Babel

The Republic of Babel
Politics and Religion
Capital: Emisum Government: Representative Democracy Consul: Semiramis Religion: Merodist Uristism Alignment: Force Primary Magic: RUNTRAN 4990
Population and Economy
Population: Human, Leonid minority Languages: Babelic, Alfar Food Production: 16 (1 surplus) Tax Revenue: 4095 thousand Dinars Mana Output: 1750 million ergs Resources: 25 beasts 100 books

The Republic of Babel was established by the overthrow of the Orthodox Kingdom of Babel. The extremism and misgovernment of that Orthodox regime led to a radical anti-theist ideology spreading through underground presses, eventually overthrowing the theocracy and establishing a state based on anti-clericalism and human rights, in percieved opposition to Divine Right. More traditional states are now watching the experiment with anything from amusement to alarm, while the fledgling republic seeks to secure its position and spread freedom and democracy to the oppressed of other lands and shores.

Budgets

Budget of Winter 5300
Budget of Spring 5300
Budget of Summer 5300

History

Ancient History

In the early days, a convergence of geographical, geological and supernatural factors produced outstanding farmland in an arid region of Creation, which was settled and densely populated by humans, who were conquered by the Alfar like all others when their time came.

After the influence of the Alfar became negligible and then vanished completely, the great men of Babel collapsed into bickering, leading to a long period of misrule by warring noble families that exchanged settlements and populations like game pieces. The image of the ‘Grand Game’ or ‘Noble Game’ remains strong in Babelic culture, both as a board game (now unpopular) and as a concept invoked to condemn the way nobles and gods use their subjects. However, the Noble Game itself did not survive the Necromantic war and the coming of Orthodoxy.

The Necromantic War

The Necromantic was was one of the few times in history that the nobles displayed a semblance of unity. With the assistance of Orthodox crusaders they fought in the bitter conflict for decades, and Orthodoxy spread through much of the land. As the war drew to a close however, the lords fell into bickering once more. The Church, displeased, backed the strongest Orthodox lord and with the aid of the Crusaders the region was unified under King Carloman.

The Orthodoxy

Carloman's kingdom established the first unified church and institutions, and was a roaring success. However the governments of his successors were marked largely by incompetence, arrogance and oppression. The most critical manifestation of this was their focus on traditional and foreign enemies which led to a failure to isolate and stamp out rising of Merodist sentiment among the general public until it was too late. The final errors were the decision of the Orthodoxy to support the corrupt government against its opponents, and the public execution of Merodin himself, which sparked a general revolution against both the government and the Orthodox church itself. The Orthodox government was doomed, and certain critical events such as the defection of General Rim-Sun and the isolation of Orthodox reinforcements only hastened the inevitable.

The Republic

That was five years ago. Now the Republic is firmly established, governed by an elected Senate, Representative Councils and a Consul in turn elected by them. The statues of the Orthodox Emperors and Angels have been torn down and replaced with Urist, Merodin and Consul Semiramis, and the masses of the people that validate the power they hold.

Politics

The Principles of the Revolution

1. All rational beings are in essence equal.

2. No authority derives except from the consent of the governed.

• "Can a people crushed by centuries of propaganda and oppression give meaningful consent? Of course not, no more than you or I would accept a confession from a man beaten senseless by his captors. It is our moral duty to free these people and uplift them until they can establish a government of their own."

3. All rational beings inherently possess the rights to life, property, and freedom of thought and agency.

4. These rights may only be abridged as is necessary to defend the rights of others and the principles of the revolution.

• "The promulgation of material denying the righteousness of the revolution is inherently a threat to the rights of the people and the integrity of the republic they have created. To allow these demagogues to walk free is not a defence of our principles, it is a betrayal."

Government

• The Consul holds the power of the executive and is directly elected by the population to five-year terms. He or she is responsible for the treasury, military, foreign policy and civil service and can organise a cabinet to this end.
• At the same time, each province elects a governor who organises a provincial cabinet.
• Each region of 7,500 to 12,500 people can elect one Representative to a five-year term, who forms a Provincial Council with the other Representatives from his province to pass laws regarding the province.
• The representative councils together form Parliament, which debates and votes on laws regarding the entire Republic.
• Executive and legislative elections are staggered by 30 months.

Factions

Revolutionism: A militant formulation. Revolutionist throught holds that all revolutionary states must continuously attempt to advance the revolution, because the Unjustly Powerful will in turn never cease their attempts to crush it. True peace is impossible as long as one or the other remains, and true justice cannot be attained until the world (or the cosmos, in more ambitious theoretical texts) has been unified under rational, democratic rule. The most prominent Revolutionist is Sundjata, but it is an open secret that Semiramis’ sympathies lie with the sect.

Matarism: A moderate, national formulation. Matarism holds that each body of people should formulate their own republic and that established republics should advance the revolution through mutual co-operation and leading by example. It is also less antitheist than most, prescribing merely that spirituality be maintained as a personal matter and that institutions should remain secular. The most prominent Matarist is Matar himself, who serves as Foreign Minister.

Henrism: The Henrists are a minor faction that deemphasises property rights infavour of democratic communal ownership, for fear of the creation of a new de facto aristocracy of wealth. They have established a minor base among farmers opposed to enclosure.

Religion

Religious belief is not actually banned in Babel, though organised religion is. Despite the popularity of the government and state propaganda efforts, a variety of theological perspectives exist in the nation.

On the one extreme are Merodin's most doctrinaire disciples, who hold that the universe has no architect, or that if such a class of entity does exist, their powers are an expression of advanced science and can in principle be replicated. Next to these is what can be considered 'mainstream opinion' in the urban areas, a range of deistic beliefs largely disinterested in theology and hostile to clerics.

Outside of the cities, the Orthodox regime never succeeded in completely stamping out traditional Old God beliefs, which persist in common superstitions and traditions of the peasants. Likewise, while the revolution ended the Orthodoxy itself in Babel, most of the peasantry persists in their ideas of the Orthodox Monad (already divergent from the teachings of the discredited church) in private. The other major religious segment of the population is the former nobility, almost exclusively Orthodox. Their religion is conducted in small private meetings, that are covertly monitored by agents of the government wary of counterrevolution.

Complicating this is the presence of the beastman minority. The Orthodoxy met grave difficulties in their attempt to convert the Soreist demihumans compared to the more sedentary (and recent) human population, who were vulnerable to the tested techniques used against Old God believers elsewhere. Things came to a head during the reign of King Carloman III and his Inquisition, which had a devastating effect on beastman communities. Although one of Zaman I's first acts was to severely curtail that organisation, the damage was done and a wedge was driven between the human kings and their beastman subjects. This lingering enmity was used to great effect by the revolutionaries of some decades later, but by then Soreist belief was part of local demihuman identity. Thankfully for the Merodists, the deemphasis of divine power by in the local Soreism has prevented significant friction thus far.

Geography

Domains of Babel

Babel occupies the majority of the length of the Warad river, extending its authority into the plains on one bank and the hills of the Southern coast.

Military

The Army of the People

Cast

• Semiramis: Consul of Babel. Bright-eyed fanatic. Leader and hero of the Revolution. Widow.
• Kin-Apli: Chairman of the General Council. Dependable bureaucrat who tirelessly but fruitlessly fought corruption and sought reform, then threw in his hat with the revolution when it came.
• Matar: Foreign Minister. Major intellectual of the Merodist movement.
• Souman: Minister of the Interior. Former merchant.
• Sundjata: Minister of War. Unsmiling fanatic. Distrusts Rim-Sun.
• Rim-Sun: General Officer of the Army of the People. Major former Orthodox general. His betrayal was a deathblow to the Orthodox regime, but some questions are still raised about his reliability.
• Riai: Senior professor of programs at Samium University. A savant whose genius surpasses that of her long-suffering husband, but only the spirit of liberalism after the revolution allowed her to enter academia alongside him.
• Ninya: Semiramis' daughter. Entitled brat.

Miscellaneous

Fabulous fashions of the wives of the wealthy: 1, 2,3, 4

Babelic music is primarily based on stringed instruments. The harpsichord is popular in the city, though being supplanted by the newly invented and highly fashionable fortepiano. Rural folk music uses simpler instruments and makes greater use of percussion. Wind instruments are largely limited to the military.

The symbol of the revolution is a red circle, commonly represented with a ribbon or a garland of roses. The heraldry of Babel consists of a red circle on a white field.

Neighbours

To the Southeast of Babel, at the end of the Warad, is found the great city of Mohenjo-Daro and its sorcerer-king.

Directly east along the Lilat are a series of petty states.

Upriver on the Warad is wastes infested with desert creatures drinking from the waters.

The west is sparsely populated, save for trade caravans to Allhime and the attendant bandits.

The hills to the south are populated by scattered beastman tribes that avoid fearsome monsters in the valleys.

The Orthodox Kings

• Carloman I
• Reigned 5201-5225
• Carloman I, or ‘St. Carloman the Great’, was the first King of Babel (though others had claimed that title, they had no credibility). He converted towards the end of the Necromantic wars when he was still a House Head, and proceeded to unite the region under Orthodox government. His centralisation of power and creation of universal military, religious and economic institutions ushered in Babel’s twenty-year ‘Golden Age’. His faith, while thought by many to be a political construction at the start of his reign, is accepted to have become a genuine and humble piety by its end. In recognition of his achievements and qualities he was canonised as a saint after his death in battle, an honour perhaps also facilitated by his son’s generosity towards the Orthodoxy.

• Carloman II
• Reigned 5225-5233
• Carloman II, or ‘Carloman the Gilded’, was raised in opulence and majesty, and set out to redouble this at his ascension to the throne. Money flooded from the coffers to fund lavish cathedrals, palaces and parties. It also funded several ill-conceived wars driven more by dreams of glory than concrete benefit. Despite the excellent state of the imperial treasury Carloman II managed to run deeply into debt, and the free flow of wealth fostered a climate of corruption and inefficiency that Carloman failed to combat. He eventually succumbed to a catastrophic digestive incident after a particularly debauched birthday celebration.

• Carloman III
• Reigned 5233-5257
• Carloman III, or ‘Carloman the Pious’ was a sharp change from his father. Where the elder was profligate and generous, the younger was tight-fisted and driven by hellfire. The parties stopped except for the barest needs of diplomacy. The palaces were stripped of valuables and many were repurposed or sold off. The ‘moral decay’ of the realm was sharply arrested by a crackdown on corruption, theft, heresy, blasphemy, immodesty and all the other sins that plagued the mortal soul. Unfortunately as he aged he was overtaken by madness, and his purges went from the harsh to the monstrous, gutting his officers and bureaucrats and driving the people to hatred and rebellion. Given this it is perhaps not surprising that his death was in suspicious circumstances, but no wrongdoing was found by the investigators.

• Zaman I
• Reigned 5257-5260
• Carloman III’s son Zaman, known as ‘Zaman the Bright’ was an immediate and welcome change. He relaxed the moral laws, improved diplomatic relations, and instituted several important reforms. While his statesmanship was excellent, it was arrested by two flaws: That the liberalisation allowed the Merodism that had taken root during the reign of the Pious to develop itself more easily, and his failure to instigate sufficient quarantine measures early enough to prevent the Mancer’s Pox outbreak of 3759 becoming a nationwide epidemic which eventually claimed his life and that of his children.

• Carloman IV
• Reigned 5260
• Carloman IV, ‘Young Carloman’ attained the throne at the age of merely 15, already suffering from the pox. He remained stoic through the pain and delerium and directed the relief efforts as best he could, but he was in the last weeks of his life and died shortly after his father.

• Zaman II
• Reigned 5260
• Zaman II, ‘Zaman the Innocent’, was ten years his brother’s junior. He became emperor at the age of 5, and died of the Pox a few days later, the last of his generation.

• Zaya
• Reigned 5260-5269
• Zaman I’s sister Zaya seized the throne after the death of her brother’s line, and ably filled the power vacuum as the plague passed. Unfortunately while not possessed of any gross character flaws she was simply not nearly as capable at exercising power as she was at obtaining it. A series of blunders stymied the recovery from the disaster and more than obliterated her brother’s successes in diplomacy and reform. Zaya’s death in 3769 remains unexplained.

• Regency Council
• Governed 5269-5274 under Carloman V
• Zaya’s heir Carloman V was not of age when she passed, and the realm suffered for five years under the corrupt, self-enriching rule of a regency council comprised of the sort of talent that occupied the upper echelons of Babel by this time.

• Carloman V
• Reigned 5269-5295, Governed 5274-5295
• More by luck than judgement, Carloman V managed to wrest control from the regency council when he came of age. It swiftly became apparent that he had inherited all of his mother’s incompetence and enhanced it with a monstrous arrogance that ended all hope of a return to the golden age in this generation. Unable to conceive that the current system might end someday, he busied himself with grand proclamations, pointless wars and overcomplex diplomatic wheezes while the Merodists spread and wide and deep. Eventually their exploits came to his attention and he directed the army to crush them, but his hamfisted response only angered the public and alarmed his allies while failing to cripple the revolutionaries. Critical mass was reached, and with his own servants turning against him he could not sustain his rule. He died by hanging in 3795, executed by the revolutionary transitional government for crimes against the people, and is remembered as Carloman the Last, much to the chagrin of his son.

• Carloman VI
• Claimed reign 5295-
• When the revolutionaries took the palace, Carloman V’s son surrendered with his mother and sisters. They were offered the choice of renouncing any claim to authority and living as private citizens, or exile. Carloman the younger, as proud as his father, elected the latter. Unlike his father however he is possessed of shrewdness and charisma, and is already considering how he can use them and his resources to return to power.