Imperial Indoctrination
Introduction[edit]
Before 1050 Ac, deep within the Imperial Capital of Isegrad, near the courts of the Empress herself, lay deep embedded in the stoneworks below a forge beyond reckoning. Imperial Engineers, serving their charge, debated quietly their next design of Empyrean Construction. Dozens, all veteraned, all hand-picked by the Court itself as a prestigious 'reward' for a life of exemplary work and servitude. From their hands are bore forth chassis of experimental designs--some akin to a statue, some akin to a dragon. Some tall and lithe, some in mockeries of Faerla and Hedera. Spherical, languid, all works of design are tested and given through the motions.
But never could they master a mind.
Indoctrination[edit]
It wasn't until sometime in the 960s that the question came of what do, should the engineering of Empyreans become a plan, that the idea need come of teaching Empyreans. Children of flesh and blood required a year of gestation and a decade more before they approached any level of adequate utility. A child, short and taut, could be subdued should their tantrums begin by any able adult--but if they were to create weapons of war they could not suffer the same emotional wracks of growth. It were a limiter in the initial stages of their deliberate creation of the kin.
Thus came the idea of indoctrination. A process in which to forcibly imprint thoughts, ideas, instincts and knowledge into the freshly 'bore' souls of the Emerald Heart. Over the course of the next decade were a machine of great power created deep within the already expansive forges of the Capital, a machine capable of breaching through the barriers of a nascent mind and placing upon it what needs known. Or, ultimately, what is wanted for the mind to know.
It weren't until later in the 980s that the process received strict controls on what could and could not be imprinted.
Topics of Imprinting[edit]
After an 'ethical revolution' a few decades after the project's beginning, the list of 'approved' indoctrination were committed to paper. Examples of, but not limited to, are as follows:
- History of Isegrad
- Knowledge of Rhyst
- Knowledge of the Eidolons of Rhyst
- Functional etiquette
- Practical applications of crafts
- General-purpose defensive maneuvers
- Current 'zeitgeist' of the Imperial culture
Deviations from the approved indoctrination heavily scrutinized and require explicit approval.
The Crystalline Library[edit]
Swiftly upon the construction of the machines needed to create indoctrination as a function did many logistical issues crop up. It were one thing to imprint ideas, it were another to store these ideas in a medium that could be reasonably accessed. Initially, in the early years, were nothing more than runic plates of adamantite used with small commands bore forth to 'imprint' laws. However, the medium were cumbersome and expensive. It required an evolution to a greater and stronger medium of information.
Tirelessly were they iterated upon, different and better mediums tested--even organic compounds, strung with mana, were used as a medium to attempt to breach the limit of data that could be transferred. Years passed with increasingly better, but no good, solutions until a single engineer found themselves lost within a particularly clear segment of malachite.
Gemstones and crystals, it were found, took exceptionally well to enchantment. By converting ideas to magic itself and binding them to the crystalline matrices before them were they, in the early days, able to bear forth entire pages of tomes into a single crystal. In time, 'approved' crystals of vital data were reproduced and stored within a grand storage tongue-in-cheekly defined as a 'library' of thoughts where these memory crystals were stored for later use. A great deal of the Imperial Capital's knowledge lay within this vault, inaccessible to all but the Engineers with explicit approval on what the newly forged life is allowed to know...