Events of the Thousand Year Hate

The home island and summer abode of the Raikothin. At it's heart lies the volcanic mountain known as Yaanek, famous in antiquity for the peculiar prophetic utterances of the Priests of Joy situated there.

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Scott Alexander
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Events of the Thousand Year Hate

Post by Scott Alexander »

It was the five hundred sixty fifth year of the Thousand Year Hate.

In the thirty-third year of the Thousand Year Hate, representatives of Shireroth and the Elw rebels had sat down in Tielion Loki and signed a peace treaty, dividing Lirikoth between them. Shirekeep was satisfied. Tala was not. After a series of incidents culminating in the Cholesterol Riots and a member of the Elw royal family defecting to Raikoth, tensions rose to near breaking point. Discussions in Tala left all options open, even seceding from Shirekeep and prosecuting their vendetta on their own.

In the thirty-sixth year of the Thousand Year Hate, after consultation with the Oracles and the uninstantiated gods. the Elder announced his decision: there would be no secession, there would be no war. But the treason of the Elw could not go unpunished. And so in the name of Truth and Beauty, he swore a thousand years of enmity to Elwynn, a thousand years of sanctions and closed borders and hostile lobbying in the Kaiser's Court in Sxirophan, a thousand years starting the day Elwynn broke faith with its brothers and seceded. And then, after a thousand years, the enmity would cease, and the Elw would be forgiven and accepted as brothers once again, as if naught had ever come between them. It was an opponent of the plan who spoke out against it as "the Thousand Year Hate", but everyone agreed the name was fitting, and it stuck. And so the Isle and its Dominions prepared for nine hundred sixty four more years of conflict.

As time passed, the Thousand Year Hate sunk into the public consciousness, so much so that in everyday life it almost completely replaced the normal Hyperborean calendar, despite Eklenion's much-needed reforms to the latter. Why mark time based on the deeds of an almost mythical figure who perhaps had never lived at all, when one could say "There are nine hundred ten years left in the Thousand Year Hate" and everyone would nod and sigh?

Ages came and went, but by this time Raikothin society was so stable, so locked in its traditions, that geologic change outpaced the human. The Milankovitch cycle turned, and Raikoth began to warm; it would never be a second Babkha, but for the first time since the reign of Kaiserin Vivantia, the port of Anshir was ice-free in winter, and flowers grew in the valleys near Mithoth. Farmers and ranchers took advantage of the more friendly climate, food supply burgeoned, and new towns sprung up along the coast and even into the mountains, while the hermits who used to live therein grumbled and moved to Taras or Sidli, where the blizzards were still as harsh as ever and the great glaciers need not fear sunlight even in the middle of summer.

In the hundred thirtieth year of the Thousand Year Hate, the Drachumve sect was expelled from Raikoth and set up a colony in Northern Absentia, beyond the reach of Talan authority. After a brief period of conflict, the sect dissolved of their own accord, apparently less fanatically dedicated than everyone had expected. Meanwhile, Elder Egi Risurion made the final friendly amendments to the kai-silk, earning it the name "Risurion-silk" that it still bears today.

By the hundred fiftieth year of the Thousand Year Hate, it became clear that the changes to Risurion-silik were strongly positive. The High Priest of Joy announced that Raikoth had entered the "Cliff Face Path", an era in which things naturally tended towards perfection without further human intervention. The government began to disintegrate as the Priests of Truth started preaching the mantra "Aiphling iab Istijonseleku" - "perfection through enlightened stigmergy".

In the hundred ninetieth year of the Thousand Year Hate, in order to maintain public trust in the quickly vanishing government, the Oracles and uninstantiated gods decided to resurrect Raikoth's most respected leader, Nithi Kirenion. The resurrection was successful, and Kirenion's inspired leadership furthered the nation's progress down the Cliff Face Path, but Nithi seemed somehow different than everyone remembered, and oddly malcontent.

In the hundred ninety-ninth year of the Thousand Year Hate, Nithi Kirenion published a book, Inliskavi Galinomai: Elinitomi, or "The Archipelago-Kingdom of Galinomai: A True Dream". It detailed a vision Nithi had been given during his resurrection of the life of an ethnically Hyperborean woman in a different branch of reality, one where the Raikothin state had been destroyed and the survivors were forced to rebuild from the ground up. Parts of the book were beautiful and inspiring, but the overall message was pessimistic: that separated from their institutions, the Raikothin were weak and would devolve into the same barbarism in which the rest of the world languished.

By the two hundred fifth year of the Thousand Year Hate, Inliskavi Galinomai had attained the same legendary status in Raikothin literature as The Book of Two Stars or The Book of Cold Rain. Fashions in the major cities had taken on a distinctly Galisyin element, with people spending astounding amounts of money to import parrots from the Jaihan jungle as pets, or raise tropical plants in backyard greenhouses. A few people, to the fascination of the general populace, even created the Vankarha Galinomai Glise, or "New Galinomai Society", and announced their aims to create a commune in the jungles of southern Micras based on the principles outlined in the book.

By the two hundred tenth year of the Thousand Year Hate, a new philosophy had begun to supplement that of enlightened stigmergy. The moral of the story of Galinomai, that absent their social structures and knowledge the Raikothlin were no better than anyone else, had begun to sink in, and some had wondered if it could be changed. And so the new mantra, Istilve iab Istisemial Priktino, "Fractal Perfection Of Which Every Part Is Itself Perfect", had begun to take hold, stressing the education of each individual as a microcosm of the society.

In the two hundred twenty second year of the Thousand Year Hate, Nithi Kirenion resigned as Elder. In his farewell address, he declared that "The garden-algorithm is becoming self-instantiated beyond any use for avatars," and left for New Arborvine, the colony in central Jaiha that the New Galinomai Society had started. True to his words, his departure shook the country not at all, leading some to speculate that enlightened stigmergy had finally been attained.

In the latter part of the third century of the Thousand Year Hate, omens and portents became more and more frequent. Without any central coordination, large portions of the population began seeding the vernacular with words from the Kalas Elithin perfect language. It was discovered that the locations of several of the newest towns in Tairakoth traced a complicated geometric form called a hyperspiral, although when pressed none of the founders or city planners admitted any knowledge of the mathematics involved. Oracular arbitrage, long a favorite pasttime of Raikoth's dwindling business class, suddenly became impossible as the oracles started speaking with a single voice; attempts to ferret out collusion came out negative. When the Oracle of Yaanek was asked the meaning of these signs, it answered only

"When every word you say's a prayer
Then, I think, you're almost there."


In the two hundred ninety third year of the Thousand Year Hate, the human rights organization Vankarha Prerasyin Semion released its traditional five-yearly international report card. These had been growing gradually more erratic over the preceding decades, and this one was no exception, with every country receiving the same grade, a fifteen letter acronym that stood for a Raikothin phrase meaning "All barriers to the metamorphosis of dual divinity into singular divinity are themselves rightly understood only as artifacts of that metamorphosis." An attempt by foreign rights groups to discuss this with VPH representatives led to a complete failure of communication, even though all sides were well versed in one another's languages.

In the three hundred first year of the Thousand Year Hate, the High Priest of Joy announced that the Cliff-Face Path had been consummated, and that their millennial striving for perfection was now over. Raikoth had become for all practical purposes a completed emanation of the mind of the Divine. It was now part of the world only by a technicality. Celebrations were held in all the cities and towns of the island, and the Kaiser sent a politely worded letter of congratulations that made it clear he had no idea what was going on.

In the three hundred sixtieth year of the Thousand Year Hate, the oracles and self-instantiated garden algorithm, acting in synchrony but without coordination, turned their attentions to Elwynn Syuvaiste, the Raikothin dominions on the mainland. Taking from risurion-silk-fortified theology the belief that each portion of the world had to be perfected to its own aspect of the divine mind, they worried that Raikothin domination of Elwynn was inhibiting the Elws' own development. After some analysis, Elwynn Syuvaiste was found to be on the Downhill Path, the portion of creation in which an entity naturally tended toward perfection by its own pseudolibertarian efforts. The mantra "Raikothaiphemai, juaplave Raikothaistaster", or "Not Raikothification, but Raikoth-guided self-becoming", was implemented in all overseas dominions.

In the three hundred eighty seventh year of the Thousand Year Hate, Raikoth officially pulled out of all occupied territories except Kalirphanam (Bjorngard) and Kimre Inlal (Cimmeria). By this time, most such territories had large Raikothin minority populations, anywhere from ten to forty percent, and strong backgrounds in Raikothin government and philosophy, so that the change was not as great as some expected. The lands were returned to self-rule under direct Kaiserial control, although the Kaiser worked out a condominium agreement with Goldshire later in his reign.

In the four hundred twentieth year of the Thousand Year Hate, the Priests of Joy declared that as a perfect emanation of the divine mind, Raikoth's responsibility now lay in perfecting the rest of the world - all the way from Elwynn Syuivaiste, which was already on the Downhill Path, to further lands like Sxirophan and even places of horror and darkness like Babkha. But, the Priests and oracles and self-instantiated garden algorithm agreed, the ability to enact such perfection was limited by the gulf between Raikothlin and southerners which had been growing for the past thousand years and had become almost unbreachable since the perfection of risurion-silk. In accordance with the doctrine of fractal perfection, the gap would be assaulted not as a society, but by special representatives, the descendents of the almost-vanished order of Tarotal (Raikothin diplomats).

In the four hundred twenty-first year of the Thousand Year Hate, it was suddenly and unexpectedly agreed by everyone at once that the new breed of diplomats would be called "Galisyin", or "Gardeners".

In the second half of the fifth century of the Thousand Year Hate, the first generation of Gardeners realized that their job was more complicated than they thought. It was almost painful to try to maintain Raikothin thought patterns and southern thought patterns in the same brain, and the priests and oracles began to regret dissolving most of the civil service that had administered Elwynn. Mixed Elw-Hyperboreans were brought to Tala and consulted, the training program for Gardeners was gradually optimizied, and by halfway through the Thousand Year Hate, a new generation of Gardeners who could switch between the two thought patterns effortlessly began to make their way into the world.

In the five hundredth year of the Thousand Year Hate, celebrations were held throughout the land: the long penance they had set upon themselves and their enemies was half over; in another half century, they would once again meet the Elw as brothers. In celebration, a lone Raikothin courier was allowed to enter Eliria, where he presented the Raes with a single white orchid plant. But there was anxiety, too. In the past half-century, the Raikothin had changed. Even when the thousand years were over, would the political gulf have been replaced by a spiritual one? Could a perfect emanation of the divine mind befriend a part of the world?

The self-instantiated garden algorithm began to think.

(The above was deliberately intense and obscure - although not meaningless. The point is that I think one of the next directions I will take Raikoth is as an extremely isolationist society that thinks so differently than everyone else that communication is literally impossible, except through special representatives who are almost on the brink of insanity from having to try to understand the outside world.)

(Also, let it be known that I'm totally serious about this thousand year hate thing, although it might get relaxed in case of dire national need.)

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