The Greatest Sin [Progression Fantasy][Kingdom Building]
Chapter 395 – Sweet Mother Empire

The majority of Divines believe in negative ideologies, that is why most Divines fail in rulership and why usually the most efficient nations with Gods or Goddesses at their helm are those that afford their mortals the most autonomy imaginable. There are a few that hold to positive thinking. Elassa is one, funnily enough, Allasaria is another. Maisara and Kassandora have positive thinking. But the rest? Malam? Even Fortia? And let’s not even talk about the likes of Zerus or even Irinika. They are negative to the utmost degree.

Here, I do not throw the words positive and negative around as value judgements. They do not mean optimistic or pessimistic, nor whether their styles of thinking are good or not. They are not my thinking so naturally they are wrong, even if they are positive. I mean it in the rawest mathematical sense of positive and negative. A positive ideology creates and works towards an ideal, a negative one tears it down.

It is not enough to simply complain about the wrongs of this world. An answer must be given. To merely remove the existing power structure is not enough, a mechanical replacement has to be given. It cannot be platitudes, it has to be the concrete X-step plan into the future. Most Divines fail at this, since most Divines simply wish to all government and functions of state with their own absolute authority. They succeed through cannibalizing the success of the society they have taken over. Without putting forward a replacement, they are no different than a mineowner who exists his own mine without re-investing the profits.

Any action beats inaction, any choice beats no choice, any system beats no system. Positive, creationary thinking will always bury negative, reductionist thinking.

- Excerpt from ‘Rulership.’ Written by God Arascus, of Pride.

The transition into the loving caress of the Empire’s bosom had been nothing like Aliana expected. On one hand, it had been far harder than Aliana had ever expected. With her as the new figurehead of Allia, gone was the usual excuse of Richard being the man steering the ship. Suddenly, journalists that had once asked for her thoughts, who had once waited patiently as she said, what she thought at least, where uniting words, and who would treat her with the respect a Goddess deserved now circled around her like hawks. Thoughts? Thoughts were not answers. Platitudes were not mechanical plans. Respect was not given, respect was earned.

But on the other hand, the transition into Empire had been far easier than anyone in Aliana’s government had predicted. When the God of Pride had arrived with his team of expert, Aliana had expected that to be it. For Arascus to bring one set of advisors, for him to raise the White-Red-Black tricolour of Empire, for him to say a uniting speech, and for him to go back to Epa and focus on the Rancais war.

The complete opposite had happened. Each single man Arascus introduced to assist Aliana was actually the leader of what seemed to be an entire army of efficient bureaucrats. Imperial Bureaus established offices in every city and every town. Grants and loans were handed out, subsidies were given straight in materials rather than money. Everyone from tin and copper to iron and lead to cobalt and magnesium was shipped from Kirinyaa on massive container ships sailing out the ports in the new Central Arikan Sea rather than the long way around Arika. Doschian industry demanded the mechanical parts built in Allia, and Lubskan refineries provided the alloys. The real thing that was impressive about the logistic chains was the sheer speed. The only bottleneck was the amount of ships in the Imperial Civilian Fleet.

And it had been foisted on Allia to fix this shortage. Aliana walked through the docks of Tull, she came for the launching of the first ship this year. Another was going to launch in two days. Four more would set sail from this city within the week. Even before Epan Separation, when Allia was still directed by Richard and paying tithe to the White Pantheon, these docks had sat still, employing a tenth of the hundred thousand souls that toiled in them now.

Aliana smoothed her coat as she looked around proudly at the scene in Tull. Allia hadn’t been in the melting-down inferno of a cascading failure that Doschia had entered, nor was it the clean slate that Kirinyaa had been. There had been private conversation worry that Arascus would be unable to adapt to a functional society, that he required destruction in order to force his idea of what society should look like upon a country.

And those voices had silenced themselves when the various Bureaus of Empire started to expand into Allia. Money suddenly poured into Allia. Resources were no issue and the hands which had fallen into destitution during Alanktyda’s blockade of the nation had been scrambling for work. Tull’s Docks had swelled ten times in workers and four times in size.

Two weeks ago, there had been four drydocks and six yards for ships. Arcadia’s magicians had been brought in. For them, it was field training. For Tull, it had been a resurrection of the city. Hydromancers had pushed back the ocean, mundane mortals workers worked with Geomancers to set foundations and meld steel skeletons and place stone walls. And in the span of two weeks, Tull had twenty drydocks and eighteen yards.

Aliana walked along the seawall as the public respectfully bowed by her side. A few men saluted. Others cheered. On the other side of the busy road was restaurant after restaurant, separated only by pubs and worker’s homes. Those latter establishment existed because the Imperial Bureau of Manufacturing had bought out almost a third of the city in one fell swoop. If it was an individual or a company, then how many laws would it have broken? Aliana could count off a dozen broken regulations from the top of her head, from ignoring housing restrictions to breaking monopoly rules. But then what Imperial court would rule against an Imperial Bureau? Frankly, what court would rule against this? The only arguments could be made from paranoid doomsayers and idealistic principles and unfortunately, neither paranoia nor idealism built ports.

Aliana saw a little girl who was swinging her legs off a chair too tall for her and eating fish and chips wave to her from across the street with her family. The man had the clothes of a dockworker, the wife was pregnant. The Goddess waved back with a smile and the little girl laughed. There had been a saying in Allia once, that the companies were better because they moved at the speed of business whereas the government moved at the speed of bureaucracy. It was true, Aliana couldn’t argue against that saying, but it wasn’t correct anymore. Government moved at the speed of bureaucracy but Empire moved at the lightning fast pace of battle.

As if to emphasize the point, a skyscraper was going up in the distance. Mages were hovering around the building. Men were walking along beams. Bright flashes of welding torches could be seen and two cranes were breaking maybe a hundred safety regulations by being within distance of each other as they dragged more steel up into the sky. Just four hours ago, when Aliana had got to Tull to attend the first ship of the year launching, that skyscraper was twelve floors tall. Now, glass panels were being installed on the thirteenth floor and the steel skeleton was being mounted to make floor fourteen.

This was the speed of an army that had seized the initiative and now was claiming as much territory as they could before the enemy reorganised. More cars sped by Aliana. A helicopter circled overhead, it was from EIE to record the moment. Aliana saw more people dine, husbands kissed their wives and children fell the seagulls with bread. Ahead, a crowd was forming. A man turned around and shouted. “The Goddess is here! The Goddess is here! Make way!”

Aliana waved her hand, smoothed her black coat again and readjusted the modest band of silver on her head. Arascus had said it was a good look, and that Divine nobles should never be caught wearing opulent crowns because there was no need to. So a band of silver, gemless, with a decorational flowers of platinum inlaid with gold made the crown. Aliana had seen herself in the mirror, the man knew what he was talking about. The crown stood out against the black clothes and fiery red hair, whereas Aliana size in itself made sure that her status was recognised.

Men and women and children turned to look at their Goddess as Aliana did not slow her pace. There were police here, they held back the crowd although no one really was pushing. Most of the people had spread out along the seawall to watch the grand INS Resolution be launched into open waters. It was the first ship of the Imperial Navy to be built in Allia, and it had taken a week.

Aliana did not even know how it was possible. Frankly, a part of her still struggled to comprehend it. Ships took years, some ships took a decade even. A ship did not take a week. But then the images plastered on posts opposite the crowd told the story. Steel was being brought in already cast into shape. The huge turbines were not powered by some high technology but instead by massive four-stroke diesel engines. Factories in Allia and in Doschia were producing the monstrosities and they were being brought directly into the Tull docks by cargo ship to be mounted. The cannons were Rilian, the only thing that was special about them was that there were two mounted to a turret but otherwise, they were just heavy field howitzers.

Tull was not a seaside factory town. It was a giant assembly plant which received parts from everywhere in the Empire and then smashed them together until ships were produced.

Aliana made a show of stopping at each board with a picture of the INS Resolution in each stage of construction. Seven days ago, the superstructure had started arriving. It was a collages of images taken from ground level and from above, some during the day, some during the night when the ship was lit up by massive spotlights. The second day marked the completion of the superstructure. There was no break, the sides of the ship were attached during the night. The third day saw huge cranes, the same that would be used to lift containers out of transport ships put the massive engines in. Days four and five weren’t of the ship from outside but rather of masses of men working on the ships inside. Everything, from men that welded steel frames together to electricians to those put up the wallpaper and painted the floors and ceilings. Even the brigade-sized team of janitors got their own collage. Men and woman, both young and aged, smiling as they stood they stood with mops and buckets.

The list composed of more than twenty-five hundred names which directly were involved in some part of the ship’s construction. Aliana could see how the city docks suddenly became the largest employer in the province. As Aliana pushed past the crowd, the line of police officers let her through. Not the heavy riot police she had seen in Lubska and Doschia but rather men in professional suits and hats, who stood less to the audience back and more delineate the line which had been painted on the ground.

Aliana had seen the INS Resolution’s control tower in the distance. It looked like a series of uneven blocks stacked on top of one another. The ship had two turrets in the front, then a flat area in the back for launching missiles and two platforms for helicopters to land on. And now, as Aliana looked over the crowd, she saw the behemoth of a vessel emerge from the drydock. Half a mile long. With the two massive dual-barrelled turrets on the front. With a mermaid painted on the side waving a flag. Only a thin strip of cloth covered her bosom, that carried the name of the ship and her trident’s head end with the ship’s anchor. Lines with flags Imperial and Allian hung off the control tower. A pair of helicopters painted in white, new models Aliana had not seen before, sat on the landing pads. And people. Hundreds of people. In suits and overalls, in shorts and jeans, in formal dress and in working clothes. With hands dirty and hands clean, shaved or with beards, all stood on the side of the ship as it slowly emerged from the drydock.

The two thousand, five hundred people who had worked on the vessel were stood on the ship as an announcer read out the work they did. How many thousands of tons of steel were used, how powerful the engines were, how far the cannons could fire. It was all theatre. Aliana knew it was all theatre. But even with the certainty it was theatre, the Goddess still found herself smiling. It was hard not to. The announcer, Aliana had spotted him on the ship itself, talking into a microphone and with speakers on either side. And the workers started marching down.

And Aliana, just like Arascus had told her to, found herself standing to the side. It was not her moment to steal, their joy was her joy. Their success was her success. They were Allians and she was the Goddess of this Nation. They were Imperial citizens just as was Imperial divinity. And Divines were not gaudy, Divines had nothing to prove. Divines were dignified. Divines were to witness and be witnessed. And so Aliana saluted as she did to soldiers on the Rilian front.

It took more than an hour for all the men and women who built the INS Resolution to filter off the deck. All the while the announcer talked about their efforts. He spoke of how in the span of a week, more than thirty-thousand man-hours had been spent working on bringing this vessel to fruition. And he said that nowhere but Tull could do it. Nowhere but Allia had the expertise. There were other ports of course, but what other port could manage this? Every person in this city should feel damn proud of this achievement, because it was unlike any other. It would be repeated of course, now other ports would try and out-match and out-build the Tull Docks, but they would never be the first.

And Aliana watched. She watched as the wooden bridge that the workers were using march off the vessel was drawn back. She heard the ship’s massive horn blare. She watched the crowd cheer in silence as children sat on their fathers’ shoulders to get a view. She heard a boy cry out how it was his daddy who helped make that ship.

Aliana watched until it was time for her to give her few words. These people weren’t children. They didn’t need to be patronized by their own Goddess and Allians were never ones for long speeches anyway. The announcer on the ship extended an arm out to Aliana. “And now, for the Goddess.”

“Men and women of Allia! What you have accomplished here defies all imagination. I have always believed in you, never once did my resolution falter for even a moment.” Aliana extended one arm out to indicate the ship behind her. “But faith is certainty without evidence. I know longer believe in you people of Allia, I witness you. I witness your work. I witness your effort. I witness it, and the whole world witnesses. There are none like you.”

And as the people answered back with a cheer, as the INS Resolution turned on its engines and started to sail away, as Aliana felt her nation cradle in the sweet bosom of Empire, she stood and she wanted to weep. Because of how Tull had gone from a deindustrializing forgotten backwater of a town to a city that outshone the world. Because of everything that had been accomplished here, she was responsible for nothing of it. Because these cheers weren’t for her, they were for that red, white and black tricolour that hung next to the Allian flag.

Because it was her decision to lead Allia into imperial embrace in the first place. And now that, the loving mother Empire would not let go.