Internal Security Report on the City of Nova's Vision
Originally founded several centuries ago, the first settlers found a region bracketed with natural defenses and resources. From the records and geological surveys our agents have been able to complete in the current regime, the land has since been mined out with most of the finite resources such as metal no longer being found in plentiful amounts, within the near by mountains and ravines that provide the city with its natural defense.
However, deeper into the mountains and ravines there are still more than enough metals and other rare crystals to make the city a center of wealth, even with this wealth the city has always been a poorly managed nation, that in the words of our agents best described as a "hell hole born solely from human mismanagement."
Before the take over of the city by the forces of the Cult of Nova's Voice, the city was split into two castes with harsh laws regarding both equally. Almost all of these laws were enforced with either draconian sentences or outright death, and as such very few Enlighten (their nobles) were willingly to even risk looking kindly at a Sightless (their peasant). Due to these laws, even the nobles that remained somewhat empathic to the plight of the city as a whole, were unable to do anything but suffer in silence for fear of death.
Our agents were in fact able to confirm that it would be more accurate to say that there were three castes in the city prior to the take over by the cult. The peasant, the nobles and the ruler each with radically different laws and customs that they had to abide by. The ruler was in possession of nearly all of the wealth that the rich land provided and some estimates from our best agents place his income at roughly 80% of the total income of the city alone, with the nobles making up 18% of the remainder and only two percent for the entirety of the peasant caste.
As anyone with any understanding of economics would see, this would be unsustainable in the long run, as the peasants made up nearly 90% of the entire population and the ruler only had around a hundred people in his family, with the last ten percent being the nobles. We have yet to discover the reason behind this atrocious management of funds and resources, and probably never will.
Yet, the effects of this mismanagement are clear to see. The massive discontent that the peasants constantly suffered under made them easy prey for the ideological that the Shattering Claw endorsed. We believe that the general timeline for the conversion of the city, started with the Shattering Claw sending a tendril of their influence into the city some decades before the first revolution, as the cult drew the civilians into their fold their desire for freedom of this tyrannical government twisted the usually secretive and slow acting cult into a much more forward acting variant that renamed itself as Nova's Voice.
The reports from this time indicate that our agents expected the Cult to quickly die as they unleashed a revolution in the city, and their expectations were proven correct as the army, well trained and equipped as it was made solely from noble caste individuals quickly crushed the revolting peasants. However, this was not the end and in defiance of their forward nature the cult leaders withdrew for a decade that we now know was spent preparing for the next uprising.
Our agents have been able to confirm that during this decade of silence, the leaders sent envoys to Forge-Clans, sought out disgraced champion fighters and other such force multipliers. Thus, when the next uprising struck it was radically different from the first, with the cult leaders having trained themselves in various forms of warfare and with moderately technological assistance from a few select Forge-Clans. They slowly reduced the armies via indirect attacks, with poisons and gaseous vapors being a common vector of attack in their hands, beyond the direct they also made use of infiltration and usurpation of important government offices in order to maintain government continuity.
From their own records made free to the public, most districts of the city had their governors removed first by the cults forces as the slowly integrated their personal into the more mundane offices and from their spread slowly outward, by the time actual battles were being waged against them, almost of the city was being governed indirectly by the cult's people. This combined with their poison and other indirect fighting methods quickly destroyed the last of the noble armies with their supplies taken by the cult leaders.
Following this second revolution, the cult quickly moved against the laws that has sparked this entire situation. The evaluated their best direct fighters to serve as an intermittent guard force, while their lawyers and hired consultants from other nations reworked the law books. For a period of a decade the laws were technically unchanged, but in practice none of them were enforced and only due to the population being almost in a collective stupor of relief prevented things from collapsing. However, eventually the cult leaders unveiled a new law system to govern the entire city with and all of the old judges that had survived the revolution were forced to go for retraining before being able to serve once more.
With the rewritten laws in hand, they quickly moved to complete their take over, with the destruction of noble estates and the reclamation of the vaults that the nobles had built into their homes to hold their goods. This was only the first stage, soon thereafter every noble that had survived was placed on trial and given a scrupulously fair experience with some of the best lawyers in their employ being used for the defendants along with hiring people from nearby cities to form the juries, the weight of evidence for the crimes of the nobles was more than enough for almost all of them to be condemned to suffer the worst fate. They would be sent to work for the community, without direct pay but would have their supplies provided by the city as a whole. This replaced the death penalty in the city nearly as a whole, with the worst crimes being either sentenced to expulsion or the community work force. Only, certain crimes yet retain the death penalty, this list includes; treason (defined as meaningful assistance to an enemy in war), rape (high evidence bar), and anything regarding children in unsafe environments.
Now decades after the revolution the city is nearing the level that it should have been, wealth has started to flow around it as the cult manages the economy with a deft hand and the people support the cult in nearly every aspect of their actions. The city is now expected to become a center of wealth in a region that is overly struck with poverty in comparison to other more plentiful regions of the world.
Major Exports
Base Food-stock - the land around the city is massively fertile and produces great amounts of surplus food. Not enough to truly interest a larger nation, but sufficient to make it the breadbasket of its region.
High quality metals and ores - the ravines and mountains surrounding the city, provide access to very high quality metals and ores that are sold to at least two nearby Forge Clans and other cities to provide the city with extra income.
Labor - with the community work force as a thing, the city rents its use out to other nearby settlements to both to spread their beliefs and also to ensure that another city doesn't fall to the same extent that their city did.
Major Imports
Water - the fertile ground seems to consume all of the water in the region leaving precious little for the city to use directly, as such the vast majority of their water is bought from nearby cities and could possibly doom the city if it was ever cut off from this supply.
Medicine - there are several species of mutated insects and parasites in the city's region that require advanced medicines that only specialized Forge Cults can make, this constitutes another major import of the city
Skilled labor - due to its recent revolution the city is still suffering from a relative lack of truly skilled labor and higher profession. The cult as a whole is doing an admiral job of fixing this as fast as possible by hiring teachers from other nations even going beyond the borders of their region in order to get better teachers for their people.
Current Plans
The best we can tell is that the cult is still setting into their new found position of power in the city and most likely won't try to expand their influence for several more decades at least, however they have extended a hand to any other cult of Fractal Nova to use their city as a base/holy city if they so desire. So far we only know that the Shimmering Cloud and the Shattering Claw have taken up their offer.
Our agents report a rather strange event in the city in that the cult does not force people to believe in their religion beyond stamping out ideologies counter to their own, this makes them one of the few cults to gain true power that has not so far used it to become a state religion.
@HeroCooky another omake