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Midnight Sun; ( Greater Sakha post-Dominion, soon after the Fall of Zapht)
Topic Started: Jan 28 2010, 12:30 AM (531 Views)
Rhadamanthus
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Midnight Sun

"Pan Mongolism! The name is monstrous
Yet it caresses my ear
As if filled with the portent
Of a grand divine fate."
- V.S. Soloviev


It was high summer in Pevek. In the Arctic, even the warm season tended to be cool, though the ocean waters kept weather in the coastal town milder than in the inland regions. Clouds filled the polar skies, but they did not occlude the view of the shining sun. Indeed, the sun was always shining. During midsummer in this uttermost north, the sun did not set, but watched continuously, allowing no respite from Apollo's burning gaze. The natives, borne and raised under these perverse conditions, had these rhythms carved in their souls. But the prisoners found it difficult to sleep in these conditions and when summer came they slowly went mad.

Pevek was the major Arctic Ocean port in the Dominion Far East. For this reason, and because of the prison camp built outside of the town, a significant garrison was maintained here, subject to the command of the World Military Dominion's Second Army. The infamous Serpent Legion garrisoned the vast plains of the Dominion Far East, including the Dominion Core Territory of Greater Sakha. It was Dominion practice, here and elsewhere, to form military units that blended the races, hoping thus to build camaraderie among the disparate elements of the Dominion, and to sap the persistant racial feeling that was endemic to so many of the core territories.

Man might struggle with Nature, and so induce her to give up her secrets, but Nature is not always so compliant. As with the prisoners, the Dominion soldiers often could not cope with the alien climate, with the polar day and the polar night. Only those men who shrugged off the unsettling conditions without trouble were promoted to commands in the Arctic Circle. Those who could not stand it were rotated out at regular intervals. Those who took to this country in the manner of the natives were especially valued, and tended to remain rather than be sent to battle in other theaters. Those soldiers who came from these lands, the Sakha and the tribes that they had in the past subjugated, tended to make up a larger portion of the garrisons than otherwise they might have.

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The natives were only barely friendlier than the country itself. They rarely spoke to foreigners, and tended to be abrupt when they did so. They preferred to remain amongst themselves, to keep their own rituals, and to eat and drink and fight. They worked in the mines and in the factories. They hunted and fished and made small handicrafts to trade with the itinerant traders and nomadic herders. They tended to the native spirits and worshipped the Sakhan gods. But they avoided the soldiers as much as possible, looking downward and averting their eyes, only saying what was absolutely necessary. The exception was when encountering a soldier who was formed by this northern soil. Then they would talk quietly in their native language, until either soldier and or villager had other business.

Far from the fighting that accompanied the Allied assault on the Dominion's capital, the command of the Dominion garrison in Pevek was given to Brigadier General Tancred Maximilien von Audern. A Baltic German born in Estonia, he had been exiled from Russia during the Yusupov era for defending the Guranburg Treaty. He joined the World Military Dominion, and obtained high rank as an officer. But by the end of the war, he had not been assigned to any of the major fronts, but to the defense of Siberia, overseeing the port and prison at Pevek. Though disappointing in some ways, he had adjusted well to the strange alterations in the seasons, and had achieved something of an understanding of the country and its native races.
Edited by Rhadamanthus, Jan 30 2010, 02:27 PM.
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Rhadamanthus
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The natural operations of Pevek’s eerie arctic summer were interrupted by the charge of a gray Yakutian horse. The small breed, native to the cold Sakha-country, had evolved to survive in the extreme climate of the northlands. Descended from archaic Tundra horses, the Yakutian knew instinctively how to find and graze on vegetation even under the deepest snows, a necessary talent for travel across the cold northern plains. The inland plains were colder than coastal Pevek, and in the unforgiving climate of the Dominion Far East, every precaution had to be taken, to ensure that messages reached their intended destinations.

The horse sped forward, stopping just short of the gates of the Dominion prison complex. The Dominion guards were moving from their positions, ready to challenge the rider, to find his business and take it, if necessary, to the Brigadier General von Audern. But the horse halted suddenly, letting out a yelp, and horse and horseman collapsed, falling harshly against the cold ground. The horse had been ridden hard from the time the rider had arrived in Siberia, and without rest, it was astonishing that it had made it so far at all before returning to the earth. The rider had barely fared better. Looking at the fallen man, calling for a medic to tend him, the guards could see that his body was covered with lethal wound. Only some divine grace could have kept him alive long enough to force out one final word, “communists.”

When the dead man was taken away, the guards stripped a message off of his body. The bag was torn, the seal was broken, and blood speckled the pages. Nevertheless, the message was brought before Audern, who read carefully the latest news from the south. The Dominion was a great global machine, a futuristic vision of order and connectedness, in which the multiplicity of the world was reduced to a unity, and words from one side of the world could travel instantaneously to the other. Under the visionary rulership of Konstantin Ganz Gassel, the future would be now. But this future, as with all futures, penetrated more easily into some places than others, gently into the kind lands and only painfully into the harsh ones.

And despite its status as a Dominion Core Territory, Greater Sakha was one of those harsh lands. Here, the scattered Dominion outposts were barely connected to the global network. The Dominion planners, including Audern himself, had performed a heroic labor in creating infrastructure in these lands, but nevertheless, the farthest north was still far behind most of the world in communications. For this reason, the most important communications were all entrusted to personal messengers. In these lands, loyal as they were to the Dominion, it did not seem that there was any danger, except from the anger of the land, but that idyllic Eden was gone. The messenger had clearly been killed. The Dominion Far East had been set aflame.

The message had been sent from the Second Army’s command. They had in turn received news from the south, from war-torn Indochina—a news of utmost importance in the lands of Greater Sakha; it was feared that if this news reached the natives before it reached the commanders, it might lead to disillusion and demoralization. The God-king of the Sakha had died in battle. The Sakhan race had had its head severed. Even as he read the words on the message, he felt an unholy chill run down his spine. He felt as though a malaise was gathering around him, throughout the whole countryside, as if the natives simply knew. Of course, he did not know who had attempted to wrest the message and read it before it had arrived in Pevek, but it did not matter. If the knowledge had spread to the natives, it was not by mortal agency, and it was not human reason that directed Audern toward his next course of action.

As if in a trance, Tancred Maximilien von Audern proceeded to the mortuary, seeking out the body of the messenger. He uncovered the corpse, and carried the wounded, freshly deceased, man out to a section of cold earth outside of the prison. The pathway he took brought him to a secluded clearing, sitting on a hillside cliff, looking over the lowland coast. There, a number of small stones had been arranged on the ground, forming a large circle. Within the circle, a number of pedestals of varying heights had been laid in a formation. Standing before the circle was a native attendant, who waited for Audern with a bottle containing an unknown concoction, a long knife, and other ritual implements. The cadaver, stripped of all the cloth, was laid at the center of the circle, between the pedestals.

Stepping into the circle, Brigadier General von Audern pulled a hood over his head to cover his hair. He and the attendant, who stood behind him and toward the right, muttered a view verses in the Sakhan tongue, while Audern carefully carved open the human body with the ritual knife and other tools. Carefully, he opened the man, looking carefully at various organs that rested within the man. Finally, he settled on removing, with broad, reckless cuts, a portion of the fallen man’s lung. He and the Sakhan attendant then proceeded to consume raw the human lung, drinking draughts from the potion that had been brought with them. Once the gruesome deed had been done and his consciousness had been altered, Audern returned to the opened body, while the attendant continued chanting the ritual words.

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He removed various portions of the man’s entrails, arranging them around the body, placed on the pedestals. Finally he drew out a portion of the intestine, pulling it out with one of his implements, and stood over the body. Various organs and tissue were balanced on the pedestals and he held out on a rod the intestine, which reached back into the body itself. Continuously, the Sakhan chanted the terrible verses, while the Baltic German officer whistled the calls of birds. Starting with a single speck in the sky, the birds began to gather, swooping down toward the gruesome feast. The lemming year had come and the population of the carnivorous birds had grown appropriately, and now masses of birds joined the circle, consuming the human remains that surrounded Audern and his Sakhan attendant. The men had already had their share of the feast, of course, and the remainder was left to the birds. And Audern, for his part, watched the entrails throughout, seeing what he needed to see, laughing ghoulishly and joyously as the savage avian banquet continued toward its eventual completion.
Edited by Rhadamanthus, Mar 27 2010, 06:08 PM.
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Not long after the messenger’s air burial, Tancred Maximilien von Audern sat in his council chamber, attended by several of his associates and advisors. In total, five men had joined the Brigadier General. Colonel Günter Reinhard oversaw the day-to-day affairs of the prison and garrison while Audern looked to more arcane affairs. Lieutenant Colonel Karl Sahm and Lieutenant Colonel Aysen had important nearby commands (Aysen was a native of Pevek). Captain Mikhail Atlasov oversaw the nearby naval bases. Finally, Grigoriy Semyanov, a renegade Cossack with no formal military rank, had become Audern’s closest associate.

With Zapht fallen and communications with the south becoming increasingly difficult, a council was necessary to determine how to preserve the Dominion in Siberia. Having performed his grisly ritual, Brigadier General von Audern was convinced that he knew the answer. He had had a vision, and the gathered officers waited eagerly for the Baltic German Baron to describe what he had seen.

“… and I saw this man, who had once clutched many things in his hands, lying dead upon the ground. The things he had held had been looted, and they were held by others. But his body remained; it was his until the end. But once dead, the carrion birds came to eat it, tearing the flesh amongst themselves, fighting for morsels. The vultures tore him apart, consuming the man whole, but not before I and the Sakhan had had our share.”

Finished describing his vision, Audern waited for a response, but the officers all stared silently. None of them knew how to respond. Finally, Sahm spoke, “General, is there more? We understand that that is the procedure that you followed. But you also said that you saw a vision, didn’t you?”

“Fool,” Audern sneered, laughing wildly at the suggestion. “The process is the vision. The man is our Dominion. His possessions were his conquests. His death is the collapse of Zapht’s command. His body is Asia. And I have seen that Asia is to be torn apart by vultures, each battling for his small scrap of Asia, looking for a morsel, but forgetting that the strength lay in the whole man, not a mere piece.”

“But you will get your share?” Colonel Reinhard asked, noting the last portion of Audern’s narration.

“Of course,” Audern answered, “Who is in a better position to save the Dominion?”

“You will unite the rest of the North under your control then, sir?” Reinhard responded.

“Of course not,” Audern laughed, “For I am of German blood like you. The Caucasian race is in decline. The Mongolian race is ascendant. Men like you and I are not the face of the future. If we are to make our fortunes in this land, we will have to do so with the strength of the natives.”

It was then that Aysen, of Sakhan stock, spoke, quietly, as if stating something of frightening portent. “Only the God-King,” he said, “may govern these lands. When Dagyn ruled us, we had to leave, and could only return when a God-King returned. And the Dominion could only hold these lands as long as the God-King remained with Gassel. If you wish to take these lands for yourself, lord, then we must find the God-King.”

Atlasov shook his head, “There was no word that the God-King had sired any heir. Where would a God-King come from?”

“Where do God-Kings come from?” Audern pondered out load, “Where did the current God-King come from? For Aysen has told us before about he simply appeared among the people, slew Dagyn, and announced the return to these lands. Zapht did not care as long as the God-King retained loyalty. But the question remains. Where do God-Kings come from?” He turned curiously to Semyonov, thinking that the Cossack might have an answer.

“A man takes a woman, and they make a child,” Semyonov responded, “If the man’s a grunt the bitch bears a bastard. If the man’s a God-King, she bears him a little God-Prince. In the end, it’s all the same shit.”

Audern’s expression was curious. He turned to Aysen, hoping for a better answer.

Aysen spoke carefully, aware that he was revealing the secrets of the Sakha’s own custom to outsiders, but he hardly thought of Audern as an outsider anymore. So he spoke, fearfully at first, thinking that this was the only way to restore a God-King.

“Tengri,” he said, “is the name our people give to the Sky. He is above the gods, the Eternal Blue. Umay or Eje is Mother Earth, under all things. They come together to form a great Ruler, who will serve as the Sky’s Spirit and Emissary in our world. That is Our Lord Sakha, the mightiest of the Gods, who lives among us in human form. Man and woman provide the clay, but Heaven and Earth provide the God, and they cannot cease to do this. It is their nature. As it is the nature of the Sakha to rule over other races.”

He spoke the last part somewhat defiantly. The rest of the men gathered in the room were all of European or partially-European stock. But Audern seemed delighted by it, rather than offended.

“Indeed, and that is the final piece of my vision. It is with the God-King Sakha that I will tear my chunk of flesh. Ah, there is no time to waste. I must find the heir to the God-King’s throne.”
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