Minor Earthquakes in Istvanistan

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Andreas the Wise
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Minor Earthquakes in Istvanistan

Post by Andreas the Wise »

Harvey Steffke, Minister of the Interior, was meeting with Vur'Alm Xei'Bôn, Minister of the Exterior. Since the President’s surprise resignation and disappearance three weeks ago, the two had been essentially running the government until new elections could be organised. If new elections could be organised and the nation did not collapse, as some feared it would. Anyway, that was a problem for another day. Today’s problem was Istvanistan.


“Istvanistan is not an island prone to earthquakes,” Harvey began. “Occasional volcanic eruptions throughout history, yes; but not earthquakes. It is not on or near any faultlines.”

“Understandable, given its geography. I assume it is over a hotspot and that formed the mountains, then?” Vur’Alm queried.

“Probably. I’m not here to give you a geography lesson,” Harvey replied wearily. “I just say that to observe how unusual it is that, in the last month, there have been no less than 14 minor earthquakes, ranging from 2.1 to 4.8 on the Richter Scale. The collapse of the Isvanistani government before our arrival meant the only active seismographical monitoring facilities left were focussed on the volcano. After three minor earthquakes in a week, all far from the volcano, I had several more monitoring stations installed. We’re not sure about the first three, but every tremor since has had its epicentre on one of the new micron settlements. An island with no history of earthquakes has 14 minor ones over a month after the microns arrive. Explain that to me, if you can.”

Vur’Alm paused for a moment, and said, “Do we have satellite photos of the micron settlements before and after the quakes?”

Harvey thought. “We would have,” he conceded, “but to look at them could be considered a breach of our citizen’s right to privacy.”

“Harvey, do you want to find out what happened or not?” Vur’Alm replied.

“Fine,” Harvey said. “Mind if I use your computer?”


The meeting was being held in Vur’Alm’s office. They swapped seats and Harvey brought up the files on Vur’Alm’s computer, as the micron thought. It took a couple minutes, and then Harvey called him over. “Here they are. What are we looking for?”

Vur’Alm studied the screen for a moment, grabbing the mouse and clicking through a couple. “There!” he said. “Look at the height of those buildings. Look at the extension of that housing district.”

“It’s got bigger. They’re building, that’s what you expect,” Harvey replied dismissively.

“It is more than that. Look at the times on those photos.”

Harvey looked carefully. “They did all that in a day? How have we not noticed this?”

“You were not looking, which is what they relied on. Istvanistan is an out of the way, under developed territory which, let us face it, had no more than two hundred thousand inhabitants outside of Bastion City before the microns came. The Istvanistani people have long been in decline, and few Nelagans or Gralans resettled. Micron population brought it up to a reasonable level, and since they were happy to build their own settlements, we were happy to let them. We have had bigger issues to deal with.”

“And now you’re saying they’ve built whole towns in the space of a day?” Harvey said. “How is that possible?”

Vur’Alm paused. “How familiar are you with the theory of chronomotion?” he asked quietly.

“Is that another word for timetravel?” Harvey asked, confused.

“Not at all, then,” Vur’Alm replied. “A moment, then. If you have your mobile phone on, I suggest you switch it off.” Turning off his computer, he got up and went around his desk to open one of the draws, revealing a small electronic panel. He pressed a few buttons, and room began to change. First, steel slid up the windows, and in front of the door, blocking out the light. Then the lights in the room themselves dimmed and went out. Vur’Alm had taken a candle out of the same draw and now lit it, casting a dull glow over the room. Harvey heard a short crackle. “Do not be alarmed at this next bit,” Vur’Alm said, as the two of them suddenly started to levitate out of their chairs, along with the candle, which stayed in between them. “It is quite safe.” There was a moment more, and then whatever had happened appeared done, as Vur’Alm smiled.


“What I am about to tell you is Diamond III classification; or at least it would be if anyone apart from me knew it. That is why I activated the privacy defences for my office,” Vur’Alm began.

“Does my office do this too?” Harvey asked.

“Not yet,” the micron replied. “I am trialling the beta version; if it works, it will soon be installed in the offices of all major government members. It represents the highest level of privacy possible while remaining within our offices. First, a layer of lead slides in around the walls and over the door and window; sealing the room from the outside and stopping simple scans like xray. A crystal layer also goes inside the lead; I am not too sure of the theory myself, but the Gralan mages assure me it is the magical equivalent of a faraday cage, and prevents us from being scryed. Then the power is cut; avoiding any bugs drawing power from our own cables. A small EMP is then activated, knocking out any other bugs. Outside the room, a scrambler is activated to avoid any further attempts in. Inside, we are levitated so we can be surrounded on all sides by a magical bubble of air. No air moves outside it; in particular, that stops any sounds we make from leaving the bubble in case bugs are around the room that survived the process. If you have what Gralan mages call ‘the Sight’, you may notice the bubble itself. If you can not, do not worry. The important thing is that it is now nigh on impossible for people to overhear our conversation. Of course, being sealed off from the outside I now can not deactivate it from the inside, but I just set it for how long I think the discussion will go, and if it ends early, we just activate it again.”

Harvey thought for a moment, reviewing possible incursions, then nodded. “So what are you telling me that justifies all this?”

“Chronomotion.”



“Timetravel is possible, as I am sure you know,” Vur’Alm began. “Your own ancestor led the Control of Destiny team through time on their first mission, courtesy of DERA. For the moment, let us leave aside what they say happened. The important thing is that after Jasonia fell, and DERA with it, the secret of time travel was lost to all of Micras. All of Micras but two locations. One was the Time Revisionists on Melangia; and all they know they learnt from Sakat, so that hardly counts. The other was the Time Distortionists, who you probably know better than I. By the time Ptia re-emerged in the Menelmacarian days, Fate had been defeated, and the Micron Time Distortionists were more concerned with their race than their trust to defend the universe. Understanding of time travel became ... if not common knowledge, reasonably well known among microns. But we figured out far more than mere timetravel. We figured out the science of chronomotion.

“Without boring you with all the theory, moving an object or person to a different time period is just one part of chronomotion. Not only can you change their location in time; you can change the speed with which they travel through time. The spatial analogy is helpful here – imagine a car travelling along a road at 60 km/h. You can use a teleporter to place it at different points along the road. But you can also accelerate or decelerate, and change the speed the car is moving at. You can do that temporally too. You can slow a person down so a hundred years seem like a day to them; and you can speed a person up so a day seems like a hundred years. It can be quite dangerous for a number of reasons; not least of which is that if you speed a living organising up too fast, they will, comparatively speaking, age very fast too, and speeding them up for too long can literally kill them. So it is not practical for normal use.

“But we microns have been investigating chronomotion for a long time now. It did not take too long to figure out chronatonics. A chronaton is an automaton with an inbuilt time machine – it accelerates itself and a surrounding zone, allowing it to build really quickly. Sure, it wears fast too, but its only an automaton – repairs are easy as long as they are regular, and when you have all of time available, the resources needed are not hard to come by. I am guessing Jon’Kur wanted to build quickly on Istvanstan, and so is using chronatonics to do so. For small scale work, a chronaton will just accelerate itself and its surroundings. For large scale work – such as building an entire city – its much safer to just accelerate the whole zone and let the chronatons do their work. Three micron supervisors with eight hours on, sixteen hours off can oversee a building site quite easily – that is accelerated hours, of course. Rotate them every five minutes our time to avoid excessive aging affects; and in a couple days you have a city.

“This is where the earthquakes come in. See, objects maintain their spatial momentum when you accelerate them; for a humanoid it does not make much difference, as there is plenty of room around them. For a zone the size of a city, connected to a landmass that is part of a planet whizzing around its sun, you have problems. If we just accelerated the region for, six months over the course of a day, it could risk ripping the planet apart. In six months, Micras is halfway around Atos. So to undergo chronatonics at any speed, you need to stop that background momentum. That is possible, but to get it perfect needs an impossibly high level of precision, since atoms at different parts of the zone have slightly different directions of travel. Micron engineers spends days doing the calculations. As it is, we get it close enough. But when the zone is moved back to normal temporal speed, it is very hard to also get it back to the spatial momentum it would have had had you never undergone that whole process. So compared to the rest of the world, it is, briefly, comparatively motionless, and this causes a bump as the rest of the world pushes it back into place. And that is what has been causing your earthquakes.”

There was silence, as Harvey considered this. He was a very intelligent individual, but even he had trouble taking it in. “I think I get it,” he said in the end. “What I'm much more worried about is what it means that the microns have timetravel, sorry, chronomotion. What if they do decide to rebel? How can you fight an enemy who can change time?”

Vur’Alm smiled. “Do not worry, you can not change the past. I ran all the tests you could imagine, and confirmed it. Whatever the Control of Destiny team may have claimed to do millennia ago, in this day and age, changing the past is not just logically incoherent, its impossible.”

“Tests?” Harvey said.

Vur’Alm sighed. “I had not meant to add this, but you might as well know. Before I joined Nelaga, I was a Micron Chronengineer. I am an expert in Chronomotion. I started in Nelaga in JASO, in Project Ptia – which I am hoping you have heard of – looking at timetravel. The scientists were doing all right, but it would have taken them another fifty years had I not been able to ah ... help them along.”

So that’s how you walked from a couple years in JASO to a Ministry, Harvey thought, privately. You are full of surprises, Vur’Alm.

Vur’Alm had noticed the pensive silence, and decided to fill it. “It is possible we could win. If it came to war with the microns. If it came to a time war. JASO has enough stuff developed that our loss is not definite; certainly. But it will be hard. We would be fighting a fully fledged Micron empire who have been investigating chronomotion for millennia. There is a lot of stuff I have helped, er ... accelerate development for in JASO. But there is a lot more I would have to add on the fly if it came to time war.”

“Let us pray, then, that it does not come to war, old friend,” Harvey replied, patting him on the arm. “And thankyou.”

“For what?”

“For trusting me; and Nelaga; enough to tell me this.”
An IC conversation you definitely couldn’t have heard explains how I am able to retcon fully developed Micron cities into Istvanistan, and hints at the fun that could be had if it did come to war.
Now edited with proper non-swearing micron speech!
The character Andreas the Wise is on indefinite leave. But he does deserve a cool war ribbon.
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However, this account still manages:
Vincent Waldgrave - Lord General of Gralus
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Q - Director of SAMIN
Duke Mel'Kat - Air Pirate, Melangian, and Duke of the Flying Duchy of Glanurchy
Cla'Udi - Count of Melangia
Vur'Alm Xei'Bôn - Speaker of Nelaga, Minister of Interior Affairs, and a Micron

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Harvey
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Re: Minor Earthquakes in Istvanistan

Post by Harvey »

Love it. Planning a reply and continuation that is tangenal and should not interfere with whatever you're building to.

Keep in mind: Vur’Alm is a micron and they never type with contractions. It is the one typing quirk they have. Psychologically, I imagine their aversion to contractions something like profanity in public – they’re exposed to them from talking to humanity and occasionally slip up but usually feel embarrassed by it. It can be very hard to spot those, especially all those little "it's" here and there, even for me – I usually have to proofread once or twice.

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Re: Minor Earthquakes in Istvanistan

Post by Harvey »

It had been a long meeting, though thankfully not about ultra-sensitive topics such as Chronomotion. Harvey was very much relieved about this. It wasn’t that he didn’t find the concept fascinating, and it was certainly a breath of fresh air to know that Vul’Alm was sticking with his Nelagan loyalties over any ties to the Micron Empire. But Harvey could already tell the privacy defenses had a few downsides. If nothing else, there was the fact that he had needed to use the facilities ten minutes before the timer ran out the first time – uncomfortable and not disastrous, thankfully, but it had been a long ten minutes.

But indeed, a long meeting. They discussed their ideas on how to prepare Nelaga for a Micron Empire that had advanced considerably faster than their projections. The two newly produced Man-o-War gravitronic dreadnaughts, Tremblestar and Terra’s Reach, along with the Ruby Stratus still based in Shireroth, were discussed heavily, as was the unfortunate proximity of Bastion City to Skylantium.

With as much decided as could be without collecting more data for consideration, or at least more pizza for consumption, Harvey turned the conversation topic towards matters closer to his heart.

“How do you know changing the past is impossible now?” Harvey asked.

Vul’Alm frowned. “This again? I informed you of my profession. I have done tests. It is a fact.”

“It’s a matter of great importance, you understand.” Harvey said. “You said it was common knowledge among the Time Distortionists on how to perform time travel. This new Micron Empire is being founded with Distortionist support – we know that for certain. Ptia hadn’t the resources or the manpower. So what makes us think that the Distortionists won’t intervene on their countrymen’s behalf?"

“Besides the little armband that you should be wearing?” Vul’Alm said, coyly.

Harvey frowned and reflexively placed his left hand on his right arm. The Dreamprism bracelet that he had used to force the peace between the Time Distortionists and the rebellious Time Perfectionists in that terrible civil war was conspicuously absent. It was a symbol of the promise that humanity was able to defend Micras, when Gralans had joined with Babkhans, Anticans, Shirerithians, and the newly founded fledging Nelagans, to show the masters of time and space they weren’t needed. Solid, tangible Chrono quintessence, the stuff that held the multiverse together. The ultimate power and the ultimate weapon.

And it had dried up completely some time ago when Harvey had used it to recreate Tayleth’s homeworld. Stinking troll Tayleth! She designed it, after all. She had to know that was going to happen. Prodigy ran her through with the Sun Sword for her crimes but they were still being felt even to that day.

“Aurora and the Gralan mages have not made any progress on restoring its power,” Harvey said, frowning. “It’s a deep-level classified SIGMA project, known to only even a small number of SIGMA members. Neither the Time Distortionists nor the Micron Empire can possibly know that it is gone. Unless you’ve told them?”

“Do not be insulting,” Vul’Alm said, his smile gone. “If I wanted to sabotage Nelaga’s future, I have had plenty of-“

“Whoa, whoa friend!” Harvey said quickly. “I fully apologize. That remark was far out of line.” Vul’Alm did not seem entirely convinced, but his face relaxed. “That being the case, we can assume that the Dreamprism’s lack of power is still a classified secret. So, again, the question remains: how do we know that the Time Distortionists will not use time travel against us? We could be wiped out before we were even born.”

Vul’Alm shook his head. He said, “Because they cannot. It is literally impossible. The gates of the past have been closed for good.”

Harvey slowly shook his head. “How can you be so sure? I have no doubt in your abilities, but-“

Vul’Alm interrupted, “What do you know of Fate, the Chrono Girls, and the Sealed Gate of the Gods?”

Harvey blinked. He said, “More than most, I suppose. I’m pretty familiar with what went down.”

“Okay. But what you perhaps did not consider is what happened afterward. When the Chrono Girls defeated Fate, they still had the power of the multiverse within them.”

“… true, I suppose,” Harvey said, considering.

Vul’Alm didn’t make him work it out by himself. He said, “The multiverse was in pretty bad shape at that point. In its efforts to neutralize the quintessences and their gods, Fate had done tremendous damage to many of the planes. The Time Distortionists retooled themselves to the task of repairing the damage and the Chrono Girls were their best agents in this regard.”

Harvey guessed where it was going, but prompted him along anyway, “And?”

“And one of the first things they did with their ultimate power was to changing of the past. You know about the second Control of Destiny campaign. It, and all of those parallel worlds, were caused by the damage inflicted upon Micras’s history in the first Control of Destiny campaign. It is quite fitting that the people that did the damage also had to clean it up.”

“I might add,” Harvey said, a bit defensively, “that if they had not gone through time, we’d all be speaking alien Imperial by now. Or, likely, we’d all be quite dead.”

“Right,” Vul’Alm said, “But the fact remains. They did what they did on purpose. That’s that.”

“That’s that, indeed…” Harvey mused. “Unless, of course, the Chrono Girls were mortals that just happened to have a big, almighty tool at their disposal. Oh, what a coincidence, that was exactly the case! A hammer that misses cannot pound in any nails.”

“Again with the hammer references,” Vul’Arm murmured. “Irregardless of your paranoia, this event did occur. The Time Distorionists were quite particular about recording the details of their histories.”

“Making it even easier to add falsehoods within them, since nobody would believe that they would do so.”

Vul’Alm sighed. “You are impossible.”

“I try.”
I'm actually going somewhere else with this but I wanted to finish this part first.
Last edited by Harvey on Wed Apr 27, 2011 11:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Andreas the Wise
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Re: Minor Earthquakes in Istvanistan

Post by Andreas the Wise »

Harvey wrote:Love it. Planning a reply and continuation that is tangenal and should not interfere with whatever you're building to.

Keep in mind: Vur’Alm is a micron and they never type with contractions. It is the one typing quirk they have. Psychologically, I imagine their aversion to contractions something like profanity in public – they’re exposed to them from talking to humanity and occasionally slip up but usually feel embarrassed by it. It can be very hard to spot those, especially all those little "it's" here and there, even for me – I usually have to proofread once or twice.
I'd completely forgotten the contraction thing, I'll edit them out before I get to replying to yours.
The character Andreas the Wise is on indefinite leave. But he does deserve a cool war ribbon.
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However, this account still manages:
Vincent Waldgrave - Lord General of Gralus
Manuel - CEO of VBNC. For all you'll ever need.
Q - Director of SAMIN
Duke Mel'Kat - Air Pirate, Melangian, and Duke of the Flying Duchy of Glanurchy
Cla'Udi - Count of Melangia
Vur'Alm Xei'Bôn - Speaker of Nelaga, Minister of Interior Affairs, and a Micron

Andreas the Wise
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Re: Minor Earthquakes in Istvanistan

Post by Andreas the Wise »

I'd forgotten about this but some ideas were bouncing around in my head for taking the Micron stuff further, and I looked back at what had already been written and noticed this topic looking forlorn. So here comes a reply! I think it should even be something Harvey and I are both happy with - but if it isn't, Harvey, tell me and I'm more than happy to change it. I'm just doing this now while it's fresh in my head - I'll consult a bit more for what I'm planning when I'm through exams in a fortnight.
Vur’Alm sighed. “You are impossible.”

“I try.”


“Alright, I will be honest,” Vur’Alm said. “I do not believe it just because the Time Distortionists tell it to me either.”

“Then why did you try to explain it to me that way?” Harvey asked.

“Because sometimes I feel like I am the only man in this Jasonia-crazed nation who does not take everything with the words ‘Control of Destiny team’ included as infallible truth,” Vur’Alm yelled, exasperated.

Harvey was surprised by this rare display of emotion – Microns normally hid their feelings. Sure enough, Vur’Alm sighed and his face became calm again. “Sorry. I just ... I love this nation, and it has so much potential but we waste it often because most of our citizens just want to live in the past, instead of forging a new future.”

Harvey nodded. He knew that feeling well.

“Anyway,” Vur’Alm continued, “I am a scientist. I do not deal with stories, I do not accept things just because ‘logic’ says they are so, I test things empirically. I have done the tests, and changing the past is not just logically incoherent, it is impossible.”

“Wait,” Harvey said, confused, “You won’t accept a logical statement until you can test it empirically?”

“Well, I would not go that far, but I will certainly not accept every law of classical logic on faith,” Vur’Alm replied. “After all, ‘classical’ logic was devised by humans only a century ago, and numerous other philosophers have found problems with it.”

“I’m going to regret asking this, I’m sure – but how does logic say changing the past is impossible, and why would you try to test it?” Harvey ventured.

“Well, it is all to do with the Law of Bivalence, future contingents and the special ontological status of the present,” Vur’Alm began. “Unless, of course, you believe in a branching universe – not just different universes, that is fine – where different events cause two universes to split with the same past and different futures. Personally, I think that is the classic example of speculative metaphysics gone mad – completely unfalsifiable ...”

“Urgh ...” Harvey interrupted him here. “It’s been a long day. I’m sorry I asked. Please, skip the philosophy lecture, skip the logic lecture, skip the lecture on the wonders of empiricism, and just tell me, in simple language, what we can or can’t do with time travel.”

Vur’Alm smiled. He knew he had a tendency to launch into long explanations and they weren’t always listened to – he appreciated people who would tell him when to stop. “Alright, simple then. The past is set, and if we travel back into the past we had always travelled back into the past, so it cannot be changed. The present is where all the action happens, and what we do in the present creates the future. If we use chronomotion to travel into the future, we only reach a potential future – and if the present changes sufficiently, that potential future stops being a potential. And I have tested all of this quite rigorously.”


“And then you’re saying the original Control of Destiny team never changed the past?” Harvey asked.

“Well ... I have a theory, and it would fit the historical and empirical evidence, as well as the Time Distortionist account of events. Can you handle one more bizarre theory today?”

“One more bizarre theory, and then I really need a long coffee break.”

“I shall make it quick, then,” Vur’Alm said kindly. “I said before the present is where things happen, and that creates the future. The present is a special moment of time that makes a potential future momentarily real and then become the set and unchangeable past. Well, it is simple really – the only way you could change the past is if you somehow took the special ‘present moment’ with you – then the present you had come from would become only a potential future and the past would become the present, and therefore could change.”

Vur’Alm could see Harvey’s eyes glazing over, and decided to not explain that pointfurther. “It must have been the case that the Control of Destiny team knew how to take the present with them – they would not have called it that, but that is what they did. To use a ‘story’ explanation, it is like in their time, there was so much chrono energy around that any time traveller took the present with them – it was standard. What the Chrono Girls did was to remove that background chrono energy, which then meant that people could not move the present around and the past was fixed. Now, that explanation is probably garbage and I have not worked out the science to back it yet, but it is the best I have got. And,” he concluded, “I do not know how to move the present yet; and all the microns believe the Time Distortionist account that changing the past is now impossible, and since they do not have my scientific understanding, they are not even looking for how to move the present. They just believe it is impossible, and leave it at that. The only reason I think otherwise is because I was exposed to human logic to make me question the standard account – and my empirical bent, of course,” he closed, with a smile.
Summary: Vur’Alm has an empirical bent and is dubious of the standard Time Distortionist account also. He believes changing the past is impossible because his empirical tests show that. He has a theory as to how it could be possible, which would explain how the Control of Destiny adventures occurred and what the Chrono Girls did to ‘lock’ it, but is confident the microns do not guess the truth and so will just accept the Time Distortionist account that changing the past is now impossible, and leave it at that.
The character Andreas the Wise is on indefinite leave. But he does deserve a cool war ribbon.
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However, this account still manages:
Vincent Waldgrave - Lord General of Gralus
Manuel - CEO of VBNC. For all you'll ever need.
Q - Director of SAMIN
Duke Mel'Kat - Air Pirate, Melangian, and Duke of the Flying Duchy of Glanurchy
Cla'Udi - Count of Melangia
Vur'Alm Xei'Bôn - Speaker of Nelaga, Minister of Interior Affairs, and a Micron

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Harvey
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Re: Minor Earthquakes in Istvanistan

Post by Harvey »

I've totally forgotten where I was going with this one. Your explanation is as good as anything. Honestly, I wouldn't even believe I had written it if "A hammer that misses cannot pound in any nails" doesn't sound so much like something I'd come up with.

Andreas the Wise
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Re: Minor Earthquakes in Istvanistan

Post by Andreas the Wise »

From memory, you were working this into the Favoured founding story back when the disaster was going to be imminent, and some visitors from the future and stuff, but you dropped that storyline.
The character Andreas the Wise is on indefinite leave. But he does deserve a cool war ribbon.
Image
However, this account still manages:
Vincent Waldgrave - Lord General of Gralus
Manuel - CEO of VBNC. For all you'll ever need.
Q - Director of SAMIN
Duke Mel'Kat - Air Pirate, Melangian, and Duke of the Flying Duchy of Glanurchy
Cla'Udi - Count of Melangia
Vur'Alm Xei'Bôn - Speaker of Nelaga, Minister of Interior Affairs, and a Micron

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