Dichoro

And then there's military and the military police. With their expanded numbers and role, civilians being tried due to breaking military law (usually tresspass) is something that happens. Still handled through civil court, just means there's people with guns to arrest you if you go to the wrong place

Riot control is a lot more common, and has more mechanised force behind it. Portable Enforcement Placements (Pepperpots), ground based reinforced drones with heavy 'non-lethal' armament, are usually wheeled out, along with overhead camera units to register attendants and track escape attempts.

There's a small community of werewolf police officers embedded into the force across the nation. Most counties have enough for a pack to get together when their 'old friends' have reason to see some particularly troublesome fugitive brought to justice.

#FebruaryWorldbuilders

Still the Home Office. That said, the Department of High Technology has a few 'unorthodox' levers to apply some extra pressure to 'subversive elements', if they feel its warranted.

#FebruaryWorldbuilders

Still the houses of parliament. The ghosts have their House of Shades, but that's more a forum for a workforce to air their grievances and the bosses to try and sell them on what they're doing. Law is still a thing for mortals and their MPs. The ghosts have all they need.

#FebruaryWorldbuilders

This is something that the leads have some reason to worry about. Once they figure out the dimensional sealing thing, there's no way to be sure what the wider world would be like if they brought Britain back to the material plane. They could be heading back to a ruined world

So... yeah, I really wanted to get some stains on the Aetheri culture with this. It's easy to show corrupt practices in an imperialistic sci fi military, harder to paint the issues with a quasi democratic mage republic. ^^

The Heart Seal works. But 'works' is the wrong word given what it puts people through. It's a clumsy, blunt force approach, ripping magic away and creating an underclass of victims. If you need it, you're weak, you wouldn't have been a decent mage anyway.

And even some people with the Seal buy that

You know, in the abstract, what those memories are. But the specifics are cut off. Trying to access those memories is physically painful, and your feelings in general are... muted. Not gone, but hidden. Buried.

They're still there, and the subconscious effects of them... tend to not be great.

The Heart Seal is indeed emotionally suppressive. I'm wary of it, turning this concept into an anti medication metaphor would be easy. The intent is more a matter of masking. The Seal is focused at a specific emotion, and the memories the mage believes led to that feeling dominating your life.

(Theoretically, non magical medication might be able to treat Athamatics' emotional overdrive? It's not in play yet, but given the Aetheri are now spacefairing and have met high tech civilizations, it'd be on the table if they were open about the problem)

Most Athamatics create a mental framework around this. A wrathful Athamatic can try to be a righteous warrior, bringing down the deserving. A despair locked Athamatic tries to see the world through a bleakly comedic lens, having a laugh at the futility of it all, and sharing it with others.

Take a wrathful Athamatic. They're never going to be able to fully stop feeling that anger. But they can still experience positive emotions - if they don't contradict that wrath. If you find something you want to destroy, or that provides an engaging challenge, you're going to feel satisfied.

Athamatics are semi-locked. That emotion will not leave them. A lot of their behaviour is rooted in trying to manage with this psychologically and bring themselves back to something relatively normative. That norm just... shifts. And now, unfortunately, has to accommodate their base state

A picture a friend of mine posted in a Discord. Its several Harry Potter books on Audible for an ad. Graffiti is sprawled over the books and it reads in all caps: “FIND A BETTER BOOK” A male female, gender symbol, which I’m going to assume represents trans folks is in the top right corner, but there’s an a for anarchy inside of the circle in the symbol

Find a better book

The role of ghosts, the House of Shades, the degree of its dominance over Britain via their hidden AI monopoly - all that stuff's limited to the ghosts themselves, and a few key mortal Civil Servant allies in the new Department of High Technology.

That belief has gone a long way towards minimizing protest. The country is seemingly doing well, which has built a degree of trust in the official narrative.

It's worth noting however that even most of the government believes that isolation was done to preserve the technological advantage.

There isn't a lot of enthusiasm for the sealed borders, but few people seem willing to talk much about it. Common belief is that the government has gone too far, that it's been too isolationist, probably should stop soon but... well, there's UBI. High street stores. They Know What They're Doing.

Nerds who are into history or tech will be a bit more familiar with Adaptive AI tech, that it runs off a specially designed server unit known as a Carnacki Box, after the engineer Thomas Carnacki who invented it. Details of Carnacki's personal history are vague however.

Everyone knows that 'Adaptive AI' was the root of the UKs technology boom, that it was developed in the early-mid 21st century, and that the British Government sealed the national borders in a bid to preserve this radical technological advantage.

#FebruaryWorldbuilders

Origin of this world, in this case would be the point of timeline divergence with our reality. And it's somewhat known, just not a lot of the specifics (and secrets) made it to the public eye.

1/6 🧵

The process can never be entirely stopped, as long as the Empyrean exists there will be Athematics. But the League've managed to make it rare by applying Heart Seals to those deemed vulnerable to the condition

And as morally flawed as the seals are.. they have made the Athematics rarer.

In the past, that led to demon kings and dark lords. They threatened nations. The Aetherian League was originally formed to wipe out Athamatics before they could reach that scale. It brought the mages of many nations together to contain a threat to everyone.

The Aetheri believe anyone who fell to Athamatics is essentially dead, their soul devoured and what remains is a walking demon. The Athamatics disagree, but their history is not great. They're driven to exercise their power, spread their 'gift', transform those around them into Athamatics.

You can get hit by Athamatic Alignment. Your magic circuits rapidly expand and lock into alignment with this emotional energy. It's a crazy thing to watch, you transform physically, your magic gets easier to use and significantly more powerful... but you are lost in that feeling.

If you're lucky, and not affected too deeply by the emotional storm, it's just going to screw your magic up. Things will misfire; get boosted to a damaging degree or fizzle out.

... But if the emotional storm is resonating with you, you're trying to use magic while surrounded by something you feel?

The Empyrean's emotional feedback loop can get overwhelming. If there's fear in your community, you're constantly feeling it, and by feeling it, boosting it.

Trying to use magic in that situation is like trying to manipulate heavy machinery while a storm's going on. Not a good idea.

#FebChantment

There's a few options. Architects abusing their power to drain life from the poor wards. Thaumologists experimenting and contaminating an area. But one issue is widespread and cultural.

Athamatic. Linguistic root of Aetherian League and later, in space, Aetheri.

1/7 🧵

^^ Indeed.

The main counterpoint is ghosts seeming sentience. They can retain memory from life. They seem able to take independent action. 'Wild' ghosts can come off monstrous, but those bound in Carnacki boxes have enough will and mind to ask these questions of themselves.

That guy might be held down less by his own regrets and more by the lamentations of his followers. Which he may in turn start to believe. Overriding his principles about stepping back from office with the drip fed conviction that Only He Could Save The Nation.

... In theory. ^^