Between 10,000 (one Faculties graduating class) and 100,000 (the city of Shaheen) Falcresti citizens die in the course of a ten-year civil war. Most succumb to unknown diseases native to Oriati Mbo. Returning expeditionaries quarantine on Sousward, containing these pandemics away from our heartland, with the risk of total loss of Sousward’s vulnerable native population.

Crop failure, internecine violence, and plague cause between 15 million (ten cities of Falcrest) and 35 million (the population of the entire Falcresti heartland, Normarch, and Occupation) deaths in Oriati Mbo.

Infant mortality in the Mbo climbs from 20 per hundred to 35 per hundred.

The death of griots and the destruction of records erases one month out of every year of recorded history.

Outbreaks of the Oriati Emotional Disease introduce additional death, but it is our hope that Incrastic progress will fend off the better part of these suicide casualties.

A MORE TROUBLING SCENARIO

A war of attrition in the Ashen Sea and inconclusive naval battles along the Mothercoast force both powers into a stalemate.

Our Metademe deploys demographic weapons against Oriati Mbo. Oriati Mbo retaliates with the bushmeat defense, including especially the zoonotic reservoirs of the Kettling. The Stakhieczi launch an opportunistic invasion of Aurdwynn, cutting off shipments of grain and lumber to Falcrest.

Between 1 million (one out of thirty) and 6 million (one out of five) Falcresti citizens die to food rationing, contaminated water, and the Oriati bushmeat defense.

Between 35 million (one out of six) and 70 million (one out of three) people in the Mbo die in famine, unrest, and the use of demographic weapons.

Nearly one in six people in the known world die.

We predict the total collapse of most societies within the Ashen Sea trade circle due to the spread of crop blight and the end of agricultural trade.

The remote possibility exists that Ashen Sea civilization will disintegrate entirely, triggering a return to sustenance agriculture in small polities (as in the Near Ancient collapse of the Jellyfish Eater and Cheetah Palace civilizations).

LET IT BE NOTED

That Parliamin Mister Mandridge Subahant, Candid Whip and Chair of the Committee for Realism, has entered an allegation of sensationalism against this paper and a motion of censure against Miss Truesmith Elmin.

It must be repeated, in the interest of pragmatism, that the digestion of Oriati Mbo would give Falcrest the keys to the known world and secure an Incrastic future of well-ordered, prosperous, scientific society.

3. The Lever

3

THE LEVER

SAIL down the arc of the trade circle from wolf-wintered Aurdwynn southeast toward Falcrest, the jewel of the world, and halfway along your journey you come to an island of great green forests and rich white guano, an island where compasses turn madly under alien influence as the caves jet steam and the mountain rumbles.

Once this island was called hell. Today it bore the burnt-clean name of Isla Cauteria.