Verionist Vespers
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 Raspur Pact  ESB Group
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The so-called Verionist Vespers began in the Iserdian bailiwick of Saint Biffor, located in the heartland of Tapferite settlement on Benacia and thus a core territory of the Bovic faith in Elwynn. The Bailiwick had never held allegience to the Verionist cause, not even during the Elwynnese Civil War save for the raids mounted by the self-proclaimed Holy Realm, whose fanatical theology and religious intolerance had won it few friends.
That the bailiwick and its neighbours had found their way into Verionist hands at all was as a consequence of haggling between Eliria and Fieldburg, with the Elwynnese Republic unwilling to risk a civil war in order to bring the Verionists to heel following the collapse of the Stephen Lewis administration in 1675, but equally loathe to surrender authority over the entire coastline of Agnesia. Four frozen bailiwicks in the sub-arctic latitudes were the price paid by the Court of the Prince for holding on to the vital warm-water port of Vijayanagara.
The event takes its name from an insurrection which began at the start of Vespers, the sunset prayer marking the beginning of the night vigil on 23.VII.1676, at the Church of the Butter Bull just outside Saint Biffor's administrative seat. Beginning on that night, hundreds of Cimmerians across northern Elwynn were massacred within the period of six days before the Union Defence Force and Northern Banner Group re-established order in the Northern Commonwealth.
Regardless of the local proximate causes, that the revolt followed so soon after the disappearance of the leading lights of the House of Verion and was matched by concurrent police actions by Raspur Pact member states against the Iron Company and the Verionist Union on a global scale, led some to doubt the extent to which the local uprising was as spontaneous as originally reported.
Background
Verionism had a long and contentious history in Benacia politics. How much of this was down to ideological factors and how much was due to the clashing personalities of the principals involved in day to day political discourse in the old Imperial Republic is difficult to neatly discern. Whichever the case may be, elections held during the latter days of the Imperial Republic, in which Verionist parties participated, invariably began to take on the air of political crises. Both Verionist and non-Verionist aligned parties would accuse the other of being fundamentally unable to temper their ambition for absolute power with the realisation of the need for pragmatic cooperation. Irrespective of whether or not there was any truth in this mutual accusations and their resultant recriminations, the cumulative effect over time was one of a draining away of reserves of trust and goodwill which may not have been entirely ample to begin with.
Vespers
Blood for the Butter Bull
- (stub) The most dreaded entity in the Bovic pantheon manifesting as the Blood Aurochs, given substance by the slaughter carried out by the faithful on the gore splattered steps of his church in the bailiwick of Saint Biffor. Every individual who watches any of the video clips of the Blood Aurochs receives a commandment burnt into their psyche. The instruction varies according to the watcher but comes in the form of an intensely personal revelation that is invariably homicidal in its ultimate intent.
Suppression of the Northern Commonwealth
On 06.XI.1676 Evert Flint, the Verionist President of Elwynn's Northern Congress, ordered a full recess until further notice of the Northern Commonwealth's legislature. With communal violence plaguing the northern bailiwicks, Evert Flint, was apprehended from a safehouse in Fieldburg by a UDF snatch squad on 08.X.1676 and conveyed to Eliria. Upon arrival he was obliged to discuss the political crisis with a committee formed of representatives of the Congressional Counties government. The committee pushed for the reintegration of the Northern Commonwealth into the Congressional Counties, which Flint rejected. "We would rather die", he was quoted to say. "That can be arranged", one of his interlocutors was heard to answer.
