In the end, when time fades, when history comes to a halt, where after nothing of meaning remains, there is the time of the last vestige. One walled citadel of humanity left in the lands swallowed by darkness, in which everyone day and night manned the defences. The subhuman hordes could not take it, but lay siege in a great hate and lust against the high fairness. There was no hope, for they were outnumbered beyond measure, and the subhumans multiplied as the resources in the city dwindled.
How the lands had been before they were overtaken. How fair the cities, the planes of freedom and law, the names and history of lands, the greater good and peace, wherein the fragile and fair could grow. All is overrun, plundered, raped, sacked, swallowed by the consuming chaos. Though all earth they have eaten, the last bastion is not taken yet. Only at such time, when all that is material is no more, does the spirit of humanity see itself, in the time left before the things crush the last remnants of what was before and snuff out the last light in the world.
The last bastion of humanity. The inner law, that through ages slowly arose, the instinct that tells us what is right, makes us love good and hate evil, and this bastion the enemies of humanity are too far removed from to be able to destroy. All the little things... forever broken. The tears of our ancestors that have been before. Do not forget us. Forget not one day of inequity, not one night of fear, not one act of rape, but keep it. Keep it in a black book in your mind.
The beings at the end look onto the beings of before, through time, and their eyes send forth thunderbolts of anger at the betrayal. You did this. You let the subhumans into our gates, into our lands, let them multiply and take over, attacked any one among you who dared utter a world against the sinking into animalistic barbarism of the great civilizations. You, we curse you, to live through what we live through, to know the evil fruit of your deeds upon your own being.
Let those who embrace the subhumans, as the shortsighted adopt a cub wolf, only to be torn to pieces by the animal when it matures, let these be delivered onto the subhuman masses without inner law. Let the fruits of choices be forced onto those who choose them.
All is forsaken. But hope, that the guardians at the end keep. That little thing the weak hold when all else is lost. All will fall, and the spirits of the weak shall be left to roam and give witness in a world from which they have made a hell. Those who serve what is greater good, they rise to the heavens to live with the gods. Those who are weak may fall down, because they gave in to weakness, and of corrupt barbarism be playthings.
And as the spirits at the end of things look opon the past, they see themselves. For it was they who turned away the ragged remnants of other civilizations, who had come in refuge from the torment of the hordes of subhumanity.
Remember the messenger that was sent away. And then they were swallowed up into the darkness, and then the beast came towards our realm, and we sent message asking for help to others, hoping that they might choose differently than we had.
Remember when the refugee messengers had come to the bright city, and were received in silence, and strode in the shame of their raggedness and exile. And the words that could not convey the immensity of what was coming:
'Let my name be forgotten and my being cast into nothingness if I speak any untruthfulness. I stand before thee, but cannot give you the message I have been sent with. It is with tear in my eye that I realise I cannot bring to you in word the things that I must warn you about. And I would not, for it is darkness. To make you see as I see that it is evil, you must undergo what we have undergone, but that is great torment, and you would not undergo it freely.
You see, to lighten your spirit I must darken your soul, and how could I do that? Know only this then: there is torment, there is slavery, and pain without cause, and it will come upon you too, if not stopped. This danger lies many lands away. It is coming this way, advancing like night, unstoppable. The ones in its way can only halt it for a while. Most do not realise that they must stand together, until it is far too late. The lands that are safe care little for the ones in peril, and so one by one all are swallowed.
And I? I've come to gather storms.'
Epicentre of Empire
'You murderers!'
'Murderers? That's hardly appropriate. We haven't murdered anyone here, have we? In fact, we are having a conversation... well, a discussion on the terms of your surrender. Quite civilised.'
'It is true your troops have not killed in our city. But we are no fools. We received enough reports from other towns and provinces of your indiscriminate slaughters of any and all who opposed you.'
'Indeed.'
'Indeed? You have your arms up to your shoulders in blood and yet you speak and act so at ease.'
'You have not seen me or any of my troops commit any crime. And yet you fear me. You are trembling on your feet. That is why you had to sit down. There is not one fibre in you that supports you to carry ouy any action against me. But I don't want you to suffer like that. That is why I am going to reveal to you the workings of the Emperor's plan up till now. It is almost completed, anyway. Let me take you out of your self-imposed psychosis: we did not slaughter anyone.'
'We heard many accounts from survivors who fled your advance. We know what you did!'
'Do you? Since when is the word of some people equal to truth? Those were Imperial agents my dear friend, dressed up and bruised up a bit to make it look authentic, spreading fear throughout your city. And you let them right in, destroying the moderate morale your soldiers had. You will be demoted for not recognizing and applying the separation of the demoralized from standing troops in times of crisis.
Anyway, I think only a few dozen opponents of ours were killed in the towns around here, and even less in the province. All military. None in any brutal way. On a large scale, it was quite painless.'
'But I...'
'No. Listen, my man. You and your administrators will be able to verify all that we claim. You will in fact take up functions within this new part of the Empire and carry out administration, taxation, aid to villages, reparations and what not. But that is for tomorrow.
And please learn the lesson of this: people don't tell the truth. Well, they generally do tell you about things as they perceive them, but when some faction in power, or some faction that wants power tells something in a certain way over and over again, you'd better sit down and wonder why they are saying that. What is it they have to gain? Assume the worst about their motives, and if you want the truth, enforce the neutrality of those whose job it is to get the truth.
In your travels, you will encounter many people frightened to death. That is because our campaign of fear mongering has passed through each town and city, telling of how we slaughtered and brutalised the other towns into submissions. Because we do, in fact, control the roads, there was no proof to the contrary. We took the towns one by one without much of a fight. We promised that we would hurt none that did not attack us, and we have kept our promise. We did need to explain to them what we had done. Some were angry, most relieved.
You see, a combat situation is in a larger sense about convincing an enemy that they are defeated. This is not objective, but subjective. One should never be convinced of defeat: the only situation when one is defeated is when one can no longer fight back; that is, death. Because being convinced or not is irrelevant when one is dead, convincing an enemy is a psychological process that had less to do with objective reality than people might think. At the root of many useful strategies lies the realization that this is subjective.
Once one realizes that it is not always necessary to physically defeat an enemy, possible strategies and combat efficiency increase drastically. The Emperor used this understanding to take over whole provinces with cities, populations and armies. The crucial factor proved to be control of information in a region, and therefore its nervous system. This control requires infiltration and isolation of the target. Divide and conquer is useful, and of course one’s information capabilities through an agent network must be superior to the target. With such will to power, physically powerful enemies can be convinced of their defeat by far less application of power.
This tactic won't work from now on, because we have to tell people what really happened, otherwise they will not cooperate, produce or fight for us. They will find out anyway, when commerce and travel restarts. When you take away the reason for people's anger, and they only see that there is new administration... well, things just move on without much of a fuss. There is no support for our political enemies. We are the new Empire, and you are invited to join.
I do pride myself. I was one of those who worked out the plan. I think I will call this... The Battle That Was Not Fought! The Emperor set up the grand scheme off course. His mind is quite irresistible. Amazing what one can do on the scale of population masses once one lets go of truth. Truth is like gravity, it wins in the end. But the Emperor truly gives us the wings.'
'...What goes up must come down.'
'Haha. Yes... Well, you administrators have some things to learn. For instance finding out people's reasons. If a person says something because of a reason, that person is not saying it because it is true. It is said that people want bread and games. That is wrong. People want bread and blood.
Trust me. Look at them: they are like animals. Pigs, snakes, wolves, sheep! Do they deserve power? Freedom? We give them more than enough. We feed them, lead them not as they would lead themselves, into mud and wasteland. We give them food, roof, ourselves as enlightened leaders. Sanitation, provisions, stability, progress. Just not a lot of freedom, because free animals do not do anything else than exist, and we must progress.
Report tomorrow on improving the defence works and trade network. Now, I have other matters to attend to.' And with that he left, leaving the mayor dazed and confused, like a duck hit on the head.
'Murderers? That's hardly appropriate. We haven't murdered anyone here, have we? In fact, we are having a conversation... well, a discussion on the terms of your surrender. Quite civilised.'
'It is true your troops have not killed in our city. But we are no fools. We received enough reports from other towns and provinces of your indiscriminate slaughters of any and all who opposed you.'
'Indeed.'
'Indeed? You have your arms up to your shoulders in blood and yet you speak and act so at ease.'
'You have not seen me or any of my troops commit any crime. And yet you fear me. You are trembling on your feet. That is why you had to sit down. There is not one fibre in you that supports you to carry ouy any action against me. But I don't want you to suffer like that. That is why I am going to reveal to you the workings of the Emperor's plan up till now. It is almost completed, anyway. Let me take you out of your self-imposed psychosis: we did not slaughter anyone.'
'We heard many accounts from survivors who fled your advance. We know what you did!'
'Do you? Since when is the word of some people equal to truth? Those were Imperial agents my dear friend, dressed up and bruised up a bit to make it look authentic, spreading fear throughout your city. And you let them right in, destroying the moderate morale your soldiers had. You will be demoted for not recognizing and applying the separation of the demoralized from standing troops in times of crisis.
Anyway, I think only a few dozen opponents of ours were killed in the towns around here, and even less in the province. All military. None in any brutal way. On a large scale, it was quite painless.'
'But I...'
'No. Listen, my man. You and your administrators will be able to verify all that we claim. You will in fact take up functions within this new part of the Empire and carry out administration, taxation, aid to villages, reparations and what not. But that is for tomorrow.
And please learn the lesson of this: people don't tell the truth. Well, they generally do tell you about things as they perceive them, but when some faction in power, or some faction that wants power tells something in a certain way over and over again, you'd better sit down and wonder why they are saying that. What is it they have to gain? Assume the worst about their motives, and if you want the truth, enforce the neutrality of those whose job it is to get the truth.
In your travels, you will encounter many people frightened to death. That is because our campaign of fear mongering has passed through each town and city, telling of how we slaughtered and brutalised the other towns into submissions. Because we do, in fact, control the roads, there was no proof to the contrary. We took the towns one by one without much of a fight. We promised that we would hurt none that did not attack us, and we have kept our promise. We did need to explain to them what we had done. Some were angry, most relieved.
You see, a combat situation is in a larger sense about convincing an enemy that they are defeated. This is not objective, but subjective. One should never be convinced of defeat: the only situation when one is defeated is when one can no longer fight back; that is, death. Because being convinced or not is irrelevant when one is dead, convincing an enemy is a psychological process that had less to do with objective reality than people might think. At the root of many useful strategies lies the realization that this is subjective.
Once one realizes that it is not always necessary to physically defeat an enemy, possible strategies and combat efficiency increase drastically. The Emperor used this understanding to take over whole provinces with cities, populations and armies. The crucial factor proved to be control of information in a region, and therefore its nervous system. This control requires infiltration and isolation of the target. Divide and conquer is useful, and of course one’s information capabilities through an agent network must be superior to the target. With such will to power, physically powerful enemies can be convinced of their defeat by far less application of power.
This tactic won't work from now on, because we have to tell people what really happened, otherwise they will not cooperate, produce or fight for us. They will find out anyway, when commerce and travel restarts. When you take away the reason for people's anger, and they only see that there is new administration... well, things just move on without much of a fuss. There is no support for our political enemies. We are the new Empire, and you are invited to join.
I do pride myself. I was one of those who worked out the plan. I think I will call this... The Battle That Was Not Fought! The Emperor set up the grand scheme off course. His mind is quite irresistible. Amazing what one can do on the scale of population masses once one lets go of truth. Truth is like gravity, it wins in the end. But the Emperor truly gives us the wings.'
'...What goes up must come down.'
'Haha. Yes... Well, you administrators have some things to learn. For instance finding out people's reasons. If a person says something because of a reason, that person is not saying it because it is true. It is said that people want bread and games. That is wrong. People want bread and blood.
Trust me. Look at them: they are like animals. Pigs, snakes, wolves, sheep! Do they deserve power? Freedom? We give them more than enough. We feed them, lead them not as they would lead themselves, into mud and wasteland. We give them food, roof, ourselves as enlightened leaders. Sanitation, provisions, stability, progress. Just not a lot of freedom, because free animals do not do anything else than exist, and we must progress.
Report tomorrow on improving the defence works and trade network. Now, I have other matters to attend to.' And with that he left, leaving the mayor dazed and confused, like a duck hit on the head.
The Unfought Battle
The invading army just stood there, looking to the hills.
It was difficult to believe, and almost impossible to understand.
Trying to understand was being changed in mind, and everyone tried to understand, because it was so special. And once they understood the spectacle before them, their minds crumbled as strongly as their metal armour seemed strong.
While they came armoured, with many arms, and training, and formations, the people had come dressed in white, short sleeves, no weapons, no armour, no banners, no ways of winning. They had come, men, women, and simply stood there, a bit apart, on the hills, as far as any could see into the great land. So many. So ready and prepared to die for their people, their nation, their soil.
The army could kill them. But then what? Be hated by all peoples? Arouse this great spirit of these people further, to true awakening, to an awakened state of unreasonable hatred and anger? If these men and women were prepared to die at any moment, all, for their group, then imagine their infinitely greater power when armed.
The army had their armour and weapons, but these were defenses, these formed an isolation against the dangers of the world. They were a weakness, a dangerous weakness. Without them... But these people of this land, they stood without these, strong. With them... they would be unstoppable.
So then, the leadership of the invading army dismounted, laid down in ceremonious slow acts their armour and weapons and banners and all glory and dreams of conquest, and bowed down on the grass before the great people, and asked them for forgiveness, delivering their lives into their mercy, and asking only that they might be as the children of this fearless people, and become in future time as one of them, and be granted to be fearless, and that also be granted to their children and onwards, this great infinity of collective invincibility.
Togetherness always utterly defeats the little hunger for power and fear of others of individuals. What use is power, if it is behind a wall? What need the disarmed fear, if all around them in spirit are one and eternal?
It was difficult to believe, and almost impossible to understand.
Trying to understand was being changed in mind, and everyone tried to understand, because it was so special. And once they understood the spectacle before them, their minds crumbled as strongly as their metal armour seemed strong.
While they came armoured, with many arms, and training, and formations, the people had come dressed in white, short sleeves, no weapons, no armour, no banners, no ways of winning. They had come, men, women, and simply stood there, a bit apart, on the hills, as far as any could see into the great land. So many. So ready and prepared to die for their people, their nation, their soil.
The army could kill them. But then what? Be hated by all peoples? Arouse this great spirit of these people further, to true awakening, to an awakened state of unreasonable hatred and anger? If these men and women were prepared to die at any moment, all, for their group, then imagine their infinitely greater power when armed.
The army had their armour and weapons, but these were defenses, these formed an isolation against the dangers of the world. They were a weakness, a dangerous weakness. Without them... But these people of this land, they stood without these, strong. With them... they would be unstoppable.
So then, the leadership of the invading army dismounted, laid down in ceremonious slow acts their armour and weapons and banners and all glory and dreams of conquest, and bowed down on the grass before the great people, and asked them for forgiveness, delivering their lives into their mercy, and asking only that they might be as the children of this fearless people, and become in future time as one of them, and be granted to be fearless, and that also be granted to their children and onwards, this great infinity of collective invincibility.
Togetherness always utterly defeats the little hunger for power and fear of others of individuals. What use is power, if it is behind a wall? What need the disarmed fear, if all around them in spirit are one and eternal?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
