Mage Imperium III

**Mage Imperium III** took place in The Hybern Sector and the wider Mage Imperium 20 years after the events of Mage Imperium II (1773-1775 C.A.).

## Characters

### Player Characters

*This section is incomplete. You can help The Aeldrum Wiki by expanding it*.

## Summary

### Setup

The campaign begins in the Hybern Sector of the Mage Imperium, in the year 1773 C.A.. The campaign takes place some twenty years after the events of the Mage Imperium II Campaign, which ended in a failed naval coup by Rear Admiral Roland Drumpf and Commodore Astrid Keith against Princes Erhlai An’Drosse and Grigori Levin. We begin the campaign with ongoing Imperial Crises and Outside Threats, as well as two major events affecting the player characters: the death of an Imperial Seer and subsequent candidacy of MacDonald to replace him, and the planned wedding of Maeve Keith-Levin to Carrek An’Drosse. The Imperium has its hands full with both The Lechtan Uprising and The Inquisitorial-Legate Schism in the wake of The Seer Crisis.

While Adalna’s apparent silence has led some to pursue a religious revival, other elements of the Imperium have interpreted the Seer Crisis as the death of Adalna and, with it, the state creed of the Imperium. In an Imperium already increasingly skewed toward secular institutions and beliefs, many have abandoned religion altogether (a position barely tolerated by the highest Imperial authorities), but others have sought new gods, minor and great, real and fictitious. These apostates are hunted by the Imperial Inquisition throughout the Imperium, but several major faiths have begun to claim the souls of the Imperium on some worlds rivaling the Adalnan state creed. Kirvan sympathizers have turned into converted zealots, frontier physicians now worship Idolmar as often as Adalna, those of elvish heritage look all too often to their Enclave cousins for spiritual guidance, whispering angels of the Lords of the Pentacle ensnare Princes and commoners alike, and all across the Imperium a thousand minor gods and greater demons are worshiped by secret cults that subvert and even assail the Imperial Creed. The result is spiritual and political fragmentation, eroding the foundations of the Imperium and threatening to alienate regional secular governments ever more from the Seer Council. Attempts to counter this phenomenon are cautious, for reconversion can swiftly turn into Revivalism, a movement perhaps even more dangerous and destabilizing than mere apostasy.

#### Threats to the Imperium

* A Possible Third Kirvan Crusade Against the Imperium:
Having suffered losses on all fronts during the previous crusade owing to the untimely opportunism of the Fialta and the Thalranese, the Kirvans are more bound and determined than ever to make up for lost ground. Taking the last decade to lick their wounds, a new generation of Kirvan zealots have risen up to carry the torch of Kirva’s might. With the almost complete destruction of the secular states closer to the borders of the empire, there is no moderating force holding back the revanchists who advocate for yet another crusade to cleanse the unworthy, convert the heretic, and gain further dominion for the glory of Kirva. Worshipers of Idolmar and even Adarnum must tread carefully in this new theocratic climate, for they are only a step removed from the infidel worshippers of Adalna and the Lords of the Pentacle.
* Dres’Fialt and the Unification of the Clans:
The part-demon border clans of what will later be known as the Fialta have always posed a threat, albeit a somewhat piecemeal one, to the Imperium. But under the leadership of the (quickly becoming legendary) Dres’Fialt, the Fialta clan has beaten, bribed, bullied, and inspired their fellow clans into one mostly coherent feudal state. Encouraged by their previous successes against the Kirvans (a venture apparently backed by agents of the Imperium), the Fialta are looking for more blood and plunder. Whether or not the Imperium becomes their next target, the Fialta’s enthusiasm for battle will not be contained.
* The Orcish Prophet:
The disorganized orcish tribes and clans scattered across the cosmos by long-forgotten campaigns and garrisonings in The Pantheon War have been a troubling thorn in the side of the every empire of any consequence, but they were largely a planetary threat. Now, a movement of shamans across continents and worlds has led to a coordination of orcish warfare on a cosmic scale. These shamans claim to hear Korbog, the greatest of the savage gods, telling them that the time has come to overthrow all other deities. While not yet a cosmic threat, these strangely connected orc leaders could merge into an enormous power.
* The Gul’Dan Turn Raider:
Following the brutal assassination of Crocodile Demon Moses Tam’Gul at the hands of Roland Drumpf, the Gul’Dan have been a hive of new activity. Gul and Dan both have been wandering in all directions, creating new colonies and building new fleets. This diaspora has created a problem for everyone in contact with their territory, especially the frontier domains of Liet Harth and his pals.
* The Thalranese Crown an Emperor and his Empress:The warriors of the Thalranese Imperium have crowned a new warlord-emperor, Evrek son of Ignus. A veteran of the wars with the Kirvans, he has promised his supporters a more glorious victory than any in the history of the Imperium of Thalran. It may be that the only prize to satiate such an emperor will be the crown of a still greater Imperium.

Evrek comes to the throne not only with a will for conquest, but a powerful ally, in the form of his consort, Livina. The daughter of an archpriestess of Shantara, Livina is half-even, her father a dark elf and her human mother supposedly sired by a Shantaran angel; these would make her a revered symbol of the goddess under other circumstances, but as a wife of the Emperor Evrek, she represents an almost divine union between Thalran’s mortal soldiers and the cultists of Shantara. Evrek, when he goes to war, will do so with bloodthirsty champions and sinister magic; for an Imperium already weakened from within, these are dark portents indeed.

#### Events

* Death of an Imperial Seer:
The recent death of Imperial Seer Lodand of the Seer Council has produced a critical juncture for the Imperium — with Lodand dead, the Imperial Seer Council stands at six members, three from Aeldrum and three from the wider Imperium. Imperial law does not dictate how many seer councilors should hold the title at any one time, but the council has consisted of seven members for the last four centuries. Likewise, while the Seer Council has historically accorded a majority to seers from Aeldrum, Imperial law does not specify any representative ratio. At a time when Aeldrum is struggling to retain control over the rest of the Imperium and local leadership is increasingly crucial for resisting the onslaught of heretics, apostates, and foreign invaders, many suggest that it is time for parity between Aeldrum and her subjects or, some dare to say, for outsiders to outnumber the Aeldmen on the council. Two “outside” candidates, Lamnus and MacDonald, are especially popular, both receiving endorsements from planetary seers and high seers. With MacDonald’s revivalist overtones and Lamnus’s alleged apostasy, however, the conservative, pro-Aeldrum faction of the Council is likely to pursue stalling tactics while the psychic lineages of Aeldrum scramble to advance their own candidate.
* A Wedding a Lifetime in the Making:
In the terms of the Hybern Reunification Contract, written 20 years ago to end the unrest caused by a series of coups enacted first by Naval commanders Roland Drumpf and Astrid Keith (and their allies), there were many complex provisions regarding the continuation of dynastic power and the interrelation of the Great Families of the Hybern Sector. One of these provisions was a series of family management requirements made of the then Lady-Administrator of Karaval, Petra Keith. She was required first to marry Grigori Levin, second to bear him a child (who would therefore become a Keith-Levin), and third to betroth that child to the child of the other power linking couple of the sector, Ehrlai An’Drosse and Julia Brahm, thereby creating in that child a four-way linkage of the great powers of the sector (a Keith-Levin-Brahm-An’Drosse). With the coming of age of Maeve Keith-Levin and Carrek An’drosse and the sudden and peculiar abdication of Lady-Administrator Petra Keith, the stage is set for the great marriage of the sector on Karaval.

#### Cultural and Technical Developments

##### Imperialists

* Imperialists represent the traditional, pro-status-quo branch of the Imperium. An overwhelming share of Imperial officials and Mage Princes are self-proclaimed Imperialists, though many do so out of pragmatism rather than sincere belief. At the core of Imperialist Doctrine is a rejection of the Adalnan Silence, a belief in Imperial Primacy and support of the Seer Council.

* Orthodox Imperialists most strongly adhere to the central teachings of the Adalnan faith and unwaveringly support the Seer Council as the glue of the Imperium and the fount of Imperial law. They may even criticize institutions such as the navy or the diet for reinterpreting the word of Adalna handed down to them from the Seers. The most extreme orthodox imperialists may even support the Supercession Doctrine, whereby planetary seers take a more active role in administration, up to and including confirming secular planetary governors. The Orthodox Imperialists are overwhelmingly likely to support the Inquisition but may question its growing autonomy.

* Radical Imperialists take the view that the Imperium is beset by enemies within and without and that Adalna’s vision must be preserved with aggressive, even genocidal shows of strength. They support an independent inquisition, and some may even argue for a purging of the lower seer offices, which they believe to have become just as corrupt as the secular state. Radicals may also (but not always) support the centralization of the Imperium, including by violent seizure of semi autonomous regions. Several Diet members from recalcitrant outlying sectors have been assassinated or the subject of blackmail or framing efforts by the Radicals.

* Reform Imperialists span a variety of issue-specific groups, but they broadly believe in a more pragmatic approach to apostasy and heresy; while they accept the Seer Council’s rule and reject any claims that Adalna has fallen silent, they may believe in rebalancing the power of Aeldrum relative to outlying worlds. They may oppose especially brutal reprisals against alleged heretics or encourage commerce and even military collaboration with foreign powers. In this regard, many Reform Imperialists risk being accused of Gnosticism, and the pro-foreign elements of the faction have increasingly recanted or been radicalized, while voices calling for greater parity between Aeldrum and her subjects have become a dominant theme of the Reform movement.

##### New Imperialists

The New Imperialists accept and proclaim the Adalnan silence as the end of the covenant with Adalna. Unlike the Gnostics, however, they support the preservation of Imperial institutions such as the Navy, the Diet and a political doctrine of technological secrecy under a new, post-Adalnan Imperium. Often, New Imperialists suggest that the Seer Council should devolve its powers formally to the Diet (or the Navy). The New Imperialists are considered a heretical faction and hunted as mercilessly in the Imperial core as Gnostics, but in some segments of the frontier, their ideas have gained sufficient currency that pragmatic leaders punish only the most brazen advocates. Many actively distrust Psionics as charlatans or quasi-demons, believing them to be certainly unfit to rule an Imperium.

* Representationalists, a faction of the New Imperialists, take the extreme view that the Diet or Seer Council should reflect the interests of outlying sectors, suggesting some extension of the current practice of sending delegates from the sectors to the Diet; in the Representationalist agenda, these envoys would become part of a more formal legislature or would elect an executive leader to join the Imperium’s ruling council.

* The New Imperial Confederationalist-Secessionists are a radical subfaction of the Representationalists that believes in a cultural kinship across the Imperium but advocates the disintegration of the Imperium into independent sectors or subsectors, claiming that the centralized rule of Aeldrum is a tyranny that can no longer be supported. Very few open members of this faction hold office, even on the frontier.

##### Gnostics

* The Gnostics push back against the edicts of the Seer Council and want the right to associate with other schools of thought and even other gods. Some more extreme Gnostics have even defected to other empires or actively oppose the idea of an Imperium in the first place. In most conflict areas (like Hybern) these have already been driven underground or radicalized and are often no longer publicly part of the Imperium. Many Gnostics have thrown in their lot with the Pythians, as the members of the league were most often responsible for shielding Gnostics from the inquisition. Others have left the Imperium altogether and sought refuge in states powerful enough that even the Inquisition does not dare conduct covert operations within them for fear of sparking a wider conflict.

* A radical subfaction of the Gnostics, the Gnostic-Apostates, either believe that Adalna is silent (perhaps even dead) or unworthy of their worship, and they seek out new gods to serve and worship (not merely with whom to commune). Several have joined the Kirvan Church-State in past Crusades or formed small cults around minor gods (e.g. the Circle of Ja’irm, which ritually sacrificed an Imperial governor and his court on the world of Nil in The Parval Sector). Many former Valander Gnostics who survived the Miloszc purges in Hybern became Gnostic-Apostates, worshiping rival deities partly as an act of vengeance against an Imperium that brutally destroyed their society.

##### Ascensionists

*Main article: Ascensionists*
Though no Mage Prince in their right mind would admit to being an Ascensionist (as they are hunted down even more furiously than any other "dissident" faction), the temptation to use science and the occult to achieve godhood is too strong for some particularly ambitious princes to resist. At first, Ascensionists tended to work on their own, but as word spread about the silence of Adalna and as more Princes turned to the possibility of Godhood to escape the decay of the Imperium, several Ascensionist cabals emerged.

##### Revivalists

Adalnan Revivalists accept the silence of Adalna, either as a punishment for the Imperium’s decadence or as a rejection of the Seer Council, but they do not believe that the deity’s silence means her end. Rather, Revivalists seek fervently to restore the Imperium’s golden age under divine guidance, following crazed psionics claiming to be Adalna’s newest archpriest while attacking the Seers as false prophets. Revivalists push for a new, fully theocratic regime within the Imperium. The Diet and local governors would be cast down along with their Seer puppets/puppeteers (Revivalists are not always clear on the narrative), and the Navy will once again sail the ether for Adalna, not for personal or dynastic glory. Naturally, Adalna remains a deity of technology and learning, and so the Revivalists voraciously seek knowledge, claiming that certain prototypes and designs are "blessed" by Adalna.

However, some technologies are truly heretical, seeking to understand psionics is an attempt to penetrate the mystique of Adalna, and a violation of the ancient covenants. Seeking to improve the human form outright through genetic engineering is an attempt to exceed the form of Adalna’s chosen followers, and hence an act of capital hubris. Attempting to study the occult leads to temptation and apostasy, and so must be punished severely from the first whisper.

##### Pythians

The Pythian League has its genesis in the first Gnostic Purges on Aeldrum thirty years ago. Horrified Mage Princes and Imperial citizens, even if not Gnostics in themselves, banded together to shield and evacuate those targeted by the Inquisition. Since, the Pythian League has evolved into a dissident network. While radical factions have turned fully Gnostic and some Pythians have even associated with the Revivalists, the Pythians are generally ideologically flexible except in their opposition to the tyranny of the Inquisition and the Seer Council. Many of the more conservative Pythians sympathize with the New Imperialists.

### Parenting Strategies and Advanced Gerontology

*This section is incomplete. You can help The Aeldrum Wiki by expanding it*.

### Destroyer of Worlds

The Imperium began fortifications of some frontier worlds in the Holden Expanse but did not provide enough military protection. The Kirvans, looking to start a crusade, quickly moved in to occupy those worlds. It looked like a horrific tactical oversight by the Imperium when suddenly the Aether around those worlds began to distort and the planets vanished. The Kirvans suffered heavy losses, stalling their war efforts, and the Imperium showed the power to destroy entire worlds.

### Apostasy? I hardly know 'er!

Imperial Seer MacDonald spearheads a number of extremely repressive initiatives and makes apostasy a "dynastic crime" punishable by death of all relatives of the Apostate out to 2nd Cousins. The year is now 1774.

### Epilogue

Imperial Seer MacDonald, using an unsecured demonic battery array bought from Dres'Fialt (and secretly supplied to Dres'Fialt by Admiral Clara Keith in return for his cooperation in the planned grav-bombing of Emperor Evrek of the Thalranese), destroyed the Seventh Spire of Aeldrum. Hundreds of thousands were vaporized instantly, and the deal toll reached into the millions within hours.

The bombing occurred while Seer MacDonald delivered an address on the subject of apostasy and heresy to the Imperial Diet, at the summit of the Aeldrum Spire. MacDonald's hundreds of loyal, psionically-brainwashed cultists had prepared a complex ritual to allow the Seer to siphon the souls of the dead of the 7th spire into himself, making him a living god. The ritual failed, however, and MacDonald was confronted by Imperial Seers Vendesh and Malthan with charges of apostasy, in full view of the Imperial Diet and as the roiling psychic energies of MacDonald's failed ritual set papers and hairpieces aflame. While MacDonald's Friend gave him the power to liquefy Vendesh's brain instantaneously, Malthan withstood the psychic assault and was able to break MacDonald's hold over the other four Imperial Seers. Thus confronted with five of the Imperium's great psychics and a platoon of imperial marines sent to arrest him, without the power he had expected from the destruction of the seventh spire, MacDonald thought it an excellent time to die. He released his friend, and in the moment before the Diet Chamber was scoured by sentient hellfire, felt truly alone for the first time in three decades.

Of the Imperial Seers, all but Malthan were burnt to ash along with most of the Imperial Diet. Seer Malthan survived, a charred husk of a man, unfit for the monumental task of holding together the Imperium whose sole ruler he had just become. Surviving Imperial history does not record any subsequent Imperial Seers, nor the ultimate fate of Seer Malthan. Imperial history does, however, remember the Apostate MacDonald, whose final great crime against the Imperium sealed its end.

Even before the death of MacDonald and the death knell of the Imperium, other instabilities had manifested. Grand Admiral Hiram Klausman, though invited by MacDonald to discuss the security of the Kirvan Front, chose instead (on the diplomatic suggestion of Clara Keith), to send his second, Brune Dorset, at the last moment. Brune, however, was the child of Anselm Trobe, secretly implanted within the navy twenty years before, and ready to act on Clara Keith's grand design. Brune would feign having been intercepted by the Inquisition, acting on MacDonald's order and presumably sent to arrest Klausman. With this information, Klausman concluded that Trobe had meant to imprison him and seize the technology for the G-Bomb. He promptly and predictably declared his rebellion against the Imperium. As the news of MacDonald's Apostasy filtered back to Hybern, however, Klausman's ambition grew greater, and he soon took on the airs of a conquering Emperor.

Clara Keith died only just as word of MacDonald's crime reached the Hybern Sector. With Klausman declaring open rebellion, and the days of the Thalranese Empire seemingly numbered, Dres'Fialt asked Clara to attend a summit to formalize their military and technological partnership. Courtesy of the spectacular failure of Sloane and Arindar of the Elvish Enclaves, which resulted in Sloane becoming possessed by a Shantaran angel and Arindar becoming the mad deformed prophet of a unitarian elvish god, Emperor Evrek's Shantaran consort knew almost the full extent of the Fialta-Imperial plot to destroy Evrek and claim the Thalranese Imperium. Evrek, in turn, had reached out to Dres'Fialt and offered him a different arrangement — independence and an alliance against a Mage Imperium that was on the verge of civil war, ripe for conquest.

With MacDonald selling Dres'Fialt technology for the very demon-batteries that Clara Keith had supplied, the disunion of the Imperium was all too apparent. Thus, the Fialta and Thalranese attacked Dres'Fialt's erstwhile Imperial Navy allies, surrounding Clara's warship and frigate escort. Admiral Clara Keith fought a glorious battle, bringing to bear every technological marvel that forty years of secret Keith-Navy projects could supply. No Imperial record states exactly how many Fialta and Thalranese ships were lost against Clara's flagship, but her last stand is immortalized in Fialta legend as "The Great Light Show."

With Clara's death, Petra Keith made good on her plans to depart the Imperium. However, Klausman attempted to hold on to the technology that Clara had accrued, going so far as to arrest (often killing in the process) civilian scientists. Protests from the nobility were met with threats of arrest and bombardment. Klausman's actions quickly assumed the specter of Drumpf's attempted coup two decades prior. Following Clara's will, Dolorn and all its naval facilities were destroyed, taking untold technical knowledge and spectacular machinery into the etheric abyss.

Dorset, still incognito and unwilling to participate in a civil war or the destruction of the Encyclopedia Foundation, saw to it that Klausman's Imperial dreams ended with an etheric blast to the back. Dorset, however, had not managed to hide his identity from everyone. Mendesh Korrel "The Fly," Klausman's chief of intelligence, had deduced Dorset's allegiance. As soon as Dorset had accomplished the task of removing Klausman for him, The Fly feigned vengeance and slew Dorset, taking the mantle of Grand Admiral. For all his gifts as a schemer, however, The Fly did not have Klausman's gift for command. He would spend the next several years trying to suppress the nobility of Hybern-Kartak.  While he did not have the technical knowledge to build new gravity bombs, The Fly was able to salvage the demon battery stores held by Klausman. In his campaign of terror against the nobility, The Fly would bring the roiling madness of demon-bombing to Hybern and Zu'un, before dying in battle against a Keith-Androsse fleet (the Brahms having been subsumed by Maeve Keith-Levin in her seizure of her father's Hybern-Kartak Consortium interests).

With the largest fleet left in the region and the Kartak Sector essentially annexed by tripartite dynastic forces, Lord Clarence Keith III declared himself Emperor of the Hybern-Kartak Imperium. It did not survive his assassination six years later by Carrek An'Drosse, nor Carrek the vengeance of Clarence IV. Vendetta and an ever-dwindling supply of superweapons played out in this fashion over the Hybern and Kartak Sectors for a decade after the death of Clara Keith, before the Fourth Kirvan Crusade and the conquering armies of Dres'Fialt swept over what remained in their bid to strike at each other.

Petra Keith fled the Imperium for Celestial Space, with Lucia Lianor, Selene Veer, Montral, Duncan and much of the Encyclopedia Foundation, closing the way behind her using the etheric quagmire technology devised by Veer. They found a small second Imperium already in the making, staffed by exiled scientists and the various children of Anselm Trobe. For a short time, the Encyclopedia Foundation flourished as Petra had dreamed it would. Selene Veer aided in its first year, but after declaring a new breakthrough, disappeared into the ether.

Arindar, his mind and body ravaged by the battle with the Shantaran angel that possessed Sloane, could not return to the Enclaves. He was tainted, irrevocably and so deeply that his erstwhile brethren would have slain him out of mercy. He chose instead to join Petra in leaving Imperial Space, driven not by fear of death but by a quest to unravel the mess of visions that had been revealed to him in the battle with the Shantaran angel. He surmised that Shantara and the Elvish Triad were all fragments of a greater divinity, a true god of the Elves. His quest to find this god and make it known to his elvish brethren would take him through Celestial Space, where he found strange offshoots of the elvish people, grown wild or living in isolated sects that he could mold to his own peculiar and somewhat deranged faith.  What would become the Mirror Enclaves of Celestial Space were created from Arindar's search for the "true" elvish god revealed to him.

The seeds of the Foundation's destruction lay in its able cadre of genetically engineered civil servants. Anselm Trobe's experiments with induced psionic ability had led him to discover the Mind Eels, and to apply their intriguing psionic properties to "graft" a psychic gland into the brain. What Trobe did not know is that the Mind Eel, weak, blind, swarming, is but larval stage of the far more terrible Naga. What form the Naga would naturally take was unclear, but the grafts in the minds of Trobe's induced-psychic children slowly transformed them, and the true form of the Naga became hinted at in the inhuman surgical reshaping these Naga-hybrids inflicted on themselves to match a hideous vision of perfection. Trobe's supreme arrogance had not been in tampering with genetics and crafting the most perfect human form possible, but in believing that his creations could never turn on him. The hybrids disappeared from Trobe's notice, hiding away to "perfect themselves" as they called out across the ether to their true Naga cousins and plied their mundane siblings against Trobe. At last, Trobe was lured by his favorite children, the Perfect Princes, to see what had become of the hybrids. It is perhaps a mercy that whatever final vision Trobe saw has not gone recorded in detail. Those of Trobe's children who remained loyal did not long survive their father. Flazel, Trobe's eldest daughter would perish attempting to warn the Encyclopedia Foundation.

What followed was the rapid destruction of the Encyclopedia Foundation, as Trobe's children and their Naga allies seized facilities and murdered scientists. With her new Imperium dead before it could truly begin, Petra Keith found sanctuary in her Etheric Station, where she entombed herself, Lucia Lianor, and several of the Encyclopedia's top surviving scientists in Prince Montral's greatest achievement: a multi-souled computer. This colossal effort completed, the station folded the ether about itself and disappeared from history (until, of course, it was discovered by the Aeldrum Trade Company millennia later). Only Duncan, who had saved his daughter and absolved himself of the guilt of failing to save his wife so long before, remained, and went to the Mirror Enclaves to join Arindar and continue the struggle against the Naga. The elvish Veil Cult which resulted would resist the Naga staunchly during their centuries-long conquest and subjugation of Celestial Space, aided by Imperial weapons and ruling over their subjects through the Perfect Princes.

Grigori Levin accepted Seer MacDonald's offer to become his chief of staff and the new Imperial Technology Screening Committee, whose first task had been to acquire and inspect the batteries powering the G-bombs, with the goal of acquiring a distributed G-bomb-fleet (the "inelegant solution" to the demonic containment problem) for the Diet's use. When Levin learned from Clara Keith that she had sold demon batteries to Dres'Fialt, however, he realized MacDonald's objective: to obtain a battery/bomb at any cost, use it and then blame the Diet. This realization came too late to save the Imperium (Levin could not act quickly enough to intercept the demonic batteries), but Levin was able to apply his resources get his daughter Maeve and her son Oreth off of Aeldrum.  With MacDonald dead and the Diet all but destroyed, Levin became the king of a burning, collapsing hill. Sending his daughter back to Hybern-Kartak to secure the family assets there (where she would take command of the HKC), Levin attempted to construct a provisional government on Aeldrum, forming a desperate collaboration with Malthan and the Admiralty Board.

This tenuous alliance broke down swiftly, however. Levin was killed two years after the destruction of the Seventh Spire, as navy officers under Grand Admiral Vasil Veldt stormed his office with a warrant for his arrest on charges of sedition. Veldt declared himself Supreme Admiral and turned Aeldrum into a military dictatorship, killing or exiling all that remained of the Imperial Diet. Six months later, Aeldrum fell to the armies of the Prophet Lecht, and Vasil Veldt was hanged as a heretic.  Lecht would die a year thereafter in the First Scouring of Aeldrum, when the Black Spires of Aeldrum fulfilled their sinister secondary purpose: a coalition of Ascensionists and ex-navy paramilitaries advised by the former Governor of Kartak, Grimwald Oday (displaced by the events of the navy-dynast wars), retook the Third Spire of Aeldrum and connected it to the network of Baradun's black monoliths across the cosmos.

The Spires were ancient communication and coordination devices for the armies of Baradun, but also serviceable as weapons, capable of tearing apart the fabric of the ether. The First Scouring saw the Third Spire used to start a chain reaction in all but the Seventh Spire (defunct) that would cover Aeldrum in roiling etheric storms for months. Tens of millions, famished and terrified by the Lechtan tyranny, were given sudden and terminal liberation. The Black Spires would be fired sixteen more times over the next century as Aeldrum changed hands among an increasingly deranged assortment of ascensionists, revivalists and neo-Imperialists.