Egregoros

Immediately, they rebuilt the engines of trade and wealth. In the capital of Allied Borea, the ruling eloites ordered the construction of a new porter station to link the Interstellar Colonies to the capital. More trade, more taxes, more patronage—more power for the eloites to disburse to favorites. After some years passed, porter contact had been re-established with all the former colonies of Hindia. Populations of laborers took root to replace the colonists who had perished during their separation from their former home capital. Wealth and opportunity flowed through Borea. The Allied Boreans of all classes prospered. The laboring classes found work in the new colonies. The middle classes replaced the Hindian trade managers. The eloites swam in the riches of the great capital. Allied Borea renamed itself The TransGlobal Borean Alliance to reflect its absorption of the vast World of Hindia. Governors were dispatched to the newly acquired interstellar colonies to unite the interstellar empire. A vast bureaucracy manifested to consume the largess of victory. Opportunity is indeed a boon to a people, but luxury corrodes virtue.

Hearing all this of the past, the Iron Soldiers absorbed the fateful information. Travelling in the capital, they beheld the consequences of their victory with their own eyes. The prosperity that had arisen in that first generation had not lasted. The decadence of the great capital told its own story. The greed of man finds no satisfaction in wealth.

The Iron Soldiers could barely recall their first introduction to the strange times they had awakened to. The haze of their long-sleep in stasis faded slowly. The politicians’ tales of grandeur reverberated but rang false to the reality they observed. Only when they had recovered their senses fully did they begin to absorb the full truth of the times. After the politicians had paid their visitation, the Iron Soldiers found themselves meeting with the most prestigious historians of the University of TransGlobal Borea who were to explain in detail all they had missed over the last three generations. It must have been a boring and pedantic occasion. Afterward, the Iron Soldiers accompanied lesser scholars and students to eat and drink and talk more freely. The older academics serve the powers who place them; the younger, still seeking their place, speak more freely and wildly, looking to impress those who might elevate them. And so the Iron Soldiers learned more of how their world had changed. Indeed, of how their mission had changed it.

With a few notable changes, many names of things remained the same over the generations. The High Councilor remained the leading figure in the Borean government. The Grand Senate appointed that officer, as always. But all things grow and adapt over time. The High Councilor appointed governors over the colonies, a change since the natural days of the Iron Soldiers. These agents served at the pleasure of the High Councillor, hired and fired at his whim. It is a system designed for corruption rather than responsibility. The Iron Soldiers winced at the alterations of a once-accountable government.

Absorbing the World of Hindia into Allied Borea proved to be impossible. The smaller animal ate a larger meal it could not digest. The first generation tried to do so, but only succeeded at antagonizing the conquered. By the second generation after victory, the restive people of the colonies sought advantage over their trans-stellar governors, who in turn appealed to the Borean eloites at the great capital. Unrest is a constant factor in empires. No one wants to be ruled by a foreign, distant eloite.

The academics explained how a few technological improvements added to the unrest and had instigated the reforms of the second generation. The macroporters which allowed for instant interstellar transport and communication had doubled in size. Officially touted as the interstellar fullporter, everyone still called the new device a porter. These larger porters enabled transport vehicles to double in size and carrying capacity. These technological improvements reduced the necessary workforce. New vehicles carried twice as much cargo, which meant only half as many skilled drivers were required to meet the old quotas. It seems, however, that the need for unskilled loaders increased. And so skilled drivers found themselves unneeded and the unskilled laborers of Borea competed with the vast number of Hindians for their old jobs. The academics quarreled and bickered over this, though. Some insisted technological progress produced a wealthier, more productive, more efficient society. In a word, they said the progress made everyone happier. It was a false word. The Iron Soldiers must have grown weary listening to their obscure arguments over maximization of efficiency and reduction of costs, and how such advances enabled the former transport drivers to work in other fields. These high-flown descriptions—who can listen to such false, obtuse nonsense when the sights all around contradict it? The other academics insisted the so-called technological progress resulted only in a mass of unemployed laborers and colonists. Who truly understands the logic of economics in a Trans-stellar Empire? The Iron Soldiers cared little for the debate, but focused on the indisputable conclusion: living human beings had lost their jobs and functions in the interstellar colonial system. Naturally, the laborers had rebelled.

The older academics had talked in high jargon of how the TransGlobal Borean Alliance made new work-projects, paid stipends to unemployed laborers, and otherwise found ways to integrate the mass of persons with no function into the interstellar economy. The younger spoke more bluntly. In the second generation, the Borean eloite offered admission of non-Boreans into their circle. Hindians, Ocealhms, Meckans, Huitzlis, and even Noirese took positions of power over colonies. The Borean eloite devised what they thought was a clever plan. They did not put an eloite with a like population. They put Meckans over the Huitzils. They put Huitzils over the Ocealms. They put Hindians over Boreans. Colony by colony, a new eloite ruled over a people sharing nothing in common with them. It was then that the High Councilor assumed power over appointment of these officials. The Senatates of the Grand Senate, though viciously disputing with each other in public, privately grew wealthy together drinking from the same fountain. Wealth flowed across the Trans-stellar Empire to the Borean capital—wealth enough to quell rebellions and foster a cryptic cooperation among the diverse eloites of the TransGlobal Borean Alliance.

The Iron Soldiers had lived in a time of relative austerity. They were disciplined, courageous, and loyal to the Allied Borea of their youth—a land which no longer existed, a people which no longer existed. The Boreans had branched out to rule their trans-stellar empire. They had become like those they governed in order to govern over foreigners. The wealth likewise altered them. Discipline had disintegrated like metal in acid, bubbling away into gas and crust. And what of courage? How can men grow courageous when there is no enemy? The great capital had no enemies after the victory of the First Interstellar War, only subject colonies across the stars and subject peoples in the great capital. Yet, the Thuraphulanx still existed. It was trained to guard the central porter station, as always, but it had no foreign enemies and no wars to prepare for. Even its weaponry had barely changed over the generations. Still equipped with a pulse cannon, the individual thuraphulankees seemed like a deteriorated copy of a once-great original. The Thuraphulanx functioned only to control the flow of transport through the porters, to prevent any unauthorized use of the capital’s porters, and to symbolically represent the force of the Grand Senate and High Councillor. Bureaucratic tasks and ceremonial functions do not prepare a guard for violence or war. No courage was needed to wear the uniform of a thuraphulankees after the Iron Soldiers secured victory in the last war between the great capitals of that era. And so courage too dissolved from the once-mighty Thuraphulanx. The pageantry remained. The pay increased. But the absence of a martial mission reduced the soldiery to routine policemen, subject to a tangled bureaucracy of scheduled transportation.

Some of the young academics grew bold in their telling of the past, revealing the corruption of Borea over the three generations since the Iron Soldiers scored their victory and slept in stasis—the Three Degenerations they called them.

First was the Borean eloite drowning in wealth, then was the non-Borean eloite and trans-stellar colonists siphoning their cut of imperial largesse, then came the final degeneration of the Borean people themselves. In the third generation, TransGlobal Borea passed certain technologies into the public to ensure their cooperation and pacification. The main device was the SelfScreen. Through it, the TransGlobal Borean Alliance ran all governmental information, well-being & health programs, and entertainment operations. The SelfScreen looked simple enough—it was a fancy helmet to the Iron Soldiers. Anyone in history would recognize it as a helmet that covered the whole head and face of the wearer. Some in history might wonder how such a person could see while wearing the thing or if it was not dangerous to put something as fragile as glass in front of one’s face. Even the Iron Soldiers could not have guessed at the advanced technology of the SelfScreen. In our days, we would burn alive the man who devised it.

[continues]

For one thing, the SelfScreen allowed the wearer to watch any and all media. It was a view-screen in front of their face. For another thing, it allowed for person-to-person communication with other SelfScreens. Governmental agencies could also interrupt a SelfScreen to message the people. Also, the devices also became the channel for people to communicate with government, where possible. In short, the SelfScreen became universal because it was necessary to function in the great capital of the TransGlobal Borean Alliance. Everything from personal entertainment to mundane communications to the purchase of consumption-products to bureaucratic registrations operated through the ubiquitous and necessary SelfScreen.

Some even wore the SelfScreen for health advantages. The rapid integration of Hindian colonists into Borea in the first degeneration saw the outbreak of minor plagues. The academics disputed how serious the diseases were and how far they spread, but even the old Iron Soldiers could understand that the rapid communication of diseases is a consequence of the instant transportation of peoples across the vast great capital and trans-stellar empire. By the third degeneration, the SelfScreen included an anti-pathogen filtration mechanism to reduce the chances of catching an illness while in public. If some people doubted the utility, others wore the device to reduce the effects of pollution purportedly introduced into Borea by the constant travels of interstellar commerce. The great capitals long ago had sent heavy industries to the interstellar colonies exactly to banish pollution from their world. The wellness filter on the SelfScreen sold widely. It is easy to sell promises of security to a hyper-sensitive, weak-willed public. The academics explained to the Iron Soldiers more than one reason for the people to adopt the new technology. As always, an effective government will pave many roads that all lead to their desired destination.

As the Iron Soldiers recovered their strength, the High Councillor arranged for their long-postponed victory parade. Understandably, the people of the great capital of Borea idolized the Iron Soldiers. The heroes of history had manifested from the great nothing of empty space. The dead took on living flesh. They wore the uniform of the past days of rising glory. Few remained alive who could recollect those times, and those who did retained only a childish memory of flashing images and powerful emotions. By the third degeneration, media constructions determined most people’s understanding of the past. The High Councillor perceived the opportunity. He understood the political necessity of identifying himself with the Iron Soldiers for reasons of popularity. Though he instinctively feared these resurrected relics of a bygone age, he also understood their symbolic importance and real utility. The people needed their show, and the High Councillor needed to be the central star around which the Iron Soldiers revolved. Such is politics in any time and place.

The Iron Soldiers waited for their appointed day to be introduced to the throngs of cheering Boreans in the wide causeway of the great capital. In the meantime, they saw bits and pieces of the world they had created. Little things irritated them, as is always the case when the old meet the young. Changes in fashion, new phrases for common sayings, quiet places grown loud, popular diversions out of style—time changes everything and wealth buys many vices. In a natural lifetime, these changes develop slowly and organically. But instead of the deliberate motions of organic evolution, the Iron Soldiers endured an instant transformation of their world. Even mundane alterations made their heads spin. Though they could not fail to observe the greater differences—the SelfScreens and the foreign nurses—they also could not comprehend them. What world had resurrected them from the dead? It was at the grand parade when the spell of confusion lifted and the Iron Soldiers saw and comprehended the dreadful world they had made.

In our times, we do not have the parades of old. We do not have the long boulevards and tall buildings of the long ancient past. The great capital of Borea had streets that stretched to the horizon. It had towers that reached to the skies. A mass of people could crowd those streets. More watched from windows in the towers. In times long gone, a parade celebrated those who performed some great triumph, but all enjoyed the grand occasion. In those times, the people roared and shook the very streets, towers, and skies above to show their love for the Iron Soldiers. But the old Soldiers saw into the illusion—which is to see through it. They fought for Allied Borea, their country in their time. They heard the cheers of the TransGlobal Borean Alliance, an empire won by their efforts, but not a thing of their own kind.

Slowly traversing the long boulevard, the Iron Soldiers witnessed the full change of the three degenerations before them. The people were not their people. The customs were not their customs. The symbols, the stylings, the greetings even—everything had changed for the worse. The behavior of the people would have received a lashing in the time of Iron Soldiers—unnatural, undisciplined, unseemly. The fete disgusted the Iron Soldiers. The people had devolved into a licentious mass of individuals who shared nothing in common but the base indulgence of immoderate lusts under the aegis of a gross, lascivious culture unworthy of Boreans. Out of civilization had grown a new and repellent barbarism that wore the wealth acquired only by the discipline and sacrifice of the Iron Soldiers.

The politicians sneered through their smiles at the crowd, understanding the mockery of civilization their world had become. Why would they protest or object? They fostered the decay and grew wealthy and powerful through it. Holding contempt for the population, they lied and manipulated them daily. The people had become as poorly disciplined pets and the politicians as gross, cowardly owners. The Iron Soldiers intuited much from their observations. The wild academic talk of the Three Degenerations resonated with the sights they beheld at the grand parade.

Legend has it that the Great Colonel of the Iron Soldiers gave a speech to the crowd, to the politicians, and to all of TransGlobal Borea at the end of the parade route. The politicians spoke first, with the High Councillor himself heaping praise on the deeds of the resurrected warriors. At last, the Great Colonel of the Iron Soldiers addressed all. He lectured them on their ignorance. He chastised them for their lack of virtue. He scorned them for their celebration of the unnatural. He reprimanded their viciousness and weakness. He spoke with the stern voice of command and authority that most people had not heard in their lifetime. Only the elderly could recall that voice, faintly, from the distant times of their youth. The Great Colonel, the leader of the Iron Soldiers, justly rebuked the children of degeneration and called them to order. Astounded, the politicians froze in the moment. Only the High Councilor retained his instinctive wits. The people initially could not understand the Great Colonel’s speech and took his words as a jest. Slowly did they grow to understand his meaning. Offended, the people rioted as the politicians desperately issued a call for calm through the SelfScreens. Everyone panicked but the Iron Soldiers and the High Councillor.

The Three Degenerations produced politicians in the vein of the High Councillor, though he surpassed all others in their essential qualities. He rose to power telling everyone what they wanted to hear or what they needed to hear—exactly whatever would bend them to his will. Flattery and praise, threats and abuse, even pieces of the truth: the High Councillor possessed all words and manners of speaking them. Honeyed phrases and acerbic vituperation, secret knowledge shared to initiates, a silver tongue to charm the snakes of the Grand Senate: the High Councillor ruled others by his words. He also spent the wealth of the empire to buy the goodwill of his audiences. Silver words and silver coins kept a decaying empire in his power.

In the days following the parade and rebuke, the media agents of the High Councillor broadcast his artful messages to the people of the great capital. Overall, the people heard stories of contempt aimed at the Iron Soldiers and prideful reassurances of their own worth. “The Iron Soldiers are relics of a dark past. They are hateful, violent, and ignorant of fine, modern ways.” The media agents used many words which would have little meaning to the Iron Soldiers or to us today, we who live long after their rotten world ended. The power of false words is always ephemeral. But in those times of degeneration, false words held great power to ruin the public reputation of men and to stir the barbaric souls of the people to action. “The Great Colonel’s speech is offensive, tribist, and anthrophobic.” Never mind what they meant by such preposterous words. The power of the accusation created a frenzy of emotion to whip the people of the great capital into an irrational antipathy against the Iron Soldiers. The High Councillor understood that he could blame and exile the Iron Soldiers for their honesty which threatened his hold over the Trans-Global Borean Alliance.

[continues]

In truth, the High Councillor barely needed his careful effort. The shock of the Great Colonel’s speech reverberated through the degenerated people of the great capital. No one had dared rebuke them for their vices. No one had called their treasured luxuries “decadence.” No one called their prideful vanity “weakness.” No one had called their progress “degeneration.” No one said such things aloud. No one, that is, until the Great Colonel of the Iron Soldiers did. The degenerated people withered at the burning, crushing truth. They grew ill and suffered from their experience. So quickly did the Iron Soldiers change in the eyes of the public, from resurrected heroes to immanent villains, that the High Councillor was compelled to act against them. If High Councillor did not avenge the sore and inflamed public, they would take their wrath out on him.

And so the media campaign blitzed the once-esteemed icons. Some messages mocked them. Foolish actors marched in derisive imitation of the Iron Soldiers’ orderly step. They sarcastically saluted each other. They ridiculed the discipline of the past to insult and belittle the Iron Soldiers.

Some messages accused the Iron Soldiers of insanity and irrelevance. “What can we expect of them? They are ancient. They should be dead. The long stasis probably caused brain damage. They ought to be in a Borean Wellness Institution for total-care rather than talking in public.”

Some messages reveled in taking priggish offense at the Great Colonel’s speech. “How dare those old fossils criticize us! Who are they to judge? What terrible deeds did they commit in their awful wars? They should be tried as war criminals and caged like the troglodytes they are!” The masters of communication crafted their message to reinforce the vicious minds of the degenerated people. The SelfScreens relayed the content to all. If anyone wanted to escape the propaganda, no one could.

The agents of the High Councillor fed all these attitudes to the thoughtlessly consuming eyes of the degenerated people. He had a grave foreboding about the Iron Soldiers from the first news of their resurrection and now felt smug in his instincts. They were men outside of his time and beyond his control. The High Councillor was cunning enough to know he could not rule over them as others, and as such they presented an odd threat. Initially, he hoped to hide them away after their necessary display at the grand parade. The Great Colonel’s terrible rebuke now offered an easy path to banish them from the great capital forever.

“Exit! Exit! Exit!” the crowds of degenerate people cried at the High Councillor and Senatates as they prepared to convene a trial of inquiry. The people lined the walkway to the sacred dome where the Borean Grand Senate had met since the days of the long-ancient republic, far before the First Interstellar War and the rise of the TransGlobal Borean Alliance. The spoiled people could not bear the insult offered by the Great Colonel. The High Councillor’s propaganda had ensured their inflamed pride would not yield. Now he led the government to take action against the resurrected heroes. The accusation was clear and the punishment well-known: exit. The Iron Soldiers would be escorted through a porter and sent to a distant colony, never to return to the great capital of Borea again. The solemn process inside the halls of the dome was a procedure rather than a substantial trial: The accusation declared, the evidence obvious, the conviction foregone. The Senate unanimously agreed to exit the Iron Soldiers forever.

Normally, the central porter station is off-limits to the people of the capital. It is reserved access for trade directors, transport laborers, and the Thuraphulanx guardians. For the occasion of the exit of the Iron Soldiers, the High Councillor had picked special guests from among the most rude and boisterous of people. He wanted the Iron Soldiers to exit under conditions of ignominy, to show to all how hated and reviled they were. The Iron Soldiers had acceded to the judgment. The whole affair filled them with revulsion. The great capital disgusted them. The people disgusted them. They no longer considered them true Boreans. They had lost all feelings of kinship with their degenerated heirs. As they marched inside twin columns of thuraphulankees, the Iron Soldiers recognized even the degeneracy of the soldiers who escorted them to their banishment. These would not have lasted long in the First Interstellar War.

The wild degenerates invited by the High Councillor fulfilled his scheme. They howled and jeered at the Iron Soldiers from behind barricades and marching thuraphulankees. They hurled abuse and detritus at those who had justly rebuked them. They taunted the convicted Iron Soldiers and celebrated as if they had won a great victory over a terrible enemy. The media agents captured the political carnage and fed the images to everyone in the great capital through their SelfScreens. The scene pleased the High Councillor. Vanishing through the porter one by one, the Iron Soldiers disappeared into the trans-stellar empire. He considered the affair concluded. Anyone traveling through the porters to the great capital would be screened by the Thuraphulanx. Anyone who tried to fight would be killed one by one, as travel by porter allows. Nor did he suspect the Iron Soldiers would find any help in the distant colony to which they had been exited. Though a far-seeing man, the High Councillor allowed his own shame and sense of inferiority to those heroes blind his oft-acute judgment. In this case, he knew he had entered combat against men better than himself—against men good in themselves. They were unlike the villains he had always bested. These unusual circumstances warped his usually keen foresight.

One by one, the Iron Soldiers emerged through the porter at Chihoda Hua. Their exit landed them in a desolate colony founded three generations ago by refugees from the great capital of the World of Hindia. The descendants of those defeated by the Iron Soldiers did not greet their ancient enemies. They only stared with the tight face of ancient hatred. The High Councillor expected the Chihoda Hua colonists to kill or shun the Iron Soldiers. We will never know what words or deeds the Great Colonel did to win the favor of the Hindians at Chihoda Hua. But we do know that the old enemies came to trust the Iron Soldiers enough to show them their secret means of traveling to other colonies.

Corruption and crookedness was rife throughout the Trans-stellar Empire. The Trans-stellar Governors tolerated it and engaged in it. They even reported it to the High Councillor, who had many informants across the stars. Many people will say many things if they receive payment for their words. The High Councillor himself understood the necessity of corruption and took advantage of it. In one particular aspect, this corruption offered an escape opportunity to the Iron Soldiers. Though all porters in the Trans-stellar Empire were to lead to the great capital of Borea, many others had been put into surreptitious service. Covertly and corruptly, colonies had established contact with each other by porter to circumvent the trade representatives and tax collectors at the great capital of Borea. The Trans-stellar Governors knew this and exacted their price to look the other way. No one can keep a widespread practice secret for long in an empire, so the governors had also told the High Councillor and offered a tribute payment to protect the well-known secret from official revelation and sanction. Small amounts of contraband trade flourished from colony to colony. To keep their hidden market, colonial peoples bribed their governors, who bribed the High Councillor. Such is government in an empire.

[continues]

We know that the Chihoda Hua colonists told the Iron Soldiers of this secret route to other colonies. From Chihoda Hua, they traveled to the colony of Dalniy Ugol. From Dalniy Ugol, they ventured to Antima Cauki. They travelled from colony to colony, raising the prospect of rebellion wherever they could find a population dissatisfied with their subordination to the TransGlobal Borean Alliance and their impoverishment at its hands. Resentment fed their successful diplomacy. The Great Colonel of the Iron Soldiers played the statesman with unparalleled expertise. Some colonies had no desire to attack the great capital. Happy in their position, the Great Colonel simply negotiated transport to the next colony. He never let the colonial representatives know the size or scope of the plan and he acted fast. From colony to colony, he assayed his counterpart and acted decisively. Rumor and spies would undoubtedly bring word of his travels to the High Councillor sooner or later. Wherever he found a restive population, he offered the colonists an opportunity to exact revenge and quickly built his ready forces of marauders.

The Great Colonel of the Iron Soldiers formed two plans in his mind. He told only one to his Iron Soldiers and colonist-confederates. The plan as told was another suicide mission for the Iron Soldiers. Using the credentials of Chihoda Hua laborers, they would enter the central porter station at the great capital of Borea. In the First Interstellar War, the Iron Soldiers had done this to destroy the central porter station in the capital of the World of Hindia. This time, they would have to fight the Borean Thuraphulanx for control of the porters. They sought not to sever the great capital from its colonies, but to seize control to allow for unencumbered transport of colonists to the great capital. The colonies intended to plunder and punish those who sent them to the far corners of the universe and exploited their labors. The Iron Soldiers promised to give them the opportunity.

The Iron Soldiers believed the raid was their justified revenge on the degenerate people of the great capital. They thought it might teach them the error of their ways and serve as a warning to change their course. But the Great Colonel held no such illusions or intentions. He understood what course he set upon. He briefed his loyal soldiers of the plan. They would steal into the central porter station of the great capital, just as they had against the World of Hindia so long ago. They would fight the unsuspecting guards, wrestling their weapons away from them. They would suffer casualties, undoubtedly. But they would take the station and seize the control authority. From the controls, the Iron Soldiers would allow a few allies to enter the capital and cause havoc. With a small riot to occupy the attention of the local thuraphulankees, the Iron Soldiers would be safe in their place for a time. They could threaten to unleash more chaos as they dictated terms to the High Councillor. They would have their revenge by humiliating the political leadership which had cast them out of their homeland.

But the Great Colonel held secret his true mission. This attack would be no mere raid to humiliate the High Councillor or the pompous Senatates. The Great Colonel intended to hold the porters open from colonies across the Trans-stellar universe. A seething mass of furious colonists would storm and burn the great capital. No Thuraphulanx could stop the numbers the Great Colonel planned to release. The raid would increase to invasion, to cataclysm. The Great Colonel presented the brief moment of plunder as a screen for his larger plan. Initially, the invaders would have to face the nearby Thuraphulax mustered outside the central porter station. But if they could overcome those, the colonists would find little resistance from the weak, degenerate population. Nor did the Great Colonel expect the corrupt, demoralized Thuraphulanx to put up much of a fight. On the contrary, he expected them to be overwhelmed and run for their lives. The people and government of the great capital would dissolve into isolated pockets of individuals, helpless against never-ending waves of violence at the hands of vengeful colonists. He even thought it likely that the colonists would fight each other as well, for all had degenerated in the Trans-stellar universe. The carnage would not end until the wealth and prosperity of TransGlobal Borea had been annihilated. This was the Great Colonel’s hidden aim.

And so it happened, by the Great Colonel’s plan or close enough to it. Why do you think we find so many bones and ruins beneath the dirt under our feet? Why do we find twisted metal, charred remains, and broken landscapes strewn across our world? The terrible revenge of the Iron Soldiers brought the last age to its end. They stole through the porter of Chihoda Hua back into Borea. Each disguised Iron Soldier targeted a thuraphulankees and overpowered their weak and surprised opponent. Taking the pulse cannons of their defeated enemy, they fought onward to gain complete control of the porter station of the great capital. Sending messengers to the prepared colonies, they signaled their confederates that they succeeded in eliminating the immediate guard of Thuraphulanx. With the marauders ready, the raid commenced. Bands of colonists poured through the undefended gates of their porters, lusting for violence and plunder against the decadent people of the Borean capital. The Iron Soldiers held the porters open for who knows how long. They used the moment of carnage to open discussions with the High Councillor as to terms of his humiliation. But the Great Colonel ensured that no agreement was sealed with the High Councillor. Stalling negotiations, the Great Colonel allowed messengers loaded with plunder to return to their colonies to call for reinforcements. The victorious colonists showed the wealth they had seized in the brief raid. The display of a shining victory and sparkling wealth instigated a wave of colonists to follow their kindred raiders through the porters and into the great capital of Borea. Did the Iron Soldiers understand what their Great Colonel had done? Did they come to agree with him or did they turn against him? We do not know. We will never know. We only know that the invasion turned into a tide of fire, blood, and death.

The end of an era is always fire, blood, and death.

* * *