Introduction to Thálassagorod: Tyranny

[Mansquid]

• This is a introduction to Thálassagorod from the perspective of a important member of it's community, it covers topics important to understanding the realm but also focuses heavily on the life of the character telling the story.
  This is the story of Elizaveta Polládushi, elected leader of the republic and now a very old and very cynical woman.

Introduction to Thálassagorod: Tyranny
Greed, deceit and well earned suffering

I loathe this City. I hate it more than words can ever truly describe. All the people that writhe within, all the laws that bind and choke it, and all it’s gilded towers that it creeps ever higher. I hate them all.

You would too if you only understood how thoroughly rotted it all is, how deep the sickness goes.
Diseased from its very core, run by cowards, motivated only by short minded avarice and the fear of being left behind by the uncaring city they’ve made. The great and noble Citizens, who stammer endlessly about a city of the free and equal. About the great republic, free from all monarchy. All while this city is built on the backs of peoples who are slaves in all but name. All they care for is the nobility of their families' long prestigious blood lines, though those lines run in circles more often than they’d care to admit. The wealth and power they have so rightfully earned. A lie, to hide the endless debts that mire them all, and the grim ways they find what little sums they do cling to. Cruel and vindictive to any they see as weak and exploitable, for why have mercy when one can have control. Every last Citizen, hypocrites and liars, all well deserving of all the brutality they put to each other to get even the tiniest advantage.

The Citizens reside over a city where no one is free, not even themselves. But all that pales in comparison to how they treat others. Like their grateful workers, the Residents, they couldn’t leave if they tried, they’d be hunted down for their endless unavoidable debts or just left to starve out in the wilderness. Our noble Citizens do not even think of them as people, only the work they can do for them. At least the Citizens themselves have the illusion of choice, they can pretend to be above the cruel games of backstabbing that makes a merchant lord. But in truth, if they ever stopped this callus game, they would be butchered, their life, wealth and family are all grounded down by the city to be fuel for those crueler and hungrier than themselves.

But what of the huddled masses, who so greatly outnumber their cruel masters, trapped here by debt, contract and poverty, forced to toil endlessly for the profit of those who chain them. Weakened by starvation, drink and fatigue. The one thing the Citizens truly fear more than themselves are those they continue to abuse, the very people they rely on for their power. For what is a lord without their serfs. Trapped now in a cycle which only ends in death. Should they ever stop suppressing the Residents they would surely be massacred in righteous fury, a debt of violence they so thoroughly deserve, at last repaid. As it is now the Residents bleed from the city constantly, drained by disease and starvation, should the import of mortal life ever end, the city’s population would wither. Hopefully you understand the source of this reprehensible existence, anyone with the power to make a change is so afraid of being slaughtered for the injustices they’ve already enacted or losing the security of what little power they truly have, that they will go to the ends of the world to perpetuate this system.

Yet none of this matters, all part of the deities' great games, their plans. A foolish notion, as though deities who have never, and will never care for us could save you from this city. So far above us that they do not even interfere when their temples are turned to houses of extortions, when their teaching becomes little more than justification for tithes and taxes. If the deities of this world have even noticed us, they surely turned away in disgust long ago. Moreso we should hope their sight has not and will not reach us, clearly their view of morality is inhuman or they would have wiped this sinful city from the face of the world a long time ago. Perhaps they should.

But maybe you think there is some value in all this, what of the grandeur, the opulence and beauty of our great brick halls. Surely the great works of art and architecture produced by the city make it all have some greater meaning. No, a beautiful lie is still a lie. The golden facades built atop rotten foundations, the wealth we have stolen. The art made to chase the tastes of the wealthy and brainless. No matter how much blacked brick or polished stone you stack on top of a fetid swamp, the stench never leaves. No amount of other peoples gold can change what this place is at its core. Grandeur is nothing but a monument to greed.

Even our magics are not our own, for all that we rely upon their power, for industry and war, we are nothing but children playing with powers beyond our understanding. We have magics learnt from around the world. Stolen and perverted from their original goals. The hearts of golems used to power brick works, druidic magics used to trap and butcher animals, element magics copied from an empire that died before our city was even born. They do not understand true power, it has taken me a lifetime to see the bigger picture. The fools of the mages guild see only how magics can be exploited, they do not understand how they work, the patterns they leave in the world. Not like I do.

But that doesn’t matter, not while the traders can continue to find profits in far flung lands, where our misdeeds are unknown or uncared for. Though of course, ruining those relations is an all too common practice. You see, too many families see too much to be gained from unfair trades or from plain old theft. After all, the stolen magics have to be stolen from somewhere, and the goods made by the blood of the poor need buyers. If only the world had a longer memory, if only people couldn’t be so easily made to forget with the right application of coin.

Maybe they could kill this city...

What am I saying, I shouldn’t say that about the city I was elected to rule. If anyone is to kill this cancer in the world it will be me.
After all, I gave my youth, my family, and my very ideals to try and reform her. I was naive, I know. Now I am aware that even the Vozhd cannot control the city, they are simply the first among it’s prisoners. Forced to watch forever from the most rotten of it’s creeping towers, as it’s gilded skyline crawls ever closer to the heavens. As it’s grasp chokes more of the world it’s all consuming hunger for human lives. As the great families race for it’s promises of wealth and power, only to be ground up and eaten whole, fuel for a hateful city.

I thought once that I could save you. That you deserved to be reborn. Your people could be given better lives, your crimes repaid. Now I understand, the fools that live within you deserve their suffering. If they had a worthy heart they would not let you live.
But I will not make their mistake, I will kill you Thálassagorod.

For I am the Vozhd, I am Elizaveta Polládushi and I killed the last Vozhd, I ended his entire line . Just like I have ended any who have tried to stop me. I will not be stopped, I will not allow any to defy me, and I will not die, not till this city does. No matter the suffering, no matter the sacrifice, no matter how long it takes.

I will end Thálassagorod.