"They call us the tekkies and them capital, city folk the magias. That's how it's been for years; high-fallutin' city folk with their magic and us rural workers gettin' by with our smarts in puttin' stuff together, ya hear?"

Kestrel nodded politely. No sense in correcting facts or grammar out here…

"Now, it wasn't always like this. There were good times, back before ord'nace 76 came around…" Kestrel sighed internally as her cheery, interested face wavered slightly in preparation for the lecture she'd have to sit through in order to get any intel from the old man. Looking left, Kestrel glanced down at the smaller of their odd pair, leaned against Kestrel's shoulder, keeping watch under a pretend gaze of boredom out across the open-aired bar. It often worked out that Daisy was small enough to pass as a much younger sister or daughter; this was the third small town they'd passed through and so far, people had more sympathy for a single mother with a young daughter travelling in hardship.

"Ordinance 76?" Kestrel winced; she'd have to soften her strong, poignant city accent if she was to maintain her guise as a wandering mother…

An awfully weak alias as far as I'm concerned… But it works. What do the tekkies say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it?" Yes. That one.

"I'm surprised you dunno what it is, seeing as eres de la ciudad, ¿no?" Kestrel's eyes opened wide in panic to the sudden shift in his voice and a hand slid to the knife holstered at her hip. A wave crashed into the shoreline outside as the old man half-stood and reached his hand palm out towards the frightened archer, his eyes alight with a vigor that his frame seemed to have lost years ago.

"Shh, don't nobody care who you are or where you from out here, long as you don't cause no trouble." Another wave came in quietly as the old man sat back down, a yawn spreading from his mouth and settling into his body.

"Do you need a place ta stay, miss…" Kestrel was barely relaxed enough to acknowledge his cue; a tight grasp from the arm looped around hers reminded her to answer incorrectly.

"Kes-Ka-Karen. My name is Karen." The old man raised an eyebrow but made no mention of her stuttering and motioned to stand.

"And your daughter's?" Daisy turned and stood with a child-like burst of enthusiasm and eagerly motioned herself around.

Overdoing it.

"I'm Diana. Nice to meet you!" She stuck out her hand to match the old man's and a smile graced even Kestrel's face as the duo came to their first, seemingly genuine interaction with another human being in three weeks.

"Que bellisima, su hija." The old man's skin crinkled at the edges as he smiled and grabbed his cane from beside him.

"Well, come now. My place isn't far and I have a spare room that's been empty ever since…" He turned and grabbed his hat as he walked out and declined to finish his sentence. Kestrel and Daisy shared a look before briskly pacing after the man who, for all appearances, set a relatively uptempo pace towards his home.

"See you tomorrow, jefe!" The bartender's call behind them prompted the old man to wave and keep walking. Another wave crashed like distant thunder as the two ex-Stormguard shared another look before walking on, draped in an uncomfortable silence.

Ordinance 76: The Beginning of the Tech-maturgy Wars

Ordinance 76 was the large, signaling event of the tech-maturge split; techmaturgy meaning the synergy of "tech" and "magic" use.

Two years prior to the ordinance's implementation, a horrible respiratory disease struck a majority of the population in the continent's major cities. There had always been a minor disparity between those who were Mageborn and those who weren't, but the disease spread much more rapidly amongst those who were "lowborn" and the Mageborn who did become infected could be cured by the healers. Many documented cases of magical healing attempts on lowborn resulted in severe loss of mental faculties and physical ability. In other cases, what was a simple procedure on a Mageborn instead resulted in death for enough lowborn for many to start to believe the former was "superior" to the latter.

Cases of the disease were much less severe and less frequent out in rural areas, so many lowborn took their trade skills and took to the hills, populating areas near Gythia and Mont Lille. The root cause of the disease is still unknown, but the main and primary symptom of the disease was a gradual lessening in respiratory function until the afflicted died of suffocation over the course of three to four days. The minor side-effect was a whitening of the face, now attributed to a lack of proper oxygen flow to the brain in those afflicted. This flow issue halted the brain's safety mechanisms in dealing with the disease, nicknamed the Ghost's Touch in the early years. In retrospect, it is often referred to as TGT or O76 as a reference to the (final) ordinance to come about.

After the first wave of panic and subsequent exodus, a "high-class" lowborn by the name of Francisco Maldonado invented and quickly reproduced a respirator-like mask that could stall the disease in its tracks; the earlier the mask got to an afflicted patient, the better the long-term chances were for survivability and quality of life. The mask pointed out two crucial flaws, however; primarily, the disease was incurable. Those afflicted and forced to wear a mask to live were almost immediately subjugated and tasked to fill the jobs that the exodus had left open; if they had no way to get infected further, they were invaluable to the ruling class.

The second and perhaps more major issue (brought about in a debate by one of the last senators to hold power, Adrian Florenz) was that the mask implied the inception and spread of the disease was somehow in (the air of) the cities. After a few months of diaspora, many relatives who had moved out of the cities reported a number of positive qualities attributed to the location.

A (small) number of masks had been taken with some of the last migrants.

Many of the migrants who had been infected showed signs of partial recovery, similar to the effects of the masks in the cities.

When masks were used by infected migrants, their recovery was boosted almost to completion. Many non-infected migrants began replicating and utilizing the masks to improve their quality of life.

Many migrants began a trend of painting their masks with a diagonal red stripe to symbolize their parting with the disease (and later, with the magias).

The symbols made their way into cities (notably, Mont Lille) within a year of patient zero and quickly became a rallying cry against the treatment from the suddenly intolerant Mageborn. Within six months of this symbolic propagation, an "official" resistance sprouted up among some of the more noteworthy, dissent-spreading figures of the lowborn class. One of the younger members, Ardan REDACTED, became relevant in the "second" rebellion but at this time he was simply a basic resistance member with no real influence or power.

It is at this time that the previous Queen (note, the youngest queen to ever gain power in Mont Lille), Julia Stormcrown, reportedly became infected with TGT. It is said that she refused "proper" (Bourbon-Anjou, 57) treatment, used a mask like the lowborn despite being Mageborn and decided to walk the streets in an attempt to repair her city.

Within four months, the situation was improving slowly but surely and on the surface, everything appeared to be calm and on the rise.

Julia's mask was found marked with a red, crossed line (reportedly the incorrect diagonal) and hung from the palace flag-post in a grand ceremony by the (later known as only the Storm Queen) rightful successor, Joanna Castille. Scholars suspect she had been planning to overthrow Queen Julia for years and simply seized power in the chaos that was the spread of TGT.

Ardan comes back into play here; he and a few other resistance members helped to guide the Queen to the outer limits of the city; it is reported that they fell in love at some point throughout these months. Ardan and Julia were not reported found until years later in the events that culminated in the public assassination of the Storm Queen.

Ordinance 76 banned all symbol-marked masks and was the final reason for the aptly named O76 Massacre which resulted in the death of 7-10% (amongst even reputable sources, numbers vary) and the exodus of about 75% of the lowborn in the city. The rest simply became slaves bound by advanced magic, turning them into tireless automatons in exchange for "their loyalty to the state" (Zurita, 77) according to the Storm Queen. Scholars instead believe it was simply an example for the rebels; similar to old, dated customs of leaving heads on pikes at the entrances of cities.

After the mass exodus, a number of privately-run businesses by some of the high-class lowborn and lowborn-sympathizing Mageborn were shut down; a factory discovered years later in the northeast quadrant of Mont Lille run by an opposing force to Inigo Maldonado(note: the mask's primary inventor's brother) is rumored to be the cause of patient zero to TGT but evidence is scarce due to an apparent arson. Very few cases show up as reported after the O76 exodus; some Mageborn use this as further evidence to "justify the lowborn's true nature" (Calabria, 64). Pathology experts note however that there were simply less possible infection cases and since TGT did not infect genetically (note: 95% of the Storm Queen's fabled "Stormguard" were actually born out of this era) the bellcurve of infections was simply due to decline at around this point.

Abstract, next: The Storm Queen's Rise, Reign and Demise. The factors contributing to the Storm Queen's successes and failures will be discussed next.

(Hamartius and the Techmaturgy-Mageborn Wars, ed.6, vol.23)