Magus sat at his desk reading a copy of the Pames Memoirs by candlelight. Religious study had never been his strong suit, but he found himself reaching for the memoirs of Anointed Catala Enfar more and more as of late. Catala had been responsible for bringing the light of truth to the secluded valley of Pames in the far northwest corner of Gadir over a thousand years ago. The soil of the land was rocky and poor, and the people nomads of no real importance, which meant Catala had been given few resources to work with during his efforts. Given Thanet’s distance from Gadir, and her people’s incredible stubbornness in adopting faith in the God-Incarnate, the experience grew increasingly relevant to Magus.

To abandon a god is to abandon an identity, wrote Pames’s Anointed One. These simple people meet in caves, they pray to the stars, and they think their rituals, which are shrouded in mystery, make them wise. They refuse to believe their gods are dead. The mystery and ignorance of their practice grants them a veil no logic may pierce. For this reason, I suspect our measures go not far enough. Until they see themselves as imperials, they will never worship an imperial god. We must break the identity. I propose we hasten the replacement of their native tongue. All new homes must be built using wood brought by our traders, and styled like our abodes in Everlorn. Any ritual, be it innocent or tied to dead gods, must be outlawed. I have also ordered an influx of new clothes, and ordered burned their meager city’s lone textile.

These early thoughts were the first inklings of what Catala would codify into the Joining Laws upon his return to the capital of Eldrid. His success in Pames had led God-Incarnate Aristava to adopt them throughout the empire, creating a unified identity for each and every citizen to hold in their hearts.

Magus sighed. The lengthy journey across the Crystal Sea, coupled with their narrow time frame leading up to the six-hundredth-year ceremony, prevented the Three Pillars from implementing many of Catala’s perfected methods in Thanet. Sinshei had done her best, as much as her limited skills allowed. She had focused on the language, mandating that the imperial tongue be the only writ accepted for any legal documents and, after two years, requiring that Thanese be removed from all signposts and storefronts. Paid bards sang songs from the mainland. No teachers had been supplied for the language centers, so Sinshei had chosen clever priests among her ranks to spend several days each week amid the city’s schools teaching their young the imperial tongue.

Yet Catala was right. These people viewed themselves as part of Thanet, not part of the Everlorn Empire, and so they clung to their lion feathers and butterfly wings despite the ever-present reminders flying from the Dead Flags. Perhaps it was time for even more drastic measures…