at their dying breaths. Their guilt, along with the visions in blocktowns, caused them to become so obsessed with the people they hurt, wanting to make sure the people they hurt will be safe.

Even as they were cleared of all their sins, many of those cursed, miserable fools went to the afterlife in tears. Legends claimed that some wandered the world as ghosts, never allowed to enjoy anything aside from the occasional prayer and offering. Other such spirits left a stream of tears, their every word broken by sobs, as they quietly approached the Gods when it was time for them to be judged for their sins.

Only those who were permitted to enter Paradise had the curse ultimately removed, smiling for the first time in a while.

However, it is possible for a victim of the Curse to avoid having their own soul tormented. If the victim has resolved their own sins, by paying back for every harmful deed against their victims, they could be freed from the Curse when they die, allowing their souls to pass on into the afterlife unaffected.

## Trivia

* One common variation of "bloka" written in graffiti was "bl8ka", with the o replaced with the 8-symbol of the Tyrskans, comparing all bloky with the enemies of Bujan.
* Sophie herself was a Terran, and because of her Serpentian background and online offenses, she was one of those who were put under the Curse of 400. This may had been why the nightmares in the blocktown cell continued to haunt her, along with her guilt.
	+ On the other hand, because her granddaughter Ljudmila was a half-Terran, the nightmares were less severe. What would have been recurring nightmares for everything wrong she did instead became into a sharper mind, allowing her to become almost as intelligent as Radumo. Radumo herself sometimes joked that "because Lord Perun knows you are good, His punishment for your kind is instead His blessing!"

## See also

* Canvas, a movie in 1900's Bujan about revenge
* Mending and folding
* Bujanski taboos