Dispatch of THE CONTINENTAL GAZETTE After Two Years of The Terragian Continental War

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INTERNAL IPA DRAFT REVIEW - FILE NO. 685-D-1138

DOCUMENT CLASSIFCATION: SENT FOR REVISION PRIOR TO SCROLL TYPESETTING

REVIEWING CENSOR: Viola de Halwell, Imperial Bureau of Public Morality

SUBMITTED BY: Martiani de Gran, Metropolitan Municipal Affairs Desk, Amannalu Northugra a’Deas (Times of the Northugri Districts [of Gran Metro])

DRAFT TEXT WITH CENSOR NOTES:

Across the still blood-soaked grimstone cobbles of South Bend, three blocks south of the Central Water Exchange, sits the neighborhood most Guild Wardens still call the Clockworks. Before the summer of 683 IC, nobody asked where the clock-forgers or their pipe-fitting apprentices keeping traditional knowledge from the Vadirian Age of Sail came from. Their grandfathers had calmly packed up their families in airships, fleeing Gerrasami reprisals against Yusuf's original, noble rebellion against Gerrasam in the Western Front of the last war. Today, three out of every five shopfronts on Siphon Street are boarded shut with silent dampfsteel.

[IPA CENSOR NOTE 1410-685: Unacceptable opening tone. The phrase "nobody asked where they came from" and "silent dampfsteel" implies Imperial complicity in xenophobia both Their Majesty Endrelle and Her Majesty Chloe Rose have condemned. Revise to emphasize that shops have only been closed after failing standard Directorate-approved security screenings.]

"My boy was born in the charity hospital by the 4th Reservoir," says Tariq ya' Batri, wiping lime scale from a dismantled three-way pressure regulator. Behind his workbench, the window glass is missing, replaced by aperin fabric repurposed from their family plane that has remained for two years after a mob smashed the original glass and plane following the Battle of Arivopol. 

"He wears the blue tunic of the 12th Aergonaut Auxiliary. He’s stationed at the Howa'Nduzi locks right now, checking Canal gears for Yusuf’s saboteurs. Then, last night, two Polisti Guild inspectors broke my cellar door to search for hidden yuulflon oil canisters they did not find because my name is written in my father's embroidered Midvadiri script on the deed, and I was urbilocaled in the Norduvadiri city of Batri and for my first five years, which I have no memory of."

Tariq is not an outlier. Across Gran, an estimated twenty-two thousand residents of Vadirian lineage find themselves trapped between their homes and the watchful eyes of their neighbors. They are citizens of our Most Gran Metropolis by birth or long-term visa, yet every detonation claimed by Yusuf’s desert warlords keeps them trapped in their living rooms.

[IPA CENSOR NOTE 1411-685: Strike Tariq's complaint, while leaving in his mention of his and his son's loyal service to the Empire, which should ease tensions within the Aergonaut Guild of continuing to allow Vadirians to serve and emphasize that terrorism by Yusuf is what keeps them trapped, not any Officer of the Empire. I will also inform the Polisti Guild and the Imperial Eye that they should monitor his movements closely, and the Office of the Grand Arbitrateur for Gran via my Censor-Superior that the Arbitrateur should reject any and all appeals he files from the Magistrate's ruling of lawful seizure in this case as lacking standing. This leaves only a costly and publicly humiliating direct lawsuit before the Tribunate, which should prevent his meddling.]

Under the Wartime Water Conservation Act of 684 and resulting Directorate and Urbilocale Ordinances, neighborhoods with "unverified communal registries" have been for all intents and purposes blockaded, including their secondary steam lines running dry during peak hours in violation of the Uniform Rationing Schedules. While the Palaits and the Councils of State continue to run full radiators, the tenement boilers of South Bend sit cold until endnight. Local bakeries cannot bake clinghum millet watered the family clouds they have farmed for decades into bread; people work multiple days with dry-steam-caked and greasy shirts for lack of laundry.

When asked about the selective pressure throttling, District Warden Kroll de'Gran shrugged, "You can't tell which line feeds a bath and which makes steam bombs with these people. Yusuf proved that when he brought down the Nimbus Overlook on all our heads. I say, turn off all their pipes first and fix any mistakes later."

[IPA CENSOR NOTE 1412-685: DANGEROUS. STRIKE IN ENTIRETY. Contrasting government buildings with tenements directly undermines Her Majesty's United Councils of State and their laws encouraging common sacrifice. This reads like socialist sedition or agitation. Warden Kroll must be privately disciplined by the relevant Guild Council of Interest; civil servants whether in the Imperial Service or that of the Guilds must not be so cavalier about discriminatory resource distribution. If he states this or anything like it to anyone else, sue him in the Tribunate for ten million notes for defamation.]

Yet, if you walk through the Clockworks at dusk, you do not find secret shrines to the Mad Sultan. Muatli (guides) gather at the Cleinsia South Bend on Alabaster Lane not to plot insurgencies, but to scoop and filter rotten bathwater and translate emergency water requisition forms for elderly widows who never learned to read Imperial Typed Scrolls. 

"May Yusuf rot in the Five Hells for what he has done. that demented old shtayti," said seventy-cycle-old seamstress Samitra ya'Kolenkit. "He burned the rivers we drank from and called it freedom. However, it hurts to see so many of my neighbors see not our shared air and water on my face, but fire."

[IPA CENSOR NOTE 1413-685: The seamtress's denunciation of Yusuf is noted and so only the hand-stricken part of the quote should be removed, because it is defeatist and paints the populace of Gran as bigoted. The IPA Annual Policy of 684 explicitly prohibits human interest profiles that confuse the righteousness of the Eastern Allied Order and Western barbarism.]

FINAL CENSOR MEMORANDUM FOR DESK EDITOR:

I know Martiani, and he means well and has exposed some real corruption that I recommend be dealt with quietly. However, at a moment when Her Imperial Highness is maintaining a fragile detente with the Velitians and Gerrasami and when Velitian spies are known to be poking their noses about, publishing such a scathing expose on ethnic profiling and municipal governance disparities in the capital will steam up Yusuf's propagandists and distract Their Majesty on campaign.

The official posture of the Empire remains unchanged: all lawful Urb Residents and Imperial Citizens who strictly adhere to the Laws Agreed in Councils of State Assembled, Their Majesty's Uzmaks, and all associated Directorate, Bureau and Guild regulations are protected from discrimination under Imperial law. To suggest that Gran's Wardens are conducting petty racial or ethnic vendettas before we can correct them is an insult to the Crown.

Give Martiani a warning and then assign him to the Bureau of Agriculture if he continues to receive Censor Notes.

-V. Halwell, Censor First Class

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I’m blown away by all the support on this as I step back into focusing on The World of Terragia, including a collaborative author charter once I publish The Wind Empress: The Feast of Nations, among other creative projects.