Of Fertility and Tumult
As we begin our study of the Naturalist’s Tumult, we must start with a study of ancient fertility magic. Few of us can say that we are without those in our close family, or immediate line of ancestry, who have made use of Damson’s magics to perpetuate their line. The story of Damson Mestica of Sutet is all too familiar; a Metric in the fifth tectad, she and her wife longed for children. At the time, the traditional method in such a situation was to seek the assistance of a heritant man who might step in as a surrogate father, to allow one of the women the ability to birth. Metric Damson, however, was unsatisfied with such an arrangement; neither she nor her wife were interested in submitting to a man’s touches, and they wanted a child that would be equal parts the both of them. For a lesser woman, this might be an impossible dilemma, but Damson had all the ingenuity and potence of an Imperial Metric at her disposal.
Damson’s research was not quick, and not easy, but after three long years of work and endless horrifying experiments on various livestock, she was finally prepared to present her spell to the magical community: Damson’s Deutoplasmic Digeny. By gathering reproductive essence from a donor, and imparting it into a recipient at the height of their fertile cycle - be that mere ovulation, or full-blown estrus, as species dictates - the Digeny can imbue the recipient with a fertilized egg, inseminated by the donor, without sexual contact and regardless of the genders involved. The review board was doubtful that the spell worked as claimed - after all, what proof could they have - and demanded something more certain, and so Damson offered an incontrovertible demonstration. She called her wife to the stage and performed the spell upon the two of them, and asked the board to reconvene in twect months, when the resulting child had been born. Impressed by her commitment, despite the unconventional request, the board agreed and adjourned.
As her wife began to swell, Damson became concerned at the obvious objection to her trial: that some might claim she had become pregnant through more natural means, and that the spell was still a fraud. As such, she began to work with a close friend of hers at the Academy (which, at the time, was still located in Sutet), Metric Feijoa Ellow. Metric Feijoa had been working on hybridizing livestock, and had found difficulty in tracking with utter certainty which studs had contributed to which sows, but Damson believed she had a solution to their problem as well as her own. Together, the two collaborated on a new spell over the coming months, for Feijoa to present before Damson when the board reconvened. Damson wrote a letter in the month before her retrial, requesting that the members of the review board bring their children along to see the show.
When the appointed time came, Metric Feijoa stepped up first, offering their spell for consideration: a simple comparative test, given two samples, would produce a bright light around both if one shared direct parentage over the other, and no light if they did not. They invited the members of the board to come down as a group, blindfolded, inviting their children down as well without indicating what child belonged to whom. Through repeated casting, Feijoa correctly matched every child to their parent, save one. When the masks were taken off, and the results revealed, that parent admitted that the child was indeed his, but not by blood; the girl was his niece, the daughter of his sister, and he and his husband had adopted her when her parents had died some years previous. Confident, then, that their spell worked as advertised even in the presence of a misleading result, Metric Feijoa’s spell was given approval for publication, under the name Feijoa’s Forisfamiliative Foil.
With that spell approved, and shown well to work, Metric Damson stepped up, with her wife and daughter at her side, for her re-test. The timing of Feijoa’s trial had not passed their notice, and after some brief instruction, several members of the board attempted the Foil upon the child. Indeed, as advertised, the girl showed a positive result to both Damson and her wife, and the board had little alternative but to approve Damson’s spell for publication as well. With the Foil published at the same time, any worries of paternal upset were handily assuaged.
Some traditionalist groups objected, of course. Damson’s spell was seen to violate the natural order of things, in ways that magic had never tread before. And yet, the popularity of the spell was such that those groups were seen as foolish. Homosexual couples, claimant couples, couples regrettably struck barren, all might now see children of their own. Their primary objection, claiming that those who ought not breed may now find a way in defiance of natural law, was seen as grotesquely eugenicist, and rightly so. We must remember, even as we see events unfold, that such objections are vile to the core, and unworthy of the wind it takes to speak them or the thought to hear them.
In time, of course, that one arrangement that Damson’s spell failed to help came to her for aid: her spell imprinted reproductive essence from one party onto another, but the recipient must be able to bear the resultant child. Two heritant men, or two claimant women, would find the Digeny quite useless. Damson realized her spell had a flaw, and got to work attempting to rectify the situation - and only two years after the Digeny saw light, its successor did as well. Damson’s Dispermous Decalcomania passed muster quickly, being enough past a variant on the Digeny to be a new spell in its own right, but derivative enough that its merit did not require a waiting period to demonstrate. The Decalcomania collects essence from two donors, to imprint on a third fertile surrogate, whose reproductive essence is stripped out in the process, leaving the fertilized egg a viable blend of only the two donors. Though it is exponentially more difficult to perform than the Digeny, the Decalcomania is the only option available to many couples, but between the two and a willing surrogate if necessary, anyone can have a child. And it is this that led to the greatest societal upheaval in the history of the Empire. It is this great beauty that lead to the Tumult.
Through the 21st and 22nd tectads, as the Karella Dynasty began to decline, the Imperial House became overtaken with a sort of obsession with purity. Karellan Emperors were growing weaker and weaker, living less and less long, nothing like the glory days of the early Empire. There were those among the Prime and Cadet Houses of Karella that blamed this perceived weakness on the blending of Karella’s line with inferior stock. Karella herself was of the lineage of great chiefs of the Pole, after all, and here the father of the 24th Emperor Karella was a particularly talented painter. In his 44th year, Kakara the Perverse*, the 24th Emperor Karella, was the one who issued the fated decree: the Imperial Line of Karella must be kept pure, and so shall wed only unto itself. He took his sister, Pare the Miserable, to wife, and promptly set to work populating his incestuous brood.
When the 25th Emperor Karella was of age, she set her parents aside and took the throne, much to the relief of the High Houses. But the damage of Kakara’s Perversion had already been done - the young Peria the Misled had been raised from birth to believe that her younger sister, Yeoju the Pitiable, was her promised bride. In time, they issued their own children, who took the throne and repeated the crime, and again, and again, until the 31st Emperor Karella ascended the throne. By then, the generations of inbreeding was taking its toll on the Imperial line - Sledge-Mitt Margoz bears his historic epithet due to the oversized mallets of fused bone he carried at the ends of his arms and legs, where his hands and feet ought to be.
A brute of a man, of twisted countenance and shallow brainpan, and hairless from tip to toe, Margoz by all accounts could barely issue his mad proclamations, and mad indeed they were. The 31st Emperor Karella was known to have banned from the Imperial Presence the color blue, and the remembrance of song. At the age of 24, he took his halfwitted sister Asosi the Innocent to wife on the occasion of her 17th birthday, but the two were apparently unable to conceive, or likely even consummate the union. This was far from an unusual occurrence by this point; Margoz, Asosi, and both of their parents were conceived not by natural means, but by the use of Damson’s Deutoplasmic Digeny. It is said that Margoz’s manhood was withered and pale, prone to gangrenous infection from lack of blood flow, and one shudders to imagine the state of Asosi’s organs. As had become tradition by this point, the Emperor turned to the Magi of the Cadet House to secure his heir, and secure they did, performing the Digeny again to impregnate young Asosi.
And now, the truly regrettable part of the history. Asosi did indeed bear Margoz a daughter, a malformed little mote of a thing whom she lived long enough to name Gac, before she perished from the strain of a live birth. Margoz is said to have raged for hours, blaming everybody in the palace for the death of his bride and with it the severance of his line, before he struck upon the vile plan that would spell his end. He ordered the Cadet House Magi to find some maid, and perform the Decalcomania upon her, sampling himself and the infant Gac; in this way, by force if needed, he would perpetuate Karella’s heritage.
This abomination, as it happened, proved to be too much. One noble of the Cadet House fled the Palace, meeting in secret with an agent of the head of House Kasturi, and quickly a Convocation of the High Houses was called. As this noble, a young woman serving in the palace guard by the name of Kantola Momor, explained the events of the last nights to the collected Great Lords, a decision was rapidly made. The carryings-on of Karella’s dynasty had been of great upset to the Houses for many years, and as rumors spread among the common folk of the perversions of the Imperial House, faith in the Empire was beginning to erode. But hearing all of this, of the madness of Sledge-Mitt Margoz and the taboo he was preparing to break, it had become clear that the line had been crossed ages ago, and they had all merely been afraid to act.
The Lord of House Kasturi, a hulking man by the name of Binjai Mangi, was the one who finally proposed what all at the table were thinking: the Imperial Line of Karella had to be brought to an end, and a new Emperor selected. The Lord of House Quattel, a sharp-eyed young woman by the name of Medlar Crata-Quattel, immediately proposed that young Kantola be selected, that the 32nd Emperor Karella be the one noble of the Cadet House who was willing to seek intervention, but Binjai Mangi-Kasturi was firm - for the people to regain their faith in the throne, the perversity of the Karellan line had to be purged. Kantola could become the new Lord of the High House of Karella, to mark a cleansing and reward her faithful service to the Empire, but the Emperor must be the first of a new Dynasty, and must be selected from the six Great Lords at that table. A vote was cast, and with a plurality of three, Binjai was selected as the First Emperor Kasturi. This meeting has become known to history as the Convocation of the Gage, in part due to the challenge offered and met among the Great Lords, and in part due to the inability of Sledge-Mitt Margoz to fill a glove.
The Houses rallied their forces overnight, even as Kantola returned to the palace to find a way to delay the casting of the Decalcomania and determine who among the Karella family could be trusted not to fight the coming storm. She managed, but only by killing three different Magi who were preparing to conduct the ritual, and freeing the poor scullery maid they had dragged from their bed. When the attack came at dawn, Kantola fought her way through a squad of her own people to keep the palace gates open, and quickly, Margoz was dragged from the throne and put to death on Gete’s Promenade in front of a shocked assembly. The Great Lords explained their actions to the people, why they had to intervene, and crowned Binjai as the new Emperor. On that day, 26th Net 2355 I.E., the Empire had its first Emperor that was not of the Karellan line - and this is why we celebrate this day as a holiday. The infact Gac was placed in Kantola’s care, even as she took on the task of reorganizing her House and clearing it of counterrevolutionaries, but the child but died of multiple organ failure three days after she was born.
The Kasturi Dynasty, if you will recall your history, did not last long. Binjai postured as a man of strength, but his first decree as Emperor proved to be the undoing of his entire family. In response to the great evils the Karellas perpetrated, on his second day as Emperor, he decreed that the casting of Damson’s fertility magics should henceforth be banned throughout the entire Empire, under penalty of death for all involved. In the year that followed this decree, Binjai was subject to almost foct assassination attempts, and though he claimed these were the actions of loyalists to the Karella lineage and set Kantola to tracking down their source, every would-be regicide she could find simply wanted a child of their own. As Emperor Binjai attempted to solidify his rule, he found himself more and more exposed and more and more disliked, until finally in 2362, one lucky and clever assassin managed to peg him with a launched iron rod that called lightning from the open sky. His reign lasted for all of five years.
After Binjai the Priggish died, his son, Kwini the Obstinate took the throne as the Second Emperor Kasturi, and immediately sealed himself in the Palace. He reigned there in secure silence, fearful of assassination, for nearly twoct years, issuing more and more oppressive edicts without ever interacting with his subjects. It was in 2401, when he met with the Great Lords and the High Metric of the Kitet Academy to propose an elaborate licensing system to determine who would and would not be permitted to learn or practice what kinds of magic, that something finally gave. Kwini’s daughter Wani pulled aside the aging Kantola Momor-Karella and Medlar Crata-Quattel as they left the meeting, informing them that should Kwini be convinced to retire from the throne, she would be more receptive to the needs and wants of the people. Her message was received, and that evening, Kantola and a handful of irregulars slipped into the palace through passages she remembered from her time serving there, and garroted the Emperor in his bedchamber.
Wani the Canny ascended to the throne as the Third Emperor Kasturi on 11th Mage, 2401. Her first decree, made minutes after her coronation, was to lift the bans on reproductive magic put in place by her grandfather. Over the next week, she issued a series of additional decrees, rolling back the restrictive edicts of her predecessors, before making her last decrees on 20th Mage: that the Empire’s Ministries and their Magists, heretofore simply administrative apparatuses to enact the Emperor’s will, should take on the lion’s share of governance and governmental decision-making, with the authority of the throne reserved for jurisdictional disputes and the judiciary. With that, young Wani abdicated the throne, naming Medlar Crata-Quattel her successor as the First Emperor Quattel. The reign of Wani the Canny lasted exactly one week, which was about as long as anyone would have tolerated it. The people of the Empire were glad to be rid of the Kasturis, though it is recorded that the sentiment was commonly shared at the time that this one may have been worth keeping around.
It took Medlar nearly half a tectad, the full remainder of her reign, to properly shape the Ministries into bodies of government, exercising her power of jurisdictional resolution liberally and with Great Lord Wani of House Kasturi at her side to show her exactly what she had in mind. It is said that the two of them grew very close even as Medlar stepped down and passed into dotage, and one wonders whether they may have been in communication well before Kwini’s death. Kantola Momor-Karella, for her part, served as a tireless supporter of Wani and Medlar’s agenda, as an ideologue in the public sphere and as a military leader in the countryside as Imperial loyalist movements cropped up. There are those at the time who claimed that, were such a thing possible, she may even have possessed the spirit of Karella herself, returned to us in our time of greatest trial.
As we see, the Naturalist’s Tumult was a period of great turmoil and upset, from its seeds planted in the decline of the Karella dynasty through to the peaceful accession to the throne of Medlar the Administrator. And yet, more even than the overthrow of Karella’s lineage, it was Wani’s decrees on her final day as Emperor that upturned our society the most, reshaping it from an absolute monarchy that existed since the Founding into the magistocratic noocracy that it is today.
And yet, when we look back at the excesses of Emperors past, it is hard to say that we are not better for the difficult times our ancestors experienced. As a society, we are stronger; we have seen the recklessness of power wielded incautiously, and the need to act when those in power step beyond the limits of morality. The Houses are now glorified merchant families; though the throne has changed hands a few times more since then, with the Paranas taking a turn in 3044 and the Kewas rising to the throne as recently as 3533, but continuity of government has existed in the Ministries the whole time. When we see the naked monarchy at play in the Principality of Vokt, and the mess that nation makes of itself on the stage of the Plane, we may permit ourselves a small chuckle, but perhaps we ought keep it humble - it was barely a hachetry ago that we ourselves were little better.
*Kakara's epithet, like all Imperial Epithets, is the mark of historians long past his reign. Though assuredly spoken of as such while alive, he was never officially recorded as Kakara the Perverse until many tectads later. The same can be said for all Imperial Epithets present in this text.
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