The Great Game 🎲 Kollarum
Farenn
The Fallarian Black Horde wanted to keep the Baulians in the dark, yet the Vicinese wanted to bring everything into the light. Farenn had agreed to advance the Black Horde’s desire for secrecy, yet he also felt the Horde had no right to tell him what to think. So as he stepped up to the podium, he gave a wink to the brightly-lit corners where the Vicinese and their lively sprites were hovering.
The conference organizers had decided that Farenn would open the debate. The organizers had been bribed by the Vicinese Illuminists, who wanted their speaker to have the benefit of coming after the Fallarian, and who also believed that Farenn would be the least likely to toe the Fallarian line. Perhaps he might even help the cause of the Illuminists, that loose nordern confederacy devoted to the idea that everyone should be allowed access to everything. Some even called them libertarians. In any case, the Illuminists were the real money behind most of the bribery and secret deals in the upper levels of the Vicinese Union. They spent trillions in advertising campaigns to make sure they were seen as open-minded philanthropists whose only goal was that everything be transparent and accessible to all.
The Illuminists bet on Farenn (and had paid good money to get him on the podium) because they knew he was the craftiest and most unpredictable diplomat the Fallarians had ever sent to the Great Debate. He was neither a member of the Black Horde nor a Demon Priest. He was an advisor, a consultant, a wise counsellor, a contractor, a vizier, and a consigliere. That he kept changing his official designation was a sign that he wouldn’t stand for labels. While it infuriated the Horde that Farenn wouldn’t commit to their ranks, they also respected him for it. He was his own master, something each of them would have loved to say of themselves, if only they could resist the power that came along with their official positions.
Contrary to all expectations, Farenn was not an impressive looking figure. He was short for a Fallarian, and his retractable claws were small. The diminutive size of his claws had helped him, since the one thing the average Fallarian lacked was manual dexterity. His diminutive height had also proved a blessing: it allowed him to avoid being identified as a Fallarian, which worked to his advantage in the middle and nordern universes, where Fallarians were shunned, feared, or subjected to surveillance and interrogation. Finally, Farenn was also a Katazoid Fallarian, which meant that he could also retract his antennae and his wings. He could also change his colouring faster than a chameleon.
Farenn adjusted the mic downward and began his opening address. As usual for a Fallarian, he dispensed with niceties and got directly to the fearful crux of the matter.
“Greetings, fellow Kraslikans! As they say, We come in peace. Although it may be a surprise to some of you, Fallarians don't aim to control or eliminate. We leave that to the millions of species who profess benevolence, all of whom can imagine the beauty of a cosmos that only contains creatures like them.”
Farenn looked downward, his eyes swirling in a chaotic vortex. He reined in the whirlpool and brought it back into order, a single current flowing from his mind.
“Fallarians understand their dark natures, their cut-throat instincts, better than others understand their angelic natures. Yet, contrary to what these angels might say, the fact is that we’d rather dominate than decimate. We’d rather play with the mouse than kill it. For what would be the point of killing every other species in the Kraslika? We could do that if we pleased. Have you seen the speed at which a Derelectan can devour its prey, or a Thromantz can strike on an open battlefield or in the tight corners of an Aatari labyrinth? And yet, we were the first species to sign The Black and Purple Convention Prohibiting Genocide. As I hope to convince you, we simply don't desire to decimate or exterminate.”
“Where would the fun be in genocide? Once the battlefield was quiet, and the small hills of bodies no longer twitched or smouldered, we Fallarians would be left facing each other. We’d be left to deal with the only species we fear — our own! It’s for this reason that all Kraslikans can count on us. We mean the rest of you no harm.”
“All of which doesn't mean, however, that we have no interest in the rest of the cosmos. Far from it! It’s the only open field we have. It’s the only space on which our prowess can be judged, our respect can be earned, our fearfulness can be appreciated in full measure. It’s in our deepest interest that no one mess with this field or turn it into their own private playground.”
“So, no, my Kraslikan friends, you fundamentally and forever have nothing to fear from the Fallarian Empire. It is already an Empire, and it doesn't seek to become larger. What would be the point? To change everyone into our own image? We have more than enough Fallarians already. There’s no species in the Kraslika that agrees more than the Fallarians do that it would be better if most of us didn’t exist. The depths of hatred between one Fallarians group and the next is unimaginable in worlds where everybody says they want to get along. The last thing we want is a cosmos full of the mirror reflections of our own brutal selves. On Earth, Jean-Paul Sartre might call that nausea, yet his idle philosophical nausea hardly compares to the harrowing vomiting nexus of nightmares that Fallarian self-hatred engenders.”
“No, banish your fears of Fallarian hegemony, for there is nothing Fallarians relish more than the diversity of the Kraslika. The main reason we insert ourselves into cosmic politics is to preserve that diversity. If the laughable Baulians ever suggested a danger to the life-blood of the cosmos, we’d be the first to mine their installations and defract their entire fleet of DNA sequencers. But they don’t pose a threat. We leave it to the adjacent dominions to deal with them. If, however, the Joint Council determines that the adjacent dominions are unable to slow down the Baulian advance, or if they decide to turn the Soul Star, wherever it is, into some sort of weapon, then we’ll put their home world into a state of paralysis which will leave them wishing they never crawled out of their sacred Pink Well.”
“The status quo works because it ensures the neutrality of the Middle Belt and its Soul Star. The less the Baulians know about the bigger picture, the less they’ll scheme to control the Star. They bumbled into 2.7 million worlds; they could easily bumble onto the Star. Or, they could bumble right past it. If we confront them openly and they somehow come to understand advanced fractology, they may very well learn of the Soul Star’s existence and have the opportunity to look for it. They may even find it, given that it almost certainly lies within the galactic cluster they’re in the process of annexing. All we need to do is watch over them. The less they know about it, the better.”
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Gascitar turned to Kaldriscat and nodded in agreement. Farenn had toed the party line, just as they hoped he would.
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