February Content Update: The Khorobirit Papers (Pt 5)

The Khorobirit Papers

5/11/617

Thus, it appears that I have outlived another Tierran King. This one has departed his kingdom in a state so very different from how he inherited it: divided, paralysed by in-fighting, nearly bankrupt. One could almost mistake it for an Antari principality.

Some would see such a state as a warning, that when one tries to alter the traditions upon which a state is built, one will only serve to shake its structure apart.

Perhaps they have a point. Tierra's example is a warning, but it is one which recommends strength, not cowardice. The King of Tierra tried to work within the traditions of his country to remake it, and those who benefitted from those traditions opposed him, seeing as our own Lords of the Congress do, only that such changes might erode their own power. A naive fool in politics for all of his ambitions, he trusted in the goodwill of those who had every reason to oppose his interests, and as a result, all of his ideas of reform and self-strengthening have come to nothing.

I am not a King of Tierra, to think in the terms of one was the mistake of my earlier years. One cannot remake a state by using the very instruments one intends in the end to destroy. One can only forge one's own new tools - strong enough and sharp enough to cut away the rotten timbers and rusted braces of the old. 

I am not a King of Tierra. I am Prince Khorobirit, and if those who should seek to defend their own powers in contravention of the good of this realm should expect me to beg and cajole and scrape as a King of Tierra might, then they will find themselves very regretfully mistaken.

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7/1/617

Transcript of Address to the First Classes of the State Academy

My most faithful and able subjects.

You have been called here to correct the great wrong which has been done to you. For centuries, it has been believed that all those born without the Divine Blood are fit only for brute labour, that men and women such as you are incapable of anything greater than the station which you have been born to. Now, we know that this is a lie. You are the proof of that lie - those handful born within the great mass of the people with the will, the ability, and the loyalty to transcend the limits of those around you, and to fulfil a potential which almost all others cannot dream of achieving.

For centuries, there have been men and women such as you, and for centuries, your potential has been wasted by ignorant and profligate masters. Those of you who were picked out by the Sainted Martyrs to be better than your peers have been left unacknowledged, the great good which you might have done for your people has been disregarded. Instead, you have been forced to live amongst your inferiors, to labour as they labour, your sharp minds left to wither, given no direction or purpose.

Beginning today, this changes.

Here, at the academy of sciences, your will be raised to the position you deserve, one in which your skills and talents will be cultivated to the advantage of yourselves and the whole of the Principality. In doing so, you will become the extensions of my hand and my voice. Your abilities will be trained to serve me, and in return, you will be rewarded as extensions of my own power, as my favoured servants.

Those who excel in their duties will be showed with honours. They will become the subjects of the envy of those above and below them. Do not heed such sentiments, for they are born of the anger of those who will remain in the past. They fear the loss of my favour - a fear which those of you who serve me well in the days ahead will never have reason to harbour.

They are the past. You, my most faithful and able subjects, are the future.

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9/14/617

It is understood very well that the Blood is intended to provide powers of judgement and intellect, and that most of those without it are little more than animals.

However, there are times when this truth seems in doubt.

A judge was killed in the far north two weeks ago. The perpetrator was a minor lord of no account - even less account now. He saw fit to have my servant arrested and impaled, on the grounds that he was a serf who was away from his estate, never mind that he was one of my serfs, on my business, bearing my token.

A column was dispatched to chastise the offender and his chattels, as has been the case in the previous few cases. Only in this occasion, when the force arrived, it was reported that the serfs themselves had seen fit to arrest the Lord in question, for fear of the punishment which I was to mete out to them.

Unfortunately, this also places a dilemma before me. The serfs are, undoubtedly guilty of servile insurrection. The proper course of action would be to stake each and every one of them, as I have before. However, doing so would show that I would treat serfs who are more loyal to me than their immediate masters no differently than those who would remain obedient to a lord who commits treason against me. To offer clemency would reward this show of loyalty, but it may also encourage others to rebel, as many have in the west. This I cannot allow.

Thus, I must offer a reward and exact a price, but I must also determine the proportion of each. There is no question that some will have to die on the stake, and others will have to be honoured for their actions.

The question is whom, and in what numbers?

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4/28/618

I have visited the canal project again. The main channel remains frozen over. The engineers tell me it will likely be another month before the passage is suitable for the use of small boats, and another two weeks after that before it might be useable for heavy shipping.

It seems that this affair has proven to be mere folly. A channel to a protected harbour will be of little use when it is only open to the sea for three or four months of the year. If I am to secure the means to assemble a sea-going fleet, then I will need to secure a port further south, an enterprise which will involve resources and plans of an entirely different kind.

Perhaps this project was always destined to exist in the realm of the fantastical. The Southmen may see the use of a canal for such a purpose, but their land is warmer than ours. No doubt that a Tierran Lord would find a canal project a much more practical solution. Here, we must salvage what we can, divert the resources to other projects, and leave what is left standing as a monument to the imbecility of copying the works and methods of foreigners without understanding them.

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6/2/618

During the height of the war, there were those who prayed to the Saints and the Mother to reverse the fortunes of our respective sides - to sow the same disunity and confusion among the Southmen that we witnessed every time we entered the chamber of the Congress. We, the right-thinking, intelligent men, dismissed such supplications as the pathetic mewling of desperate cowards. The Saints, as it is well known, look to nothing but their own plans. The Mother of Ascension is not drawn to the sound of prayer, but to deeds of glory and courage. It was folly to apply to the Heavens in such a manner, the Heavens did not listen to supplications of such a tenor.

Apparently we were wrong.

It seems perhaps the Heavens do listen to such pleadings, they simply take a great deal of time to answer them. News has come to us that the Tierran kingdom has collapsed into a state of civil war, between the factions of the court and the throne. The Duke of Wulfram, son to the man whom I defeated at Blogia, now fancies himself a latter day version of Prince Ivan of my own illustrious line, calling for the overthrow of the power of their new Queen - who has evidently realised at long last that an edifice of government cannot be remade while maintaining its walls and pillars. Now the Tierran Congress - their Cortes - is broken into multiple fractious parties, each adhering to one side or the other, but in the name of different interests.

Word has come to me that the Takarans have involved themselves as well, after their embassy was stormed and its staff cruelly slaughtered by some mass of lowborn rabble. It is not the only account I have heard of such animals running free in that country. Perhaps now the Tierrans will understand the folly not keeping the mass of their serfs in hand. 

It is said that among the Kian, the hatred of their great enemy is so deep that they rejoice whenever they hear of some Takaran misfortune regardless of cause or severity. I cannot doubt now that I am of a kindred spirit with such sentiment. This internal dissolution of the Tierran kingdom weakens those we hate, and serves as an object lesson to our own people as to how disunity and the pursuit of shallow interests may bring down even a seemingly strong government. More than that, it gives us time: time to strengthen ourselves, to bring those who still cling to the past to heel, time to position ourselves to our advantage.

Time to engineer revenge.