Anno Plague

During the Plague many other things had occurred that the Emperor and his Inner Council had to deal with. The “independent state” of Menhaden (and the other smaller rebellions it h ad inspired) the alarming growth of the Great Waste, the heathen barbarous hordes on the other side of the Rockland Mountains, and the fact that most of the population had died over the last seven years and there were great tracts of land lying fallow and untended. Perhaps the strangest development was that when the Plague left, death became a more temporary condition than it had been. Men lived and died more than once. With the Plague gone, at least the Imperial coffers could be spent on more things besides researching the illness.

The Emperor gathered all the best thinkers in his Empire and set them the task of halting the Great Waste. What they came up with was the Wall. Earth Mages of all species were called upon to take part in a tremendous ritual designed to stop the desert from encroaching any further into Gallinule. Dozens of wizards toiled for weeks to create the single largest cooperative spell ever cast. Many died from the strain of channelling that much combined energy but in the end they did it. They created a massive Wall running from the edge of the Southern Forest to the Northern Wilds, fifty feet high, which would have taken years to construct by hand using more labourers than the population of the entire Empire.

To solve the population problem, Sidram III began a breeding program. Candidates who displayed the favourable traits of intelligence, creativity, and physical prowess were paid to mate with one and other and produce children. A reward of five Imperial Sovereigns was paid for each child born this way. Ordinary mothers were also encouraged to breed by offering five silver pennies a year for each living child. These programs were a serious strain on the Imperial Treasury, but Sidram III was determined to repopulate his empire. The programs were cancelled shortly after Sidram III stepped down in 364, but hundreds of thousands of children were spawned under Sidram’s incencitives.

The advent of magic helped solve the problem of working fields and feeding the surviving population. Earth wizards could grow the food, Water mages irrigated farms, Air magicians could harvest and Fire sorcerors could process and cook. In the first eight years or so after the devastation, wizards made quite a profit magically farming the land. But to cover their costs in mana the price of food was driven up. Eventually, the Empire had repopulated enough that the manual method of farming became possible and practical again and the Emperor stopped paying the inflated prices FARM (the Fraternal Association of Rural Magicians) was charging. Farming once again became a mundane industry.

The strange face of the resurrections which began occurring at the end of the Plague stirred things up quite a bit in the Empire. At first it was believed that the surviving citizens of the Empire had as a result of the Great Plague or some other intervention from NOS, became immortal. While it is obvious that a population the size of the Empire pre-Plague could never had existed and maintained order if no one ever died, the drastically reduced population of post-Plague could conceivaby exist as undying beings. This idea was soon discarded as people, convinced of their own immortality, began repeatedly taking risks with their lives, dying in violent (and often embarrassing) ways, and eventually not coming back to life. The legal system had to altered because of questions like “If a murder victim testifies to the identity of his killer, how can the accused possibly be found guilty since the person he murdered is still alive?”. Soon after the resurrections began it was discovered that one need not return to the exact spot one died at. If the body is disposed of, or was say, under water for example, an entirely new body could be ressurected, where ever they wanted it. This also caused commotion in the courts. What’s the point of executing someone for treason if they’ll just resurrect miles away from jail?

It was decided by the Magistrates that murder was still murder, even if the victim was resurrected. The courts tended to be more lenient on murderers whose victims came back to life, but the victims themselves are unusually quite vindictive. Mages began working on a ritual that would prevent prisoners from being resurrected after death, or would at least force the person to resurrect in the same place they died. But in the meantime, torture and long prison terms became more frequently used punishments for crimes.

Another siege was set against Menhaden, but it did not fare well for the Imperial troops. Then one night in 363 one lone figure scaled the wall into Menhaden and paid a visit to the “King”. It is not known who the man was or what he and the King of Menhaden said to one another, but the next morning the man was gone and the “King” ordered the gates of his city thrown open to welcome the friends who had been waiting so patiently outside the walls to visit the governor’s palace. The “governor” of Menhaden never spoke of what made him surrender and took the secret of that night to his grave, thirty years later. The superstitious among the royal court think the “King” had a visit from a son of the House of Darrion, but the rational mind knows that the treacherous House Darrion was snuffed out entirely by the Plague.

The other rebellions, though numerous, were much smaller than that of Menhaden and were more easilly quelled by the Imperial Army. Returning the great port city of Thulud to Imperial rule proved to be the hardest feat of Sidram III’s reign. Thulud claimed its right of independence first in 359 and the Emperor’s soldiers were sent to Thulud shortly thereafter to disabuse Thulud of this notion. The solders captured the city but the war had been raging ever since. Riots, open revolt and terrorist tacticts have been used by the Thuludite Seperatists but the large number of Army men and the strong Loyalist presence in the ity has kept the port officially the domain of the empire. In 364 the Separatists whent as far as to assassinate Sidram III. Death did not become him and even though he was mysteriously resurrected, he decided life was more valuable to him than the throne and he became the first Emperor to step down from the position.

At this point the Inner Council had its hands full deciding who the next Emperor would be. Due to the unusually prolific line of House Sidram and the, at least partially illegitimate nature of most of its descendants no fewer than seventeen claims to the throne were made by people tracing their lineage to the Imperial House. Then there were six immediate relatives of Sidram III who said that Sidram III had only adopted the name Sidram when he was crowned Emperor and that the new Imperial line was in fact that of House Dirkin (Sidram III’s birth House). Add to this those among the Senate who felt that since Sidram III was the appointed successor of Medaka IV (Corvass Zardouin), and not his blood heir, the royal lineage should revert back to House Zadrouin (of which there were three possible contenders for the throne. Plus there were the several members of the Senate and the Inner Council who felt that they themselves had a strong enough group of supporters to make a claim for the title of themselves. All this means is that when Sidram III stepped down after his assassination in 364, the Inner Council had a list of no fewer than thirty possible claims to the Imperial throne.