The Perils of Tyranny

[Louis]

(Solo. Set in the time of the Civil War.)

“But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.” - Thomas Paine

[Louis]

FOREWORD

It was the third year into the Civil War that threatened to tear Corone apart, and the country was left bloody as both sides fled to their corners and tended to their sick and dying as they tried to lick their own wounds. The war had proven disastrous for the fledging Empire that sought power over its country and people while it openly turned over every rock as it tried to root out the remains of the rebellion that was threatening to be its undoing. While the war had been the result of the deaths of two men working within the government, it had been conspired by others deeper in the bedrock of power that sought to solidify the government's dominance over its people. Instead, the blood of the innocent helped to erode and eventually wash away the remains of the Republic that had been torn to pieces and the country eventually gave birth to an Empire that was despised for its tyranny. Some even chose to fight the Empire and crush its ambitions in a bid for power by defeating it and restoring the old Republic.

This resulted in a number of battles of an entire army being hounded by the guerilla tactics and warfare of the Corone Rangers, who proved a more capable adversary then the Empire could have imagined. In contesting this new Empire, the Rangers were persecuted and slaughtered as their base of operations, Underwood was burnt to the ground and Concordia was ripped apart as the young giant angrily rooted out any of the remains of the rebellion. However, what the Empire succeeded in doing with those victories and the massacre of those rebels was solidify their presence in Corone. Many more battles were waged with plots to overtake the Empire by the Rangers, now galvanized not only to fight for their country, but now for their very existence.

Backed into a corner, the Rangers then succeeded in systematically dismantling the Empire's military and continued to conduct operations that destroyed or annihilated weapons raised by the Empire to be used against them. This, in turn, became an arms race that only succeeded in a string of bitter defeats for the Empire and forced it to do the only thing it could do. Even as it continued to apply extraordinary pressure on the Rangers and left them running around the country with few places to call haven, the rebels were prevailing. Whether it was the fact that the Empire was fresh and had yet to cut its teeth as a government, it was nearing collapse as not only the Rangers sought to topple them, but any countrymen with a weapon that shared their common goal joined the rebels in arms.

Meanwhile, the people of the country watched each side battle back and forth. Often caught in the crossfire as the Empire saw its citizens as only collateral damage and those who rebelled were not always in the position to seek the best places to make their strikes with surgical precision. The war had been waged for three long and bitter years leaving the contestants tired and the people bitter and growing complacent. There was no longer a fire or a drive to fight for their freedom as morale had run dismally low. No man would be able to destroy a government on their own, and what the Rangers had done so far was remarkable, but they had yet to find its black, beating heart so that it may slay the Empire once and for all.

This wait and uneasy, silent truce between the two forces could only prove to be fatal for the rebels if their cause was not brought back to the ears and eyes of the people. That kind of drive and patriotism was a spark that died fairly quickly outside of constant bloodshed, and all the Empire would have to do is sit back and outlast the Rangers until their resources have dried up and the people sought only to end the war, regardless of who won. Eventually, they could even put a spin on it where they had been fighting terrorism within their country that had threatened to rend the country and destroy the government. They would also say that the government was actively protecting the people not only from the terrorists but also from themselves, as without firm control and a steady hand, a country could fall into anarchy. This kind of profane politicking would only serve to feed the Empire's power and would make any attempts to rebel or to murder it all the more feeble as it spawned a reign that could prove to be totalitarian if not stopped.

What the rebels needed was someone to galvanize the people and prove to them that the Empire's tyrannical and despotism was not to be tolerated. Only then could open insurrection be successful because as one man's terrorist may be considered another's patriot, especially if he were backed by the people of an entire nation.

[Louis]

It had only been four months prior, and the city of Radasanth had screamed as it burned and the people, in a state of unrest, began to loot and riot across the city while the Empire turned most of its resources in the pursuit of the Corone Rangers. The result of this had been the complete isolation of Radasanth from the rest of the country and the world abroad. Attacks on the ships in the city's shipyards only served to invoke the Empire's ire as it issued a harsh tariff on all food and necessities imported into the country which marked over a quarter of the country's food supplies. Believing the rebels to have access to the country's heart by staying in Radasanth, the Empire pursued a policy of containment that sought to starve and bring the rebels out of hiding by forcing the people to choose while they starved the Empire by creating an artificial food shortage by starving its capital.

Instead, the Empire did the one thing a government must never do when fighting a rebellion and that is to lose the will and support of the people. What it had done proved to be disastrous, as Radasanth's magistrate rationed food and started bread lines to feed its people, it wasn't enough to sate their growing hunger for revenge. The government, leaving this cancer to fester, turned its attention back to the Rangers and in a battle that could have been won by either side, the Empire mobilized its troops from Radasanth and other garrisons to move them into a battle that could prove to be a decisive victory and a turning point in the war.

However, the Empire, relinquishing control and planting the seed of dissidence in its capital proved to be fatal as the citizens began to openly question the motives of their new Empire and eventually sparked into an unrest that led to anarchy. The magistrate's forces, relied heavily upon the Empire to keep and maintain order, were quickly overrun and chaos ran the city for five days before the insurrection could be crushed by the Empire who moved its forces back into the city.

In the present, Radasanth was nothing like it was before the civil war. Under martial law and held under the rule of a permanent military presence, the city was no longer a place where neither ideas nor business could be exchanged. The bazaar had been forced to close under government pressure in order to keep access of supplies out of the hands of the rebels and those that were sympathetic to them. The tariff also guaranteed that the shipyards would be heavily guarded as the shipments from different ships were processed by the Empire and acquisitioned, leaving only what it thought the citizens deserved while it gave the rest to be distributed by its tired and hungry military. The Salvarian Quarter, a place where immigrants and refugees from Salvar had defected and built that part of the city was isolated from the rest of the city and under guard as the immigrants, which proved to be the bulk of the city's labor force, were ushered into factories to make the weapons and munitions the Empire would use against its enemy.

The truth was that the citizens of Radasanth were prisoners within their own city which had once been the beating heart of the entire nation. Under lock and key, the people were now not only without freedom or liberty, but without hope. The Civil War didn't seem to have an end in sight, and the people hungered for a return to what they remembered before the war. They also hoped for that change before they had forgotten. But, without a cause to put behind themselves, the citizens of Radasanth remained rebels without a cause and would continue to be imprisoned and victims to the Empire's will as they grew for a sign that could feed their desire.

Fortunately, something came along to cure the ailing people who were still reeling from their imprisonment. It wasn't freedom from their confinement nor the death of an Empire that had restored their hope and reignited the fire in their belly. It was an idea printed on a leaflet by the last man anyone in Radasanth thought could reignite the drive to fight the Empire.

[Louis]

At the corner of 32nd Avenue and Floring Street, a small double-floor printing shop lay nestled between that of a bakery that had become a city staple for its cakes and pies and a pawn shop with a sterling reputation in dealing with exotic gems while sitting directly across from a hardware store that was popular for its wide variety of tools and access to many items that were hard to get a hold of anywhere else in the city. This printing shop had been housed in a building that had been constructed inside of an alley out of a last minute decision by the district to buy a plot of land to raise what they had hoped to be a telegraph. Much to their chagrin, out of all the businesses to fail at Saint's Corner, it had to be the telegraphy.

Feeling this to be a sign, a middle-aged, robust man with a reputation as being the only man in the history of Corone to be tried annually for tax evasion and to walk away a free man, Gerard Varding, sold his home on the other side of the city and spent his life savings to buy the deed to the building. The building looked diminutive on the outside, but served as a two-story building where the man could conduct his business below and make a home for himself on the second floor.

Gerard hanged his shingle as a self-publishing newspaper in which he would spread the truth of the mysteries that had been plaguing the city such as the threat of wild life within the aqueducts to a government conspiracy to tax its citizens into bankruptcy. He claimed the latter to be an attempt to drive businesses into the ground so that the local government could buy all of the businesses in a city and pursue a kind of socialism. Not surprisingly, it was this kind of man who backed a paper that many in the city considered to be a rag and many on the corner thought the district ought to evict to make way for a more useful business in one of the city's most sought after spots for small business because of its location and access to the public.

However, despite whatever cases may have arisen, Gerard managed to knock them down. Because despite how much people thought of him to be a crackpot, and he was after all a crackpot, Gerard Varding was also an accomplished lawyer who used to be among the prime choice as a defense attorney by anyone in the city. That was until a fit of alcoholism and a nervous breakdown caused the man to divorce, lose most of his assets and shuffle away into another part of the city as a hermit under an assumed name.

Despite the public opinion, Gerard managed to keep his newspaper, The Sons of Liberty, in business for years. Out of all the mysteries that ever plagued the city, the one that really irked citizens and remained unsolved was just how Gerard managed to keep his printing shop afloat, especially when nobody would buy his paper or took it seriously. Instead, Gerard managed to print a steady supply of his stories for what he believed to be a wide circulation and distributed it throughout the city with newspaper boys who he paid a crown a paper to bring his ideas to the public.

Unfortunately for the community, this often resulted in papers being forced onto people rather then bought, and the Varding Newsies were often the most feared domestic menaces in all of Radasanth for their voracity and perseverance to see their paper distributed. These newsies were even sought after by local authorities, often for petty crime and pick pocketing, but they became the top of what the citizens joked as the Radasanth Police's Juvenile Most Wanted List. The reason for these young boys and their habitual crime wasn't so much of a mystery as Gerard Varding was infamous among children as withholding pay to his employees for failure to sell his papers. Given an impossible task with a product nobody wanted, it was a wonder why the Newsies hadn't graduated to assault and battery and just took their wages from their employer instead.

So, the Sons of Liberty Press in all of its glory, rested on the corner of 32nd and Floring and while other businesses around it prospered and saw it nothing but an eye sore, it continued to prosper despite not being able to legitimately sell more than a hundred of its newspapers since its opening seven years ago.