The Assembled Prophets of Eruza the Deliverer
It is not common knowledge that the GMC can trace its roots to a cult movement, known as the Assembled Prophets of Eruza the Deliverer (or just the "Assembled Prophets" for short). The Assembled Prophets were a religious movement in the relatively unimportant Kingdom of Iskiwora in the early 1700s, one of many such fringe movements that would ordinarily be a footnote in history. The Assembled Prophets worshipped a single charismatic leader by the name of Unalla Makali as the physical manifestation as the Goddess Eruza (the Makali verzion of the Zeruan air-goddess Aizusha), and believed that contact with Unalla could unlock one's innate potential for divine revelation. Unalla preached that the end times were approaching (possibly in 10 years, possibly in 3 generations) due to the collapse of the "walls between worlds" that separated the peoples and cultures of the planet into their 'proper' places and stations. This was a direct reaction to the sudden arrival of foreign influences in Iskiwora: the kingdom had been scouted out as a potential site for a
Keveket factory in the 1690s, and selkie fleets were becoming more numerous in the early 1700s and introducing many new foreign cultures and ideas.
Essentially, the cult believed that there was one universal creative spirit that took many forms - Heaven, Paradise, Halcyon, Aizusha, Eruza - and called to mortal virtue, and it was opposed by a universal destructive spirit (or spirits) that called out to mortal vice. Souls naturally were called to Eruza-Halcyon's side, but were burdened by 'Miasmic ash' that clung to sin. This Miasmic Ash weighed down spirits and caused them to sink rather than float into heaven, and dragged them to purgatories and hells rather than true heavens. Social discord and improper living had created a world so polluted that it could not be saved, and soon the world would be drowned in its sin when the great volcano in Zerua would erupt and coat the world and its hells in ash. The only hope for mortals would be to either purify their souls of ash (unlikely), or to prepare soul vessels to hide their souls in so they could be taken to heaven during the prophesized Deliverance. For the island of Makal was a chosen land, a sleeping dragon turtle of gargantuan size that mothered
Ruko and would one day awaken and flee this sinful Earth. To prevent the heaven-turtle from throwing mortal-kind from its back, Makal must be united under a prophesized kingdom known as "Greater Makal", which would bring social and spiritual harmony under Ullana's teachings. This is the Deliverance, and it is the sacred task that all Prophets must contribute to.
As a cult, the Assembled Prophets were all about the illusion of agency: by becoming a Prophet, one could achieve a personal connection to the divine as well as a claim to social status. Recruits were also promised financial success as prophets and general success in life. Of course, the realization of these things were always just out of reach; there was always another level to be gained, always another step to become
more of a prophet than one's peers. Advancement in the cult required financial investment, investment of personal time, and recruitment of new members. The cult was fond of pyramid schemes as both recruitment vehicles and ways to accumulate money for the group. The Assembled Prophets were quite skilled in investing their ill-gotten gold, and their influence blossomed in the 1720s. While their financial schemes collapsed, their leadership was able to buy into the upper class and use their government influence to shield themselves from consequences, and the cult continued expanding with new names and more sophisticated projects. In 1739, the Assembled Prophets even got their claws into the royal family, and in 1744 their favored candidate won the throne in a brief civil war.
The Assembled Prophets shot for the moon and smashed into a thousand pieces when they unexpectedly hit the moon dead-center. That is to say, they had no idea what to do with government control and promptly fell apart as a structure. The death of their leader to old age in 1751 saw the movement lose virtually all of its last vestiges of organization, and it crumpled into a collection of wealthy cliques who had money and power but little of the cult's old ambition or spiritual reach. The greatest of these cliques orbited two of Unalla's closest allies: King Hamegi (the member of the cult who had seized the throne), and Kotu Ubrilo, Unalla's financial planner and bookkeeper. Hamegi tried to cling to the strict dogma of the cult and ultimately was deposed after a failed invasion; he sincerely seemed to believe that he was destined to unite Makal by force and that defeat was impossible. Kotu, meanwhile, tempered his belief with ruthless pragmatism and began quietly scooping as much wealth as possible from the cult and investing it in legitimate businesses within and beyond Iskiwora. Kotu's grand-daughter, Zerra, married his eye for numbers with an ambition and charisma that reminded some of her great-aunt Unalla. Zerra dusted off some of the old Assembled Prophets baggage without outright spurning the remaining believers, and had them recruit investors with the same idealistic shock and awe that they once recruited souls. In 1769, Zerra's businesses were consolidated into one financial entity as a privately traded corporation in the Zeruan stock exchange: the Greater Makal Company.
Growing the Company
One of Zerra's prime sources of early investment were Maradian collaborators and Keveket converts who were seeking refuge in the late 1700s. From he 1760s onward, it was becoming patently obvious that Maradia was losing its hold over Makal, and that Zerua was soon going to gain total economic dominance over the island. That dominance would not be fully realized until 1805, but the writing was on the wall for decades. The rats fleeing the Maradian ship were not all comfortable submitting to their Zeruan enemies, but they needed an innocuous neutral party to hitch their investments to. Zerra offered them a backdoor into the Zeruan economic system that didn't actually involve becoming Zeruan. She also reached out to the selkie fleets, and helped them construct their fleet infrastructure in Makal in exchange for discounts on shipping and goods; Zerra became a middle-man to the selkie middle-men, and even got a few captains on board as shareholders. It earned the GMC a name in the luxury goods market and helped jumpstart them as a cross-Makal company, but the GMC had yet to ascend to megacorp just yet.
Zerra would never live to see the GMCs big break. In 1823, the ruling family of the newly unified
Kingdom of Umeda-Kokora agreed to invest heavily in the GMC in exchange for shared control of the company's direction. The GMC's 55 years as a corporate entity had long since scrubbed it of any cult or scam associations, but its continued focus on 'Greater Makal' was attractive for the rising kingdom. As a privately traded company, the GMC preferred Makalan investors and actively built its leadership structures to give Makalan shareholders more voice in company decisions - it sold well among Makalan merchants as a chance for the island to seize its own agency and destiny. It had the branding and message Umeda-Kokora wanted, and Umeda-Kokora had the money and the mercenaries to propel the GMC to greatness. With Umeda-Kokora's cheap mercenaries, the GMC could finally put cold steel behind its influence. The first test of this was in the GMC's own cradle, when the Kingdom of Iskiwora attempted to impose regulations and land confiscations on the GMC to contain its influence over politics and society in 1826. The GMC responded with a corporate coup of their home state, and a new member of the royal family more sympathetic to the GMC was placed on the throne. And with a favorable government at home, the full economic power of Iskiwora and its vassalized neighbors could be poured into the corporation. From 1826 to 1910, it was time to expand, expand, expand. Even when anti-corporate revolution struck the
Kingdom of Rakara, the GMC's psuedo-idealism shielded them from the consequences and allowed them to remain present in the new kingdom.
The jewel on the crown of the GMC was their acquisition of the New Zerua Company in
Asalay in 1901. The New Zerua Company (or NZC) was a company founded by Zeruan immigrants and merchants in the city of Asalay in 1799, who helped found the Azalen stock exchange there (an imitation of Zerua's Ibaishan stock exchange). The NZC rose over the 1800s as a dungeon-delving corporation, extracting treasures and magic items from the Azalen
Underworld and exchanging them for chemicals and gunpowder from Zerua. The NZC and GMC grew close in the 1860s, as the GMC's fleets and selkie allies sold the NZC's goods to a larger Zeruan market and gained a monopoly on shipping into Izekra. In the 1890s, the NZC's influence declined in the face of internal divisions and increased competition from the local Azalen Kinrath Corporation (which was in many ways the NZC but better and richer), shrinking the company and opening it up for a buyout by the Greater Makal Company. While the purchased NZC was not as powerful as it had been back in 1860, it gave the Greater Makal Company a significant presence in Asalay. The GMC used this to completely monopolize all traffic between Asalay and Ekraht and to greatly increase the amount of luxury goods they shipped into Zerua.
By the time the
Samvaran Healing Church looked towards Makal in 1926, the GMC had a stranglehold over the region's trade and was easily the most accessible corporation for foreign actors. It was only natural for the Healing Church to officially partner with the GMC in 1930, giving the GMC an industrial monopoly on healing potions. This new monopoly was extremely lucrative and with healing potions and magic items entirely locked down, the GMC was able to step up as a true megacorporation in the mid 1900s.
Challenges and New Horizons
The rising star of the GMC made many enemies. First and most troubling were the
Kingdom of Orpora and Kingdom of Illwora. Orpora is a large aquatic state that controls the undersea passage from North Makal to Izekra, and is troublingly militaristic and imperious towards surface-dwellers; the GMC tried its best to ignore them during the early days, but they became a constant source of irritation in the 1940s onwards. This reached its peak in 1973, when Orpora declared outright war with the GMC and shut down the continental passage. The GMC sacked their surface-city of Aprizada, slaughtered their surface-expeditions, but struggled to protect their shipping or meaningfully strike back. While the GMC tested many new surface-to-reef weapons, their most effective countermeasure were partnerships with other aquatic states; the GMC funded a grand coalition of rival octopeople and squiddles to swarm the Orporans from all sides while the fleets broke apart lesser reefs and waged war however possible. The company and Orpora came to a peace agreement in 1976, but it was a very costly and embarrassing war.
The Kingdom of Illwora, meanwhile, is a surface kingdom in South Makal that is known for its militarism, royal cult, and aggressive foreign policy. Illwora's goal of a united Makal is more military-political and economic, and their monarchs began to see the GMC as a threat to their unifying vision in the 1940s. Illwora has tried to compete with the GMC for influence across the island and has undermined their public image as the face of Makalan solidarity. In recent decades, they have even confiscated GMC property and arrested company personnel, igniting a vendetta that burns across GMC company culture.
It hasn't all been enemies and obstacles, though: the GMC has also looked to new avenues for expansion. Exploratory expeditions have been launched in Eastern Izekra; outposts and allies have been made in Eastern
Sonev.
Comments