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Iberia, second nation after the Sargonian Empire to call its lands "golden," expanded from a fertile peninsula commanding the channel between the inland sea and the ocean. Its kings prized exploration and conquest over wisdom; the explorer Francisco de León discovered Bolívar and was made Viceroy. After Bolívar's forced independence, Iberia built a prosperous trade league along Terra's southern coast.
In 913, Ægir Islanders arrived from the ocean, bringing art and technology that sparked the Golden Age. Islanders like Chief Naval Architect Breogan prepared against threats from the sea, while royals and nobles turned their research toward wealth and power, building the Golden Armada to parade the inland sea. Beneath the glory, society strained: workers and farmers were mocked as disgraces to the Golden Age, and the Church of the Deep spread Seaborn legends through Iberia's culture, even as Islanders warned of the sea. Iberians collected Sea Terrors as luxuries.
In 1038, the Profound Silence—a disaster from the sea—snuffed out the lighthouses, submerged more than half of Iberia, and destroyed the manorial system and fiefdoms. The King's final broadcast proclaimed defiance, then fell silent. Crop failures, famine, and riots followed; many economies reverted to barter, and survivors fled north to remote inland frontiers.
Surviving clergy rebuilt Iberia. Archbishop Carmen refused the title of Pope; instead, nine Archbishops took Iberia as their family name, became Saints, and reorganized the Church into the Iberian Inquisition, the nation's governing body, with a planned economy and a structure of Saint—High Inquisitor—Inquisitor. Its rule is criticized as harsh and arbitrary, but it stitched Iberia back into a nation. Two armed forces remain: the Iberian Defensa, descended from mercenary guilds, guarding borders and nomadic cities, and the Penal Battalion, mostly post-Silence youths who fight Sea Terrors and watch for the Church of the Deep.
Today Iberians live reticent, fearing heresy and accusation, gathering around recitations and churches. Maritime culture survives in adapted sea shanties; swordsmanship is encouraged. The text closes with the question of what Iberia now is—once an explorer of Terra, now itself the object of exploration and discovery.
One margin note (unattributed) observes that survivors, groping blindly for answers, first found them in the Church of the Deep's claim that the disaster was punishment and salvation; its most devoted zealots threw themselves into the ocean as sustenance for the Seaborn.
Matteo Martínez Alvro ran an Iberian restaurant in Siesta that could hardly be called popular. His gazpacho was unlike any true Iberian gazpacho; he admitted that after the Profound Silence he had spent over a decade making porridge for Church relief work, flavored with crushed seagrass, tree bark, and artificial sweeteners scavenged from abandoned factories. The soup he served, of uncertain Columbian or Victorian provenance, was the best he could do. When pressed about Iberia's present circumstances, he finally asked: "What is Iberia? Where has she gone?"
Since the decline of the Sargonian Empire, Iberia was the second nation to call its lands and fortresses "golden." Her territory once stretched south to lands that no longer exist, her palaces overflowing with strange and wondrous treasures that her kings displayed on every street. In 1038 a disaster from the sea descended, snuffing out her lighthouses and submerging her palaces. Since the Profound Silence, hardly a whimper has come from Iberia thanks to the Inquisition's lockdown, and even Iberians cannot say whether their former glory carried on or marks a coming end.
The founding kings upheld Lateran saintly virtues, but centuries later the royal family prized exploration and conquest over wisdom. Ambitious men pursuing riches and untapped lands enjoyed royal funding. The explorer Francisco de León so moved the court that he was appointed Iberia's representative in its westward expedition. He avoided the Victorian blockade, persuaded the Sargonian Padishahs to build a trade route, and discovered the fertile plains of Bolívar in Terra's northwest. The King granted him the title "El conquistador" and made him Viceroy of the Viceroyalty of Bolívar.
Iberia's expansion provoked unease. New Padishahs tore up trade agreements, and Victoria, Gaul, Leithanien and others jointly pressured Iberia to sever its connection with Terra's interior. By the time Bolívar was forced to declare independence, the Iberians had found new routes; coastal settlements submitted or cooperated, and a prosperous trade league rose along Terra's southern coast.
In 913, Iberia welcomed her first residents from the ocean, the Ægir or Islanders. Unfamiliar with court etiquette, they neither bowed before the Golden Throne nor used elegant speech, yet their art and technology caused wonder. Seeing a compass displaying all the currents of a stretch of sea ignited the King's ambition brighter than ever. With Chief Naval Architect Breogan as their representative, many Islanders still feared the ocean and prepared against disaster, greatly advancing Iberia's economy and technology, while royals and nobles turned that research toward seizing wealth and power. The Golden Armada, rather than sailing south for scientific exploration as Breogan expected, grandiosely patrolled the inland sea, amazing Victorian Dukes and Sargonian Padishahs. Royal artisans held endless banquets aboard its flagship, composing odes until the ship was covered in layers of symbolism; those who could explain it all were rewarded with money and the title of Witness of Glory.
Before the Silence, Iberia was already full of perplexities. At the start of the eleventh century, people abandoned generational property to blindly seek new roads befitting the Golden Age's spirit; the steadfast and dutiful were branded defeatists. Workers and farmers, essential to Iberia's glory, were jeered in the streets as disgraces. The Islanders' excess productivity temporarily covered these cracks, but had the Silence not struck, would they have broken the facade?
Centuries earlier, seafaring Iberians had discovered strange fin-like aquatic creatures. They did not yet know the Seaborn, and became obsessed with collecting these "Sea Terrors" (a term that did not exist before the Silence) as luxuries. When the Islanders came ashore, the Church of the Deep—Seaborn worshippers—spread through Iberia, sowing seeds of disaster over the following century. It spread legends of a giant fruit-bearing tree at the ocean's center whose fruit became Sea Terrors, and of primordial beings sculpted by sunlight over eons. As Sea Terrors appeared more frequently, the nation was gripped by a craze for "wonders of the sea": children played with Sea Terror toys while the King spent a fortune on a five-meter shell to carve into a statue of his authority. Most Islanders unaffiliated with the cult feared the sea, but their warnings were less captivating than the Church's legends.
In a seaside tavern in 1032, a worker named Juan Gómez Castro described the Golden Age: youths' minds were filled only with research, creation, and exploration. His father dreamed of mastering the swordsmanship called Destreza against the grandmother's wishes, gained nothing but a swollen wrist, and suffered heart palpitations from the night she died. His mother, after their last quarrel, took all his research data and fashioned it into a paper carving praised at the port art exhibition. Castro himself took over a decade of his parents' savings to buy a boat and seek a crew. They never enjoyed the sea, scooping up only stinky fins and rotten shells, but he felt the Golden Age referred to what they could accomplish or begin. Fernanda, a girl with the fleet, led them in singing the hopeful shanty "Tomorrow Lies The Golden Age." When that tomorrow came, he had to sell the boat; Fernanda did things worthy of the history books, and he was glad he had not held her back. He then sang: "For we see the dawn horizon glimmer with light of gold! In cradle boughs of great Cerulean rose the sun, the tower of Terra's keeper lighting all and one; She bore from every branch her rarities galore, the seas will come to bless Iberia once more..."
The disaster destroyed Iberia's vaunted glory. The Golden Armada quietly disappeared, the Eyes of Iberia were snuffed out one by one, and palace music fell silent. No one could give a complete account of what happened. The Profound Silence submerged more than half of Iberia's territory; when the sea retreated, fertile fields were barren, salted wastes. The manorial system and fiefdoms—her economic foundation and political base—collapsed. Royals and nobles could not maintain armies or provide farmland; after manor granaries were looted dry, commoners lost their final reason to stay. Crop failures and riots brought Iberia to the brink of collapse.
Mr. Martínez recounted his flight: they once followed someone from the Church to a manor and found a dead body in a striped flannel cloak clutching pure gold bars with bite marks—everyone was terrified, for if even the Dons starved, was there no food in the country? Cooking required no salt; everything was bitter and bleached. An Ægir lady traveling with them learned to grow crops in the salty soil, and they dug ditches and plowed following her example; she always reminded him of Fernanda. He had lost hope of her return—she was at sea when disaster struck, and though they said those who died at sea became Sea Terrors, he insisted she would have planned a good death.
With communication paralyzed and the land reshaped, post-Silence Iberia bewildered her natives. Surviving members of the Church of Iberia attempted to rebuild her from the foundation up: the old Iberia was portrayed as an arrogant conqueror demanding endless proliferation; the new Iberia would be a holy land requiring her people to gather and protect her purity and morality. The Church wrote its own scriptures to guide life after the Silence, teaching that value does not rely on material goods and that even on empty wastes people can live virtuously. It restored basic order and set up planned management of food; while some plundered food over the corpses of the clergy, others clung to faith as their final thread.
The royal family fell silent, but the people prayed even to the founding Kings' bones for protection. Many clergy wished to appoint a Pope, but Archbishop Carmen repeatedly refused installation. Instead, under his direction, the nine Archbishops set aside their family names and took up Iberia as their own, becoming Iberia's leaders with the title of Saint. "Saint" was perhaps not the best title for rulers—Lateran records tell of the first saints building their homeland and spreading faith, but never of them ruling. Yet Carmen insisted: installing a Pope would place all Iberians' hopes on one person, and if that person failed, Iberia might shatter and never reform. Under such adversity, power would become a lure for the weak, behind which the mediocre hide themselves. Carmen and the Archbishops did not wish nor dare to test themselves that way.
Conferred as Saint, Carmen I Iberia reorganized the Church into the Iberian Inquisition—both religious organization and governing body. Guided by new laws, survivors rebuilt society from the ground up. Critics held that the moral judgments presupposed by "trials" and "punishments" were arbitrary; from survivors' accounts the Inquisition's rule was harsher than the royal family's, but it stitched Iberia back into a nation. One may reflect: in an age of crumbled values, should people spend spare energy maintaining openness and inclusion, or should the confused and tired seek salvation from explicit guidance and convenient answers?
Mr. Martínez described encountering workers during his flight: drawn by music of the Golden Age—impossible, since no signals were active—they found people in workers' wear knee-deep in bricks, hammering to the beat, building shabby houses still in the Golden Age style, with a gilded record player by the door. These people all bore the family name Iberia, strange like the later Saints. One worker explained: the lords had their own dreams, but workers had spent their lives building Iberia in the factories; if Iberia was gone, what was left for them? Old Juan dredged them out of despair, the first to return to the factory after the cities shut down, hammering away unpaid and without fuel or materials, and others followed, starving but never stopping, to live as human beings. "If the nobles won't rebuild Iberia, then we will. We are Iberia."
Iberia once occupied a fertile peninsula commanding the channel between the inland sea and the open ocean. After the Silence, the southern ports were decimated; survivors fled north to the once-remote inland frontier. Present-day Iberia is defined by several long, narrow river deltas, low-lying and flat with scattered hills. Generations of surveyors walked its breadth to sketch the new coastline; Iberians still raise flimsy sails searching for surviving land, but most of the swallowed land is now claimed by Sea Terrors for their nests.
Before the Silence, Iberia had a solid economic foundation: fertile fields, well-developed drainage, highly developed agricultural and finning industries, and industry comparable to the Core's forefront; many industrial products for converting the Lateran City into a nomadic city were imported from Iberia. Islander technology brought excess productivity and extravagance. After the Silence, most of this technology was abandoned: no energy, materials, or demand. The Inquisition halted most Islander research, leaving results to rot in the Bastión de Cánticos, only recently warming to letting former Ægir technical staff resume their work. With land salted and sea occupied, agriculture and finning are nearly extinct; a financial crisis followed in which a cartload of gold could not buy a bag of food, bandits looted food but ignored gold and silver, and many local economies returned to barter. The Inquisition instated a planned economy under unified administration, which remains the dominant system.
The Inquisition rules Iberia under Saint Carmen through a three-layer structure of Saint—High Inquisitor—Inquisitor, incorporating functioning local power. Bishops and Priests are better described as grassroots civil administrators; sermons offer both spiritual consolation and concrete guidance on work and life. The Inquisition unified doctrine by adapting, expanding and refining scripture; these thick tomes are the foundation of faith, a reference for life, and the basis of enforced law. The Inquisitor is the core of power: spiritual leader, judicial administrator and enforcer, and military commander—leading the Penal Battalion on coastal patrols, observing the ocean, and containing Sea Terrors. The Inquisition's rule invites criticism for lacking procedure and using extreme methods, but as an ultimate solution to urgent issues these can be considered understandable; whether they have caused substantial abuses remains to be investigated.
Underwater Ægir technology and land-based Originium power formed a graceful union; Golden Iberia's products seem wild and fantastical today. Most representative were marvels of sailing—golden warships and the Eyes of Iberia piercing dark clouds with dazzling luminescence. The King began constructing amphibious nomadic cities along the coastline; most were never completed before drowning in silence, and only a few ruins survive.
After the Silence, a group of Iberians met weekly in a Victorian coffee house, calling themselves the Post-Silence Recovery Group. Their exaggerated, unconfirmable tales—of anyone with a royal portrait taken to dungeons, of sailors locked in cages for admiring the ocean—never failed to captivate their Victorian audience. When a group photo appeared in Victorian newspapers, their words became "true accounts," documentaries, and eventually a move to Londinium's most luxurious pub.
Iberia needs no administrative subdivisions: aside from surviving nomadic cities, only a few small post-Silence settlements exist, many centered around a church or courthouse.
Iberia's military draws from two systems. The Iberian Defensa, formed from ancient mercenary guilds hired by royally appointed officers, once sustained entire training fleets. After the Silence, standing armies were mostly disbanded and once-neat uniforms appeared among bandits—but in the comparatively unscathed north, Defensa defending border nomadic cities never deserted, quelling the Messengers, investigation teams and mercenaries sent by inland nations. After reorganization, they inherited the ancient name and answer external threats. The Penal Battalion, mostly youths born after the Silence, know not formal dress but how to behead Sea Terrors and burn away Nethersea Brand. Organized into companies under Inquisitors, they maintain order, guard against Church of the Deep infiltration, and resist invasion from the ocean.
Combat skill and command experience alone do not make an Inquisitor; each must find answers to: Why do I wish to judge? What do I wish to judge? To become an Inquisitor is to discard softness, confront fear, hand down sentences, and perpetrate atrocity. Many of Iberia's Ægir, after the Silence, were hoisted by ropes by former friends and neighbors—embodiments of the truth that little reason justifies blood on one's hands. But few sustain this for life; as anger cools on the endless road, people become conscious of how insignificant and irrational they are. Only those of unerring faith and resolve can follow the Inquisitor's path long—at least in the Inquisition's belief. This is embodied in the Inquisitor's lantern and hand-cannon, which rely on Originium Arts but whose training emphasizes tenacious will and unwavering conviction.
Iberians once sought novelty; now they treat old and new with reticence. Unfamiliar faces frighten them, but familiar ones bring no ease either—they cannot know whether friends have fallen to heresy, and they fear heretical accusation regardless of truth. Recitations organized by the Inquisition are among the few things that calm the mind, and many Iberians start their day listening to them. Attitudes toward Golden Age legacies are complicated: some hate and are harmed by them, others hope and depend on them. An antiques shopkeep was once burned to death with his store by a mob; two years later, many laid flowers in the blackened ruins. Iberia has lost her artistic scene, though ordinary, much-needed folk art persists—songs sung while rebuilding are mostly adapted sea shanties. Martial traditions fared better than maritime ones; the Inquisition encourages swordsmanship, perhaps hoping every Iberian can raise a sword if disaster strikes again.
Years later, the narrator saw on television the Post-Silence Recovery Group's organizer, now a popular author in Victoria, whose recent book omitted Iberia entirely yet who promised to explore his "Iberian-ness" from new angles. The narrator thought back to Mr. Martínez's question: "What is Iberia? Where has she gone?" People still speak of trying to "discover Iberia"—within and without its borders, for solace or profit. Iberia once shocked Terra through exploration and grand discoveries, but has now become the target of exploration itself. If a disaster like the Profound Silence approached once more, could these many answers and understandings of identity allow the people to unite and withstand it?
Near the close of the 20s of this century, the narrator left Leithanien for Iberia and visited the royal capital Real-Iberia as a scholar. Iberia boasted a sophisticated nation-wide broadcast system; in the age of newly appearing recording technology it left jaws on the floor—even now its principles cannot be ascertained or replicated. Before returning to Victoria, the Royal Academies gave visiting scholars receiver terminals, promising that when the technology was ready, it would be shared with every nation, eliminating geographical barriers so all humanity could communicate instantaneously. None anticipated that on the 28th of June, 1038, Golden Iberia would sound her final crescendo.
The King's final edict, issued by Fernando Alejandro Ruiz de Ley Castro-Torres Real-Iberia de Letrán—King of the Iberians and the Ægir, Sovereign of Iberia, Suzerain of all the Seas, Master of all Ships, Cities, and Ports, Defender of all Trade, Merchants, and Explorers, Liege to all Lords and Nobles, Conquistador of the Land and Sea—proclaimed that violent weather and geological shifting had damaged the country, and that unusual oceanic behavior and lost connections to ports and cities constituted a deliberate provocation by Terra's ocean, which hates humanity's lands and civilizations. The King decreed that officers of the law ensure citizens' safety, priests suppress evil, military officers push back the waves, and fleets wipe out the culprits, even scouring clean Terra's sin-ridden seas. He declared the lighthouses still shining, the Golden Armada weighed anchor, victory close at hand, and promised another proclamation in twelve hours: Iberia will not be defeated, will triumph, will endure forevermore.
Less than an hour after the edict, the weak signal from the royal capital terminated. All sound fell into silence, and Iberia spoke no more.
EPIGRAPH
On occasion, dreams of the sea still crawl in through the shutters on my window. I dream of those great golden galleons cresting above the waves, Fernanda leaning against the figurehead at the prow. Her face was as bright as the day she first set sail, her black plumage fluttering in the sea wind. There were the young folk of the shipyards and the old fellows of the lighthouses too. They all came back...
Matteo Martínez Alvro ran an Iberian restaurant in Siesta that I would hesitate to call popular. His gazpacho was certainly unlike any Iberian gazpacho I had had before. Upon learning that I had frequented Iberia during her golden years in the 20s and 30s, he admitted to me that he had long forgotten what true Iberian cuisine tasted like. In the wake of the Profound Silence, he spent over a decade making porridge for Church relief work. That porridge was flavored with crushed seagrass and tree bark, alongside sandy artificial sweeteners scavenged from abandoned factories... The bowl of soup placed before me, with its uncertain Columbian or Victorian provenance, was already the best that he could do.
I tried to gather more from him about Iberia's present circumstances. He spoke at length on the subject, but also kept his silence at times. In the end, he asked me: "What is Iberia? Where has she gone?"
Since the decline of the Sargonian Empire, the second nation that described its lands and fortresses as "golden" was Iberia. In the distant past, her vast territory stretched southwards to lands that no longer exist today. If one were to stand atop an embankment and squint into the distance, one would see a string of lights and sails—That was the coast of Iberia. It was a time when the storehouses and halls of the palace could not contain the vast strange and wondrous treasures flowing into the nation. Iberia's kings set up displays on every street in every city, so that all who stepped into her ports could admire her riches.
In the year 1038, a disaster from the sea descended upon Iberia, snuffing out her lighthouses and submerging her palaces beneath the waves. Since the descent of the Profound Silence, there has been hardly a whimper out of Iberia thanks to the Inquisition's lockdown. It has come to the point where even the Iberians themselves cannot say whether their former glory has carried on, or if it is a mark of the coming end. But they know that Iberia's struggles are far from over.
An Iberian gold Doblón. As Iberia has not renewed coining molds post-calamity, each mint's year of issue appears predating 1038. Obverse: King's bust has been forcibly filed off. The monarchy was excommunicated by the Inquisition for failing in their sworn duty as protectors of the people.
The founding kings of Iberia may have upheld the virtues inherent in Lateran saints to a fault, but after several centuries, in the age of wanton Iberian expansion, wisdom and intelligence were no longer considered the most important virtues by the royal family. What the King would much rather see in his offspring was a desire for exploration and conquest. If, say, a crown prince showed a more modest and kinder nature during his childhood, alongside a disdain for worldly affairs, he would find his place in the line of succession slipping through his fingers like sand.
Correspondingly, anyone with enough ambition and foresight to pursue great riches and untapped lands would enjoy royal funding and support. When the explorer Francisco de León spoke of his ambitions before the King, there was not a single soul in the court who was not moved by his fervor. In the end, he was appointed the representative of Iberia in its westward expedition, the royal crest embroidered upon the sails of every ship. De León avoided the Victorian blockade via skillful use of the waterways, and he persuaded the Padishahs of Sargon to construct a trade route for him. His final act of exploration was discovering the fertile plains of Bolívar in the northwest of Terra. Thanks to all the wealth he sent back to Iberia, the King happily granted him the title of "El conquistador", and named him the Viceroy of the Viceroyalty of Bolívar.
Iberia's expansion provoked unease in the nations surrounding it. Newly-appointed Padishahs tore up the agreements with their predecessors and broke the trade route between Iberia and Bolívar. Victoria, Gaul, Leithanien and several other nations jointly pressured Iberia to try and sever their connection with the interior of Terra. However, by the time the Viceroyalty of Bolívar was forced to declare independence from Iberia, the Iberians had already found new routes elsewhere. Independent settlements and city-states scattered along the coast either submitted to Iberia or sought cooperation, and in time a prosperous trade league rose along Terra's southern coast.
In the year 913, Iberia welcomed her first residents from the ocean. These Ægir, also known as Islanders, hoped to settle on Iberian soil. The Ægir, fresh out of the sea, were unfamiliar with Iberian court etiquette, and when facing the Golden Throne, they did not bow nor use elegant speech. Despite that, the art and technology they brought with them caused no small amount of wonder among the Iberians. Upon seeing the sparkling streams rhythmically circulating about the elaborate face of a compass, indicating all the currents of an entire stretch of sea, a fierce ambition ignited within the King of Iberia, brighter than ever before.
After the Islanders came ashore, Iberia began a new era of unprecedented prosperity, one that most Iberians nowadays call the Golden Age. With Chief Naval Architect Breogan as their representative, many Ægir Islanders still feared threats from the ocean, and they tried to prepare as best they could before disaster struck. Their efforts proved to be a great impetus on the development of Iberia's economy and technology.
Meanwhile, the royal family and the nobles would find ways to turn the Islanders' research and technology towards seizing more wealth and power. Upon the completion of the ostentatious Golden Armada, rather than heading south to the open seas to conduct scientific exploration as Breogan expected, it instead grandiosely sailed through the straits into the inland sea, where the Victorian Dukes and Sargonian Padishahs alike stared in amazement.
The Golden Armada patrolled the inland sea for several years. Royal artisans held never-ending banquets aboard its flagship, where they unceasingly composed odes of praise towards Iberia until every part of the ship was covered in layer upon layer of symbolism. Those who could remember and explain all this symbolism were rewarded with vast sums of money alongside the title of Witness of Glory, becoming honorary officers of the flagship.
As the survivors of the Profound Silence thought back to the past while crammed into what temporary housing they could find, perhaps they understood the meaning of Golden Age better than those who lived within the Golden Age itself.
Before the Silence, Iberia was already full of perplexities, and while praise for the Golden Age was omnipresent, the reality of the people living within it was not always as glorious as the songs told. One indisputable value pushed all Iberians towards the unconventional: At the start of the eleventh century, more and more people abandoned property that their families had held for generations to blindly step into the unknown, seeking new roads befitting the spirit of the Golden Age. Those who were steadfast and dutiful were branded defeatists and laggards. Iberia's glory was inseparable with the toil of her workers and farmers, but as these low-class workers walked the streets, they would be greeted with ear-splitting jeers reprimanding them for their lack of initiative, lambasting them as disgraces to the Golden Age. The excess productivity created by the Islanders' technology was able to momentarily cover up these many cracks in society, but if the Profound Silence had not struck, would the gradual appearance of these cracks have broken the facade of glorious Iberia?
A water flow meter commonly used by the Ægir. It can monitor the flow of ocean currents in real time After receiving one from the Islanders, the King of Iberia never again wore a watch: "I have no need to check the time any longer, for time belongs to no man. However, I must inspect the ocean at all times, for it is my ocean."
A popular collectible from the Golden Age, now no longer welcome. In the wake of the Profound Silence, the Iberians discovered that this collectible would induce a hollow feeling that was hard to accept: A great flagship trapped within a narrow bottle. The glories of the Golden Age seemed so insignificant, helpless, perhaps even ridiculous. And so, for the sake of keeping their memories of the Golden Age pure, people would throw out these bottles from that era.
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As early as several centuries ago, Iberians who set off to sea discovered strange aquatic creatures who looked like fins, but were not. At that point, the Iberians did not yet know what the Seaborn were, but their strange appearance piqued the Iberians' curiosity. For a long time, Iberians were obsessed with collecting 'Sea Terrors' of varying shapes and sizes, and turning them into luxuries. Of course, before the Profound Silence, the term 'Sea Terror' didn't even exist in Iberia. People gave them various different names based on their individual characteristics. It wasn't until the Islanders reached the shore that the Church of the Deep - the Seaborn worshippers - spread through Iberia on a large scale. Over the following century, while other Aegir diligently worked in scientific and technical fields, the Church of the Deep cultists had already sown the seeds of disaster within Iberia's intellectual, cultural, and social sphere.
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The Church of the Deep spread many legends about the Seaborn throughout Iberia: Many such tales describe a giant, sunlit, fruit-bearing tree at the center of the ocean. Upon maturity, the fruit fell from the tree and into the ocean, eventually becoming Sea Terrors. Other stories speak of primordial beings slumbering on the ocean floor, who were born alongside the world itself. Over eons, sunlight sculpted these beings from various angles, shaping them into the bizarre forms we now know as Sea Terrors. In the decades leading up to the Profound Silence, as Sea Terrors began appearing more frequently along Iberia's shores, the nation was in the midst of a craze to buy up the 'wonders of the sea'. Children living by the sea played with toys modelled after Sea Terrors, while the King spent a fortune searching for the five-meter-tall shell of a giant Sea Terror, hoping to carve it into a statue symbolizing his royal authority... Admittedly, most Islanders unaffiliated with the Church of the Deep harbored a deep aversion to and fear of the sea. However, their stern warnings were far less captivating to the Iberians than the mysterious legends curated by the Church of the Deep.
In a tavern overlooking the sea in the year 1032, a worker by the name of Juan Gómez Castro described what he saw of the "Golden Age" to me:
By the time the youths reach the age where they need to start planning ahead, their minds are full of things like research, creation, and exploration, nothing more. That's how Iberia is. You'll only be considered successful if you make some technological breakthrough, come up with some new type of art, or discover some nice, fertile land.
My father was born with such dreams of success, and he spent the latter half of his life atoning for that dream. Against the wishes of my grandmother, he wanted to study the Supreme Art of swordsmanship, the Destreza, in his youth, but he didn't get anything out of it other than some swelling in his wrist. The night that my grandmother passed away, he suffered from heart palpitations for the first time, an affliction that would plague him for many years. Up until I was grown, he would take our earnings to take part in those research projects that my grandmother wanted him to join in the first place... My mother tried to get him to accept his mediocrity, but she herself was hardly mediocre. After their last quarrel on the matter, my mother took all his research data in a rage, and fashioned them into a carving made out of a stack of paper. That carving was displayed at the port art exhibition that year, receiving praise as "a piece that broke the mold". That was the sort of thing I saw growing up, so I never felt like I was doing anything wrong when I took more than a decade's worth of savings from my parents to buy a boat and seek a crew to explore.
Honestly speaking, we didn't enjoy our time out at sea, but we never did question the spirit of that age. Despite the fact that we were only ever able to scoop up some stinky fins and rotten shells every time we went out to sea, I always felt like the Golden Age referred not to what we already had, but what we could accomplish, discover, or begin. Fernanda, a lovely girl with the fleet at the time, would lead us in singing that sea shanty that was brimming with hope, "Tomorrow Lies The Golden Age"...
But when that tomorrow came, I had not a Doblón to my name. I had no choice but to sell that boat off and give my crew their severance. I'm no captain anymore, just an honest laborer. That's how my life's going to end. Fernanda joined a good fleet, and I heard she did plenty of things out at sea worthy of the history books... I'm happy for her, from the bottom of my heart. Glad I didn't hold her back with my uselessness. What I'm sorry for is her coming back ashore just to marry some chef with no aspirations of his own...
After he finished speaking, he continued to sing that sea shanty:
...For we see the dawn horizon glimmer with light of gold! In cradle boughs of great Cerulean rose the sun, the tower of Terra's keeper lighting all and one; She bore from every branch her rarities galore, the seas will come to bless Iberia once more...
The disaster from the sea destroyed that vaunted Iberian glory. The Golden Armada quietly disappeared amidst the waves, while the Eyes of Iberia were snuffed out, one by one. The music and the clamor of the royal palaces were lost to silence, as the people within flapped their lips to no avail. Within the silence, disaster descended. No one could give a complete account of what happened next. This disaster, dubbed the Profound Silence by later generations, submerged more than half of Iberia's territory. When the sea retreated, the remnants of dry land were scattered, and what was once fertile fields were now barren, salted wastes. Alongside the loss of land, the manorial system and the fiefdoms—the economical foundation and the political base of Iberia—both collapsed. The royals and nobles were unable to afford the resources to maintain their armies, and were unable to provide farmland for farmers to till. After the manor
granaries were looted dry, the surviving commoners lost the final reason for them to stay in their homeland. In the aftermath of the disaster, crop failures and riots wracked Iberia, bringing her to the brink of collapse.
In dribs and drabs, Mr. Martinez told me about what he saw, heard and thought while he fled:
We followed someone from the Church to a manor once owned by some Don Who-Knows. There was a dead body sprawled out on the kitchen floor. It wore a flannel cloak striped black and gold, and was holding a pile of pure gold tight in its arms, bite marks stamped into the bars... Nobody said anything, but we were all scared as hell. If even the Dons were starving to death, was there simply no food in the entire country?
Whenever I cooked those days, I didn't have to add salt. Everything around us was already stained in that white mineral. Everyone complained about how everything tasted bitter. Even just looking at salt made us nauseated. But we still tried our best to manage that bleached, salty soil. There was an Ægir lady travelling alongside us. She tinkered about and learned how to grow crops in that soil all by herself, and every day we would follow her example, digging ditches and channels, plowing and harrowing the earth. She always reminded me of Fernanda...
I had long lost all hope of her returning. She was out at sea when disaster struck. They said that those who died out sea became Sea Terrors. Rubbish, I'd say. She always knew what she was doing when she lived, so she must had planned a good death for herself too. I was the one who didn't know what to do with my life. I would always wonder, why did I live? Couldn't have just been to cook up tree bark gruel, then watch people try to keep it down just to throw it back up, day in and day out, right?
With communication paralyzed and the land drastically reshaped, post-Silence Iberia bewildered even her natives. As people wandered the wastes, they were unable to find any familiar roads or buildings, or hear any familiar broadcasts or recitations. The occasional smoke rising from the darkness might indicate some bandits, while occasional rustling among the quiet often stemmed from a Sea Terror. The people sank into despair. They could not believe that the land beneath their feet was Iberia.
Several surviving members of the Church of Iberia attempted to rebuild Iberia from the foundation up, in a shape of their choosing. The Iberia of the past was portrayed as an arrogant conqueror, one that required her people to proliferate and spread over ever vaster territories. The Iberia of today would be a holy land illuminating the darkness, and she required her people to gather together to protect her purity and morality. The ancient tomes of Laterano were based on laws and virtues, with the occasional story of a saint scattered within, but the Church of Iberia wrote their own version of the scriptures, one that could guide the people of Iberia in their lives after the Silence. In this era of decay and collapse, perhaps this was for the best. According to the sermons, value does not rely on material goods. Even on the wastes, devoid of anything, people can still live lives of virtue.
The Church did not only attempt to prop up the people's spirits. It also tried to restore the basics of order to society and even set up planned management of food resources. While admittedly there were a few who fell to despair who plundered food over the corpses of the clergy, there were those who despaired yet still held on to their
■ Perhaps the Church believes praying in a dim, ruined chapel is better than reminiscing about those royals and nobles buried at the bottom of the sea.
Nobody wishes for the church to be so dark and dilapidated, of course, and the pious believers carefully wipe the windows clean every day. However, they remain covered in white dust floating over from the sea. The work never ends, and the windows are never truly clean.
faith as their final thread, hoping that by carefully adhering to its instructions they would be able to find salvation.
The royal family had fallen into silence, but the people still sought shelter and salvation. They even began to pray to the founding Kings of Iberia, beseeching those long-buried bones to protect them. Many high-level clergy in the Church urgently wished to appoint a Pope to redirect the people's longing for salvation, and to establish a new authority within Iberia. But Archbishop Carmen repeatedly refused the proposal to install him as Pope. Under his direction, the nine Archbishops of the Church set aside their family names and took up Iberia as their own. They were also conferred the title of Saint, and so they became the leaders of Iberia.
When it comes to urgently setting up a governing authority, "Saint" might not have been the best of titles to pick for one's leaders. While "Saint" can easily stand for a trail-blazer, it lacks the gravitas befitting a ruler. Ancient Lateran records tell of the first saints building their homeland with their own two hands, while spreading their faith as their legs walked the land. All well and good, but the tomes never spoke of them ruling.
But there was a reason why Carmen stubbornly insisted on this path—while the prospect of installing a Pope was alluring, the price of defeat would be catastrophic. It would mean placing the hopes of all Iberians seeking salvation on the shoulders of one person, and if that person were unable to bear that weight, Iberia may shatter and never reform again. The headless Iberia struggled blindly against riots and famine. She was barely fit to be called a nation, as she faced adversity beyond what humans could comprehend. Under such a burden, power would shift from being an instrument to becoming a lure for the weak, at least for most of the people who hold power at that time. Like how portraits of incompetent monarchs portray them as fierce and wise, they hide their lifelong mediocrity behind the facade of power. It can be inferred that Carmen and the other Archbishops did not wish nor dare to put themselves to the test in that way.
After being conferred the title of Saint, Carmen I Iberia gathered his supporters and completely reorganized the Church of Iberia, changing its name into the Iberian Inquisition. The Inquisition is not only a religious organization, but the nation's governing body. The survivors gathered together and threw themselves into their work, guided by their new laws. Slowly, the Iberian society rebuilt itself from the ground up.
Yet there were still many who had their criticisms of the new order, believing that the moral judgements presupposed by the "trials" and their "punishments" were too arbitrary. From the accounts of those Iberians who had personally experienced the disaster and the subsequent rebuilding, the rule of the Inquisition was harsher than that of the royal family, but it was the Inquisition who managed to stitch together the shattered remnants of Iberia back into a nation. One thing we can reflect on is this: In an age where values have crumbled away, should the people use what energy they have spare to maintain an open and inclusive environment? Or should the confused and tired people rather seek salvation from explicit guidance and convenient answers?
Supplementary Material
Talking about the efforts to rebuild after the Silence, Mr. Martínez mentioned a group of workers he encountered while seeking refuge, who had decided to throw themselves into reconstruction:
We were drawn over by the sound of music. There were no radio or television signals active at the time, and nobody would want to carry a gramophone and speakers while fleeing the Silence. Everyone's ears had been deadened by the winds of the wilderness, so hearing the music of the Golden Age felt like we were all in a dream.
There were a group of people in workers' wear knee-deep in a pile of bricks, hammering along to the beat of the tune. It seemed that they were building a house. Compared to the gilded pre-Silence record player next to the door beams, the things they were building looked rather shabby. But based on the crude carvings above the beams, they were still building things in the style of the Golden Age.
These people said they had the family name Iberia. All of them did, apparently... Rather strange, no? Just like the Saints of the Inquisition who came about after. But the Saints did it to earn respect and love for the people. Why would these workers cling so strongly to that name? After all, they were not much welcomed by the Iberia at the time...
At this point, a construction worker stopped their work for a moment to give an explanation to Mr. Martínez:
I know that everybody looked down on us. People like you and me, people who actually did the hard work and cooked the soup? In their eyes, we were just complacent. But it was their problem, not Iberia's. The lords and ladies had their own dreams and goals. Research, exploration, swordplay, studying something or the other... Even if Iberia was gone, there were things they could do. But us? All our lives, day after day, we were building Iberia in the factories. If Iberia was gone, what was left for us?
A decent number of folk lost their will to live. It was Old Juan who dredged us back out of the doom and gloom. After all the cities had shut down, he was the first to head back into the factory. The factory heads had long since fled, and nobody was there to pay him for any work. Also, without fuel or materials, the production lines just couldn't run. But Old Juan didn't care. He'd hammer away in the dark depths of the factory every day. After that, more and more would follow him to work, even if they could not produce anything usable at all. We may all had been starving, but none of us stopped. For no other reason than to live as human beings.
If the nobles won't rebuild Iberia, then we will. We are Iberia.
In the past, Iberia occupied a fertile peninsula in the south of the Terran landmass, commanding the channel connecting the inland sea with the open ocean. In the wake of the Profound Silence, the bustling ports of the southern coast were decimated. The survivors fled to the north, cowering in the once-remote inland frontier. Presently, Iberia is defined by several long, narrow river deltas. Her terrain is low-lying and flat, with some hilly terrain scattered about its center and north.
The coastline of Iberia was radically reshaped by the Profound Silence. Several generations of surveyors painstakingly measured Iberia's wounds by walking its breadth, sketching the form of the new coastline little by little. Nowadays, there are still Iberians who raise flimsy sails to search for surviving land, but a majority of the land swallowed by the sea has already been claimed by the Sea Terrors for their nests.
MAPA DE LOS VIGILANTES DEL MAR
Patrol maps drawn after the Profound Silence Former major inland hub cities are now no more than ruins poking out of the sea. To Iberian eyes nowadays, these glorious remains are only reference points to estimate distances and headings, nothing more.
Long before the Islanders came ashore, Iberia had a solid economic foundation. Thanks to her fertile fields and well-developed drainage systems, Iberia's agricultural and finning industries were highly developed. Before the Silence, every Iberian chef had to master more than a hundred ways of preparing seafood before he could finish his apprenticeship. On top of that, Iberia's industrial development was comparable to the forefront of the nations of the Core. When the Lateran City was being converted into a nomadic one, many of the industrial products required for such a feat were imported from Iberia. The introduction of Islander technology resulted in excess productivity for a time, and extravagance was all the rage back then.
However, after the Silence, the vast majority of this sophisticated technology was abandoned. Since there was no energy or material supply, and no corresponding demand, formerly busy factories now sank into silences of their own. The majority of Islander research was put to a halt by the Inquisition, the results left to rot in the filing cabinets of the Bastión de Cánticos, or 'Bastion of Hallowed Saints' in Victorian. It is not until recent years that the Inquisition has gradually warmed up to allowing former Ægir technical staff to return to Iberia to resume their research.
A once-popular Iberian rum, made from sugar cane grown on the southern coasts. Even if sugar cane sprouted in Iberia now, it would be salty from the inundated soil.
In addition, with the land inundated with salt and the sea occupied by Sea Terrors, Iberia's agricultural and finning industries are nearly extinct. Before the people were able to find reliable sources of food, Iberia experienced a financial crisis. At a time where a cartload of pure gold couldn't buy you a bag of food, people began to regard money and precious metals as burdens that would only slow them down as they fled. Bandits in the salt wastes looted food and clothing, but ignored silver coins and bars of gold as they laid in pools of blood. Many local economies returned to a bartering system.
The Inquisition instated a plan to realign the population back towards manufacturing. Under their unified administration and pipelines, the planned economy model became the dominant economical system in post-Silence Iberia. Until today, the vast majority of Iberian industries are still under this economy model controlled and operated by the Inquisition.
Iberia is currently ruled by the Inquisition, successor to the Church of Iberia. Under the guidance of Saint Carmen, the Church experienced a comprehensive reorganization. Its former complicated system of lofty titles was replaced with a three-layer structure of Saint—High Inquisitor—Inquisitor. What local power structures still functioned were all incorporated into the central structure of the Inquisition.
While Iberia still sees the titles of Bishop and Priest, it would be more accurate to call them grassroots civil administrators under the Inquisition than clergymen. Many times, those reciting sermons in churches do not only offer spiritual consolation, but also an appealing manner for the people to obtain concrete guidance on matters involving both work and life. The Inquisition also unified former Church doctrine and scripture by adapting, expanding and refining them. Nowadays, these thick tomes have had a marked impact on the daily lives of Iberians: It is divine, and is the foundation of their faith. It provides guidance, and it is a reference for their lives. It also restricts them, and is the basis for the laws that are enforced.
The Inquisitor is the core of the Iberian Inquisition's power. The range of their duties and the range of applications for scripture are equally broad: An Inquisitor must be able to act as a spiritual leader and soothe the fear and doubt of the masses. They must act as judicial administrator and enforcer, so as to stand against anything that might threaten Iberia. They must also act as a military commander—Leading the Penal Battalion on coastal patrols, observing changes in the ocean, and containing the spread of Sea Terrors are all duties of an Inquisitor.
It is unquestionable that the Inquisition's rule over Iberia involves many things that are subject to criticism, such as a serious lack of adherence to procedure, or their extreme methods. But as the ultimate solution to handling urgent issues, these means can be considered understandable. As for whether the above facts have caused substantial abuses of power or chaotic management, that remains to be investigated.
Underwater Ægir technology and land-based Originium power were a graceful union in Iberia. Today's boldest industrial architects would consider Golden Iberia's technological products to be wild and fantastical, whether household goods or machines for manufacturing.
Among the most representative of these were a series of marvels related to sailing: golden warships spread out across the seas, while the Eyes of Iberia pierced the dark clouds, their dazzling luminescence forming a line that shined through the sea fog. But the King was not satisfied with decorating the ocean with dots and lines. He wanted to cleave the tides in Iberia's name. With great fanfare, the first batch of amphibious nomadic cities began construction along Iberia's endless coastline. Most of these cities were not completed before they were drowned in silence. Due to the dramatic shift in the coastline, only a few ruins of these cities survived. These remnants may offer shelter to victims of the Silence at some point, but to these people, the imposing keel looming overhead is merely a relic of the past.
An Inquisitor's treasure. Scripture cannot substitute for the judgment she renders. She must seek out answers for herself.
Supplementary Material
Following the Silence, a group of Iberians gathered each week in a Victorian coffee house. They called themselves the Post-Silence Recovery Group. They intended to "eliminate the pain and sorrow left behind by the Profound Silence by mutual discussion." What they say is often rather exaggerated, and the truth is difficult to confirm, but nevertheless, their Victorian audience never doubts them.
—...The calamity was caused by the sea monsters, wasn't it? Can't the Inquisition stick to killing Sea Terrors? Why do they have to snatch away people as well? —¡Por los reyes! Did someone you know get arrested? I'm truly, terribly sorry... —No, no, do not worry. My friends and family are all well, but many will say things like "anyone with a portrait of the King in his home was taken to the Inquisition's dungeons", "anyone caught admiring the ocean will be thrown into a cage and hanged by the deck"... Frightful things to hear. —How terrible! Thinking about a proud sailor being locked up in a little cage to die, unable to move despite floating on the ocean he once freely navigated... I dare not imagine the end to come of our fellows still in Iberia. —You are not alone in this. No one could imagine such a thing! Who could have expected Iberia to seal herself off one day...? The imagination and potential of the nation has been slain, and the lowliest of the lot have now placed themselves at the rudder. They will see us all as low as them! —You're right. We shouldn't throw our lives away in a nation half-in-the-grave. Never mind all that, you have got to try these Bolivarian coffee beans...
Then, at some point, a group photo of the Post-Silence Recovery Group members was published in Victorian newspapers and magazines. Their words were transcribed into "true accounts" and adapted into documentaries. After that, they were seen moving from this small coffee house to Londinium's most luxurious pub.
Even those elderly folk who had experienced the Golden Age for themselves find it difficult to distinguish the various domains of the nobles on a map. Those former provinces have been forgotten, just like how their masters faded away into obscurity. Iberia does not currently have a need for administrative subdivisions. Other than the nomadic cities that survived the Silence, there are only a few small, naturally formed post-Silence settlements scattered across the wastes. Since the Church and its Inquisitorial successor led the reconstruction of Iberia, many new settlements are centered around a church or a courthouse.
Iberia's military draws from two main systems: the Iberian Defensa and the Penal Battalion. The Iberian Defensa had witnessed the kingdom's former glory. It was formed from ancient mercenary guilds located in various towns and cities. Officers appointed by the royal family and the nobility would hire mercenaries to form their armies, and their deep wallets would buy them the services of well-trained soldiers. Before the Silence, Iberia's largest mercenary guild could even sustain an entire training fleet. After the Silence, the royals and nobles no longer had the funds to maintain their
An artifact of an Inquisitor. There is no tombstone inscribed with any of their deeds at the Inquisitor's grave. A rusted lantern is the only proof of their existence.
military power. Even their standing armies were, for the most part, disbanded. Once-neatly-ironed uniforms began to appear among bandit groups roving the wastes, but there were still soldiers who maintained their honor. In the north of Iberia, which got off comparatively lightly, those Defensa defending the nomadic cities along the border never deserted their posts. The inland nations started to send Messengers, investigation teams, and mercenaries one after another to Iberia as it sank into silence. Perhaps these people were delighted in the Iberians' misfortune, or perhaps they felt trepidation. No matter their thoughts, they were all quelled by the patrolling Defensa. After the reorganization of the Church into the Inquisition, these soldiers were allowed to inherit the ancient name of the Iberian Defensa and continue to answer threats stemming from outside Iberia.
The Inquisition also established another armed force: the Penal Battalion. This battalion mostly consists of youths born after the Profound Silence. They have not witnessed the era of glory, and they are unaware of how to dress formally or display their medals, but when facing danger, they are well aware of how to behead Sea Terrors or to burn away Nethersea Brand. The Inquisition did not only establish the Penal Battalion to uphold domestic order, but to face disasters anew from the ocean. The Penal Battalion organizes its troops into companies, each under the leadership of an Inquisitor. They rush about between the inhabited regions of Iberia, maintaining order as they guard against infiltration by the Church of the Deep. Alongside this, they also monitor the ocean and resist any invasion by the evil lurking within its depths.
Combat skills and command experience alone are not enough for a soldier of the Penal Battalion to be selected as an Inquisitor. Before every Inquisitor can assume the role, they must find their own answers to the following questions: Why do I wish to judge? What do I wish to judge?
To become an Inquisitor is to discard softness, confront fear, hand down sentences, and perpetrate atrocity. It is true that one need not much reason to justify the blood on one's hands, or much self-reflection to believe that one is upholding justice. In the wake of the Profound Silence, many of Iberia's Ægir found themselves swinging from a rope, hoisted by their former friends and neighbors, embodiments of this truth. But few are able to sustain this throughout their entire lives. When anger and hatred cool as they walk the endless road, people may suddenly be conscious of how insignificant, ridiculous and irrational they are. Only those of unerring faith and resolve can follow the path of the Inquisitor for long. This is the belief of Iberia's Inquisition, at the very least.
This idea is embodied in an Inquisitor's signature equipment. Their lantern and hand-cannon may rely on Originium Arts to operate, but there are significant differences between these and an ordinary staff and gun. While they do require skill and talent to use, the Inquisition's training regimen emphasizes a tenacious will and an unwavering conviction.
In the past, Iberians were always seeking novel experiences, but now, they treat both old and new with reticence. Unfamiliar faces frighten them. Even if one was able to bypass the locked-down Iberian border, all that would greet them would be no more than a few doubtful glances. However, not even a familiar face would put an Iberian at ease. They would not know if these former friends had fallen to heresy or not, and they fear heretical accusation by the Inquisition, no matter what the truth may be. In such turmoil, recitations organized by the Inquisition are one of the few things that can calm the mind. Many Iberians start the day listening to these teachings.
The attitude of the average Iberian regarding the cultural legacies that survived the end of the Golden Age is complicated: There are those who hate them, yet there are those who look to them with hope. There are those harmed by them, yet there are those who depend on them for survival. The fickle behavior of the people is like a great clamor, a vivid contrast to the deathly quiet brought by the Profound Silence. There once was a shopkeep dealing in pre-Silence antiques who was burned to death alongside his store by a mob. However, two years later, many laid flowers within the blacked ruins, holding back tears as they dug through the shattered bricks, desperately trying to retrieve any surviving memories.
Iberia has lost her liveliness for a thriving artistic scene, though Iberians are wont to spontaneously create ordinary, yet much-needed, folk art. Many no longer dare to go out to sea, yet the once-marine culture has managed to find another way to pass itself down. The songs that people sang as they rebuilt their homes were mostly adapted from sea shanties. Most of those who still had a taste for
"If you yourself are afraid and hesitant, how can your sword cut away the sins of man? How can your lantern deter the evils of the sea?"
-An Inquisitor's guidance for their apprentice.
exploration joined the Inquisition, where they could go on missions to reclaim forgotten lands and technology.
In addition, Iberia's martial traditions have fared better than its maritime ones. The Inquisition even encourages its citizens to learn swordsmanship. Perhaps the hope is that if disaster strikes once more, every Iberian can raise a sword to defend themself.
A few years ago, I happened to catch an interview on the television. On the screen being interviewed was none other than the organizer of the Post-Silence Recovery Group that I met in that coffee shop decades back. It appears that he has become a rather popular author in Victoria lately.
Reporter: Your most recent book doesn't mention Iberia at all. It's all about Victoria. Many readers have their doubts, I'm afraid. We'd like to know if you still have interest in your native land. Author: Naturally, naturally. I've never forgotten that I'm Iberian myself. As you know, it's incredibly difficult to get any information about Iberia, but I can say that without a doubt, I have always done my best to... try to explore what it means for me to be Iberian. Everyone at home can look forward to me using new viewpoints to see my own Iberian-ness from a different angle, and they'll soon discover Iberia once more...
After turning off the television, I thought back to Mr. Martínez's question: "What is Iberia? Where has she gone?" The Profound Silence was several decades ago, yet people still talk about trying to "discover Iberia". Whether they are within or without its borders. Whether they seek solace or profit. Iberia once relied on its thirst for exploration and grand discoveries to shock Terra, but now it has become the target for exploration and discovery itself. As for what Iberia is, many voices will give many answers. These answers in turn form many people's understandings of their own identities. If a disaster like the Profound Silence approached once more, could these understandings and answers allow the people to unite together and withstand it crashing down upon them?
CHAPTER 5.6.1
Near the close of the 20s of this century, I left Leithanien for Iberia, far from the fires of war. There, I called upon the royal capital of Real-Iberia as a visiting scholar. At the time, Iberia boasted an extremely sophisticated nation-wide broadcast system. Even though the royal family stated it would only be used to announce major affairs due to high maintenance and usage costs, in the age where recording technology had just appeared, this system would undoubtedly leave anyone seeing it for the first time with their jaws on the floor. Even now, we cannot ascertain the principles it functioned upon, much less replicate them.
Before I returned to Victoria, the Iberian Royal Academies of Science and Technology gave me and some other visiting scholars an unusual receiver terminal each. They promised us that when this technology was fully developed and was ready to be implemented across all Terra, they would share it with every nation of this great land. There would no longer be geographical barriers then, and all humanity could communicate instantaneously.
We have looked forward to that day ever since, but none could anticipate that on the 28th of June, 1038, Golden Iberia would sound her final crescendo.
The entire edict was as follows:
I, Fernando Alejandro Ruiz de Ley Castro-Torres Real-Iberia de Letrán, King of the Iberians and the Ægir, Sovereign of Iberia, Suzerain of all the Seas, Master of all Ships, Cities, and Ports, Defender of all Trade, Merchants, and Explorers, Liege to all Lords and Nobles, Conquistador of the Land and Sea, do hereby proclaim from the royal capital of Real-Iberia:
To my son, Prince Gonzales, alongside all of Iberia's royal family. To all her nobles, all her bishops, all her general officers. To all the governors of her cities and ports, all her officers of the law. To every kind, pious, brave citizen in the realm, as well as all persons or groups of persons who might hear this proclamation.
You are all well aware, or at least should be, that our nation faces a most unprecedented time. The sudden descent of violent weather and geological shifting has damaged every corner of this country to differing extents. We detected unusual oceanic behavior, alongside a temporary communications breakdown to parts of the nation. We have also lost connection to several ports and cities. We now know that all this unusual activity is a deliberate provocation on Iberia. An atrocity against human civilization. The perpetrator is none other than Terra's ocean.
It has cast off its gentle and kind facade of several centuries, exposing its true savage, ferocious nature. It hates us for our lands, bounteous and rich. It hates the civilizations of man upon the land itself. It treats us with contempt. It pollutes our soil. It violates every tenet of our civilization.
Iberia enjoys the most supreme glory upon this great land of Terra. We should be the bastion of order. We should be the aegis of civilization. We should resist all evil, no matter how formidable. No matter from whence it stems. I will not countenance any harm to my people, nor any defilement of our lands, nor will I allow any threat to our nation or to civilization itself to run rampant.
Always have we remembered your solemn vows to the Golden Throne. Always have we remembered that the duty, the calling of the royal family is to protect all who seek protection from us, and all good people who are in peril. We will protect this treasured, grand civilization of ours, the one we built with our own hands. In these extraordinary times, in our darkest hour, I decree that: The officers of the law of every city and port must by all means ensure the safety of the citizens under their purview. The priests of every diocese and every church must by all means suppress the evil that seeks to do harm to our nation. All military officers are to bring our full might to bear and push back the waves encroaching on our land. All our fleets are to do all they can to wipe out the culprits who hide beyond dry land, even if it means me proclaiming that Terra's sin-ridden seas must be scoured clean after further consideration.
Our lighthouses still shine as they ever did, and the Golden Armada has weighed anchor. These turbulent times will soon pass. Our victory is close at hand. Now, ere the light of dawn, the oaths we swore to one another shine brighter than the stars. They are more resolute than the land, more powerful than the ocean itself. Even if my body is not by your side, my thoughts will always be with you.
I, King Fernando Alejandro I, will issue another proclamation in twelve hours.
In these trying times, we must all believe in this one truth: Iberia will not be defeated. Iberia will triumph. Iberia will endure forevermore.
Less than an hour after the King's edict, the weak signal coming from the royal capital terminated. All sound had fallen into silence, and Iberia spoke no more.