a brief history of ooranye
11: revolutions

The upheaval which marked the end of the immense Vanadium Era stemmed from a personal decision by Valim Poand, Noad of Vyanth, to free all his city’s slaves.

Slavery was already milder in Vyanth than elsewhere, with rights and customary protections in force. However, the step to outright abolition, taken by the ruler of the most powerful city of Syoom, astonished the civilized world. Deep emotions were roused – so deep that they caused an eomasp, an irregularity in the day/night cycle, which brought the longest of eras to an end at last.

For two days, seventeen hours and forty-two minutes (the Chromium Era) Syoom was poised before several forking paths of history. People waited to see what other rulers would do. But the other rulers waited also, instead of taking action. Then, inspired by events in Vyanth, a great slave revolt broke out in the other cities. It lasted thirty-one days (the Manganese Era), during which long-buried habits of thought and of feeling re-surfaced everywhere, expectations soared, and journalists struggled for metaphors as much as historians did later. “The mind of the human race juddered into higher gear.” “The infantile Vanadium cultural palette puddled and ran.” At the cost of much havoc and loss of life the slaves won their freedom in every city; elation spilled into the atmosphere, and the resulting further eomasp brought on the next era, the Twenty-Sixth.

The Iron Era lasted 18,940 Uranian days (64.8 Earth years). Many new regimes were founded, in reaction against the carefree irresponsibility and colourful individualism of the Vanadium Era, whose lack of social conscience was rightly blamed for the advent of slavery. Stern revolutionaries established oppressively reforming governments, communist in the totalitarian sense, so that in some cases a new slavery of ideology arose to replace the older, literal sort.

Conditions on the giant planet are, however, not conducive to the survival of totalitarian regimes. Reality is liable to break in upon the dreams of ideologues even more sharply than it used to do on Earth. The Iron Era went down in a welter of muddled crises. More natural Uranian habits were re-asserted, as we shall see.

>> A Brief History of Ooranye