Halls of Ivory

Chapter 20: Dawn of A New Day

With the last of the fires in the city extinguished, it was time to bring the populace back inside. While the Seraph focused on returning the inhabitants home and helping them rebuild, the Separatists made sure to take down any stragglers left. The bounty on Shining Blade heads remained up even after the battle and as one of many deliberate acts of humiliation against the former kingdom, the minister pawned off what was left of Jennah's furniture to pay for those bounties.

After they had scoured the lands immediately around the city for any citizens they may have forgotten, the Separatists and the Seraph took turns reading out prepared speeches, clearing up any falsehoods spread by the Shining Blade prior to the takeover and outlining the initial policies of the kingdom's new ruling parties.

The first point of contention between both sides were the political purges. During Jennah's era, a majority of ministers voted in favor of bills enshrining within the law the persecution and suppression of the Separatist movement, from legitimizing the seizure of any merchant suspected of harboring Separatist sympathies to outright allowing the public execution of suspected sympathisers on the spot. Minister Aldryn insisted on having everyone who voted in favor of those bills beheaded.

A drastic measure, but an understandable one. Just going by how draconic some of the laws listed were, the Seraph couldn't blame them for feeling this way. There must have been countless innocents, people who had nothing to do with the Separatists, who either lost everything or were killed on mere suspicions and that was the argument that tipped the Seraph towards agreeing to it.

So before the repairs on the buildings were even finished, the first wooden beams brought in were used to set up guillotines in every district of the city. And to ensure that future traitors weren't tempted to think they could live on through their descendants, they beheaded not only the ministers in question, but their entire families as well. The fortunes, belongings and estates of those families were liquidated and the proceeds were set to be invested in rebuilding the towns and villages throughout the Krytan countryside that were destroyed during the Charr's occupation.

The Piercing Spear quickly designed a new banner that would serve as their flag. A winged spear wrapped in the middle of a bundle of wooden sticks. The wings of the spear were so wide and resplendent that they hung over the bundle. All simple colors, the spear and the bundle in white, while the background was red. During the rebuilding of Kryta going forward, they incentivised outside volunteers helping by rewarding sufficient effort with custom weapons forged with wings like the spear's wings in the banner, which drew many weapon collectors that had helped them during their time in Scarycave looking to amass their own collection of 'Piercing Spear Weapons'.

The Piercing Spear, the Shining Blade's new replacement, formed out of those who joined the Separatist movement prior to Queen Jennah's death, considered the time under Jennah's rule - and especially the months under Anise's rule - a dark chapter in Kryta's history and made it their highest priority to ensure that it would never happen again. And they didn't miss the common theme in the Shining Blade's rhetoric of propping up women and pitting them against men.

So to incentivise family building and guarantee that women no longer served as an attack vector for foreign powers, they simply banned the entire female populace from holding office, holding employment, owning land, any conceivable kind of income. This even included nobles, the only exceptions were members of the Piercing Spear as well as all the voluntary fighters that had joined them in their assault on the city. They announced that this ban would expire after a year, but it was signed into law that it could be re-applied at a moment's notice should the female populace be found to step out of line. Even when things would go back to normal in a year's time, this ban would continue to hang over their heads for centuries to come.

The purges opened up many new seats in the ministry, and the rest were vacated on the Piercing Spear's fiat. They decreed that for the new ministry, membership in the Separatist movement PRIOR to their takeover was a prerequisite to being awarded a seat. Even if - to the outrage of many an old noble family - this meant appointing commoners for lack of eligible nobles.

And when way back - on that encounter in the empty city of Scarycave, the minister had told the Commander that he would offer the Seraph a place at the table, he was being very literal about it. Of the seats in the ministry freed up during the purges, seven were reserved for a committee of officers appointed by Captain Thackeray or whoever may succeed him in the future and Logan reserved for himself the right to re-appoint the members of this committee at his discretion and at any time of his choosing.

The Separatists kept a record of the names of each of its members, and now that it was safe to publish, they did. The significance of it was to segment the populace into several gradients of approval on the Piercing Spear's part. Those who joined the movement before they conquered Divinity's Reach, but too late to join the Piercing Spear, would still be rewarded during the rebuilding of Kryta. Whenever a new business was opened, pre-takeover Separatist supporters would receive preferential treatment when it came to deciding who to employ. The same went for all forms of public office as well. Having thrown in your lot with the Separatists BEFORE it became the convenient thing to do, had a lot of perks that the Piercing Spear had no shame in handing out.

Vice versa, the Piercing Spear were not a fan of opportunists. Having thrown in your lot with Jennah or Anise in the past had a lot of downsides. While they weren't outright executed or imprisoned, anyone recorded as being an avid supporter of Queen Jennah was subjected to weekly or monthly laughing circles. They were dragged out of their homes, pilloried in a public square and subjected to acts of ritual humiliation where the broader populace was encouraged to laugh at them for their foolish support of the queen and free fruits were passed around to throw at them. They would begin by having avid Separatist supporters put on a laughter, which would spread like wildfire until everyone laughed and mocked those who were loyal to the former queen.

Yes, this new way of life did mean that supporters of the queen were effectively second class citizens, but that was still an improvement over gradual extinction under Anise's rule and the Piercing Spear made it very clear on multiple occasions, that it was only thanks to the Seraph's aid in their war campaign, that Jennah's supporters from within the populace were still alive. If the Separatists had been forced to take over Divinity's Reach by themselves, they would have simply executed every vocal supporter of the queen, ministry or otherwise.

It was important, as Aldryn put it in a discussion with Logan, 'to make support of both the queen and Anise such a tremendous social faux-pas that no-one is willing to admit to it in public'. "I was just following orders." was a sufficient go-to excuse to ward off the ire of the Piercing Spear. Not sufficient to keep one's employment, but sufficient to stay alive and out of jail.

And finally there was the prisoner. While she wasn't executed immediately, doing so would have been a mercy over what they did instead. The minister actively sought out the fattest, ugliest and most disgusting-looking drunkard that the local taverns had to offer, brought him into her cell and instructed him to defile her for several hours. He used the Asuran camera to record the increasingly vile acts on tape.

With the film and the copies finished and secured, she was executed and the minister vowed that at least one copy of the tape was to be provided to every single library that the new Krytan kingdom would establish and this vow was run through the ministry as a bill and passed into law.

While Divinity's Reach under the rule of the Piercing Spear had its quirks that took getting used to, its overall result was a definitive improvement over what the Shining Blade had subjected them to in the past.

The first order of business after initial repairs within the city, was to get their foot in the door with rebuilding Kryta as a whole. The first step of which was Shaemoor and the vast farmland to the west. While it was too late within the year to plant and raise new crops before the next season of the Colossus came around, there was ample time to set up all the facilities to begin doing so in full for the next year.

In small and sporadic waves, more and more Krytans stowed away in Separatist hideouts were escorted to the city, carefully and in constant expectation of a Lionguard army falling into Queensdale. To everyone's positive surprise though, the retaliatory attacks they expected never happened. It was easy to enlist people like those Norn elementalists when the Seraph and Separatist army were still the underdog coming to overthrow the established order, but now that the Piercing Spear's rule was the new status quo, people were not so comfortable with going out of their way to tear it down.

The growing mood of the populace was one of relief, optimism, and an expectation of better times to come. Many families were to expect newborns within the coming year and people of all sides were willing to help the rebuilding efforts. "Even now, I still struggle to fully accept that it's all over." the Commander repeated during one of his many meetings with the captain and the minister. "The kingdom saved, Anise's death, it all happened so quickly. I never even got to confront her "

"Our division on that night might have been for the best." Logan answered. "How many more people would have died if we had neglected saving them in favor of pursuing Anise. At the same time, what other horrors would she have wrought if the Separatists hadn't gotten to her in time?"

The minister chimed in as well. "If you bemoan missing out on taking her life, I'm awfully sorry, but that honor was mine. My war with her had raged on for years before you ever got involved."

The Commander shook his head. "I understand that. All those years - I don't hold that against you. I just feel like I should have taken charge more often, played a greater role in all this."

"You played plenty of a role in this." Aldryn said. "Remember that it was you who acted as mediator between Separatists and Seraph in the first place. Without your help, our alliance may never have come to pass. When tensions between both sides were at their highest, you were the one to go on joint missions and build bridges wherever you could. On the other hand, it was clear that being at the head of the two largest military forces in this civil war, fate would have me and Captain Thackeray take center stage. And in the same vein, on the hunt for vengeance for our fallen brethren, Anise's head was my prey to claim. Yours may be a greater mark to hunt. A greater destiny to fulfill. A greater threat to avert."

"Like what?"

"Well the first thing that occurs to me is that all we witnessed didn't happen in a vacuum. Jennah's idea for the treaty must have come from somewhere. It is too devastating and too convenient for certain parties not to. Same for Anise's ideas about how she thought she was smart for hating her race. In her final moments, the self-declared 'High Countess' invoked a familiar name: Scarlet Briar."

That name left Logan wondering: "Scarlet…when I first took a stand and told the Shining Blade that they couldn't just hijack the Seraph to turn Krytans into the Charr's target practise, they called me 'entitled' and cited Scarlet for reference. And then there's that crazy lady in the garrison."

"Yes, I remember that too." The minister turned to the Commander. "I recall you mentioning once that all this started when you were invited to meet this 'Scarlet Briar' person. Just off of that, you have more personal experience with her than either of us. Maybe you could ask her sometime why she's going around, organizing workshops where she tells women that betraying their country makes them geniouses."

"If I meet her again, I'll try to keep that in mind." With that said, the Commander was more confident in working hard every day to ensure a better future for his people.