The Role Disputes

During the Long Northern Peace, the city of Anoomenon acted as a final arbiter to settle disagrements between the other cities of Earth. As its power began to wane following the demise of the Grey Kings, it was increasingly unable to enforce the rulings which its courts handed down. For a long while, established customs and traditions continued to be honoured, but hidden tensions could not be suppressed forever and in 2617 AF, the cities of Gantranne and Entessaminia began a short war.
Historians call the following period of a little over three hundred years between 2619 AF and 2940 AF, the time of the Role Disputes.
If the era of the Succession Empires was characterised by grand alliances, sweeping strategic plans and big set piece battles and the time of the Trade Wars was a no holds barred mercantile free-for-all then the Role Disputes were a much quieter affair, more akin to a series of tedious arguments and passive-aggressive sniping than the self consciously heroic models of the past. In the absence of a dominant single power, the cities jostled for position, struggling with their strengths and weaknesses as they attempted to achieve a harmonious balance in trade, sports, sciences, fashion, education, the arts and every other arena of civilisation in which it was possible to compete. The kind of military action with which the age began was a rarety but a constant underlying threat.
In truth, these times were blighted by three conditions which determined the fractious nature of the zeitgeist. First came the Listlessness Plague which ravaged the world between 2646 AF and 2670 AF. It killed many outright and the symptoms of ill tempered depression and lack of focus seemed to spread in a metaphorical way, even to those who were not technically infected. Then afterwards it became apparent that human fertility had been impacted and that a decline in population known as the Emptying of Earth was underway and seemed to be irreversible. Why were the cities competing then? Arguably they were not competing against each other but against the attractions of the worlds of the Galactic Compact which was stealing away their young in the Last Scattering.
To these two problems a third was added when the Grammar Wars broke out in 2731 AF. This poisoned the atmosphere between and within the cities, and led to lingering bitterness long after the war was over.
The famous mural at the head of this article is entitled "Tell Me Less" and was painted on the seawall of Entessaminia in 2732 AF by Halatt Gydomarim at the height of the Grammar Wars. It depicts in semi-abstract form what the artist considered to be the chaos and confusion resulting from the work of the group who would become known as the Bad Theologists.
In 2851 AF, the city of Helsporan finally completed the construction of its space elevator, a project which had been running for more than three hundred years. The importance of the cities of Modyran (the site of the first space elevator) and Sonnring (still the site of an independent spaceport) declined somewhat as an immediate result.
In the remaining years of this era, Helsporan began to accumulate political and military capital and in 2940 AF it made a decisive and successful peacekeeping intervention to end a troubling conflict which had blown up between Monrith and Kingcardine as though it were some kind of twisted, muted and minor echo of the wars of the Succession Empires starting all over again.
This was the last gasp of the Role Disputes, after which Helsporan became a dominant power and declared the Pax Helsporan in 2940 AF bringing the era to a close.