NationStates Jolt Archive

“You know jenny, if you don’t have kids within a year, you’re not going to be allowed to eat… Same for me… What do you say?”

The Necromantic Hell, as it was called, of Vinyaangmar was a dark place, haunted by things, the remnants of its former inhabitants. Of course, Vinyaangmar was a name used only sparingly, even by its ruler, the Regent, but the name that its people had used for it, Joseph Seal, was forbidden to all.

The Regent spoke with the voice of Sauron, a title essentially equal to God’s Representative on Earth in the official literature his regime created. He was rarely seen outside of the palatial retreat he had constructed as a façade for his regime, a massive temple of marble and steel that combined an exotic, somewhat Arabian feel with the high technology style that had been common in Joseph Seal before the… catastrophe.


The occupation by the forces of Sauron had been quite simply an atrocity, where many hundreds of millions of people had died in horrific orgies of violence and debasement of the foulest form. In that respect, the coming of the Regent had been a massive improvement. He had brought order to what had been anarchy.

The first thing he had done was end the killing, proclaiming that any murder would result in the killer being slain in a way worse than the way his victims died. It had been taken as a joke, or a laughable pronunciation, until the castellans had appeared, with four hundred ‘criminals’ orcs and humans alike, and exacted such brutal ‘justice’ upon them, flaying them alive one at a time and mounting their; still writhing and howling their distress, long after they should have died, even until the last muscles had rotted away from them, they remained struggling in agony.

There’d been less and less disorder as the tale of the Regent’s punishments had spread, and as a ‘police force’ of dark creatures had appeared, patrolling the streets at all hours, dispensing summary justice on all who drew their displeasure. Some said that these dusk-wraiths, fearsome creatures so nick-named by the inhabitants of the land because of their fondness for shadow and darkness, and the way that, after curfew, they seemed to grow in power and terror, becoming monsters that stalked through the night and carried off all who violated the Regent’s curfew.

Then the other proclamations had come from the Regent’s palace (constructed with the toil of millions while thousands toiled in pulling down the terrifying edifice of corpses that the commander of the invasion force had erected) – such irrational sentences as the death penalty for anyone uttering the name of Sauron, wearing unevenly coloured socks, wearing shorts, growing a moustache…

The Regent’s minions along with the wave of relentless, merciless and cruel order that was spread by his minions issued a tirade of such lunacy. And these insane and irrational orders were enforced with the same brutal efficiency and cruel malice as every other, seemingly more deserved order.

One of the most contentious decrees of the Regent was that any person who was not, from a year of the time of his declaration, in a stable childbearing relationship would be denied food rations. It was calculated move to force the people to reproduce to his liking. Of course, as with everything else, the Regent was careful to let it be known that he was quite serious. He enforced the rule three months early in one district of the conurbation, killing thousands through starvation.

The Regent’s cruelty was, as one would expect from an emissary of the Dark Lord, total.

----

Buried among the hordes of irrational commands from the Regent’s palace was one that seemed even more insane, but its circulation was limited. The servants of the Regent swept out, having been careful, over the first months of his reign, to lull the elves of Joseph Seal into a false sense of security. Several hundred thousand remained, after the mass evacuation from the doomed isle and inevitable persecution by Sauron’s army, from an original population in the millions.

The regent’s servants took, in all, in one terrifying, moonless night, around ninety percent of the remainder, dragging them deep into the dungeons of the Regent in chains of weathered and rusted iron forged from the structures of ruined buildings.

No mortal soul saw them again within the borders of Joseph Seal, but their disappearance was un-remarked upon by those burdened by some modicum of sense. Of course, the truth was more eyebrow raising than any would suspect. Their real fate was something designed to hedge the Regent’s bets. In a small treason that one would find difficult to credit, they had disappeared abroad, as ‘gifts.’

----

”Blessed be His name, for he is the Merciful Lord, whose might lays low the prideful and whose sword destroys the insolent…”

Herumor watched with amusement from the white marble balcony of the palace as the worship of his erstwhile and inconsistent master continued. The weight of a new, rejuvenated and different body was almost more than the weight of the hefty silver crown, spikes jutting from his immaculately clean, slightly curled, golden hair.

He turned to the castellan by his side, one of several that accompanied him, massive armoured forms, six feet high and built like battering rams, fully enclosed in helms of archaic design that pinched about their faces and left everything but the piercing silvered stare of their hidden eyes to the imagination. They robed themselves in purest white and silver, and armed themselves with un-tarnishing silver plate that made them appear as knights straight from legend, “Satisfactory,” he pronounced, waving a hand to the crowds chanting in the vast limestone-flagged square, sunlight glinting off the rings of his perfectly manicured hand. “But something more… formal, in future,” he added, with the air of someone ruminating on the lives of insects, “build a cathedral.”

The creature bowed slightly, and Herumor turned from the balcony, sweeping away down blue-topaz edged steps, through a ten-foot high doorway that billowed with silken curtains, followed by his present favourite concubine of the moment, an exquisite specimen of human beauty named Kalina, with golden hair and green eyes, garbed in turquoise and green silks. After the brutality of the invasion of Sauron’s forces, Herumor was careful to present an image of beauty. Safety, Order and Beauty was the promise of the Regency, and it had its appeal. Besides, resistance might mean a return to before…

OOC: Bloomin' thing won't let me post with Vinyaangmar...

Jeremiah Smith ran through the broken streets of the area known as ‘the Shattering’ his legs hammering at the broken tarmac of the street. His organisation, a cell of a small group aimed at restoring the old ways, had been meeting there tonight, but he had been late. So far, that delay had saved his life. He’d heard cries from the upper room where they met in the shattered remnants of an old factory, and fled away.

Behind him was a monster. It was dressed in white and leapt forwards, pouncing over broken stones with a feral grace that belied its massive bulk. It towered over him, fully six and a half feet. It was a castellan of Sauron. Mists shrouded it and the moon glimmered off its helm and sword, a silver weapon held in its drawn hand. He supposed he was lucky it had no gun, and remembered the one he possessed. He turned, pulling his pistol from his frayed jacket, and fired, the gun barking in his hand and almost overbalancing him as he fled. He hit, or at least, thought he had, and heard a chilling chuckle from behind him.

The bastard was playing with him. Mocking him. It hissed something, and he could feel his arm involuntarily loosening its hold on the gun, dropping it, and his hand trembled as he fled once more. He scrabbled down the side of a crater leading to the rank sewers of the Shattering, where he knew homeless waifs, as yet not acquiescent to the Regent, lingered.

The slurry slopped around his shoes and flowed into his socks, and he frowned, gagging at the repulsive smell. He looked up, hoping the creature had perhaps not followed him, but alas, its silver helm and white robed shoulders appeared over the lip of the crater, still running. It lept, robes blowing about its bulky form as it fell into the crater, landing in the sewerage with a heavy ‘thud’ and jangling of armour plates mixed with the wet sounds of water and excrement being displaced.

Jeremiah turned and ran through the ankle deep water again as the monster straightened itself out, drawing itself to its full height once more. He turned, running heedless of what direction his legs carried him in, and ran until he could go no further. Fortunately he seemed to have found one of the small domains of free people, sacks of bone and flesh, diseased by their putrid hiding place in what had once been a megacity.

It arrived, splashing through the water and out into the little underground room. A child shrieked and the Castellan turned its gaze on her. Others crawled back away from the monster. Suddenly it was as though an oppressive cloud of horror had been blown away, and the Castellan immediately became less menacing. Jeremiah realised, in an abstract, remote way that there was no way out.

It sheathed its sword, metal ringing as the blade was placed into the scabbard. It leaned forwards, and grabbed hold of Jeremiah’s neck, hauling him back the way they had come. He screamed. He didn’t care what he screamed.

He didn’t stop for a long time, either.

---

Months, and then years past, three in all, and things became better. Much better. So much better that the tales of those like Jeremiah wouldn’t be believed. People, on the whole, didn’t like to think of such things, and so put them out of their minds. Resistance disappeared under a hefty campaign of telling people how good they had it, and making sure they did.

The Castellans and other creatures of the Regent ensured that rebuilding happened at an amazing pace. Buildings of the old arcology regime were demolished, replaced with new, elegant constructs. Hospitals, fire stations, public transport, schools, all the other accoutrements of a functioning state were constructed using the best sites, by fiat of the Regent.

Cities were designed from scratch, to function as perfect examples of a new society, an ordered arrangement designed for maximal productivity and defensibility. Roads jinked expertly, and sported turns that were too tight to be made by armour, and reinforced buildings here and there that could be fought from with ease, and civil defence bunkers – particular attention was paid to schools – were arranged strategically, reinforced to a shocking degree against bombing, protected by dozens of meters of steel taken from the arcos that had been used by the previous regime.

The Regent set himself to managing the nation under his care with the fanatical zeal of a perfectionist. This time, he decided try something radically different from the last Vinyaangmar. A new language was devised, with its own writing system, and the calendar year was reset to zero.

Deaths happened. The nation had been ravaged by its invasion, and despite the best of efforts, the Regent’s agents were only able to bring in a limited amount of food and medical aid. Autarky was a difficult goal, and with not a strip of arable land in the nation, one many believed to be impossible, however, the regent had other ideas, ordering to be constructed a vast fishing fleet. It didn’t bring in what he’d hoped for, and mass export of metals and the few other resources the nation had was begun in order to make trade which could feed the population.

Initial refugee camps gave way to work camps that gave way to new towns and cities. Nuclear weapons were devised and experimented with, and new warships commissioned as the nation began to turn to less important matters than keeping itself fed and warm.

The religious campaign that had been established at first eased into a background project no one much cared for. Instead, the Regent and his advisors, closest amongst them Kalina – whose looks had the mastery of aging, doing so with an unparalleled grace that simply made her seem more beautiful and wiser as she aged – who proved many times to be more than simply a pretty face, turned their attention to providing a framework of laws that allowed for equitable trade and business investment from foreign nations. He believed that, essentially, capitalism was the way forwards, in moderation. Industry was needed, and investment was needed to regenerate his shattered nation, to create income and jobs. In time, even the ‘emergency laws’ such as the one intended to force population growth were abandoned. Castellans were replaced by a purple-clad police force. Their harsh justice was replaced with something less terrifying. And life went on.