Setting of the Benacian Union
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This article was written from an out-of-character perspective and might break the fourth, fifth, and even sixth wall. |
The Benacian Union, known colloquially as the Union-State, consists of the union of the realms of Elluenuueq, Ransenar, the Sovereign Confederation, and the Unified Governorates. The Union-State is ruled from the Free City of Chryse, which is for this purpose also a realm. The highest authority is the Congress of Chryse, formed by the victors of the Second Elwynnese Civil War (Benacia Command, the Benacian Union Defence Force, the Honourable Company, and the Nationalist and Humanist Party). The Congress of Chryse is the font all authority within the Benacian Union, but for the regulation of the Union State there are fundamental laws (Charter of the Benacian Union and Union Covenant) to ensure a harmonious society and a coordinated state. The realms are in turn administered in accordance with "Documents of Governance" providing for civil executives and local legislatures.
There are three routes for an entity to be established within the Benacian Union:
- By receiving a charter and livery from the Guilds of Benacia in return for the payment of annual dues and an agreed tribute. The guilds maintain chapters in every bailiwick of the union-state;
- As a subsidiary of the corporations of the victorious powers (Benacian Union Defence Force, the Honourable Company, the Nationalist and Humanist Party, and the United Ecclesiastical Corporation of Benacia);
- As a public corporation established by the union-state or one of the constituent realms.
It is important for all entities to clearly establish that they enjoy the patronage of some higher authority within the union-state in order to avoid being considered the legitimate prey of all acquisitive powers. Receiving the patronage of the chapter of a guild is probably the safest and simplest course of action for a small or medium enterprise at the point of its establishment. This can however give rise to a paradoxical situation where certain liveried companies (GleamCo for instance) enjoy such success that they come to dominate the chapter of the guild from which they received their livery in the first instance.
The concept of freedom, of universal rights, or universal suffrage, is wholly absent in the Benacian Union. All are bound to authority, as though through a chain that links the lowest protected person to the highest archon, and subjects all to the Highest Divinity. Indeed, the notion of citizenship was so completely discredited by the Ayreonist treachery during the Second Elwynnese Civil War, that there now only exists subjecthood gradated by varying degrees of obligation and privilege. Meritorious subjects can enjoy conditions and protections akin to citizenship - this can especially be the case in such realms as Chryse and Ransenar, where practical considerations encouraged the bestowal of meritorious subjecthood as a near universal.
Midjourney prompts
Near future Dieselpunk dystopian future, aesthetic influences Blade Runner and Warhammer 40K, and...
- Italianate architecture (Chryse, Florencia (UGB southern isles))
- Scandinavian brutalist architecture (Elluenuueq, north)
- Persianate brutalist architecture (Elluenuueq, south)
- Gothic industrial architecture (Ransenar, old UGB cities)
- Industrial gothic architecture (Sovereign Confederation)
- Industrial brutalist architecture (UGB)
Mini-essay
In the aftermath of the Second Elwynnese Civil War, the Benacian Union emerged as a highly authoritarian regime that employed brutality and terror on an industrial scale against its own population. An examination of its governing institutions and policies suggests that the description of it as "an empire of institutionalised psychopathy" contains more than a grain of truth.
At the heart of the Benacian system of control was the Worshipful Guild of the Sacred Carnifices - a fraternity of magistrates and executioners empowered to exercise the power of life and death over every inhabitant. Appointed to supervise the bailiwicks (administrative subdivisions) with absolute authority, the carnifices engaged in wanton acts of cruelty and lethal coercion to enforce obedience to the Union Covenant and the principles of Humanism. Public executions of alleged heretics, the disembowelment of dissidents, and the mass drowning of officials accused of intoxication were just some of the gruesome punishments meted out.
The persecution of the drug-consuming underclass epitomised the psychopathic tendencies of the regime. Suspected drug users and their entire families were condemned to penal servitude or even death, with the disturbingly named "Register of Woe" chronicling many such grisly executions in lurid detail. The Benacian Labour Reserve served as a vast penal colony where the condemned could be worked to death in slavery.
Underpinning this brutality was an intricate yet paranoid bureaucracy obsessed with control, surveillance, and rooting out any perceived disloyalty. The Commission for the Panopticon and Corps of the Gentlemen-at-Cudgels formed the coercive apparatus of an all-watching police state. Even high-ranking officials lived under the ever-present threat of being "purged" for corruption or insufficient zeal by the carnifices.
The systematic dehumanisation of the Benacian populace into rigid hierarchies of "meritorious subjects", "subjects without merit", and "protected persons" speaks to a profoundly psychopathic disregard for human dignity and individual liberty. Children were auctioned off as apprentices, while "bondsmen" existed as municipal serfs, their entire existence geared to service of the victors of the civil war.
In many ways, the Benacian Union does seem to have elevated psychopathic traits like callousness, lack of empathy, and the unrestrained use of cruelty and terror into governing principles. It was, to quote the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, a state of perpetual "warre, as is of every man, against every man" enforced by the institutionalised barbarism of the carnifices and their "Harmonious Society". Whether the term "empire of institutionalised psychopathy" is an accurate label or merely a polemical exaggeration is open to debate. What is certain, however, is that the Benacian system represented a terrifying nadir of human brutality and inhumanity in the name of order.
