Part X
It had taken much time before the riots and uprisings across the Republic had been quelled, yet in the end, a precarious balance of order had been instilled back within the cities that had remained standing following the Torment. The years had crawled past, while the great Church, the ruling faction of the Venerated Republic, worked to rebuild the kingdom from it’s own ruin. The mysterious Resolve, the dark cult who had been responsible for unleashing the Torment upon the Venerated Republic, were thought to be gone forever.
And now, my faithful companions, it is time to begin wrapping up the story of how the once glorious kingdom of men began its downward spiral into darkness and decay. Our tale has painted a portrait of a land teetered upon the precipice of destruction, brought upon by numerous enemies. The first of what would be many devastating blows to the Republic had undoubtedly been the infamous Torment, a mysterious disease that had stripped it’s victims of both mind and soul. The aftermath of this horrid sickness had been decades of scrambled attempts at re-organizing the shattered Venerated Republic. Those responsible for the dreaded sickness had long retreated into the western territories of the great kingdom, disappearing into the pages of history for nearly twenty years.
Reconstruction had began. Life had begun to return to an uneasy but welcome norm in the eastern baronies. The western territories of Vitaveus, the massive continent in which the Republic called home, was slowly being reclaimed from the Torment and its foul creations. In the early 1330s of the Decusian calendar, however, hope of restoring the Republic to its former glory had dwindled. The dreaded Resolve had returned to the world of Eden, staging a massive assault against a collection of three colonies far to the east of Vitaveus.
The attack had lead to a massive surge of manpower directed across the great sea that separated Vitaveus from the colonies within the End of the World. Thousands upon soldiers were sent to the colonial city state of MacArthur’s Gate, with desperate orders of holding and securing the city at all costs. With these soldiers had been sent hundreds of Republic citizens, deceived into thinking they had been conscripted by the great Church of Decus to form a new start in the distant eastern lands. Their purpose, however, had been only to serve as more fodder for the battle waged over MacArthur’s Gate.
Ultimately, the efforts within the colonies had been futile. The clerical city-state of MacArthur’s Gate had fallen to the hands of the Resolve, and with it, the backbone of the Republic military’s presence in the colonies broken. Word of the secret war half-way around the world soon reached the ears of the Republic’s citizenry, and in mere hours, the precarious stability the Church had held over the weak Republic faltered. Riots ensued, and the Republic’s government had nearly toppled.
The Church had been helpless to the public outrage. Unable to reveal the true intentions as to why so many had been plucked from the bosom of the Republic, and sent across the great sea in what appeared to be a senseless suicide mission, the Church’s favor amongst the peoples had been cast to the wind. All the while, in the End of the World, the Resolve had claimed a massive victory, acquiring an artifact of unfathomable power, and now turned their sights upon the helpless colonists left to fend for themselves.
At the apex of the Republic’s rebellion against the Church, an aspiring young bishop within the Church’s clergy had taken advantage of chaos that ensued from the defeat in MacArthur’s Gate, and gained power absolute over the Church clergy. Empowered by an entourage of fellow clergymen whom rallied beneath his banner, a one Bishop Karl Anslem lead a coup against those responsible for the failed defense of MacArthur’s Gate, publically executing them as treasonists. It had not taken him long to be embraced by the peoples of the Republic, and soon after, he rose to the throne of Archbishop, the supreme and infallible ruler of both the Church and Venerated Republic.
The new Archbishop’s first decree from his new station had been to declare the colonies as forbidden ground, proclaiming that any Decusian whom dared abandon its Republic by fleeing to the eastern lands as treasonists. With this law, those still left within the colonies, countless hundreds of Republic citizens and military units whom survived the massacre at MacArthur’s Gate, had been left to fend for themselves and abandoned by the Republic and its people.
This order, however, had been only the first of many that the new Archbishop would make that had effectively crippled the Republic in the five years he ruled over the ruined kingdom of men…