Therese felt an eerie feeling walking down the now unlit hallowed halls of the High Palace, the feeling of wrongness not helped by her state of dress: the full dress uniform without the usual stacks of unearned ribbons and medals that most officers managed to amass. It was almost as if the building itself was telling her that she had committed an unspeakable evil, and that the point of no return had been crossed.

It was necessary, it had to be done. She had repeated those thoughts to herself many times throughout the coup. The execution of that problem child of that minor noble family was a message to her: that the crown is watching, and they don’t like what they had seen from her. Therefore it was either kill or be killed, and she was more than ready to kill. Something she had learned from the spilt blood of others…

Perhaps in a different time they might have had the luxury of time to slow the progress of innovation and make it work for them. But alas, it was not to be. While the old regime managed to pin the blame of the proliferation of the PKW on that worthless piece of scum she knew the truth: it was such an obvious thing that even the unwashed masses could crank them out in their scrap yards, and they did.

That has been the biggest boon, and the biggest problem. A boon because it allowed her and other like minded conspirators to amass the necessary forces to take power from the fools who was about to bring the country to ruin, a problem because everyone else was also able to amass such military might, and that in the wrong hands meant more going their own ways… contrary to the needs of that has to be done. And a lot of them had in fact done just that: despite what their moral imperatives demanded of them they had fled even before the bodies stopped swinging, offering their service and expertise to the enemies that they had been fighting just a while before.

Stifling a sigh she continued her walk, the scared little girl deep down inside being stuffed back into a dark forgotten corner… again. There’s no time for that, no time to cry, no time to despair. Not with the blabbering madmen of the Turiacs baying for the blood of everyone right outside their borders, and the backstabbing renegade nobility, and the roving bands of peasant bandit mobs with their own mobs of PKWs.

There is only the next fight, the next battle, the next war. She muttered a prayer under her breath, praying that the struggle might end better this time around…

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Excerpts from An Elementary Overview of the History of Novita

… although at the time it appeared that she was successful in consolidating power, Duce Albrecht’s short-lived regime collapsed as quickly as the coup that brought it into power. Despite one of the earliest proponent of the tracked armored fighting vehicle (at the time known as panzerkampfwagen, nowadays known as the armored struggle bus), she was reluctant to abandon the traditional kriegmeister corps, for political reasons if nothing else as their social powers were still significant among most of the military class which was the backbone of her support. This reluctance to embrace change was often cited by historians as the reason for their defeat at the Battle of Kroywen at the hands of the Directorate…

… with the annihilation of the Republican Repentant army at the Battle of Kroywen and the death of Duce Albrecht the fate of the Central Republic was sealed. Although the Turiac Directorate was never able to occupy much territories past the old borders of the Seoguk Kingdom the collapse of centralized power in the Heuchler region handicapped it for decades, in an era that in hindsight was one of massive social transition and technological innovations.

Although later [mostly] reunified by the Republic of Goten, Heuchler was never able to regain its former political, economic, or cultural prominence as the continental hegemon. Although most of their reasons for their inability to regain their former glories had much to do with a number of long term trends one must wonder the what-ifs if either the Divine Imperial Confederation or the short lived Central Republic was able to keep the region intact…

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Excerpts from The Rise of the Fall: The dark age of innovation

The proliferation of the armored struggle bus not only changed the face of warfare forever, but also caused a social revolution of a magnitude not seen since before the First End of Days…

… despite its origins of noble institutions, the armored struggle bus’s ease of production and refinement meant that knowledge of its manufacture and [more importantly] use rapidly became widespread, with almost every village and hamlet quickly amassing forces capable of taking on most kriegmeister forces. Along with the proliferation of such abilities to amass military power meant the [relatively] quick breakdown of the old social order. Although most of the initial peasant revolts were quickly crushed, and not all (or even a majority) rebel, the absolute monopoly of military power of the nobility was severely eroded, a changing state of affairs that would only become more pronounced in the centuries after.

… The decline of the kriegmeister warrior caste was one the of the main contributing factors in what would later be known as “The Second Great Loss”. With the decline of importance of mechas on the battlefield the production facilities and their supporting infrastructure gradually faded into the pages of history, the almost incomprehensible advanced technological nature of their construct dismissed by the techno-illiterate mobs who destroyed the old order in the arrogance of their primitive and uncivilized weapons & tools.

Thus passed the long and illustrated legends of the keepers of the light and civilization, at the time mourned by few, their demise cheered by many. For all the legends of their noble birth and deeds it bears in mind that they were heavily despised by the unwashed masses, who cared little for the legends of distant lands and more distant past, but were keenly aware of the perceived injustice inflicted upon them in the then present.

Yet even as the ancient knowledge faded back into myth and legends the seeds of innovations grew as common people of the lower classes began to tinker and modify their tools, armed with the knowledge that the power to overthrow the heir of the gods could be in their hands with enough effort and know-how.

Thus man once again overcame, but in doing so his baser nature was also unleashed…

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Excerpts from Legend of the Corruptor

… the origins of the legend of the so-called “Corruptor” in the region of Heuchler in the late 6th century AR seemed to have coincided with the collapse of the old Divine Imperial Confederation and the revolution of military tactics brought upon by the armored struggle bus…

… While there’s supporting evidence (however scant) for all these theories the most likely explanation is that this entity was imagined up as a way to neatly explain the numerous factors in the collapse of the Divine Imperial Confederation. As the populations of the Heuchler region still mostly subscribe in the “moral theory” of historical studies rather than the “material theory” that’s more commonly accepted in the rest of Novita, it’s rather unsurprising that they clung to the use of “exceptional individuals” as a way of deflecting responsibilities (and thus temporal collective guilt) from their ancestors…