Regarding amity and enmity

Overview

During the Autumn Equinox 386YE, the Minister of Historical Research Silk Farkas instructed the Department of Historical Research to "send Octavia of Stream's Source Spire to research the nature and origin of Conclave's Amity, Enmity, and Neutrality." That is, the Declaration of Alignment.

Octavia undertook the investigation and delivered her findings to the Minister at the Winter Solstice. They were then made publicly available to Imperial scholars across the Empire.

Introduction

I was pleased to be given the brief of researching the nature and origin of Conclave's Amity, Enmity, and Neutrality. This is a topic which is not well-understood, and yet one that in a sense almost every magician knows a little about; it is one tied up intimately with the history of our Empire, its origins, and the achievements of my own people; it is one that benefits from the methodology of my spire. We take a classically Sacharissan approach: records and sources are the route to truth, even when the words of the past contain errors or lies, and only by travelling to the source of the river of time can we understand that which flows forth as the present.

I have in the past been accused of "rambling", a scurrilous and unjustified accusation made by those with little taste for the thoroughness required to produce a full examination of a topic, but in regretful deference to my critics I have endeavoured here to organise my thoughts as clearly as I can. Take caution, however: remember that everything is, ultimately, connected, in ways you cannot necessarily predict. To business.

The Politics of Alignment

I want to begin with a question: What is the legal and political nature of Alignment? Well, to declare an eternal as having Amity with the Empire grants the eternal (and its servants - please assume that I always include the latter when I mention the former unless otherwise stated) the protection of the Empire’s laws. It puts the eternal in a state not unlike that of a citizen of a foreign nation at which the Empire is at peace, but it grants other rights: the current regulations grant an eternal under Amity the ability to speak at Conclave with the nomination of a grandmaster and to donate to the Conclave’s vaults. In short, therefore, it is perhaps more precise to say that the political meaning of Amity is the recognition of an eternal as a peer to the magicians of the Empire, and the legal consequences follow from that.

A Declaration of Enmity essentially declares that eternal to be an enemy of the Empire: from this, the legal consequences follow. This makes it straightforwardly illegal to draw on its power, just as it would be illegal to accept aid from barbarian powers: it is not illegal to speak or deal with such an eternal, but there is a presumption of treasonous guilt.

The Empire does not have a perfect record of who has been under enmity during its history. It is sometimes imprecisely claimed that Ossegrahn has had Enmity since the time of Giovanni, but on re-examination of our early sources, this appears to be strictly incorrect. What we have is a partial record of early declarations of the Imperial Conclave, in which is found a reference to "the eternal Ossegrahn", a list of various additional names, and the fact the Conclave was declaring them an enemy of the Empire. It was a natural assumption at the time of this text's discovery that this is indeed a declaration of Enmity, but the word enmity is never actually used in the source. It is only in Teleri's reign that we begin to see this enter the records at all. Further examination of some of the material discovered in the roofing materials of Fishguard some years ago uncovered a judgement discarded during that investigation: a Veto judgement raised in the Assembly of Nine against a Senate motion "to create the Conclave power to Declare the Empire's Enmity for a Denizen of the Realms". It appears to have failed 9-0 (and thus was presumably raised as a demonstration of the unanimity of the Assembly of Nine's support for the motion in question).

As such, I believe Amity (and Neutrality) is the older power. That is, originally the Conclave did not have a power of Enmity, only Amity (with "Neutrality" just being the status of not having Amity). The sources suggest that this was a constitutional innovation of Teleri’s reign, although it could have been mooted before this time. It seems, then, that before the formal power of Enmity, Conclave would use a Concord to express their disapproval or disavowal of an Eternal. This probably had some magical effect, but not to the degree that the formal power does: it matters that Enmity has a specific and hostile meaning.

What, then, is the meaning of Neutrality? Perhaps the analogous situation for foreign powers is a foreign power with which we do not choose to keep an embassy. In the time of the Resurgence, in which I now write, the political consensus is to grant embassies to essentially every foreign power that will have one - this has not always been so. Similarly, there have been times in the past when the will of the Conclave has been that every eternal who is not a friend is an enemy, or vice versa, and there have been attempts to abolish the legal notion of neutrality entirely: most recently there was a push for this during the reign of Empress Deanne, but the Empress herself did not support the matter and made clear she would veto it should it reach the Senate floor. The political meaning of Neutrality is generally regarded as saying that the Conclave and the Empire have no special regard for that eternal: there certainly are eternals, like the passionate Janon, who have in the past expressed their dislike of the status for that very reason.

Agramant has "enjoyed" many short periods of neutrality. Students of that eternal are clear that historically speaking it normally finds some way to persuade the Empire to remove its Enmity at least once or twice a century. Often this happens when the Empire is most at risk - there are even some who have argued the benefits are worth the costs. If Agramant's aid saves the Empire from likely destruction even as it stores up trouble for the future is the aid worth the price? Only the Conclave can really answer that question. Sadly the destruction of many records from this period when Nicovar burned the libraries mean that it is harder than we would like for the current Conclave to lean on the Wisdom of earlier times.

The Origins of Conclave

The Imperial Conclave is the youngest house of power in the Empire - not part of the original constitutional order, of course, but an innovation of the Urizen, a condition of them joining the Empire under Giovanni. It was not created in a way that reflected a prior structure, in the way that the Senate and the Synod draw a heritage from the Witan of the Winterfolk and the Assembly of the Highborn. We Urizen wanted to design a body that did not rely on old traditions but that fulfilled its purpose by its design and intent. What is that purpose?

Early copies of the constitution written before Urizen joined the Empire make no reference to a Conclave and only say "“We shall establish a body of magicians to use magic to strengthen and protect the Empire.” It appears that the founders saw the importance of a body of magicians but had no clear idea of how that would work. Changing the constitution was a condition of Urizen joining the Empire, and appears to have happened near the start of Giovanni’s reign, at the same time that the Bourse and the Mint were established.

(A little-known fact - I mention it here because the period is a particular fascination of mine, so I will not have it edited out, whatever Leontes says, because this is my project - is that while the Exemplar Avigilana was instrumental in the actual foundation of the Mint, Emperor Giovanni is believed to have arranged things so that Viola of Tassato, his mother, was the first Master of the Mint - Virtues forfend that I accuse the League of ever engaging in nepotism, of course, so we must assume she was qualified for the post in some way that the histories do not record).

We know that figures like Brigit of Dourfen who would later become the first Grandmaster of the Rod and Shield was around at this time, so it seems likely there was already pressure within the Empire to form some kind of body of wizards. There is some suggestion from old troubadour ballads that this was a political aim from Dawnish weaver cabals and prominent Enchanters of the day as well.

Urizen insistence was explicit and firm: they would not join a polity that did not understand magic not just as some other scholarly pursuit but as the highest, truest art, its practitioners worthy of and due political power. It is recorded in some sources that there was opposition, from the Navarr and the Highborn, and most especially the Varushkans, who maintained that the policing of what was acceptable magic ought to remain the preserve of the nations alone. With the nascent Empire only recently having faced a foe from Varushka, Alderei the Fair, who represented a failure of this very tradition of self-regulation, their objections were doomed to failure.

The final design of the Conclave was shaped primarily by the mages of Urizen - I mean specifically mage in the proper sense, and not the colloquial way it is often used by know-nothings in recent time - but it was not their creation alone. Prominent threshers shared a desire to ensure that those who used magic to harm their neighbours and forced the Empire to grant powers to strip magicians of their right to use magic - something that was anathema to many Urizen.

The Dawnish supporters of the Conclave proposals appear to have thrown their weight more strongly behind the Urizen vision of the Conclave as a political body that spoke with the authority of law - weaver cabals and enchanters alike could see the value of that. There is some suggestion that Emperor Giovanni had imagined the Conclave as a body of supply, perhaps somewhat closer to the way the Bourse is described. The Bourse controls access to its resources, yes, but there is no constitutional requirement that they be used in a fit and proper way. The vision of the Conclave that the mages of Urizen presented was a body with political authority - and this is the vision that won the day.

Indeed, consider this: Who is a member of the Conclave? A child will tell you every magician is - and, in my opinion, a child would be wrong. The Conclave accords a voice to those citizens who both demonstrate a command of magic and who demonstrate the necessary commitment to the authority of the Conclave. The Constitution grants no such authority to the Bourse. This is not so with the Conclave. At its core the Conclave is a normative and authoritative house of power, the only component of the Empire’s legal structure that can judge magic fit and proper.

Magical Significance

What does this have to do with Alignment? It has everything to do with it. It is not clear if the great minds - not all Urizen, before anyone accuses me of being simply Loyal to my own nation - who designed the Conclave’s constitutional role realised what they were doing. Yet, in my investigations into the nature and origin of Alignment, I have been driven to this conclusion: it arises in the manner it does because of the power that the Constitution grants the Conclave. A constitution that framed the Conclave as a body of magical supply, a provider of enchantments and baubles to the rest of the Empire and a bringer of strength alone: such a constitution would not, I believe, give rise to the magical effects of Alignment - even if the surrounding legal arrangements were identical. Simply put - the constitution says that those magicians who look to the Conclave acknowledge its authority to speak with a normative voice on matters of magic, and thus the Constitution binds us as one community of magicians: from the Brass Coast to distant Ossium, magicians in the Empire look to the Conclave and the Conclave speaks with their voices.

Even if the architects of the Conclave understood what they had done, it is not clear that this was more widely understood at the time. Sources are scarce, but some written sources suggest that initially, magicians understood the newly created power of Alignment only in purely legal terms. It is not clear that the eternals themselves understood what had been done, at least not at first: some would, I think, the wiser and stranger of their number who understand something of the ways of the world, but those who are mostly wrapped up in their own concerns would not have initially comprehended it. It was only when the Empire began declaring Amity and Enmity against eternals in earnest that scholars began to notice the emergent phenomenon - that the Conclave’s voice now opened the gates and barred the doors to the worlds beyond.

Urizen scholars were quick to analyse the phenomenon and formulate explanations of it. Ultimately, this magic is the magic of the world itself, which we call hearth magic in the forms that it is encountered in the everyday. As such, predictably they understood it through their - our - own hearth magics. From an Urizen perspective, the effects of Alignment are clear invocations of the power and magic of Witnessing - Declarations are done in public - and a declaration by the Conclave, appointed in this role by the Constitution, of the demarcations of who may enter the space that the Empire calls its own.

Cession - the power of giving a gift is crucial here as well. Amity is a gift to an eternal (even if only some of them appreciate or care for it) - it grants power to an eternal, making it easier for them to exert their will in the world. By what can be given, can be withheld, so by extension the Conclave has the power to deny this gift.

If you are a clever reader - and in truth, I like to assume that all my readers are clever - you may have noticed an omission in the historical narrative above. Before the invention of the Conclave, were heralds of Agramant popping into the Empire on the regular? After all, surely no Alignment barred them? This does not appear to have been the case, but why not?

As I was reminded recently when visiting Upwold, encouraged by my National Assembly, the Marchers have their own understanding of hearth magic that would have allowed them to do something similar. Indeed, the communal nature to the way that the Marchers beat the bounds too - analogous as it is to the way that the Conclave speaks with one voice - would have helped. The very act of beating the bounds, grants the Marchers some power to deny beings of the realm easy access to their dominion.

The Varushkans have similar hearth magic rites designed to ward an area against intrusion that would be just as effective. We know the Jotun build crude structures to try and mark the land as theirs and thereby prohibit intrusion by enemies from the realms. It is likely that the traditions held by all nations might at one time have included practices that helped to ward off threats from the six realms to a greater or lesser extent - but these have been long since abandoned given how much more powerful and effective it is for the Conclave to act. This is unsurprising given that none of these methods are nearly as robust and effective as the power of the Conclave to declare Amity or Enmity.

Speculation

Here, I pass into the realm of the illuminate, but permit me a moment. It is of interest that in the few such records we have, it is always described as the Throne’s authority - never that of the Empress. There are other thrones, in this world and the realms beyond. One is that on which the Bound King of Winter sits, and he has in recent times exhibited some power to augment the expression of the power of Alignment. One is that on which the monarchs of Dawn once sat, which stands in the old hall in the Castle of Thorns: and the old Monarchs of Dawn were known to have an uncommon knack for dealing with the eternals of the Realms.

The Grand Ilarchs of Axos each have a throne and a crown, and possession of these is considered to grant them undisputed control over their citadel - it is somewhat unclear how the people of Axos deal with the eternals and to what degree, but most sources agree that it is done on a city-by-city basis, and that the Grand Ilarchs have some final say over what is and is not permitted in that regard.

There are certain shapes in this world that things ought to be. Things are what they are. A sword is a sword and it is shaped like a sword. Most people in the world make their coffins or sarcophagi into cuboidal shapes, because that is the shape those things are. There is power in the shape of things. I theorise that a throne is one such shape. It is a powerful symbol of ambition, yes, a profound one, but it is also a symbol of authority and power, one that I suspect resonates not just in this world but the realms beyond.

It is interesting, is it not - do not consider me someone lost to conspiracies, merely one who asks questions - that the coins of the Mint, which, as discussed, date from Giovanni’s time, have on them that very symbol. Giovanni's choice of symbols is no accident - thrones, crowns, rings - symbols of power, symbols of authority. Giovanni understood what he was doing - he was saying very clearly that only he had the power to issue money in the Empire. He made the coin of the realm a physical extension of the power of the Empire.

Could the Throne have exerted such a power over magic if the Conclave had never been created? My hypothesis is... maybe. The Constitution could have been written to grant the Empress of the day the right to control magic and there is ample evidence that the citadels of Axos embody their thrones with ultimate power in just such a way, and that that does allow them to affect who may or may not pass through the gates of their cities.

However this kind of magic is a fragile one. I think there is some evidence that the Urizen of 400 years ago understood all this, however. Consider the famous words of Tiberius Sunspire: “Who will rule your empire when you are gone?” This is more than a question about political arrangements. If all power is delegated to one person, then when there is a need for succession, that power lies dormant - or worse, is shattered. I postulate that the constitutional design of the Conclave may have been specifically formulated to create a lasting, institutional formulation of the Empire’s magical will, in a way that the Empress was not - and could never - be. It is just a theory, though - perhaps we will never truly know.

Either way, without the explicit involvement of the Empire's magicians, it is not clear that the edict of the Throne could bar creatures of the realms with the same authority that the Conclave enjoys. The genius of the Conclave is that by involving all the leading magicians of the Empire in its decision making, magicians who then implicitly agree to be bound by that authority even if they disagree with its decisions, the Conclave's dominion over the Empire's magic is strengthened. The Conclave represents the collective will of the Empire magicians - in effect it is the decision of the whole Empire - or at least everyone that matters - and not just a single ruler on a throne.

Addenda on related matters

I end with addenda on related matters, relating to questions that I have been asked by assistants and those I consulted when compiling this research.

Firstly, people sometimes ask how Alignment works in other nations. From what we know the answer is "not well". The priesthood of the Iron Confederacy offer just one of many examples; they expend enormous effort trying to banish demons from their land, and yet they still struggle to keep it free of eternal interference. Whatever it is they do appears to work, but "only just" might be the fairest way to describe it.

Secondly, why do some eternals, like Agramant, cavort around the edges of Enmity, testing the boundaries, while others seem content to walk away? Agramant is, almost by definition, a taboo breaker and one who tempts others to break taboos even more so. There are magicians in the Empire who don't accept the authority of the Conclave, who don't feel bound by its power. They can perform rituals to breach the barrier and allow an eternal entry, but their very existence is likely a beacon to a being like Agramant, drawing him like a moth to a flame.

If we regard the power - not the legal but the magical power - of Alignment as the expression of the magical will of the Empire as a whole, reified through the constitutional and symbolic methods that I have discussed, then of course it is natural that an eternal who tests and tempts and pushes at boundaries and bans by its very nature will find ways round such things.

The Cold Sun is clearly eager to send forth agents to destroy us, but the enmity of the Conclave holds it at bay. The nature of Cold Sun is likely that this doesn't bother the being in the slightest, since it expects to have all eternity to achieve its goals, waiting a few millennia is of little concern. But in recent times it has been resoundingly defeated by a coalition across the Empire! It is hard to imagine a more complete symbolic defeat - and as discussed, symbols are very powerful in these subtle matters. The result is that Cold Sun has been banished from these lands and will not return til the day comes that magicians within the Empire open the door again.

Thirdly, and this relates again to Blood-on-the-Snow: the wastes of Tsirku, where Sydanjaa blows, are in a place that Agramant is known to find his way into more easily. Does this mean that Sydanjaa has some connection to him? No, it does not, and that would not, I think, be characteristic of his power. Tsirku does, however, often appear in tales as a source of his heralds, who attempt to sneak over the border into Winterfolk or Jotun lands or push at the bounds.

Presumably, he does control some regio there, but more important is that Tsirku is a wasteland: it is not under the dominion of anyone, not even in the sense of being partially controlled in a disputed manner. It is not clear it is even possible for it to be brought into anyone’s dominion: there are no people there, no buildings, no life at all. I doubt anyone wants to march an army into near-certain death to find out. There are other such places in the world, it is said. The arid desert of Xira is a place we understand little of, and from what we know of it it, that is also a den of monsters. The area beyond the mountains in the north of the Forest of Ulnak, and beyond that, the Bittereast: here, too, may well lie such a wasteland. There might be others, to the far south-west, or in lands beyond the sea.

It is easy to believe that the whole world is controlled by someone or other, but there are places that resist control, resist dominion, by their own essential nature: in such places, a regio is a doorway through which anything could pass, at least in theory. This is an arcane subject - I had to consult an old friend of mine on the matter, and even he said that he was pushing his knowledge - but I think it is a natural thing to consider: where does alignment fail?

Finally, and here I thank the recent work of the Unfettered Mind for improving our understanding of the eternals through their ongoing research into assurances and related matters, what of the matter of areas of dominion, like that which is called a fane by our civil service (possibly also manses, temples, shadow dens, grand regios, crossroads, and other things besides - and these may some of them be the same thing, or all different)? Well, yes, it seems clear from the general understanding of dominion that such places subvert alignment. That seems entirely consistent with the state of affairs I have laid out in this research, I think. The Empire should not regard Enmity as a foolproof way to guarantee an eternal cannot influence events within the Empire or send servants forth: it seems that having willing agents acting in their name can assist greatly. This is ultimately the reason Agramant keeps finding ways in: there are always more fools willing to call on him.

Bertha, a Marcher whom I met on my recent trip, told me a proverb. I think it will serve well as the final word on this work. I invite the reader of this text to contemplate the totality of its meaning.

“A law is only the law so long as folks obey it.”

May truth find you, and may you find truth.