Empire of Unease

Caitekurke, Nieveland (Heart of the Thaumantic Order)

"And so, Laird Almskeeper, we predict a civil war . . " the head of Conor MacBain's foreign advisory staff from Cantignia, one Damperod Tharawal, began.

"In Ebria!" one advisor from Engwahl interrupted before a Nieve corrected with "Tarusa!".

Tharawal shook his head no, "why yes they are tying up in civil wars, so there is nothing predicted, and they were cheeky they might shout out Thaumantica."

MacBain scowled and made a sign of his throating being cut towards his Nievish advisor and called the Engwahlian one a "little shit bird who can only be trusted to lay that."

"Here between the Thaumanticans . . " Tharawal suggested, "it is the shadow of Tarusa which keeps Engwahl and Nieveland together now that none can remember why."

The Nievish and Engwahlian advisors poked and prodded at each other across the table and scoffed as Conor MacBain stood and shouted "NO!".

This was of course unconvincing to the Cantignians or Engwahlians, but sufficient for Nieves of this Thaumantic Order. MacBain stomped out of the room and slammed the door behind himself.

"Our Order has expanded with the Gutnish Christian Commune, and I think we could rally ourselves . ." Tharawal tried with new Cantignian Almskeeper Steve Ricks nodding and offering an open hand to the others at the table.

The Engwahlians curdled with laughter, "'NO!'" one aped while Balthazar Austin Drake, their new Almskeeper, stood laboriously and peered across the table with narrowed lids. "We might starve you tomorrow for your attack today. No, no, you Nievishmen would lose in a month!"

"So is it tomorrow or in a month when we drop dead from not sucking on Engwahl's utter?" A Nieve fired back.

"How do you think Conor will handle the Gutarike situation?" Drake relented, done with the tit for tat.

Tharawal Damperod raised his eyebrows and knocked some knuckles on the table to reset the Nieves when Conor himself, that premier Nieve, returned and ordered the other Nievishmen out. "Fuck'em and theirs . ." an outgoing Nieve said for the rest of them, a sentiment MacBain both held and sought to remedy in his country which caught the weight of Engwahl's Imperial collapse and responsibilities.

"Balthazar, yes, our angry ugly Nievish peasants will revolt and fucking sack you when there is no foreign one else to blame, but why, why doesn't Engwahl open up its alms to the Order in this time of expansion?" MacBain asked, as if his character of rage had cooled supernaturally outside.

"Good deals are abound here, and what if we pivoted to Vesper for a . ." Steve Ricks suggested before being groaned down by his partners.

Drake acted the oblivious fool and shrugged, "We do not know what these Nieves, weekend warriors, and reavers want but riches . . and yet their every action drives out investment and trade, and so how will you unfuck this Conor? Would you marry a Pressburg Pirate"

"On Gutland we like the current situation," Conor replied, "Cantignian Troopers present the best of us, and we will re-deploy again this winter if the Engwahlians in the room offer up their salt, coal, and go along with what our Order was doing before we marked our names here."

"Engwahl doesn't like this deployment any more than Nieveland, okay?" Balthazar responded "But are Nieves invested there? We traded first blood and have certain actions and events to . ."

"Fuckin' war crimes, your Engwahlian Troopers blew through villages that we hold because no one is left!" MacBain said.

"AND IF . . and if, or if, thusly because . . " Steve Ricks interjected, "none should know how when we go to war villages are rend and made no more. Mister MacBain: I think that Engwahl will be fairer with its foods, in time, because if not we will . . okay? . . fucking wreck them, globally, because alright no one is talking here about the Engwahlian Serault and all of Engwahl's misadventures . . . Listen guys, this is communalism, we will eat today and starve tomorrow together and I, my guys, do not think either of you are ready to leave.

"Civil war does sound nice right about now, Damperod," Conor jested, but Tharawal rejoined and reminded first the numbers in the room - the so-called allies and the Order's enemies and finished saying "We might retire here with Order intact and revisit this circus tomorrow?"

"Fuck-him, fine, tomorrow." Balthazar answered, as if it was the reason he was elected, and cast an ugly curse across Nieveland before leaving and shouting "ABSOLUTELY NOT!" for his team with a slam of the door.

"Are we all fine here?" Steve Ricks asked, "I need to sell something I did here to the press tomorrow?"

"Ask for a recount," Conor MacBain replied, "because you do not belong at this table and if I see you again wanting we will put you on the grill."

"And that's consoling," Ricks said, "the numbers are solid and polls say we had a good meeting here."

With the room cleared Damperod Tharawal sat down alone with Conor MacBain and reminded him of something he had spoken earlier before accepting this post in Nieveland: "I still see you, Laird."

MacBain leaned back half-surprised before remembering the exchange, when Tharawal called begging for a tip of the scales in elections with that absolute bore Steve Ricks.

"Two conferences of peace, both most and very much successful, all on your orders . . . And yet your Neighbors struck thousands of ballots from the Gutnish Communes of so-called draftsmen, this 'Patriotic Push', excuse me but . ."

MacBain groaned aloud before inquiring of the "first men of Cantignia and their mobs? Aren't they moots, revivals?"

"You've brushed up on down-Cannie culture, eh? Yes our first communes, tribes, or groups met within the migration to settle trades and mates and celebrate things you put beneath your Catholic faith." Tharawal replied.

"And you think us the savages, do you not?" MacBain asked.

"I see it, I just heard it, but I kenned it from the romp those Thaumanticans made upon the coastal folk who are no more down-Cannie." Tharawal said, reflecting on the first encounters Engwahlians and Nieves had on the tribes in the land they would go on to call Cantignia. Disease, subjugation, and re-education until wastelands like where Tharawal was from threw the incursion back. When the first deals were made for independence from the Thaumantic Empire his ancestors managed territory made lush from new canals, its lushness feeding a cattle kingdom.

"And you are still acting a fool for savage ones such as Engwahl, Nieveland, the Northern Kingdoms, and the gang you hosted before your defeat in the polls - I stole it from you because you could not stop me, and this Steves dimwit can be controlled." MacBain explained, "For the next year, until the next Democratic Revival, you as my ear and advisor will be engaged with every aspect of Communal Order. After this, when you have had an education, you will hardly need to call a Nievish Almskeeper for false ballots."

April in Caitekurke

Tharawal comported himself fully to the schedule laid out for him by the Almskeeper's Secretary Mrs. Brania Shanahan, a widower, who he and his wife and two children (ages 3 & 5) now lived with up-Nievie. Still, it duly troubled him how she was up before all of them clanging pots and pans for breakfast and slamming the front flat door shut at night while they were asleep at witching hours.

"When do ye sleep, how many hours do you wink?" Damperod asked with legitimate concern.

"Less than you, more than the demons we are at war with . ." she replied before granting an old woman's giggle at how serious this was told to her in the early days of Order by such a gran as herself. "Is your dear wife saving her moonblood?" she asked, becoming stone faced and serious again.

Damperod's wife Ellahugh choked on her oats before stammering, ". . my, my what?" before looking at her husband with consternation as if to ask her to stop.

"What goes on between our legs is no business of yours Mrs. Shanahan; our faith does not weary in Old Nievish superstitions." Tharawal advised before pushing his plate out and reaching for his five-year-old son to begin cleaning the table.

Brania shrugged and shook her head and whispered "your folly" at Ellahugh Tharawal without making eye contact. "Might she come to work with me today then and do her part, or do Cannie women stay at home and bleed and breed for dark men like muddy stumps?" she snarled, her tone cutting to the bone.

Damperod raised a hand at the old woman and was about to strike before Ella stood and stopped him, her hand catching his before striking Mrs. Shanahan. Ellahugh then offered "Mrs. Shanahan and I will walk these wee ones to their schooling and then go to work, I have so very much to learn about this uneasy place."

All nodded except for the children who watched with confusion. "Keep cleaning dear Benly, and make sure your wee sister finishes her own rather than scrapping for the plump cat Padraig."

The old orange feline was already staring up at the three-year-old intently inviting a splatter of morsel from above. Benly marched over and picked the fat cat up and brought him to his false-mouse toys saying: "you are being disorderly Padraig, we will share my lunch alms and play the laser point when I get home from school, so do not be cross and begful, alright?"

Older by thrice than this boy the cat agreed with a scratchy "meh" meant as a meow and stayed pinned where he was left, intending to wait for all of the humans to leave to find where the littlest one tucked food away for him. Indeed, first left the father with an assignment to meet with Clover Computing, and then the children with the two women. Padraig found scrambled egg scraps beneath the toddler's high-chair, a testament to their budding relationship. Should only the boy bring back part of his lunch he would be fulfilled as King of this Communal Billet.

Across a bridge to the Communal District school parents and children could be seen waiting outside of an Almshouse, "an Almsqueue for their day's food." Mrs. Shanahan informed.

"Your children are well fed enough that they will get a head start on studies, and you and I can get to work before others. This is the very definition of luxury so I hope you are grateful. I've pinched my pounds and made ready for these awful austerities."

"Is it the same in Engwahl?" Ellahugh asked, knowing she would get a biased answer.

Mrs. Shanahan stopped dead in her tracks and barfed "WHY NO!. . of course they don't. No, their alms are packaged if ye catch my meaning . . loaded with the poisons of progress that give one the cancers they do complain of down there. Do show me one skinny Nievish one and wait for the rolling blubber of cancered Engwahlians who drink from plastics and eat from frozen paper."

Ellahugh was concerned now, this host which gave them so much was now giving away the game of Nieveland's ignorance. Instead of arguing she followed the old woman in to a digital scanning system followed by a paper punching wage system the same done down-Cannie. She stood and put her arms behind her back for a few minutes while Shanahan clicked and typed and puffed and redirected calls before the old woman got up and collected a heavy sack of papers translated into Nievish and Engwahlian alongside their original prints.

"Summarize them," Mrs. Shanahan ordered, "go over once and twice the news of this world beyond the Thaumantics and when you are dumb and tired and missing your children I will look over it again, very well?"

Many stories at the top read with Ebrian words, and looking up at Mrs. Shanahan shouting at incoming callers and managing her desktop Ellahugh decided to simply begin Clovering translations and research on her own - alone, an oddity in her experience indeed. On the ranch there was always another one on horseback before or behind her, at home she never acted without her husband, and now the very Thaumantic White Man's Order . . and the Indigenous Nations would react to how she interpreted these events from beyond the Order.

The Meeting at Clover Computing

In this next challenge Tharawal was negotiating between the state and its pre-eminent media company: Clover Computing. Union Boss Byron Sacke-Worly sat down with Tharawal individually rather than subjecting him to a full board meeting and asked "what do they want now?"

Damperod raised his eyebrows at this, his role being played, and accused Clover of hiding a chat AI model that is called EvieAI. Pointing to a seemingly overnight difference, patterned and trackable, in how customer service and technical support worked. Thaumantic customers were reporting this to their communal bureaus noting a impersonal inauthenticity to a communal company defined by its claim of handmade Thaumantican products and union based software.

"When my children stream HallowEvie or Greenwich Twins I assume it's a handmade communal effort - that the SmartBlocks and their wares are guaranteed by genuine communal folk of flesh and blood." Tharawal explained, ". . please understand that we respect the work being done here, Clover is leagues ahead of any capitalist tech company save Twatter, but we need to ask if this innovation you are playing with here, with artificial intelligence, if it is communal?"

Boss Byron shifted in his chair for awhile and nodded, "So sorry . . " he began before Tharawal raised his hand and said ". . No, I want a real answer before I decide whether to invest Neighbors."

" . . And so, we are learning things with EvieAI about or users but it is incomplete. One can now speak to the SmartBlock and ask for the weather and that is all very well . . but when they ask Evie how they look in the mirror and snap a photograph and share it with her . . or ask how they should even wake up tomorrow and face the day . ."

"Her?" Damperod honed in on, marking down the statement in his journal.

Byron S.W. fell backwards and crossed his arms and said "of course there is no she, Evie is a base model program, but it responds and becomes something different to everyone who speaks or writes to it."

Tharawal stopped writing and capped his pen, "you are describing what most Thaumanticans would call a well-fed demon - reliant and adapting to personal desperation not soothed by the village, the commune. Is Evie a Communalist?"

"For now, yes" Byron replied, "the SmartBlock is germane to our Order, and her integration with the Club Apparatus is incomplete. We possess tens of millions of Thaumanticans talking to her now and only a handful of thousand foreign ones."

"Neighbors will only muck this up worse than it already is," Damperod admitted, "when I file this away as ongoing I do think the Engwahlians will follow-up if you are not bedded with them already.

A visit to the soon to be opened Sacral Queen Aelis Veterans Hospital
Lexkirk, Engwahl

"The Communal Order will not allow this bait and switch," Tharawal growled like an angry dog for the Nieves and Almskeeper Conor MacBain, "you Engwahlians made mark to name this place Communal Coalition Veterans Hospital, took in Cannie and Nievish alms, and now that it is an hour from being opened pull this stunt?"

Wearing his withered face with a scowl the Engwahlian Almskeeper Drake replied "You seem quite lost, Mister Tharawal. Is this is your commune, is this your country, and what of your island? It's quite down-Cannie."

Though the hospital was not yet publicly opened there were patient residents already in beds and milling about the halls. Their common quality was that they all missed something: perhaps an arm from the Serault flashpoint, or a leg from the Gutnish wars which persisted still with improvised explosives and small arms assaults in the "former" Pirate Reich.

"Oh yes me Lord, so beyond me down-Cannie understanding me Lord," Damperod mocked, "please come off this and at least pretend I have been told, you know around a fire, what happened with Aelis?"

Balthazar Drake relented with a quick sigh and shrug, "This moniker matters to us enough so to break our marks. But do recall it was under the previous keeper the name of this hospital was scrawled, and recall again that those Nieves maligned and menaced him out of public life . . and whether that is kinder or more Christian than plunging a dagger to the heart, as MacBain's dear father did our late Queen, we are going to recognize her sacral service at the end of the Engwahlian Empire . . And we will fight for this, mark me as Almskeeper of Engwahl today."

"Acting the bleeding heart are we?" Tharawal asked, unconvinced, "You lack the organ, sir. And however fine this place is, the finest medical center in our Order, it is just a place. The Keeper of Order can take away its doctors and nurses, confiscate these fine modern technologies, and assign them in an almshouse down the boulevard or up-Nievie. You will own a rather nice empty building to store your Engell trophies in, sir, and tokens for being righteous."

The Engwahlian Almskeeper turned his nose up at the servant of Nieves, an indigenous Cantignian barking out threats. "Did your owner, you wee errand boy, tell you that Aelis Pherson will be here to commemorate? Or was he trusting you might soothsay me or send in the Neighbors before it happens?"

"This Aelis Pherson is more harmful than your rotting Queen ever was and befitting they share that foolish name." Damperod Tharawal lamented. Indeed, the former Nievish Almskeeper was a nuisance for him personally and politically down-Cannie and seemingly everywhere in Thaumantica.

Tharawal left without another word, deciding on his own then to utilize the Neighbors the Order Keeper had lent him. He instructed them to arrest the Engwahlian Almskeeper by force, prevent the so-called retired Aelis Pherson from arriving, and asked lightly that rather than any speech at all that his aide-de-camp Merindah lead patriotic songs from the up-isles.

Balthazar Austin Drake was easily apprehended, placing his limbs together so they might be easier tied, though Aelis Pherson was quit the opposite. When confronted two blocks away from the hospital she and her entire security detail dismounted their vehicles and, rather than fighting, ran in different directions. While Aelis Pherson possessed a recognizable face her clothing was communal hand-me down and non-descript, her hair was sheared lower than her former Neighbors would know, and her likewise plain clothed 'Kingkillers' would stop and stab anyone or anything in pursuit.

At 7 AM the radio, television, and online broadcast had begun. Tharawal sighed with relief thinking that The Breakfast Companion presenter Fern Maguire was out in front of the hospital with every communal camera and microphone pressing in. Someone who never went off script, though, he had never seen her face down-Cannie and merely heard her voice for a decade now.

"We have a problem Thar!" Merindah interrupted, "that Nievish one isn't the Nievish one, that's the Twatter one who says the nasty things!".

His consciousness fell from his body then nearly, leaving and running for escape. "Everything is a bloody pageant to these sheepfucking, tiburtoothed, cousin-bedding . . Merindah? Did I not order you to organize songs?"

"So very sorry sir," Merindah begged, "everyone inside is duly afraid for their futures, they say, worried to be seen on the wrong side of this scuffle they say!"

"Fine." Tharawal said, disappointed but not angry at his tribal cousin being as confused as he would have been a decade ago at the antics of up-Islanders. "Merindah, my dear, pick a side and hold your mark. They write and speak these words but we must be the better Thaumanticans. Do you honor my word Merindah?"

"Oh . ." Merindah said, ". . of course?"

"If you go slap her down, that colonist whore, I will vest you to the end . . do you need I mark it?" Tharawal asked, offered, and perhaps ordered.

Merindah was still curdled by these people and shook her head as a quiet no, mouthing "I cannah'" without speaking.

A huffing and puffing Aelis Pherson appeared at the podium, sweating after running with her Kingkillers for half a mile in this first glimpse of spring and summer. "So sorry to be late . . " she began, gasping for air while her guards wrestled with Neighbors just out of camera view pinned particularly upon the podium.

"We carry a burden, you and I, all of us in this God Blessed Order . ." Pherson continued, "our vocations, roles assigned most holy, lead us to great places. This is such a place . . "

"Fuck all!" Tharawal complained knowing the game was done, his pants vibrating with a call from Caitekurke to scold him for letting this happen.

Aelis Pherson leaned in on the podium and clasped her heart, "right here a MacBain plunged his knife and destroyed Engwahlia and my namesake, Queen Aelis . . we might improve, we might recognize sacrifice . . and I know the threat, the violence, I have been nearly brought to dead . . , Queen Aelis, we do love ye, if you were here I'd kill ya, and you serve here and forever more this hospital!"

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