"They thought they could end the cycle of injustice through force. But all they did was create a new one in its place... more twisted, and cruel than the one that came before."
- Anonymous Citizen upon seeing the aftermath of the failed uprising.
Before the eight nations came into being...
Few realize how long the history of civilization was. Older than the written word. Older than memory. Time and again, the nomadic tribes that foraged the lands sought to bind themselves to something greater, something more. Fledgling societies and even kingdoms would rise for the briefest of periods, only to collapse back into ruin, their knowledge lost to time, and their people consumed by pride, hunger, and war. The only evidence of their existence being the buildings, temples and other great creations they left behind. Some of their works would be lost to the passage of time, while others would endure, their empty husks serving as a grim reminder of what once was.
What endured in those times was not hope for a better future, but the failure to achieve it. It was only when the ancestors of the Nobility emerged and took rule, that a permanence of order and stability would slowly begin to take shape.
Few deny that it was their hand that ended the tribal wars and brought lasting peace. Yet some whisper that peace might have come on its own, without the need for conquest, had the other tribes been given more time to find that peace themselves, if they had been been given more time to make their own choices. And their own mistakes. Those whispers never faded, and as the centuries passed, some of those whispers grew stronger.
A great system had been created: vast, intricate, enduring. It brought peace to a broken land. One that had been ravaged by endless conflicts and bloodshed. Yet as generations passed, the fruits of that peace ripened unevenly. Inherited responsibility would soon become inherited privilege. The descendants of those first rulers rose ever higher, borne upward by law and lineage. And the descendants of the common citizens, though no longer at war, began to endure a different battle than the one their ancestors faced.
Perhaps the creators of the system never meant for it to be so unequal. So cruel. But intent meant little as the system quietly tilted in one direction. Generation after generation, one side gathered more wealth and power, while the other was left with less. Less wealth, less land, less voice… less hope. That imbalance, that inequality, deepened like low pressure in the sky, and beneath it, a storm began to form. Slow, silent, and inevitable.
Until one fateful night, in a city seen as the symbol of peace and order in a powerful nation, that storm broke.
The disillusioned chose violence as their voice. And champion. But violence was neither a voice nor a champion. It was a blunt weapon. And in the confusion, many of those harmed were not enemies, but allies. Nobles who had listened, who had passionately advocated for change, who had stood at the precipice of losing all they held dear to fight for what they believed was right. Many of them died alongside those who never cared. The tragedy of their fate being… they died because they did care.
Few among the Common-born realized that some of those Nobles had been hard at work labouring on their behalf. They did so with little praise, and even disapproval from their contemporaries, trying to bring about incremental reforms on the Common-born’s behalf. Some had even shielded them from harsher punishments in the past, without them ever realizing it. Violence, meant to liberate them, had now left them more isolated than before; the path they once thought clear became more clouded and dangerous than they could have imagined.
The insurrection failed. Its charismatic leader believed dead and their followers scattered, yet the night left a stain that could not be washed away, a scar that would never heal. The cause of the disillusioned, the exploited, and the forgotten, had been just, but the actions of many on that night marred it in the eyes of too many. Nobles who had once felt sympathy, found their empathy curdle into fear. The Common-born who had initially expressed support for the uprising, unaware of the true extent of the damage inflicted, would try to express remorse and sympathy afterwards, in an effort to heal wounds, only to find their words met with the same distrust and contempt they had long shown to those of Noble blood. And as a result, they could no longer speak openly of their grievances, creating new layers of secrecy and distrust as many were reduced to speaking of their plight only in whispers and dark corners within circles they could trust. Circles that had fractured in the wake of what happened that night. In the days that followed, many could feel a new silence begin to take shape in their nation. Some wanted to believe it was peace, but others saw it for what it was; the calm before another storm. Yet one that felt so different than the one that came before that fateful night, although none would know why until it was too late. And in that new silence, some remembered a cautionary tale they once heard…
“Anger alone does not make one’s cause just.”
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