Postulations 2

From Atlantic Roleplay Wiki

Title: Postulations II

Author: Archae Titus

Contained within are a series of postulative exercises by Professor Archae Titus of the Lycaeum with a series of possibilities of how things can go wrong.

In Moonglow The whole point of the city-based Virtues system was that none of the cities could fairly claim supremacy. Not in Virtue, not in independence, not in economy, not in anything. They were all needed in Virtue, all needed in everything. It was the sum that was important.

Moonglow had the Lycaeum, the most-famous school of everything, including both magic and Virtue. Moonglow, therefore, should have especially-known that it was but one of many, part of a whole, and neither greater nor less than any other parts.

But, without a center the margins could cluster around, even Moonglow, even the faculty of the Lycaeum, had started to forget. And, it seemed, their new curriculum was tailored to making sure that generations of their students would also forget.

The faculty's intent in instituting the new curriculum, or so they said, was to ensure that the unity in the realm of Virtue itself, and of the Virtues as a system, survived in this time when the realm splintered.

But the content of that curriculum would have raised many eyebrows in the capital, had there been anyone left in the central government to pay much attention. It flatly stated the supremacy of Moonglow, as the home of knowledge of the Virtues and of pretty much everything, over the other cities. It taught the supremacy of Honesty over the other Virtues.

Indeed, Honesty was to be taught as the cornerstone of the Virtue System. This was a near-heresy to how the Virtues had been taught hitherto, which had Humility as the cornerstone.

And Lord Blackthorn's Chaos was to be not taught at the Lycaeum at all. Erased from official history.

“This is,” the one dissenter among the faculty complained in a meeting, “taking Pride in our Virtue. And that is the the worst Sin there is.”

“Oh nonsense,” one of his colleagues said, condescendingly. It didn't matter which one it was; to the dissenter, they all seemed to have one voice.

“You can still teach what you want in your own classroom, of course.

But collectively we must speak with Honesty!” A direct but exceedingly polite assault on the dissenter's Virtue. “And Honesty is respect for Truth. And this? This is Truth.”

“No,” said the dissenter, “it is Pride.”

“Nonsense,” said another colleague. Funny how they both used the same word. “Of course we are superior. We pass the knowledge of the Virtues.” “We are the center,” someone else agreed. “The other Virtues, the other cities, they exist only at the margins.”

The dissenter continued to protest, but he was clearly out-voted. His colleagues, it must be said, were more polite than one would expect as they quieted him down and voted in the curriculum. It did not pass unanimously, but he was the sole vocal dissenter.

Ironically it was that sole dissenter who was robbed and murdered by a common brigand a few weeks after the curriculum vote. The brigand got all of 50 gold pieces, enough for a few loaves of bread, out of the crime.

His colleagues, in their memories, decided he had supported them all along.