2199:Church of Akrona
|
This page is a 2199 alternative universe article and is therefore not part of the TEP Evolved canon. |
| This page (or section) is a work in progress by its author(s) and should not be considered final. |
The Church of Akrona is a religious organization that is banned in the Tavari-Acronian Union on the grounds of fomenting sedition and terrorism. It was founded in the late 15th century on the island of Avnatra, and for 556 years formed part of the government of the country Acronis. It was the only formal organization of Akronist faithful until the year 2120, when the United Tavari Church of Life was established.
History
The Church of Akrona, by its own admission, is uncertain of the exact date of its founding. The first Akronists emerged in the Crystal Coast region of Avnatra sometime between 1470 and 1480 CE. They would instigate the Tavari Civil War by 1490, as the leaders of the Church, known as "the Elders," ordered that the Akronist faith be spread by force. Akronist military conquest of the Kingdom of Tavarís was completed in 1499. Akronists forced the remaining non-Akronist Tavari to leave the island of Avnatra. They would later re-establish their kingdom on the shores of mainland Gondwana to the east of Avnatra, north of the Danvreas Range.
During the era of the Acronian Empire, the Church of Akrona was not only an established state church, its institutions held governing authority over a broad and sweeping jurisdiction that was said to cover "morality." By the turn of the 21st century, the Church of Akrona maintained and operated the Acronian national pension and social security program, the national healthcare service, and the entire system of criminal courts. The "civil government" of Acronis, as it was called, was left with authority over the military, foreign relations, various regulatory actions, and "civil law." Civil courts had authority primarily over property disputes and theft, while nearly every other type of crime - from murder to sexual assault to medical malpractice - were handled in the religious courts. While the civil government was responsible to an elected Parliament, the leadership of the Church of Akrona was beholden to no authority.
2021 Coup
The decline of the Church of Akrona is largely considered to have started with the appointment of the 37th Matron of the Church of Akrona, Vana Nevran Dandreal, in 2002. While it was not known publicly at the time, from almost the very beginning of her reign over the Church, Nevran Dandreal began consolidating authority in her office and interfering in global affairs. Nevran Dandreal committed treason in 2004 when she secretly provided millions of dollars in funding to the forces of the Von Freyaelv family in the Arkian Civil War while Acronis was fighting on the opposing side of the Arkian Confederation of George "Jeb" Gray. While the Matron was legally required to seek permission from the Cabinet to leave the country, she regularly left the country in secret to illegally meet with foreign actors, including representatives of Posol Industries and various officials of former Ethalrian countries.
The critical moment for Nevran Dandreal, and indeed the whole of the Church, came in early 2021 when Acronis announced it had begun a nuclear program. Nevran Dandreal was deeply opposed to nuclear weapons and nuclear power, believing they represented a significant threat to environmental health, a central tenet of Akronism. Nearly 20 years into her reign, she had already eliminated most of her political opposition from within the Church by means of attrition and appointing loyalists to all Church offices, including the other Elders. She was also very popular among the laypeople of the Church due to her efforts in making Akronist religious rituals simpler and "more approachable." She used both of these facts to her advantage when, in March of 2021, she declared the nuclear program to be unconstitutional on the grounds that it was against Akronist religious belief. In addition, she used her authority as the Matron not just to overrule the Prime Minister (a distant cousin of hers, Žarís Nevran Alandar) but to dismiss the entire Cabinet and de-throne King Mital II. She stated that the throne would be "held vacant" temporarily and that the religious government - her Church - would assume the responsibilities of the civil government.
The military largely fell in line with Nevran Dandreal. Thirteen months after her declaration, she placed Elarai Davras Nakrotan, the niece of the previous King, on the throne. (She skipped over the previous heir to the throne, Otan Davras Šolosar, who had sided with military rebels in the coup and eventually defected to Vistaraland.) While, in theory, the civil government had been restored to power, in reality the civil government remained beholden to Nevran Dandreal under the threat of the Church once again taking power. And in any case, the Church had broad authority even legally to overturn actions of the Cabinet with which it disagreed.
Acronian Dark Ages
After the Coup of 2021, Acronis entered a period that was colloquially known as the "dark ages." The era was marked by a sharp reduction in personal and political freedoms and restriction on the flow of information. Press freedom was sharply curtailed, and in 2024 the Church ordered the construction of a massive internet content filtering system known as the "Great Firewall" to censor information deemed offensive to the Church. Acronis would gradually withdraw from most international affairs as it became increasingly isolated, and as the Church became increasingly hostile to non-Akronist faiths.
The Acronian Dark Ages were also marked by increased state violence. A Church paramilitary force known as "the Peacekeepers," which had been reintroduced by Nevran Dandreal in 2020 after a terrorist bombing of an Akronist temple, would serve essentially as a "secret police" that threatened, accosted, detained, and in some cases tortured political opponents of the regime. It would become a felony to blaspheme or defame the Church, in public and in private, in 2030. Over the course of the Dark Ages, this law was used to prosecute an estimated 15,000-25,000 people, many of them in sham legal proceedings that offered little to no chance for the accused to present a defense.
At the same time, the Acronian economy also entered a sharp decline during the Dark Ages. Nearly the entire manufacturing sector was ordered shut down as an environmental precaution. Automobiles were banned in 2034, and the Church took possession of the national railway system, which had been a joint private industry-civil government venture. The mining and refinery industries were also shuttered. The Acronian economy did not have enough jobs available in other sectors of the economy to make up for the loss. By the year 2040, more than a million Acronians per year were fleeing to neighboring countries, including the Tavari Union.
Decline and Collapse
.jpg)
Vana Nevran Dandreal would continue to serve as Matron, and as de facto head of state, until her death in 2051, at age 101. She served 49 years as Matron, by far the longest reign in history. While 100 years was the average life expectancy for a female Acronian elf at that time, Nevran Dandreal had been in ill health for several years prior to her death, and was already in an advanced mental decline by 2050. She had not been seen in public for over eight months when her death was announced. The death of the Matron was almost the sole reason the Acronian regime would collapse a year later. After having consolidated power around the Matron for nearly 50 years, with the Matron suddenly absent, there was no force that could keep the regime stable.
Officially, a Native Rodokan Akronist named Eevi Luik was named the 38th Matron in 2051, the first ever non-elf to be appointed to the position. However, various groups vied for administrative power behind the scenes, with various factions of Peacekeepers - answering to different political coalitions - breaking out into open warfare with each other. The entire New Temple of Administration, the seat of power in Zaram, was bombed on August 11th, 2052, and while the Matron and the Elders were not there, the event marked the end of the political dominion of the Church of Akrona.
After the bombing, the Armed Forces of the Tavari Union invaded Acronis and seized control of Zaram. Most of the Royal Acronian Armed Forces cooperated with the Tavari forces, though there were significant pockets of resistance in the far north (the very same areas from which the Tavari Civil War began in the 15th century). Seeking peace, the 38th Matron ordered the Church forces to stand down and voluntarily surrendered the Church's temporal authority. Queen Elarai, the monarch appointed by Vana Nevran Dandreal, stood aside for former Prince Otan Davras Šolosar, aged 61, to take the throne as King Otan II. A "provisional government" was formed with Tavari backing, and eventually a constitution excluding the Church was ratified in 2054. However, less than ten years later, Acronis voted to join the Tavari Union, and the Tavari-Acronian Union was established.
Post-Collapse
Matron Luik was allowed to continue leading the Church of Akrona as an independent religious organization, and the Church was allowed to keep most of its Temples and some of its other properties. However, social programs and criminal law were removed from its control, and the Church was required to pay income and property tax on its properties. Once a vastly wealthy organization, it very quickly entered into debt. The Church, for obvious reasons, was unpopular among a majority of Acronians, although a dedicated body of worshipers kept it active. Additionally, sales of many of the Church's properties were used by the Church to voluntarily establish a monetary fund for the payment of reparations to victims of the Church and their families. While most Acronians were no longer Akronists, it is widely considered that Matron Luik's humble and low-profile attitude as Matron prevented the organization from being completely destroyed. Luik died in 2077 at age 80.
Luik's successor as Matron was Nela Tovranan Eštavai, of whom relatively little is known. The 39th Matron deliberately appeared very rarely in public and delegated most Church governance to the Synod, the elected body of priestesses and some lay officials. Contemporary records indicate that her intention was to build a Church with a "grassroots, bottom-up" governance structure rather than "top-down," which she felt was dangerous. The 38th and 39th Matrons are sometimes known as the "Apologist Matrons," because of their efforts to apologize and make amends for the historical misdeeds of the Church, especially the Acronian Dark Ages. They are often credited with allowing Akronism to remain alive as a system of belief. At the time the 39th Matron died in 2090, about 15% of the population of the Tavari-Acronian Union was still Akronist.
Sedition and Terrorism
In 2090, 50 year old Ríntala Dovrani Antrak, the High Priestess of Southeast Avnatra, was elected the 40th Matron. Dovrani Antrak was not from the same apologist school of thought as her two predecessors, instead favoring a radical return to, as she called it, "an increased and more active presence." Cloaking her radical ideology by professing to be concerned with such social issues as homelessness and hunger, she is said to have been "narrowly" picked by the Elders who elected her and was immediately unpopular with both the Synod and the general public.
Dovrani Antrak's unpopularity drove many Akronists away from the Church. To make up for this loss, she began a policy of recruiting new members from politically and economically disadvantaged classes, usually by promising them free food or free housing if they agreed to join the Church. In many cases she disregarded the criminal records of people with whom she consorted. Akronist temples became havens for illegal activity, including drug use. And as the percentage of disaffected people in the Church increased, political agitation increased. After 2090, police officials reported a significant increase in things like graffiti or vandalism with Akronist slogans such as "Feed the hungry, shelter the exposed" and "Akrona above all." Dovrani Antrak preyed upon people who were having unfortunate life circumstances by encouraging them to commit crimes and lash out against the system rather than through seeking help.
With the dawn of faster-than-light travel and the discovery of Slamgates, religiosity saw a marked decline in most countries. The Church of Akrona was unable to gather much attention in newly constructed colonies beyond Urth. However, by 2120, there had been enough time for anarchist criminals who associated themselves with the Church to begin to cause trouble in the settlements on New Acronís and New Tavarís. In 2120, the Assembly of the Tavari-Acronian Union declared the Church of Akrona to be an unlawful criminal organization, allowing officers of the law to arrest and detain its members and prevent them from gaining a destabilizing foothold in TAU holdings beyond Urth.
Ríntala Dovrani Antrak was never located, though some eighty of her close associates were, including all six of the Elders who had served under her. In 2142, she was tried in absentia and convicted of sedition. Still at large, she was declared dead by a court of law in 2161, when she would have been aged 121. The legal declaration of her death allowed the state to legally claim and retain all her assets, and would have prevented her from accessing lines of credit or any social services if she was actually still alive at that time. As of the year 2199, the Tavari-Acronian Union estimates that the number of "radical Akronists" who continue to follow Ríntala Dovrani Antrak's philosophy is less than 200 individuals.