The Millennium Riots [IC, Closed; Flashback]

[The Grim Reaper]

January 9, 2000
Aboard the AVG Constellation

A lamp lit by whale-oil was less a necessity, and more a luxury. On a vessel like the Constellation, an anti-submarine destroyer, 'electricity' was not exactly an alien word. Certainly not while moored at a berth of that gem of the inner seas, Neapolis. That being said, given the gravity of the situation, it was one of those charming little sacrifices that had to be made to keep up morale. The whale would be missed.

It gave the cabin such a warm glow. Honeyed light on a honeyed oak desk. The oak desk positively glowed with a warm, golden hue, and it gave such a tinted contrast to the pretty oak veneers that lined a solid metal wall. The floor still bled from the fresh scars left by the desk's struggle, sometime in the early hours of the morning.

Very little in the cabin was in any seaworthy state. There was no lashing-down; no bolting to the floor, no tying to the walls, nor lock and key. The oak desk was large, certainly, but it was no permanent fixture. Around it were the regalia of command. Maps of the port Neapolis, weapons innumerable - from eras long gone to just mere decades ago, globes, the occasional first aid kit.

The cabin was loaded to bursting with archaic tools of the trade of war. As the Captain made their way towards the desk, they passed by a veritable timeline of the usable. There were precious few automatic rifles leaning next to the door of the cabin, spraying out towards crowbars, bottles of spirits, and other such improvised weapons.

The oak desk was an extension to the pretty little thing now concealed by the tools of a draftsman. Pencils and rulers and protractors lined a map so heavily marked that you could not see the lines for their notation. The captain sat on a chair made of purloined cushions.

It was a fitting throne for His Majesty. Long live the Captain.

His name was Sergius. His name is heresy in Imperium.

He was the spearhead of the Millennium Riots.

---

"Fish dinner for the troops, one for one!"

"Uniform care, on the tab!"

"Entertainment - the lot!"

Neapolis was a busy city. The gem of the inner seas; the gateway from Imperium into the world, in every sense. There was a point in history where ships would sail through Alba Longa, simply to dock at Neapolis, so that they would be able to show the August coins and papers to the port authorities when they returned through Alba Longa.

It was a hotbed of the rebellious, and the free-thinking. There has not always been a Rosevine, with her dictates on the separation of work and recreation, and the engineering of the dual self. Yet, Imperium has always been an Emperor torn between many Empires. Chief amongst them were the Latin Empire, and the Empire of the Neapolitans. The Neapolitans were people who did not see outsiders on every ship, but opportunities – fellow people, each of whom had their own unique tool to turn.

For centuries, ships flying the insignia borne forth from the lands of what was now Imperium had made their way across Eras, fuelling the trade that produced everything from diplomacy to language; economics to politics; people to people. To this day, Neapolis was the trade capital of Imperium, and the spiritual home of Imperium's navy. The rebellious teenager from the family too poor to offer them channels of protest, of resistance, had few options but to build from the bottom-up, or to join the Naval Service.

For over twelve years, Sergius Paulus had been building a man from a blank canvas.

Today, he had more than himself. There was a crew of dozens, each one hewn from the cast-iron of Imperium's military academies, folded and fired into tools of revolution. They expected not to repair a system from scratch, left to them from three millennia of rule, but to oil the gears of progress. To cut down the Rosevine.

It was generally accepted for navy sailors to wear civilian clothes off-duty, even when, technically, their deployment had already started. Sergius threw his eyes down the dock, passing by the fishermen, and leaning into the alleyways he'd grown up in. There was a woman there, who carried a handgun. She was the brave one - her family were old money, even by Neapolitan standards. One of the so-called "loyalists" of Neapolis, those who traced their ancestry to those who had offered Imperium a modicum of fealty, in contrast to the radicals who had opposed it, and the Augustinians who swore fealty to Caesar himself.

Her personal connections, too, were astounding. Of all those who served on the AVG Constellation, she was the one who had planned the Millennium Riots around the movements of the Lictors, law enforcement - even the ebb and flow of civilian life. Sergius had helped her read through the dozens of sheafs of intelligence that had taken up her time for the past weeks. Her name was Desiderata, and she desired definition.

The map from his cabin burst into relief detail in front of his eyes. He could see the pins falling into place next to his eyes.

He knew that next to Desiderata would be the Captain of the AVG Horoscope, another anti-submarine destroyer, and the Quartermaster for the AVG Albatross, a helicopter carrier. Between the three crews, they represented an extraordinarily heavily-armed contingent, each one with military training that even Imperium's own soldiers would baulk at. The Albatross was a flagship of the August Navy, and both the Horoscope and Constellation were the result of what had been the capstone of August R&D spending for nearly a decade. Their complement were amongst the most capable youth available to the August Navy, and their officer corps a member of a radical liberal democratic tendency that had spread like fire across the counterculture of Imperium's naval finishing schools.

Desiderata had served with both of these individuals, and with Sergius, at Neapolis' largest training institute for the military sciences. Indeed, of the three, it was only Desiderata who would hesitate to call herself, by far, the most capable of them. The only reason she did not captain the Constellation was Sergius' near-infamous reputation for total, utter control of a crew. It was a state of affairs she, of all people, was loathe to question, as he had been her ideological tutor since they first met.

It was he who gave her her first hopes for a better Imperium. He who tore away her misgivings about her first, and only love. His that became her child's name.

They were inseperable till death did them part.

 

[The Grim Reaper]

"Sergius?"

"Yes, Desi?"

"Are you sure you're ready?"

New Year's Day, 2000.

Agonalia measured from the eleventh of December to the ninth of January, making up thirty days of celebration across Imperium. It culminated from the Solstice to New Year's Day, with the second to the eighth of January being the First Week. Agonalia ended on the ninth of January. The day after was the start of the school year, the start of the fiscal year - the start of Imperial life, from the tenth of January to the tenth of December.

The agonies of peace - of being outside Imperium - were, of course, unbearable, but you learned to cope. Copious amounts of alcohol were the preferred method. Desi's preferred drink was absinthe - in her typical manner, prepared deliberately and intently. Sergius was more one for the humble martini, on the rocks - a part vermouth to two parts gin. He disdained foreigners who tended, on the matter of the vermouth, to settle for a whispered mention in the martini's presence. For that matter, even the typical Albanese bar had a penchant for simply filling a glass with gin, and waving it in the general direction of a vineyard.

Sergius let a drop of his martini roll out of the glass, splashing on the edge of the AVG Constellation's railing. Desiderata put her hand just under his shoulderblade, as he started to waver.

"How's Dukey?" Sergius turned to Desiderata, smiling weakly. Dukey was a pet-name the two had for her perennial fiance.

Desiderata's own smile was rather more energetic, buoyed by a tinge of nostalgia. "He's alright, given...you know."

"When's your ten-year?"

"The sixth." Agonalia, '90. When they both got out of high school.

She joined the navy, but his heart was at home. He'd moved to Neapolis, to be closer to her, renting out a room with her father. He'd always intended to move back to Latium, once she deployed - he and her father did not get along, politically or otherwise. Desiderata's sister had a place near St. Agatha's, the big private school - Dukey's alma mater. She'd been giving Desi and Dukey's child room and board, until Dukey finished his tour of duty. It'd been eight years now.

Dukey was hoping to finally be given the luxury of a fixed post. A rare thing for an up-and-coming officer, with the world his oyster. Two more years, and he'd be 30. Finally free to retire from field operations.

Desiderata was his age, but her heart longed for the freedom of the oceans and the seas.

She'd the fires of more than just revolution.

---

Sergius slumped down against the railing, peering up into the stars. Desiderata sat next to him, doing her best not to sigh.

"How's the kid faring?"

"Good, good. We've starting putting money aside, for Grammar School. St. Agatha's is a sure thing, but, you know. It's expensive to make the best of them."

Sergius offered Desiderata his glass. Hers had run dry.

"Have the rest. You hold your alcohol better than I do, under pressure."

Desiderata quirked an eyebrow, accepting the glass, and putting down on the swaying deck. It'd been mostly enjoyed, by now, but a drop or two swung over the rim, splattering off Desiderata's pants.

"We're in the eye of the storm; a low-pressure system, surely?"

Not the world's best pun, but it'd do, given the circumstances.

"Sure, but I'm still the lightning rod."

Not a great retort, but it'd do, given the circumstances.

Desiderata was a naval officer, sure, but Caesar wasn't about to start purging an entire branch of the military on a whim.

Sergius, though.

They'd spent the last days of their preparation writing up Sergius' will, and tying up some loose ends. He'd admitted that he'd stolen her diary when they were in their youth, and she admitted that she'd revealed one of his many secretive relationships to a mutual friend. They'd talked about the intricacies of politics, and wrote down their thoughts on foreign policy.

They laughed, most of all, and they talked about money. Sergius did not have many family members left. His mother had long given up on him, when he became such a poignant focus for indecent ideological conversations. His father had died from wounds sustained at some point in the 1953 - 1966 Regency, when police and protesters regularly took up arms against each other. Open firefights were commonplace outside major cities, and the 1962 Elections were preceded by wholescale bombings in Alba Longa itself. He'd been born, of course, well after the Regency, his father having survived the point of contact.

In the end, though, the riots caught up with him, and he passed away. Sergius had been in his early twenties, at the time. The two made their peace, while they still could - Sergius, on behalf of the revolutionary he would later become, and his father, on behalf of the revolutionary he had once been.

He'd always wanted to do that with his mother. Settling down, raising a child. Affecting change through the Plebeians, or the Equestrians.

It was hard to give that up. But he'd do it for Desiderata.

 

[The Grim Reaper]

"And so, another Door closes."

1958, the height of the Regency War.

1939. 19 years ago, Caesar Trinita Augustus, the Third of the Vine, ascended to the throne. Her mother, before her, was Caesar Vitalia Augustus. Before her, was Caesar Theodora Augustus. Together, they were the three women who defined Imperium in the modern age, taking it from the end of industrialization to the beginning of globalization.

Theodora, the Rose, was a woman who took Imperium from a nation that sought to preserve a legacy, to one working towards a future. Her pink monarchism would become synonymous with the August state, with her every word forming an invisible constitution running through the ideals held within the hearts and mind of the August people. Her people wore crowns of thorns, labouring to support a military and a bureaucracy at the top of an economy unlike any that humanity had ever faced before. They suffered dearly, as factories replaced farms as the center of the world; as the Vinyards gave way to the Rosevine - the reformed Central Bank of Imperium, granted near-omnipotency over Imperium's financial sector, and the power to create the Trade Syndicates that would control Imperium's trade with the outside world.

After her, was Caesar Vitalia, the Virgin. Where there was once a Rose from the Vine, covered as it was in thorns to protect its beauty, then there was the wine. The vitality of the nation, the dream that Theodora had of a nation where all could share in the treasures she had wrought from the bodies of their people. Theodora had left the fate of her people to the Two Doors - of death, and of birth. Hers, and Vitalia's. And so, she built her state, that Vitalia could use it to build her people.

And then, was Caesar Trinita Augustus. The Third of the Vine, the run of three women who would define the world. She was the Sick.

The debt of Imperium's ninteenth century would become its twentieth. Caesar Trinita was concerned, predominantly, with her family. Elected by default, she was the only member of Vitalia's conclave, a niece adopted to the virgin queen.

It took merely days upon her ascension for the bureaucracy of Imperium to take matters into its own hands. Her cabinet was selected by its own elements, of those most able to manipulate their underlings into serving. They were conniving, dependent on the machinations of politics to retain their power - and their lives. Without a powerful occupant on the throne, there was nothing to keep in check the deadly privileges necessary to maintain the throne.

In 1939, the August nuclear program began. The weaponization of radiation, to cause sullen faces, thin, white skin, emaciation, coughing, the living death. The imposition of Imperium's ailment upon its enemies. Millions of dollars, used to bring together the esoteric needs of a program designed to bring about the end of the world, to shore up those who would happily end it were they to leave. The people who cared not for the before and after the Doors. The people who wanted exclusive control over the sea in the very middle of their nation, between the Doors.

In 1953, 14 years later, Alainn conducted its first nuclear test. The day after, Imperium went to war. Caesar Trinita was forced to abdicate power to a regency government, under her Magnus Dux - the Divine-Magister. Such was the Regency War.