Rise of Azraea, Book II: Foreword

This book stands as the second installment of The Rise of Azraea, and is an immediate sequel to the events of that book. While Book I chiefly focused on events that receive little attention outside of academic circles, Book II covers events which are far more widely known and discussed, especially within Caelia. As a result, I imagine many people may leap directly to this book, and for them I would present a note of caution.

The historical events presented herein have been subjected to interpretation and reinterpretation by journalists, historians, political scientists, politicians, educators, and students of all ages. I have presented what I believe to be the most accurate version of these events; for many people, the story presented in this book will be drastically at odds with what they have been taught. I can only say that I have based this book on research with primary sources and interviews with surviving participants of these events, as well as the most well supported theories and perspectives that have been advanced by those in my field. That said, in order to help the reader relate to the challenges Azraea and her allies faced, and to avoid what might otherwise be a dry read, I have taken some artistic license as an author. For a more straightforward, objective description of these events, I would recommend reading the sixth edition of Cadlmun’s Definitive History of Caelia. I have coauthored a chapter about Azraea in that text, which is largely based on the research I carried out for this book. Any students wishing to cite my work in their studies should go to that text for their research.

Having addressed that, I should provide some context for readers that have not read the previous book, or who may have read it quite some time ago. In the previous book, our three main protagonists, Azraea Michelle Thanel, Ochsner, and Kairumina Doro Asterigennithika, had finished their studies in Kingstown and journeyed to the east end of the kingdom to hunt and kill the scolopendrae, a vicious treasure-guarding monster, which actually turned out to be an army of creatures engineered by the dwarves many centuries before. In the process they encountered a foreign agent, an immortal guardsman, a heroic orc warrior, and a pair of polyamorous weredogs. The journeys and encounters described in my first book had a profound impact on each and every one of the women, though for each of them, they seemed to find more problems than solutions.

Azraea, a western Caelian human of Arbarii descent, began her odyssey as an outwardly chipper, friendly, kind, and studious woman. Inwardly, however, she was racked by silenced doubt, regret, and shame forced upon her by the rest of the world. She had just completed advanced studies in necromancy but had found herself unable to secure employment appropriate to her education and abilities. Hoping to delay her return home just a little bit longer, Azraea took on a quest to slay the Scolopendrae of the Dark Dweller’s forest, hoping that the treasure would pay for her considerable student loan debt. What she found instead was a brutal introduction to life outside of the capitol; a violent free-for-all where bandits, corrupt guardsmen, and survivalist militias had overtaken the countryside. This baptism by fire changed Azraea considerably; she hardened, became tougher and more strong-willed, but also more confident and self-accepting. After years of keeping it hidden, Azraea finally opened up about her feelings towards her close friend, Kaira. However, Azraea’s renewed sense of inner strength brought with it a heavy weight; for the first time, she felt like she had the power to change her world, and with that came the responsibility to do so. 

Azraea’s best friend and college roommate, Ochsner, was a dwarvish  woman from the subterranean metropolis of Undver in southeast Caelia. Ochsner was, even then, a polymath, a jack-of-all-trades who had accumulated education and experience in several fields, but had never been able to secure a job in any field which would lead her into a career. After countless internships, assistantships, adjunct positions, and part time jobs, Ochsner had reached the point of near hopelessness, agreeing to join Azraea’s quest out of desperation. What Ochsner found was an unexpected knack for adventuring; it might not have been the safe, stable career she wanted, but her broad range of skills and knowledge repeatedly proved essential to overcoming the challenges her party encountered on their journey. In fact, it was Ochsner who was ultimately able to unlock the secrets of an ancient dwarven citadel and subdue the scolopendrae. Ochsner had finally found her true calling, but as a result had drawn the attention of “Vinny”, an agent of the Gnoman Empire, who began pressuring her to defect from the country of her birth.

Finally, Kairumina Doro Asterigennithika, a very young elvish woman from eastern Caelia, had devoted her studies to survival, combat training, and military history. This partly came from a fascination with orcish culture, and partly from a general love of the martial arts. From her earliest days in Kingstown, Kaira had intended to become a professional soldier, but despite her excellence, and the support of a couple of influential mentors, she had never been able to penetrate the gender wall surrounding that field. Accompanying her friends into the wilderness, however, had eliminated any self-doubt that had seeped in with that rejection. Kaira’s experiences, and some mentorship from Vinny, also taught Kaira a measure of pragmatism, and she learned to take pride in who she was and what she had accomplished, rather than aspire to someone else’s arbitrary standards. However, while Kaira had largely avoided relationships since a tragic loss in her adolescent years, she now found herself caught in the beginnings of an unexpected love triangle between the dashing orc warrior, Thrakaduhl, and her own close friend, Azraea.

As if each woman’s challenge was not enough to overcome, Caelia was nearing the worst part of a two centuries long economic decline, which had exacerbated racial tensions and anti-progressivism throughout the country. Decaying infrastructure, deregulation of private enterprises, and withdrawal of oversight from county law enforcement had returned the countryside outside the cities to a primitive state that some have described as a mini-dark age. The power to govern the towns and communities lay in the hands of those who could either buy titles or buy militias. The highway guardsmen were as likely to participate in criminal endeavors as to stop them and the major agricultural corporations were using manipulation and intimidation to assume the roles of feudal lords. 
Across the board, Caelians were frustrated by their government's disorganization, impotence, and sometimes apparent malice towards its citizenry. At that time, Caelia was governed by a House of Lords, a voting body comprised of individuals who owned more than a certain amount of real estate (the exact number shifted back and forth over the centuries). Land-owning citizens who fell below that line voted at the county-level to elect a sheriff or governor who would in turn appoint someone (usually a family member) to represent the modest land-owners in their area. Each member of the house controlled votes proportional to their holdings (or their constituents' holdings). Formally, Caelia's monarch controlled the largest portion of the vote by virtue of holding the most property, although Caelia's last king wielded considerably less power than its first, as his predecessors had been forced to sell many of their holdings to the dragon, Syliva.
If it seems an ill-conceived system of government now, bear in mind that Caelia's founders had believed themselves forward-thinking when they limited their monarch's powers, and more so when they provided the means for Caelia's smallest property owners to make their voices heard in the House of Lords. It was expected that competition between the strongest lords would ensure that the common people would still be given their due; for the greater lords, power would depend on allying themselves with the individually weaker but numerous elected representatives, and that would require winning the support of the voting public.
Unfortunately, Caelia's forefathers did not account for significant changes in Caelia's socioeconomic strata; over the centuries the portion of Caelia's 'unlanded' population grew considerably, and so too did the number of Caelians disenfranchised by their government. This problem was greatest in the densely populated cities, where per capita land ownership was so low that even moderately successful citizens had no real influence on national politics. 
Having no voice in their government, the denizens of the growing cities became scapegoats for the greater lords who found that support from their rural countrymen could be won more cheaply through aggression than compassion. The problems of urban Caelia became go-to talking points for rural politicians, and their more powerful supporters readily endorsed any ideas which shifted the blame for any given problem onto urban Caelians. Many rural Caelians came to see cities like Kingstown, and institutions like the university there, as breeding grounds for contemptuous arrogance at best and total moral bankruptcy at worst; the rhetoric of their county representatives capitalized on that. 
For example, while Azraea and her friends finished their education in Kingstown, the heralds for the greater lords persuaded rural Caelians that the 'over educated' 'liberal elite' in their city had allowed violent immigrants to overrun it, and that a rising tide of hostile foreigners now threatened the kingdom at large. The heralds claimed that the kingdom's guardsmen were handicapped by policies instituted to protect the nation’s racial and ethnic minorities, and persuaded rural voters to support county representatives who would rescind those protections. Those representatives then followed through on their promises by supporting a very broad reduction in government oversight of law enforcement - a move that not only freed law enforcement to harass and abuse ethnic minorities in the cities, but also made it easier for private organizations to secure the cooperation of law enforcement in the countryside. Some of the smaller heraldry businesses, like The Rat Catcher Report, tried to bring stories like this to the attention of the greater public, but beyond the city walls they were generally drowned out by the bigger heraldry businesses like The Vulpine Post and The Kingstown Herald. 
Indeed, the only good thing that could be said about Caelia's system of government is that for two centuries it limited the influence of Syliva. While the dragon had been able to hoard most of the kingdom's gold and jewels in the few years after her arrival, land was not something she could easily pick up and carry off. It wouldn't have been a significant concern for most dragons, but Syliva seemed to become uniquely interested in manipulating the system from the inside, treating it as a game with rules, and finding satisfaction in bending and exploiting those rules as much as possible. As a result, in order to gain greater influence over Caelia, Syliva had to slowly transform her stolen wealth into legitimately held real estate, and to secure the cooperation and even loyalty of influential (or potentially influential) individuals. 
While no one really forgot what the dragon had done two hundred years earlier, people did seem to care less and less, over the decades. Syliva's heralds distorted some facts over time, but most people simply had such low expectations of the dragon that the odd instance of her not being openly malicious was praised as exceptional philanthropy. If the king suffered a wardrobe malfunction at a royal dinner he was said to have disgraced the country, but if Syliva crushed a business, destroyed someone’s livelihood, or was even rumored to have eaten someone, few people cared; she was, after all, a dragon operating in a free market. 
That is roughly the state of Caelia as we begin Rise of Azraea, Book II, with Syliva reveling in the dystopian chaos from its epicenter in Kingstown.