The Great Game 🎲 Kollarum

🚜 in progress 🛠

Assembly

One Hundred Percent

Farenn’s speech dominated Lingua Franca, the first week of the Infinite Distance Conference, yet he knew the road ahead of him was alot longer than the one behind. Any other diplomat would have rejoiced in last week’s victory, yet not Farenn. It was Gral who had done all the heavy lifting: his meticulous scholarship had already proved the value of English as a lingua franca. Second, Farenn was still disquieted by his talk with Tarnar, whose suspicions about the Baulians, and about the possible link between the Fractal Masters and Knifestream, made everything in the coming week more difficult.

It had been relatively easy to get the Assembly to agree on the question of language, but getting a consensus on a matter of hard power was a different bird altogether. As a result, the second week of the Conference, titled One Hundred Percent, was getting extensive coverage in the press. Scholars and ministers from all over the Kraslika flocked to the Great Hall in the Big Four to debate the direction of the cosmos itself. The rulings of this Assembly would have the power to shift entire civilizations. During Lingua Franca Farenn could see a few empty seats, yet as he looked out over the audience now he saw attendees spilling into the aisles.

On either side of the Great Hall were 400 rows of scholars and ministers. Behind thin veils along the upper walls on either side of the Great Hall were over a thousand Dalitian troops, ready to fly into action at a moment’s notice. In the thousand years that the Great Hall had hosted the Assembly, the Dalitian Guard had never been called into action. And today was likely to be just as safe. This was because beyond the Hall itself, circling the great matterhorn peak in the turbulent skies, were two dreadknot ships with more firepower than any known battle cruiser. One ship, The Veronese, was the escort for the Vicinese Bright Council. The other ship, The Bärwolf, was the escort for the Fallarian Demon Priests. Above both ships was an Aatari Stardust Point, which could evaporate either cruiser at a second’s notice.

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Farenn looked out at the crowd, and thought to himself, Fools rush in. The wise cultivate patience, perspicacity, a critical distance that allows them to judge all the possible ramifications. They think deeply before they utter even a single syllable. What he didn’t think to himself, because he was Fallarian and it was taken for granted, was that the wise also have instinct, like that of the jaguar in the dark forest, about to pounce.

Farenn of Caldemar was no fool. He knew that the Assembly wasn’t an abstract affair in which attendees debated theoretically about who had the right to hold power in the Kraslika. The 1001st Assembly also came at a very important moment: the Baulians were on the verge of understanding that their Empire wasn’t the greatest empire time had ever seen. They were on the verge of realizing that they had been operating for millions of years within a cosmos they couldn’t even see. So far, they imagined themselves to be masters of all they surveyed. The implicit goal of the Assembly was to decide whether or not to tell the Baulians that all they surveyed was already being surveyed by all.

The Fallarian Black Horde wanted to keep the Baulians in the dark, yet the Vicinese wanted to bring everything into the light. Farenn agreed with the Black Horde’s desire for secrecy, yet he also felt the Horde had no right to tell him what to think. The Horde knew sending such an unpredictable thinker was a risk, yet Farenn was a consummate diplomat and they wanted to see which way he would argue. It was worth it for them to know who they were dealing with. Would he openly agree with them and secretly betray them, or would he openly betray them and secretly be loyal to them? Either way, Knifestream, Gascitar, and Kaldriscat sat mesmerized in the front row of what the Fallarian Press called the Ebony Bank.

All three Demon Priests glowed with anticipation as Farenn stepped up to the podium and cleared his throat.

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The longest road lay ahead, and for this reason Farenn opened with a quote to make his audience to open their minds. For once the major powers in the universe agreed to take a specific path, it would be impossible to retrace the steps and take another.

On the gigantic screen above him he put a quatrain from the 12th century poem, The Conference of the Birds:

In public I ask after him, although / Behind the veil of secrecy I know / Whatever news my messenger could give; I hide my secret and in secret live.

[in progress]

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