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Public News Post #19526

On the Burning Times

Written by: High Mercator Siduri Azagnanna, the Phantom Asp
Date: Tuesday, September 2nd, 2014
Addressed to: Magister Bellator Jinsun Ze'Dekiah, Twin-born Assassin


Jinsun,

Should you be so inclined, I will gladly read any copies you may be able to forward to me. We could even discuss them at your leisure.

This is not to say that I will believe them, faux abounds on the subject, and DeKempt has been called out many times, both by the divines that lived during the so-called Burning Times (namely Lady Mithraea who was, at the time, the Luminai Dawn Illorien) and by historians alike. DeKempt's evident pro-Luxsythian stance, the fact that he did not live through the events himself and the existence of works from the proper period do not support DeKempt's accounts.

If anything, his "Burning Times" are an example of circular thinking in which pre-existing rumours and Luxsythian propaganda are empowered by their transposition on the written medium, and thus become the source that feeds its own legend. Circumvoluted, I know, but there is no better example of a self-reproducing mythic construct. I'd love to read it once again, if only because gives precious insight on Occultic self-representation and phenomenology.

As for the accounts of Eminent Master Aldrien La'Ashen, you will, of course, find "strike dates". Do not confound the administration of a police force, which was the role of the Church Templars in the days, with violent and cruel persecution. The Cabalists of the days, and the Ashtani Occultists that came after them, fueled their experiences with the lives of innocents and spread the taint of Chaos through reckless interactions with Chaos.

One cannot expect an organization centered on the protection of Creation, such as the Church, to stand idle and close its eyes on such disappearances and on the waves of panic that followed events like those surrounding the Shakira Effect and the Shastaan Panic. Arrestations were made, imprisonments too, and the dates you will find within our archives relate to these massive operations. Beyond this, the Templars were not responsible for the excessive reactions of the Cabalists and the civil deaths that preceded the troopers' arrival in Shastaan.

I grant you, however, that there might have been a period during which civilian massacres were made. It is, most probably, those to which Alphid DeKempt refers from his historical backseat (I remind you that he was not a contemporary of the events, and that his sources come from a tradition of Occultic hearsay). True contemporary accounts, such as those found in the writings of Countess Belladonna, Lord Luxsyth, Gwen (Napoli?), Judicael Ari'Temorin and Aldrien La'Ashen cross-reference each others in sometimes subtle ways:

1. Aldrien recounts the burning of the Luminai Tower, where he discovers that an Occultist infiltrator had taken Judicael's appearance and place.

2. Letters of unspecified nature were sent by this infiltrator with the seal of Aldrien to the Basillica, in Delos.

3. A full scale operation striking many vital Cabals seems to have happened, if we are to believe the correspondences of Gwen and Ermogene Napoli.

4. When certain troopers arrive, some Cabals have already been decimated (Shastaan, mostly).

5. Cabal survivors are invited by Countess Belladonna to become necromancers. Lord Luxsyth's then-secret Occultist Guild recovers the researches of the scattered Cabals and consolidates its power.

Point 4 is very suspect, and could connect the dots between 2 and 5. I owe this to an old friend who was, then, a member of your House. Note that this is only an interpretation, but it would be possible that Countess Belladonna, in her bid for power over the Occultists, either through Lord Luxsyth or independently from him, could have abducted the Templar Judicael Ari'Temorin and replaced him with one of her lackeys.

This same lackey, having infiltrated the Luminai's Tower offered Belladonna's necromancers a practical cover when he sent false orders to the Basillica (remember that the Templars reached towns which were already devastated). Belladonna would thus have killed two birds with one stone on three accounts: 1) The massive amounts of death would have fueled her necromantic powers, 2) this would have served to purge the Cabals reluctant to the adoption of Necromancy and 3) by branding the Church as the perpetrators of her own atrocities, would have gathered the surviving Cabalists under Lord Luxsyth's banner, effectively converting them to the art of Necromancy.

Until we speak again, be well,
Siduri Azagnanna

Penned by my hand on the 3rd of Lupar, in the year 663 AF.


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