And Amalgast clears his throat, and Amalgast says: Due to the fiscal circumstances of the Patriarchate, Vaspukaran will exhaust all of its ability to pay its debts within six months. The Sanhedron has one purpose and one purpose only: To agree to financial reform that would improve this desperate situation totally, and reorganize the country's debts. If no agreement is reached by the end of the half-year period, the Patriarch will declare a general and total debt jubilee and repudiate all debts everywhere in Vaspukaran, and by doing so bring unholy iniquity to its knees, in finality.
The Grand Sanhedron is dead silent. Some of the elders, especially from the High Juries, have turned red. The High Priests have turned pale. Many of the Low Priests hang their mouths agape. The Mouflons are motionless. And Amalgast takes off his death mask, and becomes again just Amalgast the Fourtieth, Santsarran. And he commands, that the elders may speak now.
Amalgast XL Santsarran is not at all fucking around, holy shit.
"What are you going to do,
double palace coup me?
During a great sanhedron? Go on. Try me.
Try me. Commit that level of blasphemy and crack the nation on which whatever riches you have rests into so many pieces that NOTHING will remain."
[x] That the Flood was a just punishment for the wicked of Babarak [Iconoclast & Orthodox Opinion].
"My Sisters and Brothers," Chedyanaki Shevah says, beaming at the reunited pair of Sage-Sister Dvorah and Guru Wendam, "it was only recently that the writing of Brother Abgar reminded me of the need to combat evil within-" She is quiet, for a moment, pensive, rolling her shoulders in the manner many of the Scourge of God
immediately recognize, "- as well as without; thus I spent time in between work and drill on study: It is clear to me that the Flood was God scourging the wicked men of Babarak for their sins." She smiles. "Though, of course, as is custom for the Free, we will probably still all agree to never agree!"
[x] Amalgast is the greatest step yet taken, but he is not so special and essential that he should be totally above all others [Radical opinion].
Counting first on her fingers, then grabbing a pencil and her breakfast salted fish bun wrapper, Sister Shevah licks her lips, tugs on her red headband and does some quick math.
"You know what? Every eight hundred to a thousand years there's been a new prophet, if we don't look at the first two. In a hundred years there might be another. Vaspurakan will live in interesting times by then!"
[x] Obrogras was the betrayed, and the Amalists are in the right [Amalist Opinion].
She crosses her arms in front of her chest "Thus also I hold this this position: that if Amalgast, praise be, is the greatest of the Prophets of God, He is nevertheless merely man, then Rav Obrogas was right not to worship him so, and it was Yatoni who was the betrayer. This is how I have always seen it."
[x] High Confession was a nightmare that would have smothered the people and the world [Orthodox & Amalist Opinion].
When the debate turns to this, Shevah turns belligerent. "C'mon, fight me," she says, and when someone whacks her with a newspaper she thrusts her chin up. "Yeah, I said it, I mean it. C'mon, have you
read or
listened to that High Confessor shit? What we seek is an utopia where all mankind works in harmony, having achieved spiritual and material mastery, to acheieve our utopia. The fucking High Confessors? Stifling, choking, they'd smother you in engine oil and call it holy." Sister Shevah looks around and glares at anyone willing to meet her gaze. "Total reformation of society for universal war! Against everyone! You remember, in Hasdaya? When we were at the Fort, squabbling over what to do with the Komandir?"
And with so many new recruits, no, only the old core cadre do, but many have heard the stories. "One of us spoke about transforming himself into a machine of total war to the knife and Baba Tanda I think rightly clapped him about the ears for that one until that dumb idea rattled right out of his skull. And the fucking High Confessors crept right to power and tried to choke the life out of our Kingdom and
force that on everyone."
[x] He is a misguided creature of his chamber, trapped within his cloister [Radical Opinion].
"Y'all have heard the tales about his former wife turned mistress. Only reason I give him this much benefit of the doubt is that he's actually called for a Grand Sanhedron, rather than just sit in the cloister like a good little pet for the High Priests and Juries."
[x] The Sanhedron, if used correctly, can lead to the freedom of the people [Popular & Radical Opinion].
Sister Shevah listens to many of the others before she speaks, heart heavy with emotion, eyes brimming with tears. "With God as my witness, I beg you listen to me. I'd prefer a world where the Kingdom of God can become better, more just, more equitable to woman and man like, to all chambers, present and future. To do all this without the rivers of blood spilled in the cycles of revolution."
Hands ball into fists, knuckles scarred from all too many fistfights, her stance is firm. "The Convent always stand ready to do our part when that day comes. But ere that, it is the tool by which our Kingdom of God has bettered itself. If that does not suffice..."
She makes a basic gesture of the Convent's public signs, the cycling of a rifle's bolt.