OOC INFORMATION
This thread exists to serve as the rebooted version of An Act of Faith (the original thread has been deleted). Though I humbly ask all participants to telegram me with a request for entry before posting anything, it is unlikely that I will reject entry requests from people whose track records I trust.
An OOC thread can be found here: An Act of Faith OOC Thread. I advise participants to fully read it before posting so that they have some idea of what this thread will be about. While a minimal amount of OOC chatter is permissible in this thread, please use the other one for major out-of-character postings exceeding two or three paragraphs in length to avoid cluttering this thread up.
IC:
AN ACT OF FAITH
PROLOGUE: A NEW ORDER IN THE WORLD
PROLOGUE: A NEW ORDER IN THE WORLD
“Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh in vain.”
–PSALM 126 (127)
March 30, AD 715
0258 hours
Hill overlooking Savan Forest
Somewhere in the Kingdom of Chalcedon
Northwestern Nova
The land lay still. Multitudes of stars swam through the moonless firmament, an inky black pool unsullied by any foreign glare that could diminish the brilliance with which these twinkling myriads shone through the night. Even though the cool spring winds had died during the preceding evening, the absence of clouds on this night had enabled the earth’s heat to freely dissipate into space, leaving only the breathing of nocturnal animals to disturb the air around them as it grew chillier throughout the night. Flower buds had folded themselves shut like umbrellas so that they could avoid having their delicate surfaces nipped by the crisp, cool atmosphere around them. As three o’clock approached, wolves that normally waited until sunrise to retreat into their dens began retiring as if drugged by premature fatigue. Most of the crickets had already grown quiet after tiring out their miniscule bodies over the previous few hours, but a few of them still persisted in continuing their nightly performance.
The chief denizen of this locale was an eremite (monastic hermit) who dwelled inside an elevated grotto at the edge of a cluster of rocky hills which were located just a day’s walk south of the dour Romanesque complex where he first took up the monastic life four decades earlier. He still periodically rejoined his brother monks to celebrate major feasts at about a dozen points throughout the year, but most of the time he preferred the solitude he had obtained by moving into his current abode eight years ago. It was here that he cultivated his ascetic sensibilities in order to pursue the sort of mystical serenity that can draw souls upward to heights that exceed the capacity of human imagination, even if it meant humbly depending on strangers for sustenance whenever he was unable to acquire it another way.
The eremite’s usual routine consisted of rising about an hour before dawn to pray and meditate before eating a light breakfast and then retiring inside his grotto to write a short commentary on some subject or another. He usually left the cavern at noon to receive any pilgrims that stopped by to ask for his prayers or request advice on general spiritual matters, then resumed meditating until he ate again at sundown and retired for the night. Shortly before the sun had set during the previous evening he walked over to an alcove inside his cave where he kept a number of items that pilgrims had given to him in past years and retrieved a small jar which he used to hold water. He took the jar down to the stream that ran along the base of the hill, filled it, put it back into its place inside the alcove, and prepared to retire for the night by reciting his evening prayers and lighting a tiny clay lamp which he left burning near the austerely-stuffed pallet he used as his bed. Soon thereafter the ascetic’s wizened figure
The ascetic arose from his peaceful slumber at four o’clock on the following morning and sat up against one of the walls to avoid becoming lightheaded as he rubbed his eyes. He looked down at the place where he had left the lamp burning through the night and picked it up so that he could use its light to navigate the interior of his living space without tripping or stubbing his toes on the uneven floor. Although he was intimately familiar with the cavern’s layout, his vision had lost some of its sharpness over time and the lack of moonlight outside would have left him fumbling around in the dark had the lamp run out of oil before sunrise. He soon reached the alcove and retrieved the jar of water and a linen towel which he dampened and used to wipe his face clean and then took a sip to wash out his dry mouth. Once he was finished he pulled out an earthenware drinking vessel which he used to satiate his thirst and then left his cave to breathe in some fresh air.
The grassy hillside outside the cave’s entrance sloped downward toward a flat-topped bulge in the hillside overlooking the brook. The crispness of the air quickly invigorated him on the way down but he still had to bend and stretch a bit to loosen up his stiff joints and members. He tilted his head back to loosen up his neck and briefly turned his attentions skyward to gaze at the stars that had fascinated him since the time he was but a little child. It took but a few moments for the celestial majesty of these distant bodies to enrapture the monk and send a torrent of nostalgia welling up in his heart as he silently recalled the days when he tried to count the stars and his eyes were sharp enough to behold the natural glory of the heavens more fully than they could do now. Even though his sight had gradually decayed with the passing of his years until it was too weak to discern the forms of the faintest stars as anything other than tiny smudges and blurs, his recollections of how many a fondly-remembered constellation had once looked still remained sharp in his mind.
The monk stared off into the star-spangled firmament for several more minutes before he peeled his attentions away from it and kneeling where he stood to bow his head in prayer. He had grown inured to many types of hardship as a result of his years spent living in asceticism, but he still regarded each day he lived as a blessing for which he owed a debt of thanks and always began his prayers with expressions of gratitude for having been allowed to awaken once again. He took a long, deliberate breath, made the sign of the cross, and began praying in gentle cadences that seemed to mimic the stream’s legato gurgling atop the smooth rocks that lined its bed. He soon grew so absorbed in his spiritual exercises that he failed to notice the movements of a second form that crept through the nearby woods.
The visitor in question was a strapping man of strong build and moderate stature who had spent the last ten minutes navigating through the forest with only the stars and a simple torch to light his way and reveal the contours of the land. He did not need to brush aside many branches nor rustle any leaves as he moved about, for he had found a well-trodden path that previous visitors had used, but even so he had to tread carefully to avoid tripping on rocks and exposed roots. He could smell and hear the stream with little trouble and enough starlight sparkled on the surface of the water for him to discern the boundaries of its surface, but even that was not enough to keep him from slipping at one point and making an audible splash in the process of crossing it. He nervously froze and looked up at the monk only to find that the old man remained undisturbed, so he drew close to the base of the hill and began ascending its slopes.
The visitor crushed a dry leaf in the process of climbing up the hillside and paused once again to see if he had disturbed the monk. This time the noise was close enough to slightly perturb the prayerful ascetic, but all he did was flinch and resume praying since the visitor was standing outside his field of vision. The lad soon reached the edge of the plateau and struck a dignified pose just a few paces behind the eremite, then waited for him to finish another prayer before deliberately dropping a rock on the ground to elicit his attention. The monk turned around and saw his new guest lean forward and bow at the waist. “Christ is in our midst, my brother.”
“He is and always shall be,” the monk replied, following the early church’s traditional greeting formula. “Who are you?”
The lad blew his torch out and set it down on the ground. “I am Claudius of Chalcedon, a pilgrim.”
“Are you on your way south?” Most of the pilgrims who passed by the monk’s cave and spoke with him on occasion were bound for the southern cities and their cathedrals, so it was most likely probable (at least in the monk’s mind) that Claudius was also on his way there.
“Yes, I am on my way to visit the southern shrines. I came at this hour to join you in prayer and ask for your blessing, and, if you’re willing, I also wish to ask for your counsel on a very serious matter.”
“My blessing?” the bemused monk asked. “I am not a priest, though you are certainly welcome to pray with me.”
Claudius nodded in agreement. “I certainly appreciate your prayers, but again, my chief purpose in coming here is to request your counsel.” The prince paused to clear his throat before explaining, “My father is the king of Chalcedon and I am destined to inherit the government of this kingdom when God calls him to rest. While I have been taught much about how kings rule over men, I do not know the right way to carry the burden that will be laid on my shoulders. I was told that you have shared great wisdom with many visitors, so perhaps you might know what I must do to become a good king.”
The monk narrowed his eyes as he thought about what Claudius had said. “Why would you—a prince—bother asking me about such earthly matters like this?” he sternly inquired, furrowing his brows in the dark. “I’m sure your father has advisers you could ask about these things instead of coming here.”
“Yes, my father has some advisers, but I do not trust some of them,” Claudius replied. His voice only grew more assertive as he sensed that the monk might have thought he was wasting time. “I want your counsel because you have been living away from worldliness for a long time and have no stake in the affairs of kings and princes. My father’s years are growing short and there are many ambitious men in Chalcedon who lust for power that does not belong to them and are waiting for him to meet his end. They will attempt to seize it from me if they think they can succeed in controlling the throne, hence my decision to come here in secret so that they wouldn’t know what I’m doing.”
“If you’re so important, then why don’t you have any bodyguards or companions with you?” the monk asked skeptically. He had a hard time believing that the heir to a kingdom would just show up at the hill all by himself, let alone at an hour like this one.
“I do. They are sleeping in my camp several furlongs from here.” Pausing again, he added, “It doesn’t matter what they’re doing now anyway, since I wanted to see you alone.” Perhaps the man is too old to recognize the truth of my words no matter what I tell him, he thought as he grew impatient with the ascetic’s continued skepticism.
Although the monk was genuinely intrigued by the prince’s explanation, he was not completely satisfied with it since it was among the most unusual ones he had heard in a very long while. His rational mind cautioned him to question the prince further, but he also acutely perceived the nature of his interlocutor’s contempt for being held in suspense and the adamancy of his desire to obtain the counsel he wanted. After spending a few more moments deliberating, the monk concluded that it was not right to risk upsetting a guest who had come a long way to pay him a visit by denying him the benefit of the doubt. “I believe you’re telling me the truth,” he sighed, “however strange it may sound to my ears.”
Claudius weakly nodded in gratitude as the apprehension that had built up inside his mind started melting away. “Brother, my question is—”
“Yes, I remember it. You want my advice on how best to rule over a kingdom when you cannot trust all of your official counselors and have rivals seeking your power for themselves.”
“That is correct. My ancestors once built a great kingdom that ruled over this land hundreds of years ago and I wish to restore it, or rather, at least I would like to begin the process of restoring it before my reign ends. I desire this because I believe that restoring my ancestors’ empire is the only way my people will be able to have a place where they can live in peace for all time, so I want to know how to use the domain of my inheritance as a cornerstone upon which to rebuild it. In this regard I wish to imitate the deeds of the righteous Solomon, leaving behind a legacy that will endure for posterity.”
The monk’s lips curled up into a smile—not a modest one, but an ear-to-ear grin that emboldened the wide, deep lines graven around them—for the first time in nearly a week. Although the monk knew that the darkness made it hard for Claudius to see how much his chiseled visage had softened from the profound feeling of glee that had entered his heart, it mattered little since he was able to make his feelings evident by replacing his clipped, serious phrases with softer, fuller ones.
“If you wish to build a kingdom that will never falter you must first hallow your country by consecrating its land as a haven for God-fearing people and promise that your heirs shall not deviate from ensuring that it remains holy ground. You must also teach your people how to live according to the way of truth and holiness so that they will stand upon the unshakeable rock of faith when they are put to the test. If you can cause your people to do these things, then they shall be victorious against every enemy who arises to assail your kingdom and not even the numberless hosts of hell shall have power to prevail against it.”
Claudius was surprised by the abstract simplicity of these suggestions because he had expected the monk to give him advice of a more concrete and worldly nature. “Your counsel is indeed wise and true,” he responded as the ascetic weakly smiled in appreciation of the compliment he had received, “but I know very little about doing the sorts of things you are asking me to do.” The monk could already tell which question Claudius was inevitably going to ask him next. “Perhaps you can tell me how these things ought to be done?”
“As a king, you must learn to live piously in the sight of your people so that they may know their ruler will deal justly with them. You must also learn to obey your conscience whenever you feel uncertain about the rightness of your actions so that you can avoid being led astray by temptations that can mar even your greatest works. If you do these two things, you will perform great deeds that will benefit your people and they shall love you in return. Remember, a king who is loved by a loyal people cannot be overthrown from within without consequences, for if he is wronged in any way they will arise on his behalf.”
Claudius nodded in understanding and twisted his head back and forth to loosen up his stiffening neck. “I have another question.”
“Go on.”
“How do I set right the evils of those who might seek my demise without resorting to the methods that my ancestors used?”
“Go and assemble the wisest sages and most learned scholars you can find to guide your hand in directing your kingdom,” the monk explained. “They will show you the fairest way to rule over others.”
The prince and his counselor soon finished discussing the matter that had initially brought about their meeting and turned their conversation towards lighter subjects which carried less gravity than the first. The pair occupied themselves with small talk for at least twenty more minutes before a squirrel interrupted their dialogue by losing its grip on a branch and falling into the stream with a loud splash that startled them. Claudius abruptly paused and glared at the stream in annoyance as he looked for the source of the noise, but the squirrel climbed out of the water and vanished up another tree so fast that he was unable to spot it.
Claudius did not have any other disturbances to investigate, but his curiosity prompted him to cast a few cursory glances across the forest anyway. It was then that he noted how the easternmost reaches of the night sky were subtly tinged with an inky blue glow that had not existed when he first arrived. Most of the stars across from him were still plainly visible, but the faintest ones appeared dimmer than they had earlier and seemed to be fading away.
“Do you see something?” the monk asked when he realized that the prince had not resumed talking.
“Some of the stars are gone,” Claudius responded, gesturing off into the distance.
“That means the sun should rise soon.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Yes, I am. See for yourself.” The men sat up and silently gazed over the treetops that would have obscured their view of the sky if they had been seated closer to the bottom of the hill and patiently waited as the weak predawn glow intensified and softened the darkness that hung over the treeline while bringing the silhouetted contours of the forest into sharper relief. The eastern horizon first took shape as a dull, paper-thin line that emitted a diffused bluish glow and then brightened slightly as a broad, curved mass of sapphire-colored light leaked out along its length and ascended over the treetops. Progressively brighter shades of teal soon emerged from beneath the trailing edge of the bluish mass and deepened the convexity of its curvature, eventually bending its leading edge into a shallow parabolic arc that defiantly forced the night to relinquish its dominion over the sky.
Successive waves of azure and cerulean light spilled out of the firmament’s lower border as it brightened further and turned from a narrow burgundy ribbon that glowed with ruddy orange light into a cherry-red belt wreathed in saffron. These warm colors and the ones that followed them mingled with the various hues of blues to form a vibrant array of new colors ranging from rosy shades of lavender to magenta and salmon pink while the horizon mellowed out even more and turned scarlet. The sun’s pallid outer aura soon melted into the east and blotted out nearby stars with the intensity of its calescent glare, leaving just a few of them glimmering among the vestiges of darkness that framed the entire scene. Minutes later, a radiant amber spark erupted out of the orient and partially blinded the men for a few moments as it grew into a luminous vein of fire which bled into the horizon. The vein thickened and grew into a yellow-orange semicircle with edges that rippled like the surface of a windblown lake and triumphantly burned with an ethereal golden fire that magically infused the air with a profound stillness that even seemed to defy the advance of time itself.
The otherworldly beauty which unfolded across the sky filled Claudius with a profound sense of reverential awe that left him absentmindedly gawking at the sights before him. He was fortunate enough to notice how far his mouth had fallen agape and pressed it shut to prevent it from falling open again, but when he peeked towards the place where the monk sat to see if the old man had noticed, he found himself completely alone. Once he had realized that the monk was gone, he unsuccessfully tried rising up onto his feet, only to discover that his body had grown very stiff over the past half-hour and that he was not moving anywhere right away. He leaned backward to loosen up his waist and stretched out his legs in order to eliminate some of their rigidity while watching the remainder of the sun’s disc emerge and part company with the earth, effortlessly gliding skyward towards its rightful position at the center of the atmospheric tableau. After roughly a minute of relaxing to let the circulation in his lower body return to normal, he sat up, rose to his feet, and climbed back up the hill. Upon reaching the top he noticed that the western sky had faded as the last traces of the darkness that once occupied it were fleeing away in a relentless occidental retreat.
Claudius entered the grotto and conversed with the eremite until five-thirty, at which point he chose to bid his one-time counselor farewell and left his torch behind for the monk to use if he ever found need for it. He cast a final passing glance over the hill’s uneven grassy sides as he descended towards the stream, pausing at its edge to look for any rocks he could use to cross it before gingerly stepping from one to another until he had reached the other side. The euphoric atmosphere that first enveloped him at daybreak had yet to fade enough for him to realize the solemnity of his new empire-building mission, so his gait assumed a childlike sprightliness as he passed back into the woods and returned to his camp. The sentries posted around it were unsurprised by their prince’s appearance, for they had grown accustomed to his habit of rising early to take walks whenever he was restless.
The prince wished his sentries a good morning when he drew closer, received a few nods in return, and walked over to his tent to take a two-hour nap. The set of fires that burned inside the camp during the night were now little more than collections of ash-covered coals that barely radiated enough heat for cooking breakfast, but it mattered little as his retinue would simply collect some additional fuel when they arose in another hour or two. None of the prince’s retainers had any knowledge of where he had gone during the night and the sentries merely assumed that he had risen early to relieve himself and a walk, so they too remained thoroughly oblivious, which was exactly what Claudius wanted them to be.
✠ ✠ ✠ ✠
Claudius was all of twenty-five years old when he inherited the throne of the Kingdom of Chalcedon three years after his secret meeting with the monk. His father, grandfather, and two additional generations of recent predecessors had all acceded to the throne around the age of thirty, so he was relatively young in comparison. In spite of this fact, the newly-crowned monarch eagerly embarked on the business of finding a wife and securing the succession, both of which remained his foremost concerns outside of politics for much of the next decade. This preoccupation with familial matters also led him to search for information about his lineage and its role in the world, so he spent many of his free hours browsing the palace archives where a dedicated corps of scribes spent their days organizing, filing, and making additions to its voluminous contents.
It had taken several years for Claudius to piece together the narrative of his family’s past and discover his personal connections to the history of an empire that had been gone for a quarter of a millennium, but to him every hour of attentively poring over texts was worth the hassle. This hard-won discovery of personal connections with history made it one of the few subjects that held his interest. Politics was too complicated for him to approach from a scholarly perspective, especially now that he was a political leader concerned more with applications than with theories. His father had scoffed at the idea of studying economics on a personal level because it was the mundane science of running households—a thing better left to the servants. Macroeconomics was consequently an abstraction to Claudius and his contemporaries; it would not become a scholastic discipline in its own right until the late eighteenth century. Though he was religiously observant, he was uninterested in the academic aspects of theology and philosophy. He preferred consulted the expertise of clergymen when he had questions over bumbling about like a blind man when searching for answers.
During his research, Claudius discovered that the Hellaneans, a Greek-speaking people who founded Chalcedon and numerous other cities, had been conquered and subjugated by the Vendians in the distant past. The Vendians referred to the Hellaneans as the Ship People because they were a seafaring civilization with a strong maritime tradition. Their shipwrights were later dubbed Monavi in recognition of their “mountains ships” (mons navi) and their lands were called Terra Monavia, the Land of the Monavi. Thus it was that Monavia received its name and took on a new regional identity within the expanding Vendian Empire. This new identity, however, was impermanent. Centuries of assimilation and change had reduced Terra Monavia to a geographic term that referred to a collection of northern provinces and had few political connotations. Centuries of Vendian dominance had buried the old Hellanean culture and its institutions too deeply to emerge from subordination to its foreign masters.
Droves of barbarians belonging to various ethnicities had been immigrating for generations by the time the last Vendian emperor, Theodosius the Old, died in AD 433. They had formed substantial minority populations within the empire, even becoming localized majority groups which had little incentive to assimilate themselves as their numbers kept increasing. Soon enough, the inhabitants of these enclaves stopped viewing themselves as Vendians and formed new regional identities that were distinct from one another. Linguistic and cultural barriers drove the unassimilated foreigners apart from one another as different tribes claimed neighboring tracts of territory and divisions grew sharper. These sectional groups formed nationalistic aspirations of autonomy, then separatist visions of independence. Once the emperor was dead, the resulting succession crisis provided an opening for invasions and revolts to erupt anywhere they could, thus causing the Vendian ship of state to founder amidst twenty-one years of civil war.
The king’s forbearers had diligently assembled the crumbling remains of several defunct Vendian provinces into a new country whose people were tied together by only their shared belief that they had a common identity. They had navigated the rising tides of sectionalism and civil strife, using the common dreams of bygone imperial glory to unify, nurture, and grow their kingdom. A collection of Vendian cultural and political institutions still survived, lending people even more hope that their slowly fading visions for the future were achievable within a few generations. After many years of separation from their former southern overlords, old sectional tendencies reappeared and the people no longer considered collecting and consolidating the old remnants of a dead empire sufficient to satiate their appetite for a great civilization to call their own. Disparate groups were being bound together by this common aspiration, offering the king a chance to unify their efforts under his banner. As the years passed he grew more confident about the prospects for his little kingdom and was determined to capitalize on them. As luck had it, the new Kingdom of Chalcedon was far more politically stable than many of the other city-states that had formed in the north after the Vendian Empire collapsed like a house of cards.
The king made good on fulfilling his vision, continuing what his predecessors had begun while still providing parallel avenues for building upon his kingdom’s new cornerstones of faith and virtue. Curiously for some, his first step towards the groundwork for his empire was rooted in history. He had read about the structure and functions of the Vendian Senate and the officials called censors who monitored elections of senators and other officials. Their tasks were so critical that they were required to lead pure lives that were dedicated to the causes of public service and political integrity—the very class of individuals who he needed. Claudius was soon married and merged his kingdom with that ruled by his new wife, fusing the two halves to create the Monavian Empire. Two days later, he formed a new body of censors with whom he shared his vision, entrusting them with the sacred task of defending and upholding the principles of the country he had set out to create.