Salemizia

A salemizia is the violent persecution of spellcasters with the aim of their expulsion or, more commonly, their wanton massacre. The Aderic term became commonplace within the First Empire of Ader following The First Salemizia and eventually found its way across the Continent; some cultures, such as Kaviri and Estuan, refer to salemizias as "doing a Salem".

History

During the first salemizia, groups of Wolfmen mercenaries were employed by the Andorian Church, with many of them neither demanding nor accepting payment due their religious conviction. Unlike the church's own men, these groups were only used in order to persecute and terrorize practitioners of arcane and sometimes primal magic.

As Violent Riots

With the catastrophe of The Second Sun, followed by the Andorian War of Succession, religious citizens of the empire were stricken with grief, confusion, and frustration; their god seemed to have died, and many of them went on to lynch users of magic and loot their possessions as they saw their reckless manipulation of reality as the reason for the disaster. On many occasions, clergymen were leading the mobs. The following years were characterized by political instability, and arcane casters became the scapegoat blamed for every ailment villagers would suffer from, and violent riots became somewhat of a norm outside larger cities.
Though never formally approved by authorities, riots almost always occurred with their knowledge and with them turning a blind eye; Salemizias allowed rulers to easily avoid scrutiny by their subjects and cover their own incompetence. This behavior was heavily discouraged in the founding years of the Second Empire of Ader, and by the 6th century AB the empire already began to harshly put down salemizias with the deployment of the Aderian Military. Protocols of the High Council shows that both the council and the Emperors of Ader understood the empire had much more to lose than there was to gain with these persecutions.

Etymology

From Salem, a large village razed to the ground; and izia, a word in Kaviric meaning "pin down (to the ground)", with the intention of dealing the killing blow in combat or hunting.

Primary Related Location

Lake Kadia

Important Locations

• Kaviri Highlands

Related Organizations

• Andorian Church
• Andorian Inquisition

Related Ethnicities

• Kadian

Origins

Our suspicions rose when the delegates of Salem refused our assistance and treatment.
The group of wolfmen dispatched to the village reported that many of the villagers formed a vast network of cultists, and followed the bidding of a hag coven.
They promptly locked the residents inside their homes; torched the hovels; killed the hags; threw their bodies inside the village well; and filled the well to the brim with whatever debris they could gather.
These wolfmen would thereon refer to similar acts as "doing as in Salem", or Salemizia in Kaviric.

- Borric Draustphar
Archbishop of Kavir