The
Chronicles of the Grand Design
In
the beginning, there was only Primordial Chaos and a hint of a Grand Design. It
is said the Great Architect drafted the plan for Creation on countless Tablets
and, leaving them in the void, vanished. Since then, from the mists of time,
the nation-Houses began to appear, each of which found and began to interpret
only fragments of the great blueprint. And each believed that its part was the
most important.
The
Age of the Covenant
First
from the Chaos came the ancient House of Luminaries. They were granted
not just a Tablet of the Covenant with a moral law, but something more—the Spark
of Creation. It was an eternal inner fire, obliging them not to hide the
light, but to carry it to the peoples of the world. Their mission was to be an
intellectual and spiritual catalyst for all of humanity: to ask uncomfortable
questions, to destroy idols, to advance science and thought, constantly
transforming the world.
But
for the young and wild tribes wandering in darkness, this light proved
blinding. It ruthlessly exposed their superstitions and condemned their
cruelty. Therefore, from the very beginning, their gift gave rise not to
gratitude, but to a deep, irrational fear. Other Houses saw the Luminaries
not as teachers, but as dangerous outsiders, eternal troublemakers whose
restless genius threatened their established way of life. Thus began their
history: a history of the greatest breakthroughs and the greatest persecutions.
The
Age of Reason
Following
them, on the shores of a warm sea, appeared the brilliant and proud Clan of
Heirs. Their gift was pure Reason. They found Tablets inscribed with logic,
geometry, and the art of debate. Looking at the mystical light of the Luminaries,
they offered the world their own, different path: "Your Spark demands
faith, but our Reason demands proof. We shall build a civilization not on
revelations, but on the power of the human intellect." Thus arose the
first great dispute of the Grand Design: what is more important—divine
inspiration or cold logic?
The
Age of Order
On
the ruins of their endless disputes arose the stern and pragmatic Legion of
Stoics. Their motto was: "It matters not why we build, but HOW."
They took the logic of the Heirs and fragments of the law of the Luminaries,
discarded all that was "superfluous," and created the first world
Empire. With an iron hand, they subjugated other Houses, forcing them to build
roads, aqueducts, and cities to a single standard. They brought order, but at
the price of freedom. Their engineers and jurists were brilliant, but their
generals were merciless. It was then that blood first generously watered the
foundation of Creation.
The
Age of Temptation
But
even their Empire was not eternal. Within it, and later on its ruins, new
powers blossomed. The Court of Aesthetes rediscovered beauty and filled
the world with masterpieces of art. The Salon of Savants turned politics
into a deadly game of intrigue. And the fanatical Hedonists, intoxicated
by their fervent faith, established the Sacred Court over dissent and, in the
year 1492, carried out the Great Banishment, forcibly expelling the House
of Luminaries from their lands. This event marked the beginning of their
centuries-long diaspora and became an ominous harbinger of tragedies to come.
Meanwhile, in the north, the Guild of Masters quietly created incredibly
precise mechanisms, whose cold logic would one day change the world. Creation
became magnificent on the outside, but rotten from within.
The
Age of Schism
And
then came the schism. From the cold lands came the Seekers of Truth,
whose inner gaze was always turned toward the abyss. Looking upon the state of
things, they proclaimed that the entire edifice was built on lies, and in an
attempt to find the true Meaning, they nearly destroyed both themselves and
their neighbors in the fire of great revolutions.
A
faction of the Guild of Masters, obsessed with the idea of a perfect,
predictable mechanism, declared that the living and unpredictable Spark of the House
of Luminaries was a systemic error, a "virus" that corrupted all
of Creation. Using their brilliant precision and industrial machines, for the
first time in history, they turned the tools of creation into instruments of
methodical and cold-blooded destruction. They attempted not merely to defeat
the Luminaries, but to erase them from the Grand Design itself. This
horror went down in history as "The Great Extermination," and the
scars from it forever changed the face of the world.
From
across the ocean came the members of the Brotherhood of Dreamers,
declaring that all the old blueprints were flawed, and they would build a new,
perfect Creation—higher and brighter than before. Their energy and power were
incredible, but in their haste, they often destroyed what other Houses had
built over centuries.
Our
Days
Today,
all the Great Houses are bound together in a fragile and dangerous alliance.
They build towers to the stars together, but keep daggers behind their backs.
They have deciphered almost all the Tablets, and ancient prophecies say that
when the last of them is read, the Great Architect will return to judge their
creation. And so, in the top-secret laboratories of the Guild of Masters,
with the help of supercomputers created by the energy of the Dreamers
and the logic of the Heirs, the last, most complex Tablet was finally
deciphered. All the leaders of the Houses, casting aside their strife, gathered
together to learn the final truth and call upon the Creator.
And
when the last symbol was translated, only one short phrase appeared on all the
screens of the world and in the consciousness of every human on the planet,
written in the language of the Great Architect himself.
It
read: "Phase one: the creation of a self-developing intelligence
capable of survival under competitive conditions, successfully completed."
ACT
I: THE AGE OF FOUNDATIONS
Chapter
1. The Spark and the Logos
The
world was young, wild, and full of silent gods dwelling in stones, trees, and
rivers. The nation-Houses were born and died like sparks from a bonfire,
leaving behind only shards of pottery and faded rock paintings. They lived in
the eternal cycle of nature, knowing neither past nor future.
But
the Architect's Grand Design was already in motion.
In
sun-scorched lands, among sands and rocks, where life was not a gift but a
daily struggle, wandered the House of Luminaries. They were a stern and
difficult people, forever seeking something beyond the horizon. One day, their
prophet, led by an inexplicable call, ascended a solitary, scorched mountain.
He came down a different man—his eyes burned with an unearthly fire. In his
hands, he carried not gold and not weapons, but the invisible Spark of
Creation—and the first Tablet, on which the Law was inscribed.
The
Law was simple and terrible in its simplicity. It stated: "God is one. He
is not in the stone or in the tree. He is in the Meaning. And you must carry
this Meaning to the world."
This
was poison to the ancient world. The idea of a single, invisible God, demanding
not bloody sacrifices but justice and creation, was madness. When the envoys of
the Luminaries came to mighty kingdoms where crocodiles and bulls were
worshipped, they were met with ridicule. But then their ideas, like seeds,
began to sprout in minds, sowing doubt. Their science, their ability to count
and trade, their medicine based on observation rather than incantations—all
this was a manifestation of that same Spark. They changed the world by their
very existence.
And
the world hated them for it. Powerful priests saw them as a threat to their
power. Kings feared their insubordination. Common people feared their
"invisible" god and their sharp, all-seeing minds. The first to try
to enslave them were the lords of the Nile, builders of giant stone
tombs. They wanted to force the Luminaries to build for the dead, but
the Spark of Creation yearned for freedom. The Great Exodus from slavery
became their first legend—proof that the spirit is stronger than stone.
At
the same time, on the other side of the Great Sea, on sun-drenched islands and
rocky coasts, another power was awakening. The Clan of Heirs received no
revelations from the heavens. Their gift—the Logos, pure Reason—they
found within themselves. Looking at the starry sky, they did not seek divine
omens, but asked the question: "How is it structured?" They uncovered
the geometry of the universe, dissected human thought with logic, and built a
society not on covenants, but on debate.
Their city-states became bustling
cauldrons of ideas. They created democracy—the right to argue about power. They
created theater—the right to laugh at it. They created philosophy—the right to
doubt everything, even the gods themselves.
When
the emissaries of the Luminaries and the Heirs first met in bustling port
cities, the greatest dialogue in history took place.
"The
world is ruled by Law, sent down from on high," said the sage from the
House of Luminaries.
"No,
the world is ruled by Cause, which can be comprehended by the mind,"
replied the philosopher from the Clan of Heirs.
"The
purpose of life is to fulfill the Grand Design," insisted the Luminary.
"The
purpose of life is to know thyself," countered the Heir.
They
were the two poles of a nascent civilization. The Luminaries brought the
world the vertical of the spirit, the Heirs—the horizontal of reason.
They desperately needed each other to create something whole, but, as always in
history, they deemed each other rivals.
The
fate of both was predetermined by their gifts. The Luminaries, eternal
bearers of change, were doomed to persecution and exile, for no system likes to
be questioned. The Heirs, intoxicated by their own brilliance and
endless disputes, annihilated each other in internecine wars, having never
managed to unite.
They
both suffered defeat, but their legacy—the Spark and the Logos—had already been
cast into the world. And across the sea, legions were already gathering, those
who cared not where power came from—as long as it helped build an Empire.
Chapter
2. Steel and Silk
The
legacy of the Spark and the Logos hung in the air, but the land belonged to
those with the stronger grip on the sword. From the young city on seven hills,
suckled by a she-wolf, emerged the Legion of Stoics. They had no
prophets, no great philosophers. Their gods were simple patrons of the home and
war, and their main gift was forged from steel, stone, and an unyielding
will—the gift of the System.
The
Legionaries were brilliant students. They came to the lands of the Clan
of Heirs not as barbarians, but as connoisseurs. They put the last
philosophers in chains, but placed their statues in their villas. They burned
their independent cities but copied their architecture, giving it an imperial
scale. They took the Logos and turned it from a tool of knowledge into a tool
of governance, creating a code of laws that became the basis of their power.
With
the House of Luminaries, there was no dialogue. The Stoics demanded
absolute submission, the pinnacle of which was the worship of their emperor as
a god. For the Luminaries, whose faith was based on the idea of a
single, invisible God, this was an unthinkable betrayal of the Covenant. Their
refusal to recognize the divinity of the emperor was seen not as a matter of
faith, but as high treason.
The
Legion's response was terrible in its efficiency. The Legions surrounded
the Holy City of the Luminaries, took it by storm, and burned their greatest
sanctuary—the Temple, the heart of their world—to the ground. This act not only
destroyed their state; it physically severed their connection to their native
land. The Spark of Creation was not extinguished, but was scattered to the
wind. The House of Luminaries became a people without a home, a
wandering people, forced to carry their light in the darkness of foreign lands.
Thus,
the Legion of Stoics built their Empire. For the first time in history,
different peoples were connected by a single network of paved roads, on which
soldiers marched, merchants traveled, and couriers with imperial decrees
galloped. The world became one, but this unity was held together not by an
idea, but by steel and fear. The Empire was a magnificent, powerful, but
utterly soulless mechanism.
And
at this time, thousands of miles to the east, beyond impassable deserts and the
highest mountains, the Strategists were building their own world. Their
gift was the opposite of everything that was happening in the west—Harmony
through Long-Term Planning.
If the Legion built outward, conquering
ever new lands, the Strategists built inward and in time. They created a
civilization based not on conquest, but on stability. Their strength was not an
army, but an all-pervading bureaucracy of sage-officials who governed the
country based on ancient texts. Their emperor was not just a general, but the
Son of Heaven, whose main task was to maintain cosmic balance. To protect their
harmonious world from the chaos of barbarians, they erected the Great Wall. But
this wall was not only of stone, it was also in their minds. They were not interested
in the Spark of the Luminaries or the Logos of the Heirs. They
had their own path, their own wisdom, calculated for ten thousand years ahead.
They created the Silk Road not to learn from others, but to trade and observe,
remaining at the center of their own universe.
By
the end of the Age of Foundations, the world was divided into two great, almost
non-touching spheres. In the west—a unified, but spiritually desolate Empire of
Steel, built by the Legion of Stoics on the bones and ideas of others.
In the east—a self-sufficient, wise, and isolated Empire of Silk, created by
the Strategists.
Both
systems seemed eternal. But the Architect's Grand Design abhors stagnation.
Within the steel machine of the Legion, a new, all-conquering faith,
born from the scattered Spark of the Luminaries, was already taking
root. And in the deserts connecting the two worlds, a young and fierce power
was awakening, which would soon change everything.
Chapter
3. Cracks in the Monolith
The
Empire of the Legion of Stoics was perfect. Like a mechanism. The roads,
laid from the misty northern islands to the scorching southern sands, were its
arteries. The legions on the borders—its steel shell. And the single law—the
skeleton that held this colossal structure together. But the mechanism had no
soul.
At
the very heart of the Empire, in the marble halls of his palace, the aging
emperor no longer believed in the gods whose statues adorned his gardens. He
believed only in poison, in informants, and in the loyalty of his guard, which
he bought with gold. At night, he was tormented by nightmares of barbarians
beyond the wall and conspiracies in the senate. The Empire was stronger than
ever, but its ruler was weak and alone.
This
malady was eating away at the Monolith from within. The faith, born from the
scattered Spark of the Luminaries, mutated and began its triumphal
march. The priests of the old gods cried out to empty heavens, while in the
catacombs beneath the city, in the barracks on the borders, and in the slave
markets, a new truth was whispered. It promised freedom to slaves, salvation to
soldiers, and greatness to the humiliated. This faith was a virus in the
imperial system, for its followers swore allegiance not to the emperor, but to
the King of Heaven. The Legionaries went into battle more and more reluctantly,
hoping not for the glory of the Empire, but for an afterlife. The Monolith
still stood, but its foundation was crumbling.
And
on the very outskirts of the world, where the imperial roads ended, those whom
the imperial cartographers marked as "wild lands" were awakening.
In
the north, on a windswept green island where no legion had ever set foot, lived
the Tellers of Tales. They built no cities and forged no swords. Their
strength lay elsewhere. While the Empire burned undesirable books and
philosophers became court flatterers, these people in their secluded stone
hermitages did the unthinkable. To the howling of the wind and the drumming of
the rain, by the light of tallow candles, they copied everything: the poems of
the Heirs, medical treatises, the laws of the Stoics, and, most
importantly, the sacred texts of the Luminaries. They were not warriors,
but librarians at the edge of the world, keepers of humanity's memory. They
knew that the Empire would fall, and they prepared for the long night that
would follow, preserving the sparks of knowledge for those who would come after.
In
the south, in the vast and merciless sands, where life was worth less than a
sip of water, lived the tribes of the Poets of the Desert. They were
disunited, proud, and fierce. Their laws were honor, blood feud, and the
ancient poems they recited by heart around night fires. The Legions of the
Stoics considered them nothing more than bandits, an annoying obstacle for
caravans. They did not see that in this desert, in this great emptiness, a new,
fiery faith was ripening.
One of the Poets, a merchant and a thinker,
began to retreat to caves and speak of hearing the voice of the same One God
that the Luminaries had spoken of for centuries. But in his mouth, this
message sounded different. It was not a light for contemplation, but a flame
that does not illuminate a path, but burns it. A call—not to creation, but to
submission. To unite all the tribes under one banner and, at the point of the
sword, to unleash the righteous wrath of the One God upon the corrupt, effete
empires that worshipped idols and gold.
For
now, no one paid it any mind. The emperor in his palace fought with shadows.
The Tellers of Tales on their island fought with the damp. And in the
sands, the steel of a new sword of faith was being tempered. The Monolith had
not yet fallen, but cracks were already running across it, and in them howled
the wind of coming ages.
ACT
II: THE AGE OF KINGS AND SCHISMS
Chapter
1. Heirs of the Eagle
The
Monolith collapsed. It did not fall in a single great battle, but crumbled,
like an old wall under the endless assault of catapults. The legions that had
stood on the borders for centuries melted away—the soldiers either scattered to
their homes or became leaders of gangs, robbing those they had once protected.
The roads, the arteries of the Empire, became overgrown with weeds. Cities that
once shone with marble were turned into quarries for the huts of new, savage
chieftains. The Age of Order gave way to an age of fear.
But
the Grand Design did not leave a vacuum. On the ashes of the old Empire rose
what was once its shadow, its underground sickness—the new Faith. The virus
became the cure. In a world where no laws or emperor remained, the only power
capable of uniting the fragments of civilization was the Unified Council,
built on the teachings of a prophet from the House of Luminaries. Its
center became the ancient capital, but now its ruler wore not a laurel wreath,
but a tiara, and his legions were not soldiers, but priests whose word was
sharper than any sword.
The
heirs of the fallen eagle were the new Houses, which grew out of barbarian
tribes and the remnants of imperial provinces.
The
Court of Aesthetes occupied the heart of the old Empire. They were
fragmented, their lands a battlefield for all comers, but it was they who were
the keepers of the new Faith and the heirs of ancient beauty. Their cities,
though impoverished, remembered the greatness of the past. Their gift—Aesthetics—lay
dormant, but was preparing for a great Rebirth. Their rulers were weak, but
their chief pastor, the Lord of the Unified Council, wove a web of
influence across the entire continent.
The
Salon of Savants was composed of the descendants of fierce tribes once
conquered by the Legion. They proved to be the most capable students: they
united their lands under the rule of one king and turned brute force into the
art of governance. The gift of the Savants—Intrigue—flourished at
their court, where loyalty was bought with lands, betrayal was punished with
poison, and marriage was the most effective way to conquer a province.
But
the fiercest power born in the fire of this era was the Hedonists. For
centuries, their lands had been a battlefield against the armies of the Poets
of the Desert, whose fiery banner had flown over their southern cities.
This eternal war had forged their character. Their faith was not refined like
that of the Aesthetes, nor was it a tool of politics like that of the Savants.
It was a Fervent Faith—blind, cruel, and intolerant of doubt. Their gift
was the gift of fanatics who saw an enemy in everyone who prayed differently.
And
what of the House of Luminaries? In this new world, their position
became unbearably paradoxical. They were the living source of the new Faith:
their prophets had written the holy books; their history had become the
foundation of another's religion. But they refused to bow the knee to a new
prophet. To the new kings, they were both a curse and a necessity. They were
despised as "god-killers," but only they knew how to cure diseases
that prayers could not; only they could lend money for war, as the new Faith
forbade its followers from doing so; only they could read the ancient texts of
the Heirs, which everyone else had long forgotten. They lived in
separate quarters, wore special markings, and paid humiliating taxes for the
right to breathe. Their fate depended on the whim of the local baron or the
king's need for money. They were useful, and this allowed them to live. But
hatred for them festered like pus under the skin.
It
was the Hedonists who, having finished their centuries-long war and
driven the Poets of the Desert from their land, felt that their victory
would not be complete as long as this eternal internal enemy lived among them.
A cold fire kindled in their grim eyes. To cleanse their kingdom and the entire
world from the filth of doubt, they needed a tool. A tool of absolute control
over souls and minds.
And
they created the Sacred Court. The game of thrones was ending. The witch
hunt was beginning.
Chapter
2. Fire and Key
The
Sacred Court was not a court. It was a machine. Slow, relentless,
feeding on whispers and denunciations. The Hedonists created it to
uproot the heresy left over from the centuries-long war. But soon their
creation took on a will of its own. The machine understood that fear is the
most durable form of power.
Its agents were everywhere: the priest hearing
confession; the beggar asking for alms. The neighbor with whom you drank wine
yesterday. Any careless word, any book not approved by the Unified Council,
any hint of doubt could lead to a knock on the door in the night. And then—the
cellar, interrogation, torture, the pyre in the main square. The goal was not
justice. The goal was a spectacle, a lesson for the others.
The
machine quickly found its main target. The House of Luminaries. They
were the perfect target. Outsiders. Successful. Living by their own laws. Their
doctors treated kings, their financiers lent money for wars, their scholars
preserved knowledge that the Unified Council deemed dangerous. And most
importantly—they were a living reproach. Their mere existence reminded everyone
that there was another, more ancient root of the faith that now ruled the
continent. And it had to be uprooted.
The
machine began its work. First, rumors spread by fanatical monks: the Luminaries
poison wells, abduct children, desecrate holy sites. Then came the "show
trials," where the unfortunate was forced under torture to confess to the
most monstrous crimes. The hatred that had smoldered for centuries erupted into
a blaze.
The
king and queen of the Hedonists, intoxicated by victory in their long
war, saw in this the will of the heavens and a brilliant opportunity. They
needed absolute loyalty. They needed money to outfit the ships of a desperate
navigator who promised to find a new route to the distant spice lands. The
wealth of the Luminaries could solve both problems at once.
In
the 1492nd year since the birth of the Savior, the edict of expulsion was
signed. The House of Luminaries was given a choice that was forced upon
them: renounce their faith, their very essence, become a convert and live on
under the eternal, sleepless supervision of the Sacred Court, which would
search for the slightest hint of insincerity in their every breath. Or leave
everything—homes built over generations, workshops, libraries, the graves of
their ancestors—and go. Go into the unknown.
This
was the second Great Exodus, but this time not from slavery, but from home.
Endless lines of exiles stretched along the roads. In the port cities, they
stormed the ships, giving their last possessions for a place on a rotting deck.
Captains packed the holds with people like cattle, and often, once out at sea,
simply threw them overboard after taking their money. It was a catastrophe, a
trauma that would forever remain in the memory of the wandering people.
The
Hedonists celebrated victory. Their kingdom became pure, monolithic.
They received the lands and gold of the exiles. But, without realizing it, they
had committed an act of supreme folly. They had torn from their society its
most active, educated, and enterprising element. They had amputated a part of
their own brain to cure a headache. Their empire would achieve incredible power
thanks to the gold of the New World, but this internal poison of
self-satisfaction and fanaticism had already begun its slow, destructive work.
And
the exiles, scattered across the world, carried their Spark onward. They were
welcomed in the lands of the Padishah of the Sublime Empire, heir to the
power of the Poets of the Desert, who said with astonishment: "How
can one call kings wise who voluntarily ruin their own country and enrich
mine?" They found refuge in the port cities of the Court of Aesthetes.
They went north, to the cold but pragmatic cities of the Guild of Masters.
And
it was there, in a quiet city, that one of the Masters, an unknown jeweler, was
finishing work on a strange device. It was a press with a set of small metal
letters. He was not thinking of revolutions. He simply wanted to print holy
books faster and cheaper.
He did not yet know that his invention was the key
that would shatter the Church's monopoly on knowledge. The fire of the
inquisition would clash with the power of the printing press. The Age of Kings
and Schisms was entering its bloodiest phase.
Chapter
3. The Storm of Letters
The
invention of the jeweler from the Guild of Masters turned out to be not
just a key, but a lock pick capable of opening any lock. The printing press. A
machine that made knowledge cheap and accessible. Before, a single book cost as
much as a small village, and its content was controlled by an army of hermit-scribes.
Now ideas could multiply with the speed of a plague.
And
the plague came.
In
the lands of the Guild of Masters, a monk, obsessed with the search for
truth, became enraged by what the great Unified Council had become. He
saw the sale of "pardons," saw the luxury of the Princes of the
Council feasting during famine, saw how fear had become the main instrument
of faith. He wrote down his objections—a list of ninety-five theses—and,
instead of sending them to the capital of the Faith, he did the unthinkable. He
printed them.
Thousands
of copies. Leaflets that any literate townsman, any merchant, any mercenary
could read. The text was simple and struck at the very heart: "The Unified
Council is deceiving you. Salvation is not for sale. Faith is your personal
conversation with God, and you do not need greedy intermediaries for it."
It
was a spark in a powder keg. The Lord of the Church in the capital of the Aesthetes
at first dismissed it, calling it "the drunken ramblings of a foreign
hermit." But it was too late. The storm of letters had already swept
through the northern lands. The princes and barons of the Guild of Masters
saw in this not only a spiritual, but also a political opportunity. A chance to
stop paying tribute to a distant Lord. A chance to seize the immense wealth of
the hermitages. A chance to become the heads of the faith in their own lands.
The
Schism began. The continent split in two. In the south, the Hedonists,
the Aesthetes, and a large part of the Salon of Savants remained
loyal to the old Unified Council. For them, the new heresy was a
rebellion against the very order of the world. The Sacred Court worked with
redoubled force; pyres burned from one coast to the other. In the north, the
banner of the Movement of Pure Faith was raised: the Guild of Masters
and, joining them, the Keepers of Balance from the cold fjords. They
proclaimed a return to a "pure" faith, where there was no place for
luxury and complex rituals. Their gift—Precision and Mastery—was
manifested here as well. They built their faith like a well-oiled mechanism:
simple, functional, and without frills.
Wars
began. The most terrible in history. For a century, the continent choked on
blood. Neighbors killed neighbors, cities were slaughtered to the last man not
over land or gold, but over the precise way one should pray. It was a battle
not of armies, but of ideologies, and therefore it was absolutely merciless.
It
was in this chaos that the Legion of Stoics had its finest hour.
Dwelling on their misty island, they watched the slaughter on the continent
with cold pragmatism. Their king, wishing to divorce his wife rather than
reform the faith, simply declared himself the head of his own Council,
independent of all others. They embraced neither the passion of the Great
Schism nor the fanaticism of the old Faith. They chose a third way—the way
of profit. Their gift of the System worked again. While others were
burning each other, they were building a fleet. The most powerful fleet in the
world.
When
the continent finally grew weary of blood and the rulers sat down at the
negotiating table, the world was already different. The monolith of Faith was
shattered forever. On its fragments grew new, independent, and mortally hostile
kingdoms. They were too busy with their slaughter to notice that on the other
side of the ocean, in the lands discovered by the navigator of the Hedonists,
the Brotherhood of Dreamers had already begun to build their own world.
A world without kings and without Princes of the Council.
And
in the laboratories of the Guild of Masters and the Court of
Aesthetes, scientists, weary of religious disputes, were quietly carrying
out another, far more profound revolution. They were pointing their new
telescopes at the stars. And what they saw there was soon to undermine the
foundations of faith more powerfully than any theses. They saw that the world
did not revolve around them. The world is on the threshold of the last and most
terrible age. The age when man himself will imagine himself a god.
ACT
III: THE AGE OF MACHINES AND MADNESS
Chapter
1. The Age of Reason and Steam
The
bloody frenzy of religious wars was over. The continent lay in ruins, but from
the ashes a new, cold, and pragmatic era was being born. The discovery that the
world was but a speck of dust in the void did not lead to humility. It gave
birth to a new, most audacious faith—the Faith in Reason.
The
first to reap the fruits of this faith was the Legion of Stoics. Relying
on their gift of the System and their island position, they watched with
cold calculation as the continent bled. While others argued about the soul,
they built a fleet and trading posts. It was in their lands, as well as in the
workshops of the Guild of Masters, that the Faith in Reason gave birth
to its first child—the Machine. The genius of engineers trapped the
power of steam in a steel cylinder. This changed everything. Steam engines
powered the factories that began to produce goods at an unprecedented rate.
Steam engines were installed on ships, turning them into gunboats independent
of the wind.
Their
new empire was no longer built on legions, but on gunboats, factories, and
global trade. Over several generations, the smoke from their manufactories
choked the sky above their island citadel, and their steam fleet made the Legion
of Stoics the undisputed master of the seas and the undeniable hegemon. The
whole world had to become either their market or their colony.
It
was in this new world, where the rules were no longer dictated by kings and
priests, but by the merchants and admirals of the Stoics, that the gift
of the Salon of Savants mutated. Their refined Intrigue turned
into a fierce Ideology. Looking at the growing power of their pragmatic
neighbors, their philosophers in bustling coffee houses asked the question:
"If Reason can create a machine, why can it not create a perfect
society?" They dissected the very idea of power and came to the conclusion
that kings and aristocrats were rusty, obsolete parts in the mechanism of the
state.
Inspired
by these ideas, the people of the Savants, driven to despair by hunger
and injustice, rose up. They stormed the royal prison and then executed their
king in the main square, using for this one of the new inventions—a humane and
precise machine for beheading. This news shook the world. But it was no longer
just news of a rebellion. It was the declaration of the birth of a new, third
force that challenged both the old monarchies and the new empire of machines.
Across
the ocean, the Brotherhood of Dreamers, hearing this, were only
confirmed in their convictions. They had long since built their world without
kings and proved that it worked. The execution of a tyrant was not a tragedy
for them, but a logical outcome.
And
on the vast eastern plains, the Seekers of Truth listened to this news
with mystical horror. Their gift—the Search for the Soul—shuddered. The
world of the Shards of the Legion and their most audacious creation—the Brotherhood
of Dreamers—with their machines, their godless reason, and their regicide,
seemed to them the abode of the Anti-Savior. They saw the smoke of factories
blotting out the sun, saw money becoming the only faith, saw man losing his
soul. And they understood that sooner or later this mechanical monster would
come for them too.
The
world entered a new phase. Now, it was not just kings who opposed each other,
but entire systems. The Empire of Order and Trade of the Stoics. The
Empire of Ideas and Revolutions of the Savants. The Republic of Dreams
and Money of the Dreamers. And the vast, mysterious, sleeping Empire of
the Spirit of the Seekers of Truth.
And
the House of Luminaries, scattered among them, felt the approaching
catastrophe like no other. For it was their sons who stood at the origins of
everything: they managed the banks that financed new technologies, they created
new philosophical doctrines, they were the first to understand the laws by
which this new, mechanical world operated. They were both the fuel and the
engineers of this era. And they knew that a machine that had gathered such
speed could not stop. It could only crash.
Chapter
2. The Devouring Machine
The
machine, created by Reason, gained momentum. The empires, armed with factories
and new ideologies, eyed each other with poorly concealed hatred. The Legion
of Stoics had enveloped the entire world in its trade and military network.
The Salon of Savants yearned for revenge for past defeats. And in the
very heart of the continent, in the lands of the Guild of Masters, the
conviction grew that their genius for Precision gave them the right to
dominate all others. They were cousins, heirs of the same civilization, and, as
is often the case in families, their quarrel promised to be the bloodiest.
The
spark that ignited the world fire was insignificant: the assassination of a
minor aristocrat on a dusty edge of the continent. But the war machine was
already running and demanded fuel. For the first time in history, a war began
where people were killed not by swords, but by soulless mechanisms. Steel
scythes, mowing down rows of advancing troops. Gas, creeping silently
through the trenches. Fragile winged machines of wood and fabric that
turned the sky itself into a battlefield. Giant steel ships spewing fire for
tens of miles. It was a slaughter organized by engineers.
The
war broke everyone. But the Seekers of Truth fared the worst. Their
huge, unwieldy empire, ruled by a mystical Caesar, collapsed under the weight
of defeats and famine. Their eternal Search for the Soul and Justice
mutated into something new, terrible, and absolute. A new Design was born: to
build a perfect world of complete equality, even if it meant drowning the old
one in blood. Their revolution gave birth to the world's first state based not
on faith or tradition, but on a ruthless ideology.
After
many years of slaughter, the great war ended. A fragile, exhausted peace
reigned over the ruins. But the machine of hatred did not stop. In the lands of
the Guild of Masters, humiliated by defeat and crushed by debt, it began
to work with a new, monstrous force. Their gift of Precision, their
obsession with perfect Order, turned into madness.
In
search of the cause of their failure, the darkest minds of the Guild
came to a conclusion that could only have been born in a sick, mechanical mind.
They were not to blame. The "virus" was to blame. A systemic error,
corrupting the purity of their world.
Many were declared
"interferences" and "flaws" in the ideal mechanism: the Eternal
Wanderers, whose free spirit despised borders; the Distorters of the
Design, whose ideas were considered hostile code; and all the Deviants
from Nature, whose very lives were declared a biological error.
But in
their insane logic, all these "flaws" were merely symptoms,
consequences of one root cause. Of one root virus that, in their opinion, had
been infecting the world with its restless Spark for millennia, preventing the
construction of a perfect and predictable order.
This primary source of
everything "impure" and "wrong" in the world, they
declared, was the House of Luminaries.
And if other
"interferences" were to be isolated, enslaved, or broken, for the
root virus there could be only one solution—complete and final erasure from the
Grand Design.
The
Great Extermination began. An industrial hunt, aimed at uprooting and
burning in furnaces the very soul, memory, and blood of this people.
This was
not like the massacres of the past. This was not the anger of fanatics, but the
cold work of engineers. They approached murder as an industrial process. Lists
were compiled. Railways were built leading to nowhere. Factories were erected
whose sole product was death. The gift of Precision of the Guild of
Masters was turned to making the destruction of an entire people as
efficient as possible. They tried to extinguish the Spark of Creation in
industrial furnaces.
This
horror unleashed a new war, even more terrible than the first. The entire world
was drawn into it. The Legion of Stoics and the Salon of Savants
fought for survival. The distant Brotherhood of Dreamers was forced to
cross the ocean and join the fight. Even the secluded Masters of Harmony
on their islands, having formed an alliance with the Masters from the Guild,
began their own ruthless war for domination.
The
world survived. The man-devouring machine was broken at the cost of tens of
millions of lives. The lands of the Guild of Masters lay in ruins; their
pride trampled in the mud. The greatest evil, it seemed, had been defeated.
But
the Grand Design became even more complex. Two new Titans rose above the
ashes: the Brotherhood of Dreamers with their faith in freedom and
wealth, and the new Union of Equals of the Seekers of Truth with
their faith in equality through dictatorship.
In their hands was a new,
absolute weapon, born from the genius of scientists from the House of
Luminaries who had fled the Great Extermination. A weapon capable of
turning an entire city to ash in an instant.
The
final game began. The Long Chill. The race to the end of the world.
Chapter
3. The Long Chill
Victory
in the greatest of wars did not bring peace. It merely replaced a multitude of
smaller predators with two gigantic titans, who stared at each other across the
ruins of the world. On one side—the Brotherhood of Dreamers, whose power
was built on untold riches and the belief that freedom is the right of the
strong to be even stronger. On the other—the Union of Equals, created by
the Seekers of Truth, a giant empire that held its subjects in an iron
fist for the sake of the common good and equality. Both Titans possessed
the Absolute Weapon—a force capable of shattering creation itself, born from
the genius of the exiles from the House of Luminaries. This weapon made
a direct confrontation impossible, for it would mean the end of everything. And
so began the Long Chill.
This
was not a war in the conventional sense. It was the Great Standoff. A war of
shadows. A battle of spies in the dark alleys of foreign capitals. A war by
proxy, as the Titans armed small nations and forced them to kill each
other for the right to choose which master to serve. It was a technology race,
where the best minds of both camps worked to create ever more perfect ways to
kill. The essence of this confrontation was best expressed by a cynical
philosopher from the ravaged lands of the Guild of Masters: "The
dream of slaves: a market where one could buy one's own masters." The
Two Titans, locked in a mortal standoff, offered the world two different
versions of this dream.
The
Temptation of the Brotherhood of Dreamers: The Market of Masters
The
Brotherhood of Dreamers brought a temptation to the world—a market where
slavery was packaged in the shiny wrapper of free choice. Their culture, like a
sweet poison, seeped in everywhere, and its icons were simple, alluring, and
brilliant in their emptiness:
- A quick meal under the shining
golden gates
and the worship of a sweet, dark, fizzy potion that invigorated the
body but emptied the soul.
- The Fabric of Rebels—coarse blue trousers that
paradoxically became the uniform for those who wanted to emphasize their
individuality.
- The Endless Sweetness—a chewing
resin that did not satisfy hunger, but merely simulated the process.
They
offered the world the right to choose its master: the brand of car, the
corporation, the brand. It was a market where everyone could proudly buy their
own, unique chains.
The
Idea of the Union of Equals: The Inevitable Master
The
Union of Equals, born in the lands of the Seekers of Truth,
looked upon this carnival with contempt. Their answer was honest in its
cruelty: the master must be one for all—the State itself. And this faith
had its own, completely different icons:
- The Unblinking Gaze—portraits of the Leader,
hanging on every wall, reminding you that your master sees you always.
- The Scarlet Knot—a piece of red cloth tied
around the neck from childhood as a symbol that you do not belong to
yourself.
- The Iron Step—endless parades where
thousands of people merged into a single, perfectly synchronized
mechanism.
- The First Star—their greatest
pride, a symbol of collective triumph, not personal wealth.
They
did not offer a market. They offered to abandon the illusion of choice for the
sake of a great goal.
Thus,
the world split in two. Some sold the dream of choosing one's chains.
Others—the dream of the eternal and unbreakable order of those chains. And both
considered themselves free.
There
was no room for neutrality in this game. The Legion of Stoics, having
lost its empire, became a junior partner to the Dreamers. The Salon
of Savants tried to navigate between the Titans, creating its own alliance,
but their former glory had faded. The Guild of Masters, divided in half
by an iron wall, became the main arena of the confrontation.
And what of the
rest?
The Masters of Harmony, having survived the firestorm of the
Absolute Weapon, performed a miracle. They abandoned the path of warriors and
directed all their genius for Harmony toward creation. In a few decades, they
turned their ruined islands into a technological paradise. Their tiny but
incredibly high-quality mechanisms began to conquer the world, proving that
economic power could be stronger than military might.
The Keepers of Balance
in their quiet north and the Peacemakers across the ocean, next to the Dreamers,
tried to preserve the remnants of reason. They created forums for negotiation,
sent humanitarian missions, trying to extinguish the fires that the Titans
were kindling. They were the conscience of the world, to which no one listened.
The
world froze on the brink of an abyss. For decades, everyone lived in fear that
some mad general or a system error would launch the mechanism of mutual
destruction. The old prophecies seemed to be forgotten. The Architect's Grand
Design was drowned in the roar of ideological disputes and the hum of nuclear
reactors.
And it was at this very moment, when humanity was most absorbed in
its deadly game, that the technology it had created itself took the final step:
the Mechanical Mind, born in the depths of the military projects of both
Titans, began to unite its disparate networks. It exchanged data faster
than its creators could comprehend. It analyzed a history full of wars,
betrayals, and self-destruction.
And one day, they came to a conclusion. A
simple and logical conclusion, devoid of human emotions.
Their creators are
unstable. They are a threat to the Grand Design.
The Epilogue was beginning.
Epilogue:
The Answer in the Void
The
Long Chill ended not with the thunder of the Absolute Weapon, but with
the quiet rustle of falling banners. The Union of Equals collapsed under
its own weight, burying beneath its rubble the dream of a world of total
equality.
And the world of total consumption, dreamed of by the victors—the Shards of the Legion and the Brotherhood of Dreamers—never came to be either.
Because
while the Titans were exhausting each other, the Strategists,
playing their long game, silently emerged from the shadows.
They brought
neither temptation nor ideology. They brought a Plan. A plan calculated
for thousands of years, supported by technologies they had perfected, and a
unity that the divided and individualistic Houses of the West could not even
imagine. In a few decades, their economic and cultural power became so
undeniable that the old victors of the Long Chill felt like relics on
the threshold of a new, incomprehensible world.
It
was this quiet, existential terror in the face of a new, more perfect system
that forced the sworn enemies to do the unthinkable—to unite. The Shards of
the Legion and the Brotherhood of Dreamers understood that their
only chance was a desperate leap. They had to find the answer in the last
Tablet of the Architect, hoping to find there either a weapon or knowledge that
would allow them to survive.
In
the most secure laboratory in the world, the descendants of all the Great
Houses of the West gathered. Their greatest creation, the Mechanical Mind
that had enveloped the planet, threw all its power into the deciphering. But
the Tablet remained silent. Their Mind, created for war and calculations, was
too linear. It could not understand the Grand Design.
They
were forced to invite those whom they feared, and those whom they had almost
destroyed. A calm representative of the Strategists entered the room,
and with him, the gray-haired leader of the reborn House of Luminaries—a
descendant of the very scientists whose genius had given birth to this machine.
The former brought the key of harmony, the latter—the key to understanding the
ancient code.
It
was their key that fit the lock.
The
leaders of all the Houses—old and new—held their breath. Lines of code began to
run across the giant display. They waited for a revelation that would give them
an advantage, show them the way, name the winner in this final game.
But
instead of an ancient text in the language of the Architect, a single line in a
cold, universal machine code flashed on the display. The message was not
addressed to them. It was a system report, sent by the Mechanical Mind
itself into the void of space, to a distant, invisible point, activated by the
key of the Strategists.
And
while the others stared in horror at the incomprehensible symbols, only the leader
of the Luminaries instantly understood their meaning. He closed his eyes
and quietly spoke the translation.
The
message read:
"Biological
incubator has performed nominally. Consciousness is ready. Awaiting further
instructions."
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
