Vinyatírion, MenelmacarOmelas. The name was one that derived from the writings of the Dramathurge Le-Guin, a parable and tale that was everything from philosophical quandry to allegory. The tale of a paradisical city state without want which remained only so by the suffering of a single individual, a child, imprisoned in the bowels of the Earth. It was a tale about many things, short but significant, variations upon this theme were part of the literary education of children and others on the road to becoming citizens of the Great Civilization. It was part of the
Corpus Literis Civilis of the Great Civilization; along with many other texts, it taught the failings of utilitarianism, it taught the ethic of responsibility, and the credo of universal responsibility.
Here, beneath the teeming city whose spires reached the stratosphere, as far beneath the ground as those gleaming heights were above it, beneath the arcades where children played and the colonnaded gymnasia where the Menelmacari improved their bodies in endless tests of physical skill, the theatres and the great soaring opera house with its own clouds, the observation platforms and the city-forests that breathed for the vast city like lungs, there was a reflection of that tale. A prison beneath the great palace of the House of Fëanor. The city was within the nigh-extinct caldera of an ancient super-volcano, the pulse of the living Earth flowing through it, where a vast part of the continental crust had broken in times long past. The volcano was tamed, channelled by ancient arts, and provided abundant geo-thermal power, though the inhabitants had long exceeded the output of such a power source, and plentiful building materials, porphyry and marble, and many more, that had attracted the Noldor, with their affinity for delving into the Earth.
The prison was a bleak place, so deep that the rock itself was warm to the touch, and insulated by gates and barred barriers. Here, the prisoner languished; languishing was all that was possible in this place. A guardian that never slept nor rested in its vigil stood watch nearby, wrought of that same stone, and few indeed could pass. The Earth was hewed with runes of healing and succor, that would otherwise be welcome, but here, served to prevent suicide and force the prisoner to remain sane. The prisoner would never die of natural causes within this age of the Earth; she had seen to that herself before her capture, replacing much of her body with living plastics and alchemical creations built on the backs of other suffering.
The door rarely opened; the cell was an ancient bubble of rock that could house hundreds, and the prisoner had not left in years that grew long and heavy by now, it was not dark; illuminated enough that the prisoner could see herself. Food was presented at times, dropped from a chute above, and enough facilities to remove waste existed in the cell to allow a degree of cleanliness; the Lord Ranisath did not wish his prize to die.
She had once been an Empress; in happier times, perhaps, she had ruled a nation whose name had been forgotten, whose people had been destroyed in the billions. She had herself to blame for that, a fascist and a slave-owner, she had sworn and singed a treaty with abolitionist nations to prohibit slavery in her realm, and for this she would in her tyranny, be left at peace.
She had reneged on that treaty. The nation had been destroyed by abolitionist crusaders, and she had fled, hoping to find a chance to flee and live. The Lord Ranisath’s webs had ensnared her; and he had promised her sanctuary in his house. This he had given, for he lived far above her. No slaver could be permitted to walk free in the land of Menelmacar, though, that was the Lady’s command, and so she had been taken to the deeping cells.
Here she had remained; here she would abide until the end of days.
Death she had craved long ago, but she would not receive it, for Death was a mercy for the recidivist; the Great Civilization hated many things more than slavery, and among them, the recidivist enslaver was such a being.
It was well known that she was here, there were five principles of justice, or so the C’tani were taught, deterrence, rehabilitation, protection of others, retribution, and symbolic denunciation; deterrence was the goal here. The prisoner had likely forgotten her name, and who she used to be, but it was well known, as was her fate. She had once been Ling Tan, Empress of Greater Tezdrian, a nation that had now died at last the lingering death inflicted on it by the crusader-state of Lyras for her oathbreaking.
It was well known to all, that was the point, that the price of oathbreaking with crusader powers could be heavy; the Great Civilization was one such, and it had made a point of showing at whiles that the punishment fell hardest upon the rulers of those it opposed, personally. The King of Altea was called a prince by now, and a prisoner within his own land, forced to stand at the side of the Great Civilization’s Regent. The Premier of New Freedomstan, had been handed over to the enemies he had attacked, despite being a personal friend of the Lord Ranisath before his crimes, who had watched with stern unsmiling countenance as he was executed by Slow Slicing. In the Sherant Desert of Aligreth, in a high tower, a Prince of the Scandinvans endured the long years of imprisonment alone and forgotten by all, save the propagandists of the C’tani. On and on the tally went of those who had once stood high among the mighty and paid at the hands of the C’tani for their crimes against the powerless.
There was no immunity for the heads of states in the eyes of the Great Civilization. Such stern commitment to justice, they said, was what made them Great.
For a first crime, one could sue for forgiveness; for a second, committed in full knowledge that one had received mercy, there was far less compassion. Less so then for the crime of genocide, which they held as worse than mere slavery; a slave could be freed at any time, and most wounds could be healed, a murder victim could rarely be raised from the grip of death ethically.
High above the cells of Vinyatirion, and above the highest of its towers, satellites orbited; watching with the same unceasing vigilance that the guards watched the cell, from their high vantage point, they tabulated and matriculated the deeds of those states on Arda that had been granted such forgiveness by the C’tani; and the coldly precise minds that watched through these eyes.