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Eliza’s Notes - 07: Age of Enmity

The idyllic society we have been living in was bound to fall sooner or later. Human nature is far too dark to keep such a peaceful society forever, after all. As soon as conditions began to change everything spirals out of control until it falls apart. And this time, just the same, the fall was brought about by human nature and its selfishness.

As society grew ever more advanced from its use of crystal powered technology, more and more stress began being placed on the mothercrystals. Patches and repairs to their structures were being made, but they continued being taxed more and more until it could be done no more. First the Air mothercrystal shattered, exploding and firing shards all around. Its remote location meant it was mostly an ignored issue, people passing it off as lack of proper maintenance. Then the Water mothercrystal shattered. Then Fire, then Earth. Then Ice, Lightning, and Shadow. Faster and faster with each new mothercrystal that shattered when finally Mind and Vitae shattered almost simultaneously.

The people figured they could just rebuild new mothercrystals, the shattering simply an unavoidable result of the age of the structures. Nothing lasts forever, after all, was their guess after the third one was destroyed. Energy could still be harvested from the shattered pieces to supplement supply while the new ones were under construction. But as they set up the latticework for the new Air mothercrystal, even while others were still shattering around the world, they found that they couldn't. Records and notes from the time of their creation had been neglected over the years, as people in the past figured that they would last forever and so hadn't bothered keeping all the records straight. In the end, nobody knew how to recreate them. The knowledge of how the mothercrystals were created was lost, and now so too were they.

The fallout from this was swift. As supplies began to dwindle, people began to hoard them. Countries went to war with each other to capture stores of crystals. Armies quickly spent their own crystal supply in efforts to capture their enemies crystal supplies, which they were themselves spending to do the same. And the civilians - cut off from easy access to crystals as their governments hoarded them for their wars - didn't fare much better. Cities went dark. Regulated food stores spoiled. Friendships shattered just the same as the mothercrystals had. Neighbor became wary of neighbor as they hoarded and protected their own crystal stores. Households that didn't have storage of crystals quickly fell to having nothing and being despised beggars or hated theives.

The Evreux too suffered greatly. While they had integrated little of the crystal technology developed on the overworld into their own lifestyle - and what of it that they did could be easily converted back to running on electricity once more - their rail network was devastated by the armies of the surface as supply lines would be cut off or captures to gain crystal stores. To their credit, the Evreux for the most part don’t have hatred or contempt for the races of Aughylia, but simply pity. Pity that we're so quick to fall into such horrible behavior and not learn to be at peace. A pity that they couldn’t come together to solve the problem and instead let it drive a wedge between them.

With the world as volatile as it is right now I’ve had to retreat once more, hiding from public view. The Evreaux consider me a friend and freely let me travel around their tunnels and rails, and so I’m able to come and go around the world as best as I can with the damaged rail lines, but the surface world right now would be too suspicious of an old woman such as myself traveling around alone, and I’m liable to get attacked by people trying to rob me. Not that I can’t defend myself easily from basically everything they could throw at me, between my own magic and my staff and other weapons I carry around with me, but it is of course far simpler to just avoid trouble than it is to try to get out of it. I’m immortal, not invulnerable. I haven’t lived this long by being reckless. That’s James’s way of life, not mine.

One exception to my policy of avoiding, though, has been records. There’s been a lot of important technologies developed in the last while - medical technologies especially - since the advent of the crystals, and I’ve felt keeping certain key technologies would be important. The Evreux agree, and collectively we’ve been sneaking into museums, factories, and government offices and stealing the design and manufacturing documents for a number of key technologies. Some of them could be converted to run on their electrical systems with work, some of them are more or less specifically bound to magic energy to function. No matter that result, we’re saving them in case they manage to clean up their act and get the crystals working once more, so we can see it restored once society heals once more.

Normally, or rather, in the past, I suppose I would say ‘if’ society heals, but I’ve seen this happen enough times now that it’s pretty much inevitable. As long as the world isn’t wiped out completely, there will be a rebound sooner or later. More it’s a matter of what form development will take, and whether technology will go down this path again. It’s probably what Menos Cor and the people he worked for feared so much, if I had to guess. If they did not wipe out a society completely, then they could build up again to fight back later. As I look at the devastation on the frozen surface of Ildios, I just pray that we never have to see that enemy here again in the future.


Date posted: 07 July, 2016
Tags: elizas_notes writing
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