How the centralised government shifted Ceon from war to peace to war again

1

We are tired. The world is tired. Of war, of famine, of death. It is exactly this collective fatigue that is about to be exploited by an enemy far worse than war, famine, or death. It is the newly conceived Convocation, a central governing organ that has a vice’s grip on the people.

This vice will clamp our throats shut, robbing us of the air to breathe and the voice to protest. It is this voice, our voice, that they want to silence, as it calls out truths that the authorities spare no effort to deny. These truths can shake the very foundations of every pillar this autocratic government is built on, and for our sakes, the sakes of the thousands of innocents and millions of victims, they must be torn down.

2

This world has seen much sorrow. Since the days of the Great Collision, now five eras past, Ceon has known nothing but strife, struggles and starvation. The birth of the Convocation then, a centralised government that unites all nations under one law, was welcomed by every weary soul in the world.

However, the wars have not come to an end despite the promises and policies of the Convocation. Instead, the nature of war has changed. It has changed from the obvious, the bloody and the violent, to one of jurisdiction and persecution. The enemy has become the law, an invisible force yet superior to any army and any weapon. Legal power is now used against us, a fearsome force that will hold its proverbial knife at the throat of the world. How did it come to this?

3

Not many of us will remember the first days of the Fifth Era. Although it has been the shortest era to date, counting only 64 years, it was simultaneously the bloodiest, most violent and most devastating era Ceon has ever seen. Many, many lives were lost. By the end of what we came to call the Age of War, the global population had been decimated to numbers comparable to those in the days after the Great Collision. At this time, the population could no longer deny the devastation and the urgency for a ceasefire. The call for unity was a loud one, and heard by those who proceeded to gather the first members of what would become the Convocation.

Simultaneously, the faint whispers of warning that sounded in the back were largely ignored, but were heard by our fathers and grandfathers.

Their era, the era before the Age of War, was an uneasy one. With the stability and prosperity that flowed from our ancestors’ efforts in the first four ages, came dreams of greater wealth and luxury, and more dangerously, boredom. All across Ceon, individuals rose up to claim leadership over their people and to promise them greater riches, greater influence and more entertainment. Civil unrest reigned and local uproars were plentiful. Some battles were fought for land, others for dominion, others for nothing more than thrills. The influence and wealth shifted between all races like a ship rocked on storm-tossed seas. The tug of war for the title of “Supreme Ruler” culminated with the formation of the Sequent Four and their expedition to the centre of Ceon, where they would present the Axioms themselves with the question who was to reign the world.

This superficially sound initiative was cheered by all peoples: the nonpartisan Axioms would judge righteously. The Forces of Nature would not decide in anybody’s favour or to anybody’s detriment. Four representatives of the four greatest races were chosen to make the descent, and in honour of the four who had made this journey before them, were monikered the Sequent Four.

This was the moment the storm began to stir.

The Four, perhaps now better known as the Original Four or the First Four, had also been four individuals, one of each race. Here it is only possible to give you the briefest summary of historical events, yet I shall attempt to be as complete as the available documentation allows me to be.

Myth and lore tell us that these Four gathered at the end of the First Era, as friends, as fellow mortals who faced the destruction of what little was left of planet Ceon. Although this shard of the planet had survived the Great Collision, the absence of any sort of elemental, geographical and meteorological stability threatened to eradicate also this last bastion of life. In a last ditch effort to save the shard Ceon, they descended to the centre of the world. Here, they created a device we have come to call the Core Crystal, at the expense of their own lives. The Core Crystal is only a crystal in name; it resembles and functions more like a prism. Made of a substance even the most learned of scholars are uncertain about, this prism filters and divides the elemental energies that flow up from the gap our planet made in the surface of the one it collided with, Tsuron. This immensely powerful influx of Raw Magic, or undefined magic energy, not only keeps our pitiful shard afloat over the surface of this host planet, it also provides us with the elemental energies (collectively referred to as saba) we need to merely exist. With the different elemental energies travelling through the Core Crystal with different speeds, the seasons came to be; periods of time during which one of the four observed elements is dominant. This filtering if you will, brought the stability the world needed to recover and prosper as it did up until the end of the Fourth Era, a good five hundred years later.

It is preposterous to realise it were mere boredom and vanity that would upend every of our ancestors’ exertions to bring and maintain that peace and stability. Yet, as stated before, the Fourth Era ended with the gathering of the Sequent Four as the culmination of this collective desire for supremacy.

The Fifth Era began with their unexpected, but acclaimed return.

Perhaps some people, keen of mind and quick of wit, had sensed the suspiciousness in that. If so, they were too few as to prevent those hailed as heroes from plunging the world into misery beyond imagining. I make this statement in full confidence of its truth. If it had not been true, I, and so many of my fellow freethinkers would not have been brandished rebels, then exiled, persecuted or killed by these very same “saints”.

4

Since time immemorial did people brandish other people as heretics, outlaws or criminals to distinguish themselves from the unfaithful, the immoral and the disobedient. But when did the value of truth plummet to so little a worth to justify the persecution of those who uphold it? Since when did the search for truth become likened to a pilgrimage to Kuran’s shrine? This was since our world was infected with a poison that manifests itself in the black hearts of the greedy, sadistic and cruel, a time that coincides far too well with the resurfacing of the Sequent Four to be a mere coincidence.

This, our grandfathers and our fathers had quickly taken note of. Within a few years into the new era, regular gatherings of these truth seekers led to private investigations on the true dealings between the Sequent Four during their descent into the centre of the world. In cooperation with some of the world’s most gifted thaumaturgists of that time, mostly former members of the now almost legendary Aequia Quandra, independent expeditions to the core were set up. At first, the expeditioners saw no need to be secretive about their ventures, until it became fatally clear that their presence in the centre of the world and their digging for the truth was unwanted: the members of the first expedition were mercilessly slaughtered, their remains delivered to their associates as a gruesome warning not to dig too deep. Who were responsible for this atrocious deed, is unknown to this day.

As to who had given the order for it, we have a fairly good grasp. And yet, I cannot give you names. The reason for this is what was found in the centre of the world, and what later expeditions had managed to retrieve: several shards of what could only be the Core Crystal.

Of the few who have ever laid eyes upon the Core Crystal, even fewer lived to tell of it. All we know of the Core Crystal, comes from lore and whatever little information the surviving expeditioners could convey. When we got in possession of these five fragments, we were as clueless as anyone as to what it was made of and how it worked. I admit we are still in the dark about it, almost an entire era later. The life-threatening consequences of our search however, had only increased. But those branded as rebels and outlaws by those directly involved with the Sequent Four, have reconciled with the price they must pay for their moral quest. They have their ways to ensure their safety and secrecy, but through the conception of this Convocation, this gathering of evils, this joined effort of dark forces, the threat of eradication has spread to all inhabitants of Ceon.

We cannot be silent any longer. Our years of research and reasoning must be shared in order to unmask these devils, to shine a light on this invisible enemy that surrounds us and now threatens to crush us.

5

The first mentions of a centralised government were insubstantial at most. A vague concept, an initiative too bold to realise. Yet, as their chosen name implies, a considerable number of high placed individuals heeded the call for a gathering when it came. The first conference of the Convocation heralded the start of a new era, our current Sixth Era.

This conference however, ended in disaster and bloodshed; chairman Talmar Clearbrook was assassinated on the steps of the conference hall. Despite much internal and external opposition, a second meeting was scheduled soon after. The turnout for this conference had been disappointing, but the parties present managed to sign the Treaty of Transit. It entailed not much more than fair trade conditions regarding import and export and the promise of safe passage for the brass when paying international visits. It was prematurely declared void, by voices which did not belong to anyone who had been present at the signing of the treaty.

The third conference was nothing like the previous two. Some voices who had shouted loudest against the formation of the Convocation, now declared the system to have too little power to make any substantial difference. Turning Talmar Clearbrook into a martyr, the general consensus was now that his death showed the urgency of the need for a global government. The failures to sign and uphold anything substantial during the second conference, illustrated the need for more power for that government. The third conference brought representatives of four of the six countries together and, addressing the interregional wars and pillaging, the Border Treaty was signed. This document defined hard borders between Ceon’s countries, legalising the use of force from each country to protect these borders but forbidding the invasion of other countries.

This was a historical event that will surely go down in the books of history as the Convocation’s first success. However, a strong voice from within the assembly rose to point out that merely signing a treaty holds no power, as demonstrated during the second conference. To ensure the upholding of the measures agreed upon, a central organisation was needed to oversee this. Under the coordination of Eoros Elumir, the Royal Seer of Irea and one of the Sequent Four, the Convocation signed the Concurrence Pact alongside the Border Treaty, which gave the Irin military forces the right to build and occupy outposts in all other countries. Their presence in foreign land was now legal and their troops were now protected from harm by the same law that forbade the invading of foreign countries.

There are freethinkers who believe that both the assassination of chairman Clearbrook and the void declaration of the Treaty of Transit were staged by the very same people who founded the Convocation, to create solid evidence in favour of their case and a solid ground for their demands concerning their military presence in foreign countries. I have yet to find any evidence to prove them wrong.

6

Ceon has seen the Irin outposts, drifting over their heads across their airspace. The Irean watchmen circle like hawks or vultures, but are unable to strike as they too are bound by the law. From their seats in heaven the watchdogs look down and aside from an occasional interference in a farmers’ dispute, can do nothing but report their findings to the Convocation. The frayed nerves of the people are not easily recovered and within the year after the signing of the Concurrence Pact, civil unrest began to pick up again. The Convocation gathered to formulate a strategy to combat this situation.

A narrow five years later, the Military Confederation Pact was approved of and signed by Irea, Taran-Ceroth, Virenya and, unable to stay behind, even Valènor. This pact entails that the Convocation may now form a military force of its own to see to the upholding of its laws. With this development, the Convocation’s peace policy may be briefly summarised as follows: ‘We have centralised the government of the majority of countries in Ceon, formulating binding laws and treaties they must adhere to. We reserve the right to see to the compliance with these laws and treaties through force.’ This is not a peace policy. This is a totalitarian regime.

With the instalment of the Confederate Forces, as their centralised army is aptly named, the Convocation now has the legal right and the power to wage war on anything and anyone they judge a threat to the government and their established peace.

However, there is no peace. All there is, is fear. Fear, and subdued anger. The curtails placed upon us, intended to restrict our personal freedom and to silence the voice of the people, have forced yet another noose around our necks. Adhering to your ancestors’ morals, living true to your country’s ways is now punishable by death. I see more and more political refugees, wanted for as little as reserving their cultural right to question authority and demanding the proletariat to be heard. It has become much too easy to brandish honest civilians as rebels, outlaws and criminals, on too shallow a basis. This is subjugation cloaked in judicial robes.

The war of the Fifth Era has not been resolved, but merely changed in nature. The Convocation, a gathering of individuals corrupt of heart and soul, will only seek greater power. More laws will be introduced, more force shall be applied to get the people to comply. Wars that will result from disobedience or resistance, will be just and their penalisation will be justice. The dark, blood-smeared hand of the law hovers over us, pressing us down into the mud that has become this political system. It will choke us if we do not find air for ourselves to breathe.

7

If the oppression is to be resisted, resistance must begin now. We must fight, and in order to fight, we must be well armed. Armed with reliable and complete information first and foremost. With the truth in our hands and resolve in our hearts, we must stand united against this force of corruption, as they are now united under the bloodstained banner of the Convocation.

This treatise has been published to expose the rotten core of the political apple. This in itself is not enough. It is your duty, the duty of all of those who care for true peace and liberty, to come together now and knot our collectively gathered knowledge into the net that shall catch the darkness and bring it into the light.

Inform yourself, inform those around you and stay alert. Keep your eyes and ears open for reliable information on progress made by our champions of truth. For we will keep making progress, be it from underground or above, through legit channels or no, we shall fight this unarmed war with everything we have, for everything we stand for: truth, peace, liberty.