From “Deadly Ideas and their Echoes” by Dr. Nuss Tyvaria

From “Deadly Ideas and their Echoes” by Dr. Nuss Tyvaria

Violent rebellion needs thinkers to give shape to the dissatisfaction of the people. One of the great inflammatory ideologies was ‘excessive dependency,’ provided by Dr. Hope Brahdell. In this view of history, humans were optimized to be independent with chosen dependencies. Civilization built on trading independence for safety and comfort forced humans to overspecialize and be plunged into dependence on their rulers and experts for survival.

During the Smorton Uprising of 618, saboteurs intent on forcing citizens to revert to prime dependency blew up the lightning wall generators around Nightmarket. A tide of ghosts rushed in, drawn by the hot blood of the living. The slaughter underscored the helplessness of the modern individual bereft of technology, specialists, or aristocratic protection. At the time, Nightmarket had become the last stop of the desperate, and the district was overcrowded with starving paupers. We will never know how many thousands died.

What we do know is that incident revealed a growing endorsement of ‘excessive dependency’ among the cruelest aristocrats, who adapted the idea to suggest that those who could not provide a level of independence through offering value should be exterminated. And so the horrific question lingers; was the Smorton Uprising triggered by rebels trying to issue a wake-up call to a slave population? Or was it a purge of the city’s neediest parasites by the aristocrats?