The Greatest Sin [Progression Fantasy][Kingdom Building]

Arascus’ Empire, if it can be described as anything, then grand is one. Orderly is another. Efficient is the third. Ultimately, these three are oxymorons, sitting here and writing this, I can see it now. To be grand is to be wasteful, to be efficient is to embrace some disorder, to be orderly is to be quiet and meek. Yet the Empire is all three, because it chooses to be none of them.

I have covered the benign, and I do meet it as benign, corruption within the Empire. There is a certain wonder as to how Arascus manages to get any data on the populace whatsoever, yet likewise, the Imperial Census is apart from Imperial law. The Bureau of Chroniclers is one of the smallest in the world, it is all almost entirely automated, and supposedly, there have been scandals that it does not report crimes. Naturally, the populace love the idea of such a thing. Inherently, it fills with me with disgust, yet the Bureau does function. Whereas almost everything needs a stamp in the Empire, a stamp is bought with a bottle.

And in turn, the Empire is surprisingly efficient. Its arsenal of red tape is actually a guillotine that is wielded out for executions. Everyone understands that certain crimes are not crimes at all, and are mere breaches of the Imperial Order. And yet, in most places, all that is needed for argument of the Imperial Order is just the memory of Pantheon Peace, when governments, although independent, still maintained a level of submission towards the White Pantheon. And in that, to the White Pantheon’s ideals, and in that, to my ideal of Order.

For what sort of man will wallow in nostalgia for bureaucracy and stamps, when now he is given the freedom of corruption. The planning permission of a house can either be rejected outright, with prejudice, indicating that some other entity holds importance to it. Or it can be negotiated, and in that, it will be negotiated over a table. A heart would have to be cowardly, cold and rotten not to be filled with mischievous whimsy over that.

This open hypocrisy, in turn, becomes a filter for the Bureaus and for high leadership. Whereas no official blacklist exists, the price is participation. There is very a ceiling that one reaches. Although punishment will never come, likewise, there will be always be a candidate that is more clean, more respectable, and so on. Kassandora and Malam both share this view, that the ability to cheat, lie and steal, is wasted on leadership.

The Imperial Army, or rather, its Logistic Corps, is routinely involved in a scandal. Yet the scandals are pried open and they fall apart or even celebrated? Military vehicles should not be used for civilian jobs, yet how often has a local commander given permission to haul trees felled in a storm with trucks bearing a regimental banner? How often do helicopters meant to fire rockets go to rescue stranded mountaineers? And this is all done under the table, a favour for a favour. It never reaches High Command.

When I asked Kassandora of it, she simply shrugged and asked me why she should care.

- Excerpt from “Imperial Bureaucracy Review: Third Edition”, written by Goddess Maisara, of Order.

Olephia poured herself a glass of wine, strengthened it with vodka, then closed her eyes and stuck her tongue out when she tasted the mixture. Now THAT was terrible. She thought of pouring the drink down the drain, then reminded herself of how close Arascus and Fortia had been sitting when they captured Allasaria, and she immediately downed the rest of it. The bottle of wine was plugged up with some tinfoil, the bottle vodka would sit on her counter, she went off to retrieve her orange juice to mix it with.

What was that even? And this job? Well, she liked looking at the stars. There was nothing wrong about that, and so she would look, but she didn’t really know what she was searching for. A piece of a ring? Olephia poured her orange juice, mixed it half-half with vodka and went back to her viewing glass. She smiled at the thought of the ridiculousness of trying to search for something that high up with the naked eye. There was finding a needle in the haystack, and then there was finding a piece of a ring out in the vacuum of space.

Arascus was no artist, that was for sure. He didn’t know what it was like to search for the correct colour that would serve as a drop of contrast in the night sky. But then he gave her this job, and she was sure that it was just because he had received the Code-Black alert that originally took the both of here, she was very obviously mad at him.

Well she should be! It served him right! Who did he think he was?! Who did Fortia think she was?! Some old hag of a Divine thinking she could waltz in to up-end the entire system and hierarchy that existed! Oh no no no no. Olephia would go to Irinika with this. Or maybe to Anassa. How would Arascus like that then? Olephia sipped her drink and made a sour face as she stared up at the night sky. Well… there was Kronos. Now missing a part of its ring.

She would paint that. Allasaria had talked more, apparently there were thirteen arcs in total. They couldn’t have been equal in size, the Second Arc was already more than tenth of the circle. The picture would have an ironic name them, something to draw and remind the audience of the fact that demons apparently couldn’t divide a circle into equal chunks.

She traced the path it should have gone. Or maybe she traced an entirely different one. Or maybe she traced a path that wasn’t a path at all. The dwarven spyglass that had been built here hummed and creaked every time she twisted the little knobs that would make it move. It was a bubble on top of the mountain, far away from civilization, with only a few villages across the dark countryside.

This was farce, on one hand. To even hope against hope that she would spot it. But the Empire operated on farce. Cleaning the oceans was farce because they were doing it piece-by-piece, and that farce would eventually lead them to a clean Eparika. Winning the lottery was farce, Olephia had never done it. And yet, people still managed to win the lottery somehow. She kept on looking at the stars, gliding from left to right, slowly enough that she should notice something.

Olephia smiled to herself as her mind wandered. Of course she lived around people. She wasn’t so incompetent, so bitter, and such a caricature of an some ancient witch, and not the sort of witches that practiced spells and illusions to seduce men a tenth their age but the sort of hag with wrinkles and boils who needed a cane to walk and… She pulled away from the telescope, her fingers tightening as they wanted to grab a pencil.

She knew exactly what sort of painting Fortia would receive very soon.

All military stations capable of operating at such distances should be made aware of the situation, within reason.

“The order was that you send all signals up into space Captain.” General Menith felt stupid saying the words, but the order came directly from Goddess Kassandora and so he had been put into a bind. This station, he was only visiting because it had been close by, the rest of them. His secretary, a human girl called Halenka, was already planning a route for him to take. She was from some backwater village in Orsk so the idea of a roadtrip through western Epa sounded far more exciting to her than it did to the elven General.

“I understand that sir.” Captain Terriote said again. “But if we knew what we were searching for, we would be able to identify it easier.” Menith released a deep breath. Sometimes, soldiers had stupid ideas that simply needed to be removed from their minds. Sometimes, those ideas made perfect sense. The second one was far worse than the first.

General Menith looked at the Captain of the early-warning radar station, then at the crew. Through the glass panes that encircled the entire control room, there was a massive radar dish and a tower, the former already pointed up. So they had followed the command to the letter already, even if they didn’t know what for. Well… That was the Imperial Military for you. “I cannot tell you because I myself do not know.” Menith said. “And that is the honest answer, the order came from above, to search for unidentified entities in the solar system.”

Captain Terriote sighed, then shook his head. “Can you give us a size estimate then? Or anything.”

“I’ve heard it will be big.” Menith said. That seemed to relight a fire within the man, although it was something to work with. Menith understood the feeling exactly.

“Do we know how big?”

“Estimated to be eighty-thousand kilometres long and much thinner. Word is that it’s a tube. Whether the tube is a circle or a square, I do not know.”

Issue a bounty for the public, the truth will get out anyway. Helenna is tasked with preparing with panic-management, not with panic-control.

“There’s an Imperial Bounty out.” Connor said as he leaned back in his chair. James groaned next to him, arms dropping down by the sides of his table, and here he had thought he would get to finish the next text of this month: a psychological memoir written by an old professor of magic who reflected the pre and post-Imperial Era.

“What on?” Nicholas asked. Already he was leaning forward, a dozen radios blared and beeped around them. Outside, the rain beat against the walls of the Farrowdale Monitoring Station. James had not wanted to get a job in the first place, although he supposed that sitting here and clicking a few spreadsheets, then sending them off to people who cared about them, constituted as a lack of a job.

“New unidentified space objects.” Connor said, his eyes going wide. “For…” He trailed off. “Fucking Hell, that’s a big one.”

“How big?” James asked.

“Up above? Space?” Nicholas said, already turning to the station’s monitors. They had a pair of dishes that could survey space. Supposedly. In theory. Not on paper. But it was better than monitoring the weather and definitely better than deal with the bureaucrats from ACD, the Atmospheric Control Department under the Bureau of Magic. Frankly, the less time one had to spend around magicians, the better that was.

“Space.” Connor said. “It’s huge. It’s a tunnel apparently, or a massive worm. They don’t know themselves but it’s predicted to be out there.”

“Did you know they wrote about world-eater snakes in the past?” James said. “Do you think it’s that?”

“I hope not.” Connor said seriously. “Estimated to be up to, but could be over, a hundred thousand miles in size. But it could be as small as fifty.” He made a grimace. “That’s a big fucking snake then.”

“We can definitely see that.” Nicholas said. “How much is it? Time for an early holiday? World-trip maybe? We could see Arika.”

“It’s a bit more than that.” Connor said, once again looking back to his phone, it was blaring with notifications. None of them important, from friends and family and so on. Time had to be killed here. Or it could be outlasted.

“Enough for a car?” Nicholas said.

“It’s a nice set of cars.” Connor, at this point, was just entertaining himself. Still though, he had to look at the number again. One. Two. Three. Yeah, that was seven fucking digits right there. A whole seven of them.

“Just spill it.” James said. “Come on, it’s going to be good, isn’t it?”

“A million.” A pin dropped and suddenly, all three men were staring at each other in silence. Connor made a slow nod. “A fucking million boys.” Nicholas turned towards the flashing gizmos on his monitor. James closed his book down. Connor put his phone away. They were going to find that piece of shit giant snake.

All universities and other public buildings will also be enlisted to the task.

“What’s this?” Annette asked in that pretty Rancais accent that Terry liked to listen to so much. She had been part of the waves that had settled in Allia during the Anarchia crisis, and then when it ended, she had simply never moved back home. Of course she wouldn’t thought, there wasn’t an institution out there like Camford. And Allia had far better telescopes than Rancais did, so of course a woman that watched the stars would stay.

“It came in from Internal Affairs.” Hews said as he looked at the staff in the professor’s lounge of the University. “Fucking IA, again, I’ll say it so that no one else has to.” Terry chuckled at the joke, it was true, and it was what made this job worth teaching frankly. He remembered the day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, year-to-year, grind back when he had started. When the textbooks where the same and he had grown sick of repeating course material the fourth year in.

Now? They had been working on railguns and nuclear weapons, on sending towers flying across continents and then carrying those towers across land, on cleaning up oceans and making useful materials out of Tartarian ash. Computer Science had been given the MURGS system to work on, Construction Engineering was to calculate the properties of the stone that the demons had left on Arda, Material Sciences had a warehouse full of their swords and armours and everyday, they were discovering a new way to break the metal. It made being a professor fucking exciting. Hews read the letter, then stared at the dozen teachers in the finely lounge. “You’re not going to guess this one.”

“Biology.” Sarah said excitedly. That was her own field.

“Nope.” Hews said, the woman somewhat deflated.

“Physics.” Malcolm raised his hand.

“Closer.” Hews said. He looked around. “But no, I’ll give you a hint. It’s up.” Terry had no damn clue. Up?

“Come on, you’re going to have to say more than that!” Annette said again.

“You’ll be happy about it.” Hews said and Annette’s eyes opened wide.

“No.” She said. “Seriously? Astrology?” Hews made a slow nod and Annette rose up out of her seat, clapping her hands.

“YES!” She shouted. “YES YES YES!” She wiggled her hips, stuck her tongue out, and made an L with her finger and thumb on her forehead. “Take that boys. I told you it was our turn soon!”

Do not shut down Skylink, but take the redundant satellites and redirect them to look outwards.

Every day, Torwold would check the InformationCowboy. It was the wild west of his frontier, a forum and a newsletter put together, when people were not looking for security, nor efficiency, nor long-term support but speed. Usually, it was cretins. Mainly it was cretins. Large firms had their own teams and would put out contracts on their pages, professionals had contacts in the industry already. It was only a way for programmers to make a few Marks coding something that others were too lazy to code.

But every now and then, there would be a big fish to catch. The banner on InformationCowboy would turn yellow, or orange, or red, depending on the reward. The little cowgirl mascot on the side would spin her lasso and she’d have a special animation, custom-made each time. And Torwold’s eyes would light up when he saw the reward displayed. It was a grey zone, really. No one wanted to say they hired from here, but if it was good enough for the SIS or IBI when they were needing to find people, then it was good enough for Torwold.

Once, there had been a military order here, that had been bright red. They wanted for people to check the autopilots on planes and whether anything was happening that shouldn’t be happening. Torwold’s had missed that bounty. Today though, he stared at the banner. A colour he had never seen before: Black. The cowgirl was nowhere in site.

He clicked the link, and it took him directly to IndependentContracting.Em. And there it was. His eyes couldn’t believe what he was reading: Independent contractors required, to send finished prototypes or to share theories, payouts up to one million marks, depending on level of completion of project, with bonuses available. His eyes went over to the objectives and he felt his breath catch.

The development of new, super-long range land-based radar will be open. Individual will be provided their own funding and team, if selected. What was that even? All theories, inventions, designs or concepts with detail the extension of radar range will be welcome. He pulled out his phone, he knew nothing about that, but he had friends who did. And then he saw the word that made him take pause so that he could look at it again, and again, and again. Interplanetary ranges.

But then, he saw something he could do: The reprogramming of the Skylink Transmission Satellites to serve as reconnaissance devices, if possible. He stared at that, blinking in utter disbelief. His eyes glossed over the terms, it wasn’t a long post: Source Code required… One satellite has been designated for testing… And his hands went over to grab a piece of paper. It could be possible, couldn’t it? Surely…

His phone buzzed, a message from a friend. “Did you check IC.em?”

Bring the space telescope plans forward. Get it functioning as quickly as possible. We do not have the luxury of waiting for the stardock to complete.

“This is Starman, requesting communicating with Lighthouse, over.” Captain Garin leaned into his microphone even though he had been watching Starman for the better part of the last hour. It was bigger than the Lighthouse, it was brighter, it was unprecedented, and it had dual stage rocket that brought a cargo trucks worth of machinery up here, trailer included.

“This is Lighthouse, read you loud and clear Starman. Over.” Everyone knew about this mission, even if no one really enjoyed the thought of it. A month ago, they had been only just taken their first space-walk. Attached on ropes affixed to the Lighthouse, so that no one would fly off into space. They had stared down at Arda, at its endless oceans, the green forests and fields, the deserts of golden sand. The Sassara covered in diamond, it glittered and reflected light that could even be seen from space. The storms and clouds and hurricanes that formed and then were repelled from habituated areas by mages. The dark Eparika, its east was notably blacker than its west, where apparently they were diluting it with the Alanktyda, fifty times larger.

And now, they were getting to work. Not just on sending data back or running reports on various things in space, but they were actually going to get to work. A new satellite model had been sent up. Normally, those would travel on rocket. This one was large enough that it needed to be assembled. “We are going to be entering parallel orbit to you Lighthouse, keep her steady, over.”

“Understood Starman.” Captain Garin said. “Should I turn her in any way? Over.”

“Keep your top to us, we’ll keep our top to you Lighthouse. The doors open up. Don’t jump, everything’s tied down. Over.”

“Copy that, Over.” Captain Garin finished the conversation and pulled out the tablet with the information manual that had been sent over here in electronic copy. It wasn’t long, that was for sure, and there wasn’t even any information on how to start the thing, that was covered in a section that could be summed up as: Ring Arda and await further assistance.

But he saying that, it did feel good to be building something up here. Maybe space would never feel as good as Arda, but it could feel Ardan. He looked over at the title page: Arda’s Eye, The Imperial Space Telescope: Construction Guide.

And so, the Giant that had spent so long staring down finally turned its head to gaze at the stars.