Benacian persecution of drug-users
The Benacian persecution of drug-users began in the final month of 1707 AN as the High Presidium of the Benacian Union sought to curb the growth of liberality and vice amongst the urban populace of its territories in the aftermath of the Second Elwynnese Civil War. Especially there was concern that the growth in narcotic consumption, and the illicit criminal activities associated with it, were opening public officials up to the inducements of corruption, whilst mass addiction was feared for its potential impact on the efforts to create a Harmonious Society and to complete reconstruction in any semblance of a timely or efficient manner. Moreover, for a trade to persist in criminal and unregulated hands would deprive the Union-State of a vital source of revenue at a critical juncture.
In late 1707 AN the monopoly on the sale and production of narcotic substances, long established by custom and usage as being confined to the Paradise Districts of the Benacian Union, was formally conferred upon the Guild of the Lotus by the High Presidium of the Benacian Union. The manufacturing of these substances was to be strictly controlled, with the penalty for either the sale or consumption of a narcotic substance outside of a paradise district being death or penal servitude for the individual, and penal servitude for the next of kin of the condemned as well. Outside of the paradise districts the new repression was to be enforced by the Benacian Censorate assisted by the Worshipful Guild of the Sacred Carnifices and the Corps of the Gentlemen-at-Cudgels. Within the paradise districts it would be the local chapters of the Guild of the Lotus that would enjoy the obligation to exterminate competitors. As the lucrative privileges the guild enjoyed were to be bound up in its enforcement of this new edict, the incentive was there for them to be rigorous in their own self-policing, especially as the Church of Elwynn had still not forgiven the guild for what it termed as the usurpation of its historic control of the Flower Streets of Elluenuueq.
History of the persecution
Forty public officials of tribunal rank were condemned by the Benacian Censorate on 6.XV.1707 for neglect of duty owing to habitual intoxication and narcotic dependency, were bound with chains and weights before being pressed into the mire at Mindon Araxion. The mass drowning at the filthy shoreline of the Blue Elwynn was recorded, and the viewing of the execution was subsequently made compulsory viewing for all officers of the BUDF, the civil executives of the realms, and the regional and national sector cadres of the Nationalist & Humanist Party in the Benacian Union. The wives and children of the condemned were subsequently declared to be protected persons and transferred to the Benacian Labour Reserve.
On the following day, a gentleman of the Honourable Company, of Shirerithian nationality, known to be involved in the supply of chemical precursors to synthetic drug manufacturers in Alalehzamin, was executed at Ardashirshahr by being crushed under heavy weights. The execution was conducted by the Worshipful Guild of the Sacred Carnifices after objections to the punishment by the Benacian Directorate of the ESB Group were withdrawn.
On 8.XV.1707 AN Rustam Malik, a spice merchant of Chryse, was denounced by the Guild of the Lotus to the city magistrates for maintaining a store of soma in defiance of the guild's newly affirmed monopoly. After the man was taken into custody and duly pressed, a confession was not long in being forthcoming. As a confession had been obtained, and the prohibited articles recovered from the merchant's own store, his appeal to Ayesha al-Osman for clemency was dismissed out of hand. Accordingly he was taken to the Palace of Justice and disembowelled under the supervision of the magister of the Worshipful Guild of the Sacred Carnifices resident in the city. The cadaver was afterwards presented to the School of Medicine at the Benacian Academy for study by the anatomists who were chambered there.
Following the initial flurry of theatrical executions to mark the commencement of the newly severe policy, the manufacturers, suppliers, and consumers of illicit substances were to be transferred wholesale into the Benacian Labour Reserve along with their families, with the majority of these condemned to penal servitude at the Svordson Reform Settlement on Leng.
In the second month of 1708 AN, Constantine Loup, the aged Szodan of Benacia, received at Chryse a deputation from the Guild of the Lotus complaining of the continued operation of organisations specialising in the manufacture and distribution of synthetic opiates in defiance of the guild's monopoly - here the term cartel was used for the first time in official records to describe the organised crime groups. Complaints focused especially upon the existence of four Alalehzamini families operating in the territories of the Central Governorate who gave every appearance of having purchased protection from the local administration. Mindful of the approach of the Third Session of the Congress of Chryse, scheduled to coincide with the Solstice Festival of 1708 AN, Constantine was eager to report a signal success to the one body in all of Benacia with the power of censure and purgation over him. He obtained from the guild the names of these families and ordered that a list of those doomed to death should be made out and communicated to Adam al-Osman, the Szodan of Elluenuueq whose powerbase had historically been in the Alalehzamin region.
Adam, then residing in Ardashirshahr, received this list without pleasure at all, for he saw upon it the names of scions of families claiming descent from Peshobay Jalil Simrani ibn al-Majeed bin Sathrati, in a word eminent individuals with whom he shared a common ancestor. Like most eminent Babkhi of Elluenuueq, Adam could trace his ancestry back as far as Simran ibn al-Majeed, via Daniel Simrani-Kalirion, and to strike against them, even under the cover of official sanction, would be to initiate a kin-strife with his own countrymen at the behest of an ancient and withered man. Nonetheless, to have refused the command would have been to risk death himself, for to demonstrate a lack of zeal in persecuting the enemies of the Harmonious Society would have left him vulnerable to his enemies and rivals in the Benacian Union Defence Force and the Nationalist & Humanist Party. In particular he feared the ambition of Zurvanudin Miran al-Osman, whose accession to the position of supreme commander of the Benacian Continental Theatre Command now required only the acquisition of a territorial base to make his claim to be the next Szodan of Benacia unassailable. To demonstrate weakness in the face of such a predator would be suicide. Accordingly Adam delayed the publication of the proscription list by a day and, using trusted eunuch kuls as emissaries, sent out warnings to those related to him by blood that they must immediately flee the country or go to ground and hide as best they can.
On 7.III.1708 AN the storm broke over Alalehzamin, as the list was presented to the Worshipful Guild of the Sacred Carnifices and promulgated throughout the Central Governorate of Elluenuueq. No-sooner had the names been received by the carnifex-tribunes in the bailiwicks than the cruel work began. Those who lacked the protection of having been forewarned were dragged from their houses by the cudgellers and slaughtered daily and hourly under the disinterested supervision of the carnifexes working their way diligently through a voluminous list for which they had been set rigid quotas. Day after day the hunt would continue as new lists of those accused by the Guild of the Lotus of being their competitors were issued.
As this persecution had only just begun the realm was thrown into still further confusion on 13.III.1708 AN when Adam al-Osman surprised his own government by issuing an edict decreeing that the old and failing railway network of Elluenuueq was to be physically torn up and that all those who had been proficient in knowledge of its maintenance and operation were to be branded and sent to work in the fields. Protests, resignations, and a full-blown revolt amongst the railwaymen soon came about as the implications of this monumental order came to be understood. There were those who suspected that there was, beneath the madness of the order, a calculation, however unsound it might actually be. By throwing the guilds and corporations into uproar, and by setting the regiments of the labour reserve at odds with the numerous and now thoroughly riled railwaymen over the fate of miles upon miles of track, the cudgellers who would otherwise have been busied with supporting the carnifexes in their persecutions the wider Simrani clan were now called away to try and maintain a precarious grip upon public order in every bailiwick that hosted so much as a length of rail.
By 1712 AN the persecution appeared to have lost momentum, following a steady decline in denunciations, with no executions being reported in the first two months of the year.
