Chapter 6

The First Fissures

 In total, we have records for 1034 candidates who were elected to the symposium. Of those, 13 failed to arrive ever for various reasons, the most common being unexpected illness or transport delays. Of the 1021 who did arrive, 5 were immediately and unanimously expelled at representations from locations that unambiguously did not count as a planet from a geographical or legal standpoint (included amongst these was one woman who had started a “microplanet” on an asteroid in which her and her husband lived). Of the 1016 who were not immediately expelled, 884 were clearly and obviously single delegates who stood entirely on their own, whether they were democratically elected or not. 57 were in situations exactly or closely similar to Ghale Thusif and Leaf Rivers in which one person was considered the “main” delegate while one or two other people were appointed as advisers to ensure all planetary interests were represented. 45 were delayed in arriving so that they missed the start of the symposium, and thus the crucial initial votes, but eventually did arrive for the symposium. 26 had minor controversies that were all resolved within a few days. By far the largest source of controversy though, and the controversy that would serve as a spark for so much unrest, were the 14 delegates who arrived who represented a total of 5 planets.

 None of the delegates knew what to expect when arriving. The Vaird had served as a metonym for the Emperor for so long, but only a handful of people had ever visited it and returned. Even the delegates who had been high ranking bureaucrats or generals had never been to it, the Emperor’s solitude was legendary and nigh absolute. It was well known for having a population, but that population was entirely self-sustaining, cut off from the outside world, and existed solely to care for the Emperor’s needs, so their appearance and attitudes was entirely unknown. None of the delegates were even certain what the Vaird looked like. Travel was strictly prohibited except by explicit invitation directly from the Emperor; an invitation that they were reticent to give out often. All were aware it was an artificial satellite around a black hole, but that was the extent of their knowledge.

 Even with the knowledge of the monumental scale that the Emperor was famous for using, the delegates were shocked at the size of the Vaird. Not since its construction has anything even close to it been attempted by humanity. While the records are lost, the structure was estimated to have taken nearly a millenia to complete. To describe it as a mere “artificial satellite” in the same class as something like a space station or stellar gas siphoner is misleading. The Vaird is more accurately classified as a “constructed planet” and was roughly equivalent in size to a small one. Even that doesn’t really explain it though, because unlike a planet the Vaird was hollow. The metal surface only served as a protective shield for a gargantuan complex within. There were houses, farms, parks, palaces, and entire biodomes. Most of the Vaird didn’t feel like you were on the inside of a metal sphere, it felt like you were on the surface of the most beautiful planet you had ever seen. One delegate who arrived early and had time to explore described her experience:

“[After getting settled,] we spent the rest of the day exploring that colossal thing. To us, it seemed as though we had set foot into another dimension. We entered a biodome containing a mountain higher than anything we had ever seen filled with air purer than we had ever experienced. We hiked through the woods at its base and found the animals that lived in it were the most docile and friendly of any we had seen. Upon leaving that biodome, we immediately stepped into another containing a windswept desert. Unlike the previous one, a large village was situated around an oasis here. All of the inhabitants were most helpful and provided us with considerable advice and equipment for traveling into the sands, even though they were already in mourning for the impending death of our liege.”

 The inhabitants were the second surprise. Most delegates would have expected around twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants in the Vaird. Enough to form a functioning society, but not too many that they were unwieldy. In reality, there were around two million. It’s unclear how two million inhabitants even got to the Vaird and because of future events it's hard to say what most of them did. Every single record of them comes from the few that left over the course of the revolution and the delegates. From what we can tell though, the Emperor created the nearest thing to a utopia. Hardship was minimal, people lived fulfilling lives, and the paralyzing effect of choice was eliminated. Naturally, all the delegates (and those who interacted with the ones who left) were incredibly unnerved by the Vairdians. To outsiders, the Vairdians appeared almost inhuman, totally unconcerned with freedom. Their lives were set out for them on a rail, each stop along the way preselected and enforced. And the most unnerving thing was the Vairdians were happy about it. They didn’t want to change. Of the ones who left, over half ended up committing suicide. They were raised like show dogs by the Emperor, unable to act for themselves, and most of them proved unable to overcome that.

 The delegates were housed, and symposium was to take place, in the Crystal Palace. There were a number of palaces throughout the Vaird that the Emperor switched between. Of these, the Crystal Palace was the second largest (after the Imperial Observatory, which stuck out from the Vaird as a large dome and was used as the primary Imperial residence). The palace itself was built inside an artificial cave with great clusters of crystal sprouting from its walls. Built in a similar monumental style to the rest of the Vaird, had the Crystal Palace been placed on a normal planet it would have been by far the largest single building on it. With the thousand delegates, the aides to those delegates, and three servants for every foreign visitor, the full wing they were assigned was not filled.

 It took three days for the delegates to trickle in. Due to the rushed nature of their compromise, Thusif and Rivers didn’t arrive until midday on the third day. Somewhat miraculously the arrival log managed to survive the chaos of the revolution, so we can say with certainty that when Thusif checked in he was the 868th delegate to arrive. Based on that log, we can make a few additional conclusions. Unsurprisingly, the first delegates to arrive were those from planets physically close to the Vaird with no political unrest over deciding their delegates. This was then followed by delegates who came from farther or with only moderate amounts of unrest (part of the reason Thusif arrived so late because Pearl was so far from the Vaird in addition to the difficulty of his selection). Naturally, those delegates who came from the areas with the greatest unrest, most notably Mawr, were among the last to arrive.

 The issue of who arrived first is not merely a historical curiosity though, it was of critical importance for the first moments of the revolution. Those delegates who had spent a few days in the Vaird, got a chance to acclimate to each other and the Vairdians, and calm their tempers a bit would form the very first organized bloc of the alliance: the Imperials, who would stand in favor of keeping Imperial power roughly equivalent and limiting the more radical reform efforts of the Necrotic Reform (ironically, depending on how one reads the Emperor’s intentions in the reforms, this may have made them more conservative than the Emperor).

 Why exactly this group arrived first should be more conservative is unclear. The traditional hypothesis, which probably has a degree of truth to it, is that they were wooed by the Emperor. The luxuries of the Crystal Palace and magnificence of the Vaird were enough to cool their tempers. The burning hot anger they might have felt was smothered by the Emperor’s velvet pillows. Obviously, this does not portray the Imperials in a good light. As there are very few in the post-revolutionary period, or today for that matter, who have a positive opinion on the objectives of the Imperials, it is not surprising this remains a popular theory especially among non-academic sources. Still though, the makeup of the Imperials must be considered as well. The planets closest to the Vaird were the most conservative, deeply rooted in the Empire. It’s also worth keeping in mind that any delegate that arrived on the first day was nearly definitionally not the product of political strife, an event that would preclude someone more likely to be open to radical changes. While the Imperials weren’t entirely made up of delegates from old, traditional planets near the Vaird, that simple makeup may do more to explain their conservatism far more than the decadence theory is capable of.

 Despite their lack of numbers compared to the rest of the delegates, the Imperial delegates were by far the most influential individual delegates in the early days solely because their ability to organize and vote as a bloc outmatched everybody else. This very early (and very transient) dominance can be seen in how the delegates from contested planets were decided.

 There was no mechanism for voting originally intended in the symposium. It was a symposium, not a constitutional convention. The idea was that delegates would all come around and give their ideas to the Emperor who would then review them and use their own wisdom and judgment to make decisions on the final form of the new government. This would have been fine had every single planet arrived with a single, unambiguous delegate, but the moment contested delegations started showing up things started to break down. Somebody had to make the decision of which delegates would be allowed and which would be rejected, a process that would inevitably upset some groups.

 The first of these contested delegations to arrive came in the middle of the second day and ironically while the conteste delegates would become a major issue very quickly, the first delegates to be contested actually weren’t intending to be at all. Ibrahim Ploomf and Ælfthryth Karunanidhi were both selected as delegates from the bifurcated planet of Liore. The equator of Liore was totally uninhabitable and frequently ravaged by ferrous and magnetic storms, making communication between the two halves of the planet impossible. Functionally, either half was separate from each other as they were from any other planet and the two sides developed as such. Thus, when time came to elect a delegate it seemed only natural to both sides to elect their own, separate delegates. Whether or not Liore North and South should be counted as separate planets or not, and if they should, which of the two delegates sent should be accepted as the official delegate was the point where the Imperial first struck.

 On the Imperials side, the animating factor in this decision to attack the Liore delegations was Vestin Vestowski of Ensen. Vestowski was one of the few Imperials not from one of those old, traditional planets near the Vaird. His adherence to the Empire was entirely due to his hatred of the powerful labor unions of Ensen and a fierce ideological commitment to autocracy. That fiery belief of his made him far more proactive than many of the Imperials who held deep loyalty to the Emperor based on inertia alone. It was his force of personality alone that often made the Imperials into an organized group at all.

 Vestowski himself was the first to attack the idea that both sets of Liore delegates should be counted. His official reason for doing so was simple: the Imperial decree only allowed a single set of delegates, despite its oddities Liore was still only a single plant, ergo Liore could only have one delegate. More practically, Vestowski was certainly aware that Liore as an Imperial dependency was much less likely to have a positive view of Imperial authority than he would like (and he wasn’t wrong). With some effort, Vestowski was able to convince the other Imperials to announce that they, too, thought that Liore was a single planet, only afforded a single delegate. Many of the delegates were totally inexperienced with politics and even those that were hadn’t been prepared for them to start this early. Caught off guard, a few of the rest of the delegates attempted to argue that it was the Emperor’s prerogative to decide whether Liore should be bisected or not. Vestowski disagreed, citing that the Emperor’s instructions were clear and that they should not waste the Emperor’s time. Hastily putting together a ballot box, Vestowski proposed to vote on it. Without even waiting for a quorum, the ballots were passed out, and the planet Liore was declared only allowed a single delegate, to be worked out amongst themselves. After a brief discussion, Karunanidhi was declared as the delegate while Ploomf worked alongside her as an advisor.

 Putting aside the question of whether the votes were even counted at all (many historians believe Vestowski simply decided the result he wanted beforehand, correctly assuming that if he acted quickly enough nobody would be able to stop it), this set a massive precedent and accidentally drastically expanded the scope of the entire symposium. By allowing votes on some procedural issues, the Imperials had provided the rationale by which eventually votes would be not only allowed but expected on every issue. Vestin Vestowski had opened a box that would destroy the Empire he held dear, entirely without realizing it.

 There were four subsequent sets of disputed delegates.

 The second set arrived at the start of day three and was resolved within an hour. Two individuals arrived, both claiming to be delegates from Pnumusis. After a quick investigation it was discovered that the two of them had left Pnumusis under an “official delegate-advisor” pact that many of the delegates from planets with divided ruling classes had made. On the ship however, the two had discovered they were personally incompatible and refused to work with each other, each declaring themself to be the official delegate. It was in Vestowski’s luck that the man who had been declared the original official delegate, Smith Seong-yong, was fairly conservative. With his influence, he was able to tip the scales and force the other declared delegate, who we sadly lack even the name of, to leave.

 The next pair arrived immediately after Thusif and Rivers did. King Zinovii and Archeich Celestine XLI were both from Luna, a tributary moon around an Earth-like planet that had been made unlivable by nuclear weapons millenia ago. The moon had been ruled by an uneasy alliance between the royal family and a prominent esoteric cult. When news had come of the Necrotic Reforms, neither side was willing to accept a subordinate role to the other. Being so far from the Vaird, they didn’t have time for any delicate maneuvering. The king and archeich entered separate ships at the same time attempting to reach the Vaird first and declare themself the official delegate. This did not work and they both arrived at the same time. Again, Vestowski was able to use his power and speed to declare King Zinovii as the official delegate of Luna. Archeich Celestine was forced off the Vaird, a decision that would accidentally spark the Velvet Chamber Debates, but that is for the future.

 It was in making Eonissi Avis and Avara Avis an issue that Vestowski reached his limit. While he would achieve a tactical victory, it was a strategic defeat. There had never been any doubt that Eonissi Avis and Avara Avis could have separate delegates. While Avara Avis was a moon of Eonissi, it had an undeniably different culture, history, and demographics. Which was precisely which Vestowski wanted to deny it. The Avara Avis delegate could have been one of the most radical delegates elected, such proximity to the wealth and power of Eonissi Avis with none of the benefits was inherently a very radical proposition. That Avara Avis arrived with two delegates only ensured that Vestowski pounced on the opportunity.

 In a similar situation to Pnumusis, a deal had been brokered by the elite power monopoly and union that ran Avara Avis that broke down in travel, with both delegates claiming to truly represent the moon. The delegate from Eonissi Avis, Bintou Mohan, supported the monopoly aligned candidate and attempted to use her influence to have that candidate, a woman named Rushinthi Enthen. In response, the union aligned delegate, Dendr Ho, attempted to find a sponsor to support her. Before she could do this however, Vestowski spotted his opportunity. He declared that because of Avara Avis’ close relationship to and reliance upon Eonissi Avis, it shouldn’t be counted as a separate planet at all and shouldn’t get its own delegate. This was a radical claim and one that nearly nobody except his Imperial allies agreed with. But, still, the other delegates were not prepared to resist him. Vestowski was able to push through the motion with a bare majority and both Enthen and Ho were asked to leave.

 With this, Vestowski had pushed too far. Immediately, the savviest of the delegates recognized he had to be stopped immediately. They couldn’t wait for the Emperor to arrive, they had to start organizing their own counterblock immediately. Through the night, a dozen delegates worked tirelessly to secure the assurances of a sizable enough bloc to outnumber the Imperials. Their sole purpose would be to stand firmly against Vestowski’s attempts to bully his way into controlling the makeup of the delegates that would have the Emperor’s ear. And it’s a good thing they did.

 The next morning, five delegates arrived. All of them claimed to represent a single planet.

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