a brief history of ooranye
27: the great triangle

The mighty Osmium Era – the Seventy-Sixth – lasted 22,090,596 Uranian days, which is exactly 900 Uranian years, equivalent to 75,600 Earth years.

It took this length of time to sort out the implications of the preceding 5 hours.

That is not to say that the people of the Osmium Era spent their days pondering the Rhenium Moment. Far from it; for the vast majority of their days they had their minds on other things. This great Era 76 comes the closest to providing stories analogous to the Cold-War “thrillers” of Earth’s history. The details are vastly different but the mood (to a Terran scholar) can be reminiscent. Syoom was divided into sharply defined, competing power-blocks. In addition there was renewed contact with the empire of the Quonians which lay outside the main part of Syoom. Espionage abounded, together with crises, destructive weapons, large military organizations... The entire period pulsed with tension and vigour.

The underlying reason for these trends lay in that brief five-hour “voice” uttered by the world-spirit. The Rhenium Era echoed on, deep in people’s souls, gradually convincing them of a truth which many of them did not wish to hear.

The voice had confirmed that the destiny of the kalyars was to flourish not in this Great Cycle but in the next one, in the unimaginably distant future. Their current efflorescence was a mere foretaste, and in some respects a false start. They ought to retire from centre stage for the time being, leaving the present to the Nenns, and reserving the far future for themselves.

It was a compliment to them, in a way, but one which ambitious evolved men naturally found hard to accept. Yet as their numbers gradually declined, as they began to show signs of a kind of cultural recession or hibernation, as many of them reverted to tribalism and diffused into the wilderness, the truth nagged at the ones who remained powerful. Many were determined to resist the message of the Rhenium Moment. The kalyar power-blocks took a long time to die. They were dangerous while they were dying.

The most successful of them began increasingly to recruit Nenns to make up their numbers: people who, though ordinary humans in a biological sense, had for some reason developed a wish or a need to abandon their native cultures; dissidents, outlaws, rootless wanderers, ambitious skilled people attracted by offers from kalyar states… By the end of the era, the formerly kalyar states had become almost entirely Nenn, but with their own traditions, different from those of the core of Syoom.

The most famous alliance of this period was between three Nenn city states: Ao, Vyanth and Skyyon. These three great powers remained independent of each other but formed a close association to patrol the lands between them. The association and the lands became known loosely by the politico-geographical expression The Great Triangle. It brought an unusual degree of peace and security to a section of Syoom about fifteen million square miles in area.

Osmium Era thinkers meanwhile turned their attention to questions of loyalty and identity, of how to treat allies and enemies, of shades of moral obligation. Brainwashing and other evil state actions were not unknown. Economics also flourished as a discipline, to an unusual extent compared with the rest of Uranian history; ell-light Gross National Product figures were published amid rivalry.

In the midst of this era occurred the first lifetime of the legendary secret agent, Taldis Norkoten, whose adventures, together with those of his sidekick Sialend Baplegn, form the basis of innumerable tales, some true, some partly true and others which ought to be true. Norkoten eventually became the 64,702^nd Sunnoad. He insisted on retiring after a thousand-day reign, during which he tried to institute a permanent supranational Sunnoad’s Navy to keep the peace.

Taldis Norkoten 64702 succeeded in helping Syoom over a dangerous patch during his lifetime, but his achievement was purely personal, and did not outlast him. His people mourned his loss but did not take his advice. The most they did was to rename Zdinth Hall, the focus of the Rhenium Moment, as Norkoten Hall – one of the rare instances of renaming in Uranian history.

The Osmium Era, to sum up, was a thrilling epic, with a tincture of reflection. It was almost as mighty as the Phosphorus Era in terms of forces unleashed, though without its aura of myth; almost as rich in personal derring-do as the Vanadium Era, though nowhere near as fresh and simple-minded. What was unique about the Osmium Era was its adrenalin-powered “rat-race” of competing powers, glitteringly ambitious and insecure.

The force which brought it to a close came from a reform movement dedicated to the memory of a long-dead Sunnoad.

This movement began quietly, with an organization of academic historians, united by their common interest in the career of Taldis Norkoten 64702. After a while the scope of this group expanded. It began to attract the attention of practical Nenns who wished to resurrect the ideals of that revered yet insufficiently supported leader. People sensed that there had been something special about him, even in comparison with his illustrious predecessors. Eventually the membership of the Norkoten Society included many active political figures in many of the lands of Syoom, and finally some of them seized the opportunity which a crisis offered, to persuade the current Sunnoad and the Noads of the more powerful cities to put Norkoten’s ideals into effect by the establishment of a Sunnoad’s Navy drawn from all the national navies of Syoom.

Amid pan-Syoomean rejoicing, and the increasing expectation that from all this excitement there would surely spring an eomasp, an eomasp of course occurred.

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