The Judgement of Peace (Closed)

[The Ctan]

Gerry, The South Lands, Valkia

The intersection of the Street of a Million Gods and the Street of Many Fools was one of the larger squares in Gerry, and it was home to the trambril banging sound of the Circus Imperiale’s Roustabouts, “The Greatest Show to Come To Earth! Come one, come all to the Imperiale, at Angran Park!” the people of Gerry were used to such things, and indeed they were not the only performers making the square ring. The Street of a Million Gods was the religious thoroughfare that dominated the east-west route of Gerry’s vast New Town, a snaking roadway that was not fast but which cut hither and yon like a drunken snake passed out across the landscape and sprawled in indolence, the New Town had been laid and built in a single night by the C’tani engineers, the New Town was a marvel, standing where weak ground had stood, stairs led down to it from the old town, to where some force beyond the understanding of any of the people of the city had fused sand into sandstone and formed a vast and flat new settlement to expand the city.

The routsabouts of the circus were making a noise near the hundreds of preachers of the Street of a Million Gods, religions from aross the world in their many forms came to Gerry to access the flocks of Turtleshroomian worshippers that could not be touched in the homeland, and where they could gain worshippers from the infamously religious nations, in a country where they could practice the theurgic magic that many possessed that made staid religions with silent gods seem dubious.

The Great Temple of Bastet loomed with a many tiered stone pillars over the square, its neko preachers used belled tambourines to call to those who passed by to witness the miracles within, while on the other side of the square the vast Grand Temple of Celestia Triumphant rose in white limestone with stained glass windows and broad arches, its walls flowing with water not unlike the Holy City in which the diety it commemorated ruled.

The Street of a Million Gods had taken longer to build, however, for it had the clash of the architecture from the myriad faiths of the world who came hence, there was no space for cars within the city, the entire New Town was built in the multi-layered fashion of the C’tani’s own cities, vehicles confined to underground levels that traced through the myriad buildings in ordered grids, with broader tunnels beneath. The expense of this was of course, prohibitive, but Gerry was one of the few places in all of the South Lands where cars were inexpensive enough for a commoner to afford them; though the population were not permitted the convenience of the high speed gravitic vehicles that the C’tani created for their own use. Within the Old City, with its gambling dens and other routes cars choked the old roads, but here, everything was pedestrianized or linked with endless underlayer tunnels of high-speed mass transit or car parking hives.

The preachers and the crowds could therefore cover the entire street, and ambled, often arguing, often fighting, and above all jockeying for position, for the Street of a Million Gods wound across the streets of the New City dedicated to tourism and the professional distribution of vice. In Gerry it was possible to stumble from a house of ill repute to a public house and thence to a gambling den, stop off in five temples and end the night in an opium den, chasing illusory dragons while reclined behind a beaded corner two paces from an actual dragon, or at least a dragonborn.

The Priestesses of Bastet were popular targets of haranguing and verbal attack by the puritanical Christians who tilted at the windmill, or perhaps blender, of vice that was liberated Gerry, trying to impose the morals of the South on the decadent city, or perhaps simply seeking to save souls. A gangel-Turtleshroomer in the dog-collar could be seen arguing with a neko priestess who wore no clothes above the waist save for feathers and petals, while sodden and sober visitors alike looked on as she swished her restored ears and tail with every point she made with sneering self-assurance.

Ten years ago, she would never have dared, ten years ago, she had been afraid of the police. Today, she was not afraid of the law, even though the most visible symbols of the law were vastly more terrifying than they had ever been before.

In the square stood a group of what might at first have seemed to be strange statues. They were metal and tall, towering at seven feet even in their strange hunched pose, easily able to draw themselves to a greater height. Each one was armed with a lightning lash, a strange weapon that appeared like nothing so much as a staff, but which could be used to punish with terrible pain or cremate a human. They were necrons, impervious, terrible, and only the visible reminder of the apparatus of control that shrouded Gerry.

The Red Judge

Gerry was equipped with a Black Arrow security system, one of the most effective deterrents to terrorist activity available. Every one of the lamp posts that lined its streets was equipped with auditory receivers and optical monitors, that zeroed in on the sound of any weapon, a single gunshot – in some cases a bolt being drawn back – could be identified and a suppression team displaced to that location within seconds.

Such things were the tip of an intricate iceberg of systems that kept terrorism in the city limited; necrons were not an unusual sight here.

The Rider, though, was different. It was red, hooded and swathed, but not in fabric. It was covered in human flesh, and its mount was covered in similar glistening meat, a string of skulls surrounded the skeletal mount of an ancient, equine animal with a curving horn, not quite like the skeleton of anything terran, but reminiscent. Its metal head emerged from a caparison of strips of flensed human flesh that gleamed with wetness, freshly killed.

The priests of some faiths cursed, the others exalted. Whoever they – for more than one, several skulls jangled on chains of black iron – were the victims who had been flayed to provide the rider’s clothing and cloak were slavers.

Slavers, the worst of beasts. Slavers, the paragon of baseness. Slavers, the symbolic criminals. Slavers, the evil that all other evil was tempted to.

The beast, mechanical as it was, trotted through the streets, crowds parting before it, flushed back from its scent.

Its road was east.

Night and day made no difference to the rider, which came from the portals that linked Gerry to the rest of the Great Civilization, and made its way by hoof, carrying a scythe that smoked with green smoke.

It rode East, to the realm of Darussalam. It did not stop, the mount needed neither rest nor sleep, it rode eastward, its destination, Samarra. As straight as an arrow it rode, heeding neither boundary nor road.

[Darussalam]

١

When the rest of Valkia declined into scenes of chaos and bloodshed, the Abode of Peace persisted true to its name—an oasis of calm stranded amidst a turbulent, violent ocean.

As Sterkvelso was consigned to obscurity, Asahina flattened, Aradon subjugated and pacified, and Jonesboro plundered into every sort of woe, so did the metropolis of Al-Mada’in shined brilliantly, wallowing in riches acquired from decades of peace and free commerce. And not only there—from the polytheist settlements scattered around Azhdaha Mountains to the villages of Black-Ifranj, from the dots of Dalhaite communes to the sacred Caliphal court in Aluhash, all men knew illustrious tranquility and prosperity absent in other great polities of Black and White Lands alike.

“It is God’s grace”, the Darussalami would humbly declaim when this is pointed to them. “He ordains upon our commonwealth the law, and under the law that we reap God’s wealth”.

If anything, the statement above was perhaps the greatest puzzle of all. All Darussalamis exalt “the law”, this law they call Mu’amalat, the Divine Justice, a customary system conceived and developed by radical Muslim scholars eight centuries ago, a set of natural laws ordained by God and deduced through human reason revered highly by these heretics. It was universal, timeless, and infallible. Mu’amalat was sacred, it was inviolable to no one, not the pauper nor the merchant, and certainly not the institution of the State. And as every State in the world was founded and maintained on robbery, assault, and murder, all unlawful on the eyes of the Mu’amalat, suffice to say that this didn’t bode well for the presence of one in the realm.

And indeed, the State was inconspicuous throughout the Abode of Peace.

There were the fuqaha who interpreted the endless tomes of legal precedents and revealed the tablets of renewed commandments to the Believers, but none of their decrees were legally binding, and others might interpret the law if they desire to. There were the quda who judged the plaintiff’s case underneath the baldachin of the court, but they cannot “rule” anything, they cannot designate what is unlawful as lawful and vice-versa, and anyone may form a court if that is, once again, what they desire. There was the Caliph in Aluhash, revered by the Believers as the Shadow of God, the divinely-ordained guardian of the Mu’amalat and innumerable other ostentatious titles, but his authority was divine, that said in a less flattering term, symbolic, he may not seize the property of others nor force the populace to servitude for his own benefit, and neither can anyone else. There were vigilante communities, watchmen’s associations, self-defense commonwealths—as long as they followed the precepts of the law, all of them were equally its instruments.

There was no State, yet there was order, birthed from competition in the market of ideas.

A contradiction, a foreigner will say. A state of nature as God has intended, the Darussalami will reply in self-satisfaction. After all, they will argue, it was quite self-evident that order will emerge naturally in absence of the false idols, a true order that aimed for the benefit of all. Unlike the false idols who enforced theft and murder cloaked with false order, the hypothetical Darussalami will continue with a disgusted scowl.

All states give birth to chaos, they will conclude. All states are criminal in the eyes of the Mu’amalat.

٢

“All present may offer their honour before the Shadow of God, Custodian of the Noble Sanctuaries, Commander of the Faithful…”

The assemblymen, esteemed representatives of the associations, commonwealths, cooperatives, confederations, syndicates, and communes from throughout the Abode of Peace stood from their seats, customarily bowed and touched their headwear—none present was without them—as a young teenager boy approached the Peacock Throne. The boy’s appearance was standard to that of his predecessors—slender, olive-skinned, thick brows, brown eyes that glimmered cryptically. Signifying his status as an ecclesiastical leader, he was attired in the clothing of the Muslim clergy: a cream-coloured, high-collared robe, the qabaa, underneath a flowing black mantle, all of which were certainly tailored with considerable quality and cost, finally with a black turban perched on his head.

Trailing behind the Commander of the Faithful was another youth, dressed in similar attire except entirely in deathly white. This appearance befitted him: a pale, quiet, delicate boy, eyes flickering in doubt as he nimbly followed the caliph’s footsteps. Had the turban been absent and his bun unraveled, revealing his hair that extended down to his waist, those unfamiliar with Darussalami customs would be unable to distinguish him from a girl. Nevertheless, for those who do, he was unmistakably the enigmatic rafiq—Companion—of the Commander of the Faithful, heir of the ancient tradition among Darussalami caliphs that had puzzled the foreign Believers for ages.

The assemblymen seated shortly after the Commander of the Faithful and his Companion did so, and the ceremony continued.

In normal circumstances, the caliph’s presence in Samarra would be rightly perceived as unusual, and carried a baggage of questions from the audience of the Jirga. Usually, the Commander of the Faithful either secluded himself with his entourage of mystics and concubines in Aluhash, a fortress high on the sacred Salang Mountain that was the traditional residence of the Ma’adids, or graced numerous benevolent philanthropists, benefactors, and business partners in the Abode of Peace or abroad. Despite being the seat of the Jirga, the realm’s largest military-confederation, as well as the wealthiest quarter in the metropolitan sprawl of Al-Mada’in, the Caliph’s dilapidated palace that stood in contrast with opulent skyscrapers that dotted the new city understandably did not appeal him or his predecessors in the slightest.

But the present circumstance was rather different—this time of the year, a dignitary of a foreign state decided to grace the Abode of Peace a visit.

The Mu’amalat was quite clear regarding the status of the institution of the State. All states thrived on repression, slavery, and theft. They were criminal gangs dignified by sheer scale of violence and a bloated system of public relations. To put it succinctly, they were illegal organizations, not unlike the criminals that extorted merchants in return for “protection”, or even highway bandits, to be abolished by the force of good and justice.
The Mu’amalat was also quite clear regarding its own status: it was an universal, natural set of laws, to be enforced throughout the world.

Not that one can hear this directly from a Darussalami, anyway. Their culture was that of tārof, a cryptic dance of implications masked underneath ritual politeness. Infrequently, it was interspersed by taqiyya—deception. Their culture was also that of self-interest—it was foremost important that one must benefit oneself while benefiting others, and vice-versa. Trade, free commerce, was the most ideal method for this. Limitless egoism and pointless altruism caused nothing but despair and ruination.

Since the Northern Pilgrimages ravaged the realm in the seventeenth century, numerous military associations formed aftermath have formulated a pragmatic policy of tārof and taqiyya in dealing with foreign states, grounded on the basis of self-preservation. The Jirga maintained cordial relationship with the neighboring Kingdom of Turtleshroom, nominally supporting the survival of its crumbling administration even as it teetered closer on the brink of civil war, and Commonwealth of Asahina, with the latter even enforced the peace of Valkian seas, ensuring Darussalami commerce to flourish. Complex doctrines were bled out by institutions to justify these policies as being compatible with the Mu’amalat.

Then surely, there should be no problem with the C’tani state: the state that proudly proclaims itself to be the home of the freemen, ally of other “free” states, righteous in her battle against the slavers and the tyrants, who constantly vanquished the enemies of the law. The state which power projection easily overshadowed all mad despots and tyrants of Valkia.

And yet, in amidst of the flawless dance of the peacocks, of subtlety and dignified hospitality, there remained an unexplained, unseen dissent. Dissatisfaction. Defiance. The issue was that, perhaps, of a fundamentally different value judgements. The C’tani dignitary’s reported appearance was perceived as a decision from its authority to treat the Abode of Peace as if it was a potential slave state, which was gravely offensive. If anything, yes, the C’tani themselves fitted more the definition of the slave state than the Abode of Peace ever will. The worshipers of false idols, it mattered little whether tyranny arose from the feudal lords or mass-assembly legislature, whether taxation on lawful properties is levied by the mad monarch or presidential decree. This quiet resentment was felt by all present that night, hung on the stagnant air of the Hall of Public Audience and provoked great unease.

Except from the Commander of the Faithful, as he observed the rituals in nonchalant boredom.