Espionage Report: Politics of Drachumve

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Scott Alexander
Posts: 1778
Joined: Sun Dec 19, 2010 1:20 am

Espionage Report: Politics of Drachumve

Post by Scott Alexander »

Top Secret Transmission
From: XXXXXXXX, Drachumve
To: XXXXXXX, XXXXXXXX

As requested I have been collecting information on the politics of Drachumve and on any divisions we might be able to exploit in order to get at the Autokrator.

Senator Eith Korphorin is currently the de facto ruler of Drachumve. He gets the job for being the only one willing to clean up after Omi's messes and for being the only person not living a fantasy of still being in ancient Hyperborea.

The Drachumvelin apparently continue to run their government in the same way their predecessor state, Hyperborea, ran its own. However, the Hyperborean government depended on the so-called "perfect language" Kadamic, a series of extremely powerful computer networks, a highly educated populace, and on a trove of philosophical knowledge. Drachumve has none of these things, and so they are at best going through the motions of Hyperborean government, with hundreds of people in roles bearing Hyperborean titles which are almost completely ceremonial. In reality, all foist the day to day affairs of government upon Eith.

Eith has continued Omi Oitherion's policy of sinking almost all Drachumvelin resources into the world government and the Senate in particular. Drachumvelin aid to underdeveloped countries along the world - by which I mean bribes to continue participation in the Senate and not break any of Drachumve's rules - is a greater proportion of their budget than is invested in domestic infrastructure. A few national projects, including the oil refinery in Volchikoth and the creation of a small national militia, have done little to change the popular perception of Drachumve as powerful abroad but struggling domestically. There is, however, little popular discontent, as its people are too full of national pride at being the rulers of the known world to look at the state of decay into which the city of Drachumphan has fallen. This state of affairs is slowly changing, but probably too gradually to be useful for our purposes.

Omi Oitherion is almost invisible in all of this, preferring to act through Eith or not at all. On special occasions, he appears before the populace from behind bulletproof glass, supposedly for his own safety. However, there are rumors that it is to hide the true level of his madness. Everyone agrees Omi is at least extremely eccentric, but the idea that he is no longer fit to govern is somewhere between treason and blasphemy.

There are also several smaller parties of discontented people, especially youth. Ianakve, a group through which the Hyperborean traditionalists demand even more respect and power than they have already, is stuffy and uninteresting aside from its action of preventing any real adaptation of the Drachumvelin government to their current situation. More interesting ist he group calling themselves Essemve, led by former poet Edr Yyalorin. They object to the Hyperborean traditionalists, object to the imperialist nature of Eith and Omi's government, and want more focus on the development of a distinctly Drachumvelin nation and culture.

Unfortunately, they stop short of recommending the removal of Eith, whom they seem to respect, and Drachumvelin do not seem to be able to entertain the thought of removing Omi Oitherion any more than they could entertain the thought of removing winter.

Summary: Although the Drachumvelin government is diseased in several ways, I do not see an obvious point of instability that can be exploited.

Yours,
XXXXX

PS: Don't forget to burn after reading!

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Scott Alexander
Posts: 1778
Joined: Sun Dec 19, 2010 1:20 am

Re: Espionage Report: Politics of Drachumve

Post by Scott Alexander »

Top Secret Transmission
From: XXXXXXXX, Drachumve
To: XXXXXXX, XXXXXXXX

Just thought I would send an addendum to the report to discuss the catastrophic failure of the Oracle project.

Preserved records show that a lot of Raikothlin government business revolved around entities called Oracles, which were able to predict the future to a certain level of precision. The pro-Raikoth party has been agitating for some time to resurrect the Oracle system, even though no one knows exactly how it worked.

What I consider the best available textual evidence points to a network of intelligent but basically normal people using a combination of math and intuition to determine the most likely outcomes of events; however, in their blind worship of anything ancient, the Ianakve Party declared that the Oracles were precognitive sorcerers somewhat like the Zaee "anticipaths" (except of course much, much better) and have demanded a reinstitution of the Oracular network based on this vision.

Eith Korphorin originally took the project with gusto, hoping it would relieve him of some of his responsibilities and create the framework for a sustainable non-autocratic government, but after a vast and expensive search only a single Drachumvelin, Nath Etendin, was found to have anything remotely approaching anticipathy, and despite several experiments performed on Nath, the only prophecy they were able to wring from him was:
Look for a quetzal on an ice-bear
And where you find one, build your city
Which was not only incomprehensible, but completely different in character from the clear, error-bar-using predictions the old Oracles used to give. Although supporters of the math-plus-intuition theory tried to use the failure of precognition to push for their own vision of an oracular network, the expensive and depressing failure of the original project made oracles politically untouchable, and all hopes of re-establishing the oracle network have been abandoned.

Yours,
XXXXX

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Alicorn
Posts: 245
Joined: Wed May 11, 2011 2:57 am
Location: Mevwan, Pelagia
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Re: Espionage Report: Politics of Drachumve

Post by Alicorn »

(There are human anticipaths in Mevwan too. The incidence rate is lower, but there are many times more humans than Zaee, so there are more human psions total.)

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