Forsaken Ruins: Part 7 (597 hits)
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Submitted by Craig Williams <thetyrant82.at.hotmail.com> (View user info) at 2005-05-31 05:03:02 EDT
Part 6: http://www.ubersite.com/m/66862
Part 5: http://www.ubersite.com/m/66009
Part 4: http://www.ubersite.com/m/65313
Part 3: http://www.ubersite.com/m/64985
Part 2: http://www.ubersite.com/m/64817
Part 1: http://www.ubersite.com/m/63802
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Mattias was awestruck as the CONCORD-class battleships and their escorts unleashed a torrent of devastating firepower into the station. Tantoseisen had brought an entire task force with him—18 ships in all. Minutes earlier they had decimated the same Angel Cartel blockade which, hours before, had nearly killed Mattias. Using his cloaked Wraith, Veniel told Tantoseisen exactly what to expect before his fleet jumped in. The Warlord battleship was destroyed so quickly that the remaining ships retreated, but Trald—the slippery snake that he was—warped out immediately after the CONCORD ships arrived. It was anyone's guess whether or not he would return with a bigger fleet. But oddly enough, no one seemed concerned.
The mood should have been more elated, given the brutal decisiveness of the battle that had just taken place. Instead, there was complete silence, even as the tachyons and heavy beam weapons drilled into the station's shields. Everyone was stunned by the story Veniel had told during Tantoseisen's journey to E8-YS9.
About 40 years ago, a movement of radical thinkers emerged from the swirling maelstrom of galactic politics that were unhappy with the institutions responsible for shaping the post-EVE era." The group saw no purpose in borderlines or the imposition of cultural ideals into the populace through the use of government. They cited that this kind of thinking was counterproductive and ultimately to blame for the greater "fallacies and debacles of our time", as Veniel had said, which included the continued imprisonment of Minmatar slaves by the Amarr Empire and the Caldari-Gallente War. They wanted to create a society that looked beyond bloodlines and focused more on the commonality between all the races; to embrace human diversity yet retain the true "embodiment of mankind" that has "kept our species from disappearing from the universe forever."
Every generation, Veniel had explained, has its prodigies. From time to time, people with extraordinary gifts surface in the gene pool, and the results are often unprecedented breakthroughs and contributions in a discipline commensurate with the individual's talent. The leader of the radical thinkers was a man named Sébastien Moreau, and his gift was charisma unlike anything the galaxy had ever seen. He was a powerful speaker and motivator, but could also make anyone feel at ease within minutes of meeting them for the first time. His charm—and soon, his mission—became irresistible to almost everyone who listened. Through the sheer power of Moreau's persuasion, "Immensea" was born.
Refusing to take his cause for racial unity to the floors of government halls out of pure spite for the "antiquated institutional paradigms" they represented, Moreau sought believers of his mission in private. He recognized that his dream society could not coexist with the Empires. To make real strides in pursuing his goal, he needed to attach the idea of racial unity with a physical objective that his followers could work towards. Therein, Veniel explained, the concept of "Immensea" was defined: The "immense sea" that separates the horrors of yesterday from the utopian bliss of tomorrow. Earth—like the notion of utopia—is out there, but a vast physical and spiritual distance must be traversed in order to reach it. "Paradise was always within", Moreau had once said. "And so the journey home completes the circle: From one we were defined, and to one we shall return, unbound, and true to our own pure selves."
Moreau's followers, now numbering in the thousands, became so passionate about this quest to "return home" that the task itself began to assume the form of a divine imperative. A massive research initiative was planned with a host of ambitious objectives, which included studies on how to stabilize the EVE gate in New Eden and a fast-track development of jump drives. All they needed was a base from which they could pursue these studies in earnest, far from the prying eyes of governments and "institutional bigots". The cost to build even a single station was astronomical, but money, as it turned out, was hardly an obstacle.
Immensea was spreading, picking up momentum, members, and resources at a frenzied pace. Because of Sébastien Moreau's supernatural gift, the talent pool and economic resources of the Immensea were enormous. CEO's of mega-corporations, high ranking military officers, government officials, and brilliant scientists from each sovereignty were either secretly a part of it or contributing directly to its growth. Immensea had become a cult with the financial and intellectual capital to rival any organization in EVE, and because it had pervaded every level of society—military, government, corporate, and even criminal—people looked the other way as convoy after convoy disappeared into the deep of space.
True to the cult's directive to keep the institutions in the dark, no one said a word. People who tried to raise alarms about missing equipment or deleted journal entries were bribed to stay quiet. When that failed, they were silenced permanently. The first stations were built in the Immensea Region; they would eventually be constructed in a total of 23 regions, in some cases with the direct assistance of the local pirate cartels themselves. These "institutional outcasts" were especially vulnerable to Moreau's persuasion, who welcomed them as would a "foster parent to an abandoned child."
Every station was completely isolated from the commerce of Empire space, but entirely self-sufficient. They were all equipped with refineries, factories, clone banks, research facilities, and starship fitting hangars; everything that they needed to exist harmoniously with each other and pursue their mutually shared goals under the now prophetic vision of Moreau. Loners, families, and sometimes even entire colonies would vanish from Empire records as they traveled to deep space. They wandered into the open arms of the Immensea, which held no person accountable for any sins committed under the roof of the Institution and never, ever discriminated by bloodline. Caldari, Amarrs, Minmatar, Gallentes, and even the occasional Jovian found refuge in this hidden society. Utopia, so it seemed, had been achieved.
But it was not to last, said Veniel. Two things had happened which spelled the beginning of the end for the Immensea. One, its members began to think of Moreau as a god; and two, Moreau also began to think of himself as a god. It was all perfectly sensible to Moreau that the Immensea should worship the man who had created so much from so little. How else to explain his wondrous powers of persuasion and the results of his vision as anything other than divine? Sébastien Moreau cultivated the image of a god as much as he could, fabricating miracles with the use of technology and demanding worship from his followers. There was nothing that he would not take; no custom that he would respect; no law that he would honor; and no woman—married or not, young or old—that he would not ravish, for who could deny the seed of a god?
Moreau had descended into the darkest realm of the categorically psychotic, yet he retained his charismatic personage—a lethal combination that has manifested itself many times over in various rulers and tyrants throughout mankind's history.
The deification of Moreau began to resonate deeply within the souls of the Amarr among the Immensea. While some were born directly into the cult, every Amarr was still deeply rooted in his or her belief in One God, and that hell itself awaited anyone who blasphemed the Faith by creating false idols to worship. "For the Amarr," said Veniel, "it is better to have never been born, should you be guilty of this sin." As for Moreau, the only evil more sinister than worshiping an idol was to claiming to be one. In the end, the religious conscience of the Amarrs proved to be too much, and they tried—unsuccessfully—to assassinate Moreau.
The botched attempt on his life enraged Moreau and catapulted him even further into a deranged, diabolical mental abyss. He was now "fully capable of horrific atrocities and astounding cruelty." He issued an edict declaring that all of the Amarr among them were to be exterminated for "interfering with the divine imperative that is the destiny of Immensea." The result was effectively flat-out civil war and genocide. Suddenly bloodlines were drastically relevant again, and the Amarr were pitted against everyone else. In the end, all of the Amarr's—every man, women, and child among them—were mercilessly butchered by the other followers.
Moreau meditated on the event and decided that its cause was due to the stations being too autonomous, thereby detracting from his "divine" cornerstone philosophy of interdependence and unity for one, single race. To set matters straight, he ordered the destruction of all but one of the three "life essence" modules aboard each station, decreeing that only one of each shall be permitted to exist per region. If his people would not cooperate with each other in the exact way that he ordained, then he would force the issue upon them and mend their foolish ways. His remaining followers rendered station modules useless by sabotaging them in ways that would make them impossible to repair, and murdered anyone who tried to stop them.
In Veniel's opinion, the act merely accelerated the inevitable. Rumors of the slayings began to spread, and contacts within Empire space quietly began distancing themselves from any association with the Immensea. The logistical nightmare of having to support three stations with one module each for every region they had settled in was unmanageable. One by one they fell into ruin and were abandoned. Almost overnight, the Immensea had all but disappeared, and some of its survivors—many of whom were the source of Veniel's information—took their own lives, overwhelmed by the heavy burden of guilt from their complicity in the greatest human atrocity of the post-EVE era.
User Reviews
Submitted by SilvrWolf (user info) at 2005-05-31 05:28:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Looks like I've been missing a good one.
Submitted by pen_name (user info) at 2005-05-31 05:08:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 for putting some effort into a series